This is the Chancellor's Program. At his homegoing in November 1997, Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. left a legacy of lifelong ministry to students as Chancellor and former President of Bob Jones University. He also left a wealth of recorded sermons which we now present on the Chancellor's Program. Today's message, titled, Open Thou Mine Eyes, is based on scripture found in Psalm 119, verse 18. Dr. Jones preached this message at a daily chapel service held on the campus April 28, 1955. There's a verse I want to talk to you about this morning, the 18th verse of the 119th Psalm. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. The man who does not know Jesus Christ will find the Bible a very boring book. This book is written that man may find in this book God's records of man's failure and God's love. Now, the man who has never had an experience with Christ will find in many places that this book is close to him. You'll never be happy in life if you're going to expect everybody to understand spiritual things as you understand spiritual things who've had the opportunity and the experience of the gospel. I say the opportunity and the experience because you've had the opportunity of hearing the gospel and you've experienced the power of the gospel in your own life. Every born-again man experiences the power of the gospel when he trusts Christ. The gospel is the power of God. Greek word has the same connotation as dynamite, that is, a great and powerful force. Our word dynamite comes from the same Greek root as this word. And the man who experiences Jesus Christ by believing in him will feel the power of the gospel as it works in his life to remove sin and to make him whole. Now, unless you've experienced the gospel, you'll never understand why the world is like it is. And if you, from your experience in Jesus Christ and your privileges of knowing the Word of God as it's been taught you by the Holy Spirit of God who indwells you. I say if you, from that standpoint, expect other people to have the same comprehension that God gives you, you're going to be disappointed and unhappy many times in your dealing with folks as you try to win them to Christ. The Word tells us the God of this world hath blinded the eyes and the minds both. of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine in." The man who doesn't know the gospel, who hasn't experienced Jesus Christ, is blinded. The devil blinds the eyes and minds of men so the gospel light can't shine in. Here's the picture. The devil draws the curtains so the sunlight can't come in. If there are blinds on windows, the light doesn't come in until the blinds are removed and the blinds are open. The devil's business is to blind men, lest the light of the gospel, and some things which seem so clear and simple to you, men will gag over and fail to comprehend. You talk to men about their need of a savior. How often do people say, well, you know, I never realized that I was a sinner. I read somewhere the other day, as if it were very clever, the quotation of some infidel. Somebody asked him if he had made peace with God. He replied that he didn't know he'd ever been God's enemy. It was quoted in some modernist sermon as a very clever statement of man, that God's a friend of man, man's not an enemy to God. Well, the man who knows the gospel knows that's not so. For the Bible says that man is an enemy with God. The natural man cannot comprehend the things of God. The natural mind can't comprehend them. They're foolishness to him, neither can he know them, because they're spiritually deserved. The man has to be told that he's a sinner. by the Holy Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit's conviction of sin. That's why much of our preaching today, I think, is marked by so little apparent conviction. Now, I don't believe that a man has to weep and wail in order to be saved. I think one reason in modern evangelism you see so little outward conviction—now, I like to see it, I prefer to see a man cry when he comes to Christ—but it isn't by crying to the man saved is by trusting Jesus Christ. I've seen some folks come weeping and not have much experience, maybe no experience. I've seen some old drunks that could cry at anything. I had one in the room next to me at the hotel the other night in Cleveland. Boy, the walls were just like paper, and he was lamenting somebody had done him a dirty deed. He had lost fifty cents. He kept me awake till two o'clock in the morning, telling about how somebody did him out of that fifty cents, and he was crying about it all the time. Trying to drown his sorrows in some more drink, and the more he drank, the more welled out of his eyes. I never saw a fella carry on so, and I thought, now that's like some... I've seen some guys come, you know, so repentant apparently, and weeping. Then they go right out and go back to their sins. They've had no experience at all. They've taken it all out in an emotional binge. I've seen people come dry-eyed and be saved. But I believe when a man is saved, he must first be aware of the fact that he's a sinner and needs salvation. He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. But, come back to this point, how often is it true in modern evangelism that we do not see a great and deep conviction of sin? People come, say, yes, I know I'm a sinner, I'll trust Christ, and they do it rather casually, and we're disturbed by it sometimes. But I wonder if much of this apparent lack of deep conviction isn't due to the fact that the modernists have spoken of man as God's child so long, and have discounted sin, until in this day men have little regard for the power and awfulness of sin. And I wonder if sometimes these folks don't come in these evangelistic meetings without much deep conviction because sin has been so played down in the modernistic preaching they're used to that they don't regard sin as a very bad thing. They come saying, yes, I know I'm a sinner, and I'm sorry, and I'm going to trust Christ, and the Lord saves me. But the reason they don't come with more conviction is because they've been taught to sort of regard sin lightly. But sin's a terrible thing. Now, the man who has his eyes open and he comes to study the word of God, will find wondrous things in the law of God." Young people, in this book, you're going to find everything you need to know about human nature. Now, this book was not intended as a book on psychology, but it searches out the heart of man. And God, who sees man's heart, sees it as it is. And the heart and mind of man is revealed in this book. It's not supposed to be a book of science. We believe in scientific attitudes and approaches in. We believe as far as chemistry, biology, physics are concerned. You should go into a laboratory and experiment. By the way, that's what we believe religiously, too. We believe in a religious experiment. That's what the Lord believes in. He says, try me and see. You know what an experiment is. You try something in a laboratory, and by trying you prove. To try means to test. That's what the Lord says, do try me and see, saith the Lord. Come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Don't ever let anybody tell you that the gospel is not a reasonable thing. It's so reasonable that God's perfectly willing to debate it with you. Let's reason it out now and see what happens. But a man's not saved by reasoning, a man's saved by believing. But the book is not supposed to be a book on science, yet it's scientific. Why did Job know way back there, thousands of years ago, that God hung the world on nothing and the north on the empty space? Men didn't know astronomy so much in those days. Yet you find men go and turn the telescope up toward the north, they find there seems to be an empty space there where there are no planets, no heavenly bodies, no distant stars. A great core of emptiness in space there. How did he know that? Now, this book's not supposed to be a scientific book, but it's perfectly scientific because the God wrote it, who's the God who made all the laws of science and all the rules of the universe. Now, as you have your eyes open spiritually, you'll come to understand and comprehend and find wonderful things in the book. If the Bible bores you, it bores you not because it's a boring book, but because you're a spiritually shallow man. Now you put that down, remember, if you are bored by the Word of God, it's not because it's a dull book, but it's because you're a shallow person spiritually. They used to tell a story in Scotland about an old Scotch family, a noble family there, and they said whenever a son was born to one of the generations there, that his father would go in the room where the young child lay, and fire a pistol to see whether the kid reacted or not, because for five generations, all the sons of that family had been born stone-deaf. And the deaf father, concerned lest his son had inherited his affliction, would go in and fire a gun in the room to see if the child was deaf. The child jumped, and the gun was fired. Then he knew the child had hearing of some degree. You know, that is a wonderful picture as far as man's lack of contact with the spiritual realm is concerned. God sends into this world his blessed word, which we are told is sharp and quick and powerful. Some people react to it because they have a spiritual comprehension, and other people do not react to it because they do not have the spiritual faculties to respond. There's something much worse than physical deafness, though, I think, that's physical blindness. Now, the psalmist says, open mine eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of thy love. You know, blind people are in a bad fix. They're so easily deceived. Do you remember what happened to Jacob when he got his brother's blessing? His father's blessing, his brother sold the birthright for a mess of porridge. And so he fixes himself up with the scheming of his mother to go in for his father's blessing. His brother was hairy, so he put skins on the back of his hands and arms, so there'll be some hair there. He goes in, he kneels at the feet of his old blind father, and he asks for the blessing. The father said, well, you know, the voice sounds like Jacob, but the hands are like Esau. And so the old man blesses him. You know, it's a strange thing how men are deceived in these days who think they're so smart because they're spiritually blind. I know a man, good man, fine Christian man. I was talking to him not so long ago, and he's so enthusiastic about the plan of a friend of his for a world federation. But I said to my friend, I said, look, you know the Bible, you love the Lord, you believe the book. Have you never seen in the book the fact that man's not going to be able to have peace in the world? Well, he said, you know, I never particularly noticed that. Do you mean the Bible teaches? Now, he's a man who studies the Bible. You mean we can't have any hope for peace? Well, I said, what about the passage that says there'll be wars and rumors of wars and earthquakes in divers' places? What about Paul's writing to Timothy where he describes the end time, what's going to happen? Man will be boastful, proud, treaty-breakers, traitors, heady, high-minded, that evil shall wax worse and worse. What about all this?" Well, he said, I never thought about that as applying to our day. Now, he's a good man, born-again man, but he's not too well taught in the Word of God. He reads the book every day. But he's never been taught in the Word of God, and God's never opened his eyes to the plain teaching of the Word. Have you ever had an experience of reading a passage in the Bible over and over and over? And then one day seeing something there that you never saw before? Maybe that time when you began to read, you asked the Lord to open up something for you. Or maybe you were going to have a special need in your life that day, and God provided there in the Word of God the crutch you needed to help you along the path. But the Word of God is in itself all a Christian needs for instruction. Now, blindness will make a man dependent. A man that's blind has to have somebody to lead him. If he can't get somebody, he gets a dog. I saw a seeing-eye dog the other day. I was amazed at that dog. If the light was red, the dog would stop at the curb. When the light turned green, the dog would move. And if the blind man with him, he'd said to me, he said, I want to show you something. He'd try to go across against the light, and the dog would pull him back. That dog would talk to tell when it was time to stop and when to go. But that man was dependent on the dog. He said, I've had this dog now about four years. If this dog were to die, I don't know what I'd do. I've gotten so used to depending on the dog. I no more could trust myself, said, I used to have a cane, and I'd come to the curb with this white cane, I'd tap it on the curb till somebody came along and took me across. But, said, I've gotten so used to having a dog, I've gotten impatient. I doubt if I could any longer stand on the curb and tap and wait. I'm afraid I'd start out, take a chance, and get kicked. Strange how blindness makes people dependent. We had a student here once, had very little eyesight. Somebody had to help him with all of his work. He was dependent upon other people's eyes. Now, if you lack spiritual insight to understand the Word of God and to get the message from the Word of God, you're going to be dependent entirely upon other people. And the man who's dependent upon others is, in a sense, in a place of danger, because he may be deceived. For blindness, as we say, also makes for deception. And blindness deprives men of many pleasures. If you're a blind man, you can't see these pretty sunsets we have around here. If you're blind, you can't see the flowers, you can smell them. You can't see them, you can't see the colors. If you're blind, there are many things you can't enjoy. You can't see Christian film, can't read a book, and you'll miss much because you lack some of the faculties that make for an appreciation of the fine things of life. Now, it's the same way if you're spiritually blind. If you haven't got the spiritual insight to get the good things out of the Word of God, You're going to miss many of the blessings that God has for you. For this book is one of God's great blessings to man, in that it gives his children pleasure as they fellowship with God the Father through his word that he wrote for them. Well, you know, it's possible not to be altogether blind, but still have poor eyesight. I find I'm getting nearsighted as I get older. My wife's getting farsighted. It's like Jack Spratt and his wife. We get along fine together. I can watch the speedometer and she can watch the road signs. It makes it pretty good. I told her the other day, I said, honey, you're either going to have to get you some glasses or grow some longer arms. She was holding the paper off clear across the room. Me, I get it up right about here so I can read. Now there are some Christians who are spiritually nearsighted. If things are close enough to them, they can see it a little bit. But if it gets just a little bit beyond their immediate horizon, they can't see it. They're the kind of folks that'll trust the Lord for the day, but haven't got the vision to see how God's moving and the direction He's going. And then there's some Christians who are so spiritually farsighted, they can tell you all about prophecy. But they haven't any spiritual vision for the needs of today. And then I've known some Christians who were spiritually cross-eyed. They were looking two ways at once. And they kind of saw everything out of proportion. I talked to a doctor once who said, you know, it's possible sometimes that as men grow older, their eyesight gets a little bit blurred, and you can put glasses on which will correct it so that things come again into focus. I know some people who are spiritually like that. Everything they see is vague and hazy, and they haven't the spiritual eyesight to bring things into sharp focus. Young folks, I recommend to you not only that you study the Word of God and that you read it, but that you ask God to give you spiritual glasses or a spiritual touch to heal your eyes. Ask the Spirit of God to operate on you visually, to give you an understanding of the Word of God that you may know why things are as they are. Nothing will surprise you in this world if you know the Word of God. If you don't know the word of God, you're going to be not only surprised, but you're going to be deceived sometimes to the death. If you know this book, you'll understand and expect everything that happens. If you don't know this book, you won't expect it, and you'll be surprised when it comes. That's a wonderful prayer the psalmist prayed. Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank thee for the book. We thank Thee for the fact that the book is Thy word that holy men of old speak as they were moved to the Holy Spirit of God. We pray Thee that as we read the book we may not be so blinded by our prejudice or by our preconceived notion or by satanic hindrances that we'll fail to find here the instruction and the reproval and the rebuke that we need to make our lives conform to Thy will for us. This has been the Chancellor's Program. You've heard a message by the late Dr. Bob Jones, Jr. This sermon, Open Thou Mine Eyes, was recorded April 28, 1956. If you'd like a cassette copy, send six dollars to Campus Store, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina 29614. Please join us each week at this time for the Chancellor's Program, sponsored by Bob Jones University.