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A Bad Record and A Bad Heart By Albert N. Martin

I want to speak to you this morning on a very vital issue.
In fact, there is no more vital issue that any man or woman in this building can consider.
And to introduce the subject about which I wish to speak, I want to ask you a very personal
and very practical question, and this is the question.
What do you feel is the greatest problem you've ever had to wrestle with?
As you look back over your life, what is the greatest problem that you've ever confronted
which has captured the attention of your mind, which has been the focus of thoughtful consideration,
perhaps has been the occasion of sweat and tears and mental agony?
What is the greatest problem you've ever confronted?
Let me carry the question on.
What do you think is the greatest problem that any man or woman can confront?
I want to give you paper and pencil and ask you this morning, what is the greatest, without
any degree of reticence, without any hesitation, I'm convinced there is one great and tremendous
problem that is the greatest problem of every creature who is the son of Adam.
You know what it is?
And I want to speak to you about that this morning, the greatest twofold problem that
any man or woman, fellow or girl, can ever confront.
And listen to me, if you live and die, never having been gripped by the magnitude of this
problem, listen to me, it were better for you that you had never been born.
Hear me.
If the problems we're going to deal with this morning have never been such as to grip your
mind and to cause the deepest, most intense agony of mind and soul, and if you go to your
grave having never been gripped and perplexed by this problem, it were better for you that
you'd never been born.
And thank God I can also say if you have come to grips with this problem and have found
God's answer to this problem, you know more than the most brilliant physicist who's come
to grips with the problems of God's created universe, an Einstein who's come to grips
with the problems of the laws that govern our universe, a Newton, any of these great
physicists and scientists—listen, dear one, you make them appear as a dunce if God has
given you the answer to this problem.
You know what the problem is?
I'm going to state it, and then I'm going to show you from the Scriptures what the problem
is and what the answer is, and, beloved, I'm just not preaching this sermon.
Every once in a while I must remind you of this.
I'm not doing this because it's Sunday morning and part of my pay involves preaching, so
I've had to conjure up something to occupy forty-five minutes.
Beloved, I'd tell you this if I was sitting in your living room today.
As a layman, I'm not just being preachy this morning.
If you never confronted this problem, better for you that you've never been born, if you
die having never confronted it.
You know what the problem is?
It's a twofold problem.
It's the problem of a bad record in heaven and the problem of a bad heart here on earth.
And that twofold problem is the greatest problem that any human being can ever have, for God
has moved from eternity in the greatest works He has ever done to the solving of that problem
for a great multitude, which no man can number.
And so, first of all, there is the problem of a bad record in heaven.
Have you ever been struck with the terrible fact that you have a terrible record in the
presence of a holy God?
For the Scripture says that as creatures born in God's moral universe, we, along with the
angels, are accountable to this God who made us.
We did not choose to be accountable to Him, He chose to create us, and He made us accountable
to Himself.
For the Scripture says, So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
When you are born in this country and live in this country, it's not a matter of choice
as to whether or not you will be accountable to the laws of this country.
By the fact that you were born here, you become immediately subject to the laws and disciplines
as well as the privileges of this country.
And you and I, as creatures created by God, made in the image of God, are therefore accountable
to God.
Whether we wish to be or not is not the issue.
For me to go out and smack my car into a telephone pole and throw a brick into the front window
of a store and to kick somebody in the shins and then be hauled into court and say, Look,
I never signed up and said I was accountable to these laws, it wouldn't get me off.
Sir, if you're a citizen of this county and of this place, you are accountable whether
you want to be or not.
And I don't need, and God does not give me the prerogative to stand before Him and say,
Lord, I'd like to sign a statement of accountability, or I'd like to sign a waiver of accountability.
Lord, I don't want to be accountable to you.
No such thing in the court of God.
You and I are accountable to Him, and this God deals with His universe as a judge.
He deals with it in other ways, but I want us to think particularly this God, the Scripture
says, His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, beholding the evil and the good.
And as the old Negro spiritual says, My God is writing all the time, time, time.
It's true.
It's a word picture.
God doesn't have to write to remember, but when we open our Bibles and read of the great
day of judgment, we read these words, The books shall be opened, and the dead shall
be judged out of those things that are written in the books, every man according to his deeds.
And this God, to whom we are accountable, who knows the thoughts and the intents of
the heart, who understands and knows our words that fall off, this God is recording every
deviation in thought, in word, in deed, in attitude, from the holy law which He has imposed
upon His creatures.
That holy law which commands us to love Him with the whole heart, to have no other gods
before Him, to take not His name in vain, to keep His Sabbaths holy, to honor all God-appointed
government, Father, Mother, or who else it be, to steal not, to lie not, to commit adultery
not, that God has and is recording every deviation from that law in motive, in thought, in word,
and in deed.
For the Scripture says, We shall be judged according to our works, every idle word that
men shall speak.
They shall give account of the day of judgment, that He will judge the secrets of men's hearts,
as we read in Romans chapter 2.
And, beloved, you and I are accountable to that God, that God whose eye searches the
depths of our beings, who knows us altogether.
That God is keeping a record of all that we have done.
And the Scripture says that you and I are under the condemnation of that holy law.
For in a way that is a mystery to us, we were involved in what happened in the garden when
our first parents sinned.
For the Scripture says, By one man condemnation came upon all, and we stand condemned because
of our actual transgressions of that holy law, and the record, beloved, is bad.
Now, I ask you this morning, has the problem of a bad record in heaven ever become to you
the greatest problem that you've ever wrestled with?
Has the thought that a holy God to whom you are accountable and who knows every thought,
every motive, every word, every deed, every deviation from His law, has this thought ever
pressed in upon you with such weight and magnitude until you felt you'd rather have
the world come crashing upon your head than stand before that holy God and face the record
of your sins?
Has that ever become the greatest problem in life to you?
Beloved, listen to me, if it hasn't, listen to me, if it hasn't and if it doesn't before
you die, better it were that you had never been born.
For when you go to the judgment, you'll face that record with every deviation from the
holy law of God in thought, in word, in deed.
And when Almighty God, who plumbs the depths of the heart and knows all the circumstances
of the life, opens the books and says, Sinner, this is your life, what will you say before
that ineffably holy God?
Young person, what will you say when the filthy stories told without the knowledge of mom
and dad and pastor are laid before your face?
What will you say, husband, when all the lustful burnings of your heart unknown to pastor and
wife and friends are laid bare before the eye of God?
What will you say, young people, when every cheating, every bit of deception, every bit
of lying to mom and dad and teacher and friends and playmates is laid before your gaze?
Beloved, listen, then you'll have a problem, but it'll be too late to do anything about
it.
This problem of a bad record in heaven must either become a terrifying problem now, or
it will be a terrifying problem then, but it'll be an unsolvable problem then.
My Bible says, When our Lord judges men out of the books, He shall say to them, Depart
from me, I never need you.
That's one problem, the problem of a bad record in heaven.
And what makes it so bad is that we can't do anything to change that record.
You see, God isn't going to go on a vacation and leave the records to be tampered with.
He's not going to leave the records to be tampered with.
You and I can't sneak into the courts of heaven and change the record.
You and I have no power to lower the standards of God and pay Him off.
No bribing of the court of heaven.
You don't bribe God with external morality and say, Well, I don't do this and don't do
that, therefore that'll cancel what I do do.
No, dear ones, you can't bribe the court of heaven with morality.
You can't coerce the court of heaven with religiosity and say, Well, I go to church
and I hear sound preaching and I love to hear the gospel.
No, you don't bribe the court of heaven by this.
Beloved, the court of heaven says, Sin must be paid for.
The wages of sin is death.
The law must be satisfied.
Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of
the law to do them.
Now, has that problem ever gripped you?
We have visitors here among us this morning, and we thank God for your presence.
Have some of you who've been here almost every Sunday since I've been here and for years
previous to that?
Some of you I know are acquainted with the substance of the gospel.
Some of you who've come among us may not be, but, beloved, is a minister of the gospel.
Regardless of your background, I declare, on the basis of this book, if that problem's
never gripped you and crushed you and caused you to be perplexed and filled with anxiety,
you're in a terrible state this morning, for the wrath of a holy God hangs above your head
because of a broken law, and you're ignorant of it, and only a heartbeat keeps you out
of hell.
Only one thing can change that law.
If God, by His sovereign purpose, is pleased to work out a plan whereby He may punish sin
and yet release the sinner, and God in grace has done that in His beloved Son, as we'll
see in a moment.
But that law which condemns us and that record which stands against us cannot be changed
by us.
That's problem number one.
Problem number two is the problem of a bad heart here on earth.
For I not only have a bad record, but I have a bad record because I've got a bad heart.
When I say the heart, I don't mean that muscle that pumps the blood through my physical brain,
but the seat of what I am.
The Scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
When a situation is desperate, it's out of hand, isn't it?
You why?
Do you know what it's like to get in a desperate situation?
You know what it is, don't you?
Here you've got something that should come out of the oven, and just as you're about
to go get it, one of the kids slips and skins his knees, and there's a kid who needs attention
and is crying, another one out in the backyard who's got his finger pinched in the swing,
and there's something in the oven, you just don't have enough hands and feet to do it.
Your situation is desperate, it's out of hand, you can't handle it.
God says the human heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.
It's out of hand!
Nothing I can do with it.
Jesus said in Mark 7, For from within out of the heart of men proceed adulteries, fornication,
sinful thoughts, murders, thefts, foolishness, wickedness, deceit, pride, all of these things
Jesus said, proceed from out of the heart of men.
They're not created by environment.
That's the whole folly of all the attempts to better society by bettering environment.
God said, The human heart is still the fountainhead of all forms of iniquity.
And the problem that you and I confront is the problem of this incorrigible, sin-loving,
God-hating heart of ours, and the Scripture says that this heart is enmity against God.
It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be, Romans 8.7.
Now this is a terrible problem.
I've got a heart that is opposed to God and to holiness and to truth and to light and
to purity.
How could God ever take people to heaven with hearts like that?
Heaven's a place of light.
God's a God of light.
He couldn't do it.
For you and I to enter heaven with unregenerate, unsanctified hearts, heaven would be the essence
of hell.
The pure light of heaven would be agony to our depraved and blackened souls.
There's the great problem.
How can this heart of mine be changed so that it will love what is pure and holy and will
love the law of God and love the ways of God, not just love to be religious and love to
be nice, but a heart that from the depths of its being will long to be all that God
purposes for His creatures?
Now, has that problem ever gripped you?
And I've got news for you.
That problem doesn't get solved by raising your hand and nodding to Jesus.
That problem doesn't get solved by lopping off some of the external sins of our lives
and becoming good Orthodox, quote, Christians, and coming to church and singing gospel hymns.
Beloved, God's greatest miracle is that miracle by which He does something for that heart
of a rebel sinner, His greatest miracle.
It didn't cost God a thing to make the world.
He just spoke, and out of the room of nothing were born the worlds and the galaxies.
Beloved, it cost God to begin to move, to do something to change rebel hearts.
It cost heaven the presence of the Lord of glory.
It cost the Lord of glory, tasting hell upon the cross for His people.
Has that problem ever gripped you, how a holy God could ever take the likes of you with
a heart like yours into heaven?
Now listen to me, if it hasn't gripped you, if you thought all your problem was that you've
done a few bad things and got a few checkmarks in the record book of heaven, if it's never
dawned on you, dear one, that the reason why you've got checkmarks in the book of heaven
is because you've got a heart that longs to do the things that bring the checkmarks.
We've been cursed in our generation by limiting the gospel as a message that says God will
blot out the checkmarks and fit you for heaven.
Listen, you're no more fit for heaven without a new heart than you're fit for heaven without
a changed record.
If God were to blot out the record and not change our hearts, salvation would be a monstrosity
of the thing and would turn heaven into hell in an instant of time.
Our problem is twofold, a bad record in heaven that we all have and a bad heart that we all
have.
We can't change the record, and we're utterly powerless to change our own hearts.
For Jesus said, Without me ye can do nothing, nothing.
The Scripture says, Can the leopard change his spots?
And the obvious answer is no.
Can the Ethiopian change his skin?
And the answer is obviously no.
And God says, Then can ye who are accustomed to doing evil do good?
And the answer is obvious no.
Oh, we can change some of our external habits.
The man who curses may cease to curse, and the man who chases another woman's wife may
cease his chasing.
But the leopard, he can't change the heart that moved him to chase that woman's wife,
and if he doesn't chase her in action, he'll chase her in thought.
And Jesus said, To chase a woman in thought is to be guilty of adultery.
The murderer may put up his gun and cease to blow the brains out of others, but he can't
change the heart that pulled the trigger, and God's Word says, Whoso he is a murderer.
The person who has no interest in spiritual things and shows it by never coming to church
may decide, I've got to go to church and be a good man, a good woman, and he may bring
his body to church.
But listen, he has no power to change his heart, so that he loves to sing the praises
of God and loves to hear the Word of God.
It's all a bore and a task and a drudgery.
He can't change the heart, he can't do it.
That's the twofold problem, the greatest problem that human beings can face, a bad record and
a bad heart.
And we can do nothing about it.
And until those two thoughts have gripped you, I've got a bad record, I've got a bad
heart, I can do nothing about it, then the gospel is good news.
For what is the gospel?
You know what the gospel is?
The gospel is the account of what God has done in Jesus Christ to change the record
and the hearts of a great multitude that no man can number, who shall for all eternity
marvel that the record was changed and their rebel hearts were changed by the infinite
grace of God.
Beloved, that's the gospel, that's the gospel.
And you remember that Jesus said when He was about to die, This cup is the new covenant
in My blood, which is shed for many.
All that the Lord Jesus did in emptying Himself of His glory and coming to earth as a true
All that He did in His sinless life and all that He was about to do by His substitutionary
death, He said all of it makes sense only in terms of one thing, the new covenant.
Now what did God promise in the new covenant?
Well, let's let the Holy Spirit tell us in His own word.
I've been quoting a number of Scriptures but haven't asked you to turn, that I might not
lose your attention, for will you look closely at what God promises in the new covenant in
Hebrews chapter 8 and verse 7?
Or perhaps we could move down to verse 10, verses 7 to 9 are introductory.
God says, This is the covenant that I'll make with the house of Israel after those days,
Now notice, I will put My laws into their mind, and will write them in their hearts,
and will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.
And they shall not teach every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the
Lord, for they shall all know Me from the least to the greatest.
Now notice, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities
will I remember no more.
God says in the new covenant, I will bring men to the place where their hearts will have
My law written upon them, where instead of being rebels they will be My willing subjects
because they know Me.
And then He says, I'll blot out their sins, I'll change the record.
Notice the same thing in Hebrews chapter 10, a more condensed account of the new covenant,
beginning with verse 15, Hebrews 10, 15, Wherefore the Holy Ghost is a witness to us,
for after He hath said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after
those days, saith the Lord, I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds
will I write them, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more.
God says two blessings in the new covenant, I'll change the record, I'll blot out the
sins, I'll remember the great mountain of iniquity against them no more.
That's why Jesus shed His blood to ratify the new covenant, to blot out the sins of
His people forever.
But beloved, that's only half of the new covenant.
The second half is this, that by what He did in His death and resurrection, He would now
by His Spirit apply to the hearts of men, and He would make rebels into subjects.
He would take those who want their own way and make them the people who want God's way.
He'd give them a new heart.
And beloved, we've been cursed for three generations.
The concept of the gospel in America has been, the gospel is, Jesus died to change your record,
period.
He died to change the record that the Holy Ghost might be sent to change our hearts.
And a changed record and a changed heart is the substance of the gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
And I thrill and stand amazed at the privilege of declaring this glorious gospel that in
Jesus, full and adequate provision has been made for the changing of the record and the
changing of the heart of any who will come unto God by Him.
That's why Jesus died, that by His blood the record might be changed.
That's why He rose and sent the Spirit, that by His power the heart might be changed.
The blood and the Spirit, the cross and Pentecost, these are the inseparable ingredients of the
gospel of Christ.
And all who come by faith and see in Christ full provision for sin are also changed by
the Spirit to bow to His yoke.
What is my message to you this morning who've never seen this problem, but who perhaps by
the revelation of the Spirit have had your eyes opened and you see for the first time
this is the great problem that you face?
What's my message to you?
Let me tell you what it's not.
My message is not, straighten up and begin to live good so your record won't get any
worse.
Oh, what a terrible thing to call the gospel.
Or suppose you could straighten up, never get another blot on the record.
The record still stands with the years of sin like a mountain of iniquity.
And if you don't add one gram to that mountain, the mountain still stands and will crush you
into judgment.
The gospel is not to tell men, straighten up and live right.
That's not the gospel.
Neither is the gospel to tell men, look, decide you're going to live for Jesus and begin to
follow Him.
Decide with what?
You've got a heart that hates His law, a heart that is a rebel against Him.
What can that heart decide but to go on in rebellion against Him?
That's not the gospel.
Tell men, straighten up and live right so their record will get canceled.
Tell men to just roll up their sleeves and decide for Jesus so that they can begin to
be what God wants you to be.
That's not the gospel.
That's not what I exhort you to do this morning.
Nor is the gospel to tell people, believe some facts about Jesus.
Just believe that there on the cross, nineteen hundred years ago, He died, and if you'll
nod to that fact, all is well.
That's not the appeal of the gospel.
What is the appeal of the gospel?
Here it is, beloved, listen to it.
The Scripture says in Hebrews 11, ye are not come unto the mount that quaked with fire
and the smoke, mount Sinai.
But He says, ye are come unto Mount Zion and unto the heavenly Jerusalem and unto the company
of the redeemed of God, now notice, and unto Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.
Hear me now.
How does this great problem of the bad record and the bad heart get solved?
It's got to be somehow when the blessings of the new covenant are applied to me, for
the blessing of the new covenant is the blotting out of sin, the changing of the heart.
How do I get those blessings?
How do I get those problems solved?
And here it is, by coming to Jesus, the author of the new covenant.
By throwing yourself down before the Lord Jesus, saying nothing in my hands I bring.
Lord Jesus, my record is as bad as the book says it is.
Lord, I sinned and thought and word and deed, time without number.
Oh God, I deserve nothing but Your wrath.
But Jesus, You're the mediator of the new covenant, and You are offered to all men in
the gospel.
Lord Jesus, I come to You and I plead the benefits of that new covenant.
I plead an interest in Your blood.
I plead the cleansing of that blood.
For You said, Come, all that labor and are heavy laden.
And Lord Jesus, the thought of my bad record and my bad heart have caused me to bow over
with a sense of guilt and hopelessness.
Lord, I'm laboring.
I'm heavy laden beneath the sense of my guilt and my depravity, my bad record and my bad
heart.
Oh Lord Jesus, You bid all that are laboring and heavy laden to come.
Lord, I come to You, not to an altar, not to a preacher, not to an inquiry room, but
I come to Jesus, come to Jesus, come to Jesus.
He's the only one who can apply the benefits of the new covenant, blot out the record,
come to Him and say, Lord Jesus, what You said is true.
I've got a wicked heart, Lord.
That's why I lust.
That's why I can't love You.
Young people, listen to me.
That's why you have no real interest in the Word of God than in the house of God and in
the things of God.
You've got a heart that is opposed to all that is spiritual and good.
Come to Jesus and tell Him, Lord, nothing but a wicked heart.
Lord, out of this heart have preceded evil thoughts.
Out of this heart have preceded problems, foolishness, sin.
Lord Jesus, You said that You died to ratify a covenant that would not only change the
record but change the heart.
Lord Jesus, change this heart of mine.
Give me a new heart, Lord.
That's what God says in Ezekiel 36, where you have the most detailed account of the
new covenant, and after God says, I'll take out the heart of stone, I'll give a heart
of flesh, I'll blot out your sins, then there's this wonderful word that says, Moreover, for
this thing will I be required of the house of Israel to do it for them.
God says, I do all of this, but you must ask me.
Ask me.
Plead with me.
Throw yourself down before me and ask for a new heart, and the promise of God is true.
Those that ask receive, those that seek shall find.
God says, ye shall seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.
Beloved, that's the gospel.
That's the glorious good tidings that I hold before you today.
Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, who is able by the application of His sovereign
power to change the record, to change the rebel heart.
You must come to Jesus.
You see, dear ones, this is the problem of the modern evangelistic invitation.
It gets people coming to an altar and thinking that coming to an altar they've got it.
Coming to Christ is not a physical act.
Coming to an inquiry room is, but coming to Christ is not a physical act.
It's a moving out of the soul.
It may not be done.
It may not be done in three minutes.
It may.
But if God, for reasons known only to Him, wants you to seek Him for days and months
and years, who are we to do anything but fall down and plead for mercy?
Who are we?
Who are we to do anything but fall down and plead for mercy?
You keep on pleading until the Holy Spirit assures us that mercy has been conferred through
the merits of Christ, until we know that our hearts have been changed by the Spirit of
Christ.
The love that I've given you in thirty-two minutes, what it's taken God twelve long years
to teach me, is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The gospel is not, you've got some bad check marks, believe Jesus died and you're all fixed
up for heaven.
Beloved, if your heart hasn't been changed so that as you sit here today you can say
with David, I delight to do Thy will, O my God, Thy law is where?
Within my heart.
The law is not just a code out here, so that if I don't actually curse or swear, I feel
all is well.
No.
The true Christian, because the law is upon his heart, he's dreamed not that he takes
the Lord's name in vain by using the name of Christ or God in cursing, but he's the
one who realizes that that law demands that he hold that name in high and holy reverence,
and he's freed when he hasn't held it high by his life or by his lips.
He's not content to merely say, Thou shalt not commit adultery if I don't chase another
man's wife, if I don't chase another woman's husband, all is well.
No, that law's in his heart, and when he feels the strivings of lust, he cries to God, O
God, cleanse my adulterous heart.
That's what a Christian does, because he's got a new heart.
He's not content when he says, Thou shalt not bear false witness.
He's not content that he doesn't just gossip about his neighbor, for he knows the substance
of the second table of the law is to love his neighbor as himself, and when he's been
selfish and cursed with self-interest in areas though no one else may detect it, he goes
down before God and says, O God, forgive me, I haven't loved my neighbor as myself.
Do you know anything about what I'm talking about right now?
That's the fruit of the new heart.
The gospel does not just get your record changed.
Ah, but here's the converse.
How could God ever move and change the heart by placing His own Spirit within us, as long
as His law up in heaven said, Damn that sinner!
The wages of sin is death.
As long as that law said, The wages of sin is death, my bad record would hinder God from
coming into my life.
How could God, who as a judge must condemn me, come and indwell me as a comforter?
He can't.
So if you say your heart has changed and you're a new creature, and you do not gladly confess
that the blood of Jesus is the only ground of your approach to God, dear one, you're
just as deceived as the person who says his record is changed by the blood but whose heart
is not changed, for God never changes the heart of a sinner with whom he has a controversy.
God must first of all remove that controversy, and He removes it by the merits and blood
of His Son, and then He comes to dwell in us by His Spirit.
I may just be thrilling my own soul this morning, beloved, but this is the most precious thing
to me today, that this is the Gospel, this is the Savior, this is the salvation which
God offers to all men in the Gospel, and says, Come to Jesus.
Come to me, the Scripture says.
And be He saved, and the word saved encompasses all that we've said this morning, the record
and the heart.
Now as I close the message, I come right back where I started with two questions.
What is the greatest problem you've ever wrestled with?
I'm asking you this morning, dear friend, what is the greatest problem you've ever wrestled
with, the greatest problem that's ever captured your mind and possessed your thoughts?
Has it been the problem of your bad record before a holy God, and your bad heart before
a holy God?
Listen to me, if you've never wrestled with that problem, you'd better leave this building
today and cry to God that He'll show you how great the problem is now, before you meet
it in the day of judgment.
If you've seen the problem, and I'm confident there's some of you here who've begun to see
this problem, how can God do anything to a sinner like me but damn me?
How can He do anything, beloved?
I have glorious news.
If you'll come to Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, He's promised your sins and
iniquities, I will remember no more Hallelujah.
Oh, beloved, when I think of the mountain of my sin, the mountain of my sin, though
I never chased around with harlots, though I never ran around with a wild crowd at school,
although my life externally was a very respectable life, beloved, I know a little bit was in
my heart.
And when I think this morning, my memory can look back not with any length of time, for
it would defile me, but just to look for a moment unto the rock from whence I was hewn
and unto the pit from whence I was digged, to think of that mountain of iniquity that
rises before my mind, the same rising up and crying out to God, condemn that sinner,
to think that this morning I can face this God with a consciousness that He'll never
remember against me, one of those sins.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
And when I think of this heart that had no longing for God and no hunger for holiness
and no desire to please Him, that at least in some faint measure this morning longs for
nothing more than to please the Lord Jesus, I stand amazed at the miracle that God has
solved the problem in His Son and by the Spirit.
And that's my second and last question.
Has God dealt with this problem in your life?
I'm not asking you if you've tried to deal with it, but has God dealt with it?
Has God assured you that your sins have gone out through the merits of His Son?
Does your light demonstrate that God has given you a new heart?
If not, seek Him today.
Cry to the Lord Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant.
Plead His mercy.
No one ever perished for lack of mercy at the feet of the Mediator of the New Covenant.
There's mercy there.
Mercy as broad as the sin of man.
But listen, mercy won't meet you anywhere else but at His feet.
If you hope for mercy from a loving God who's the Heavenly Father of you, think all people,
and that mercy is not sought at the foot of the cross, dear one, your mercy will turn
to judgment.
For there's mercy nowhere but broken at the foot of Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant.
And if you know that your record's changed and your heart's been changed, beloved, you're
a debtor to mercy alone, of covenant mercy alone.
May God the Holy Spirit cause the word which I trust has been brought with at least some
measure of depression and illumination of the Spirit, to fix itself and fasten itself
until every one of you dear young people who's old enough to understand my words will know
one thing.
If I go to death and to judgment without a changed record and a changed heart, it would
better for me that I were not born, but may also leave knowing that there's hope for a
changed record and a changed heart.
If you get through all your Sunday school classes and all the sermons and all the preaching,
if you get through to where you plead mercy before Christ, every teenager, every adult,
every friend, every visitor, every member of this church, may you leave knowing that
this is the great issue of time and of eternity.
Let us pray.
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