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Thank you. Do remember us, too.
We have a funeral service to conduct on Sunday afternoon.
Dear old Saint of God, you've been a member of Dunmurray for
many, many years. Your sister, Mrs. Rose Hamilton,
went home to be with Christ last evening. And do remember us as
we preach the gospel at that funeral service on the Lord's
Day afternoon. And I see her. My voice goes
tomorrow. I usually preach in the open
air on a Friday. I got word today, don't come
down to the open air on Friday, for they're putting up the huts
and the stands for the Continental Market. So there's no open air
tomorrow, so that'll save me a wee bit of my voice, and we'll
see how we're going. I'll maybe even sing with the
guitar, not with the guitar, you know, but the instrument,
the guitar. And I usually say, here's a hymn,
I'm going to sing a wee gospel hymn, Usually sing it with the
guitar, but this is an accordion. Of course, I always tell the
people, this is the instrument of heaven, isn't it? Never mind
the harps and the trumpets and the organs, no, the cymbals,
no. The accordion. I says, have you any scripture
to back that up? I says, yes, accordion to your
faith, be it unto you. But it's the old hymn about don't
overlook salvation. Heaven is a city, and it's built
with jewels red. Its beauty is as splendor had
once told. If you neglect salvation, you'll
never enter it. You'll never ever walk those streets of gold. So don't overlook salvation while
living here in this temple. Someday it may be too late to
pray. Someday when you need him, he
may not get you in. How awful if he should turn you
away. Sometimes we get discouraged. While we walk this golden way. But Jesus said, He left me burdened
there. So take care of all your troubles,
When you feel all hopeless gone. For in all He hears and answers
prayer. So don't overlook salvation by living here in sin. Someday it may be too late to
say. Someday when you leave here, he may not catch you in a waffle
if he should. Turn you away. My Jesus said
be ready. For we know not when they are
We may come at morning, night, or noon So keep your eyes upon
Him And your soul filled with His love For we know He surely Come and play Don't all overlook
salvation Wild imagination Someday it may be too late to pray Someday when you need her He may not get you in. How awful if He should turn you
away. Oh, how awful if He should turn
you away. Amen. Well, if you have your
Bible with you tonight, I invite you to turn with us please to
the epistle to the Hebrews and Hebrews chapter 2. A very familiar
portion of God's Word indeed. The epistle to the Hebrews and
chapter 2. And we're going to read from
verse 1. And again, we're delighted to
be back with you in the gospel mission. We thank you for your
prayers, for your support night by night. And do continue, as
Rev. Salda said, continue to pray.
to press a bottle to the gates and ask the Lord to really move
by His Spirit in this district upon the hearts and lives of
men and women, that as the mission continues we might see precious
souls come to know Christ as their own and personal Savior.
Now in Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 1 it says, Therefore we
ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have
heard. lest at any time we should let
them slip. For if the word spoken by angels
was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just
recompensive reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great
salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord
and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him? God also
bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with diverse
miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will. For unto the angels hath he not
put in subjection the world to come whereof we speak? But one
in a certain place testified, saying, What is man that thou
art mindful of him? or the son of man that thou visitest
him? Thou hast made him a little lower
than the angels. Thou crownest him with glory
and honor, and didst set him over the work of Thy hands. Thou
hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he
put all in subjection under him. He left nothing that is not put
under him. But now we see not yet all things
put under him. But we see Jesus, who was made
a little lower than the angels. for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor, that he by the grace of God should taste
death for every man. For it became him for whom are
all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons
unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through
suffering." Amen. May God bless to us the public
reading from His own inspired and His infallible Word. I want
to leave with you tonight a question that is asked in verse 3. It's
a very famous text of Scripture, very well known, and been preached
upon time and time again. But the question is, how shall
we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first
began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by
them that heard him." I was with a dear couple today from our
congregation, and we were talking about the mission here. And the woman was asking me what
I was going to preach on tonight. And I said, I think I'm going
to preach on Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 3. And as soon as
I said the word, she got up from the seat from where she was and
she ran out of the room and she ran down the hall and she came
back up again with a beautiful picture. And it had this text
on it. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? And she said, Fred, you know,
it was way back in 1965 under the ministry of Dr. Alan Kearns
at a Sunday night service in the Ulster Hall. He said that
I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as my own and personal
Savior. He said that is the text that
he was preaching on the night I was saved. How shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation? One of the many, many, many questions
in the Word of God You recall, of course, from your reading
of the Scriptures, that when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden
of Eden, and God called on to them, and they ran and hid themselves
behind the trees of the Garden of Eden. You remember that God
called on to Adam and God said, Adam, where art thou? Now, the Lord knew exactly where
he was The Lord knew what he had done. The Lord knew the estate
in which he had fallen. But the Lord in grace and in
mercy came and called unto Adam. And that is the picture of the
way the gospel works. God seeking men and women. Even when they ran and hid themselves
from his holy presence, he came searching for them. And the Bible
says concerning the Lord Jesus that the Son of Man has come
to seek and to save that which was lost. Do you remember Pontius
Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea? Do you remember as he
had Barabbas and Christ? Do you remember he gave the people
a choice He wanted them to choose Christ over Barabbas, but they
chose Barabbas. And he says, well, what shall
I do then with Jesus, which is called the Christ? Friend, that's the question that
2,000 years later is still relevant, still comes to you. If you don't
know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, what Shall you do with Jesus
Christ tonight in our gospel mission? What will you do with
the Lord Jesus? What will I do with Jesus? The
question is, one day, what will Jesus do with me? I think two of that great question
that was asked in the days of Elisha the prophet, asked of
that great woman, He said, is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And that woman in faith, even
though the child had died, she said, it is well. It is well
with me. It is well with my husband. It
is well with the child. Would to God that every home
and every family in Ulster could say that of a truth. It is well
with me. It is well with my spouse. It is well with my children that
they are all gathered in safely into the fold and family of God. Now this question that is asked
here in Hebrews 2 and verse 3, of course, in many ways is impossible
to answer because it says, Or shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? And yet the simple answer is,
if men and women neglect God's salvation, there is no escape. There is no remedy. There is
nothing. The Bible says in Proverbs 29
and 1, I quoted it last night, He that being often reproved
and hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that
without remedy. And what an awful thing for men
and women in this middle land of ours A land that was blessed
with revival in 1859. A land that was blessed with
a great spiritual awakening in the days of Nicholson. A land
where we have had the gospel preached time and time and time
again. Friend, where then shall men
and women escape if they neglect so great salvation? Now, I want to leave with you
three very simple thoughts. I want to speak first of all
about salvation. And you will notice that salvation
is described here as being a so great salvation. Now, this is not religion. This
is not philosophy. This is not the ideologies of
men. This is salvation. But purchased,
procured for us at Calvary's Cross by God's only begotten
Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And God's salvation is
a so great salvation. See, the Bible says, God so loved
the world. And I love that little verse
in the Acts of the Apostles where it speaks about the apostles
going forth And it says, they so spake the Word of God that
many precious souls were saved. And here the Bible says salvation. It is a so great salvation. Why is it so great? Well, it
is so great because of its plan. Because of the conception of
salvation. Because this salvation that is
so great, it is the plan of God to save men and women. Way back
there in the Old Testament, I will read you a verse of Scripture.
I quoted it before in our mission, but in 2 Samuel 14, and in verse
14, the Word of God says these words. It says, For we must kneel
down and are as water spilt on the ground which cannot be gathered
up again. Neither doth God respect any
person, yet doth he devise means that his banished be not expelled
from him." And the writer is reminding us that the whole concept,
the whole plan of salvation The whole means of salvation is from
God. God, the old Puritan said, God
the Father thought it. God the Son bought it in Calvary. God the Holy Spirit wrought it
in my heart. And he said, Praise God, I've
got it. That's a wonderful plan of salvation. that before the hills in order
stood or ever earth received her frame, before there was ever
a fallen sinner to run and hide behind the trees at Eden's garden,
thank God there was a matchless, a wonderful, a unique plan of
salvation through the precious blood of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ. That's why John writes in the
book of Revelation in chapter 13 and verse 8 that Jesus Christ
is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. This great plan of redemption
that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, of
whom the Apostle writes in the Epistle to the Romans, they were
God-blessed forever. They always enjoyed sweet communion
and fellowship, the one with another. And they devised a plan
of salvation. And salvation is so great because
of its plan, because of its conception, because of the person, because
of Christ in whom salvation is to be found. For God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God did not give
an angel or an archangel, but God emptied heaven of His very
best, and He gave us His only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. And you remember the message
of the angels to Mary and to Joseph? Call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. Jesus means
Savior. The One who would save His people
from their sins. The One who would be our sacrifice. The One about whom the Apostle
Peter writes, and he says, He bore our sins in His own body
to the tree. The One about whom Isaiah writes
when he said, All we like sheep had gone astray and we had turned
every one to his own way, but the Lord laid on Him, the Lord
Jesus Christ, the iniquity of us all. And the one who, when
he hung upon the cross of Calvary, suspended between earth and heaven,
the one who could say to his disciples, I will lay my life
down and I will take it up again. And when he cried out, it is
finished, then he could bow his head and he could say, Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit because the Son of God, our Savior,
our Sacrifice, thank God He is the Sovereign Christ. He is in
control. It wasn't the nails that held
Him to the cross. It wasn't the bleeding wounds
that He bore upon the cross of Calvary. But at the end, He dismissed
His spirit into thy hands. I commend my spirit. And salvation
is so great because of its plan, its conception, because of the
person, the Christ of God in whom salvation is found, because
of the purchase through the cross of Calvary. Look what the Apostle
says in Hebrews chapter 12. Isn't that wonderful? In chapter
12, verse 2, it says, looking unto Jesus, the author and the
finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him
endured the cross, despising the shame and the set-down at
the right hand of the throne of God. The Lord Jesus Christ,
to purchase for you, to purchase for me an eternal redemption,
He had to endure the cross Verse 3 of Hebrews 12 says, For consider
him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Why? He endured the cross and
he disguised the shame. Why? Verse 10 of Hebrews chapter
2 says, For it became him, for whom are all things and by whom
are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory. to make the
captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. He suffered
and he bled and he died. There was no other good enough
to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate
of heaven, let us say. You know, this salvation is so
great because of the price, the currency. 1 Peter chapter 1,
verses 18 and 19, For ye are not redeemed, with corruptible things such
as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ
as a lamb without spot or flemish." In the Old Testament order, men
and women could come. They could offer as a sacrifice
for their sins a lamb or a bullock. If they could not afford it,
They could offer two turtle doves. Mary offered two turtle doves
when she came after she had given birth to the Lord Jesus Christ. But who could ever put a price
or a value on that perfect, virgin-born, sinless life and precious blood
of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Not all the blood of
beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience
peace or wash away the stain. For the Bible says in Hebrews
10 and verse 4, For it is not possible that the blood of bulls
and goats should take away sin. But then in verse 12 of chapter
10 it says, But this man, the Lord Jesus Christ, whom John
the Baptist said is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
of the world, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice
for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God from henceforth
expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering He hath perfected
forever them that are sanctified. Salvation is so great in its
plan, in its conception, in the person, the Lord Jesus Christ,
in its purchase through the cross, in the price that He paid, the
currency of His precious shed blood. For, thank God, in its
power, in its conquest, Paul writes and he says, he was raised
for our justification in Romans. To the Corinthians he said, this
is the gospel that I declare unto you, that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that
he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. That is why
Paul could say, For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ,
for it is the power of God unto salvation. It can save the uttermost,
all that come unto God through Christ. W.P. Nicholson used to say, It can
save the down and out. It can save the up and out. It
can save the rich. It can save the poor. It can
save the Protestant. It can save the Catholic. It
can save the Muslim, or the Hindu, or the Hottentot. It can save
to the uttermost all them that come unto God through the Lord
Jesus Christ. Salvation is so great because
of its power. O. W. P. Nicholson, to quote
him, he used to talk about the modernists and the liberals and
their social gospel. I used to say, my, their gospel
has not the power to save atonement. But my, this gospel that we preach,
it is the power, the dynamite of God unto salvation. It can blast away, take away
every sin, break every chain, snap every feather, set the prisoner
gloriously free. The power of the gospel. And of course, it is so great
because of its promise for the great climax of the gospel. You
remember Jesus gathered His disciples and He had told them again and
again that He must need suffer many things of the scribes and
the Pharisees. He would lay His life down, as
we have quoted. He would take it up again. He
would die upon a cross. They could not understand. He
called them, O fools and slow of heart to believe all that
the prophets have spoken. But you remember He said to them,
Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also
in me. In my Father's house are many
mansions. And if it were not so, I would
have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you may be
also." What did Paul say to the Colossians? He says, Christ in
you, the hope of glory. And that is the wonderful promise,
the great promise of the Gospel, that every man or woman or boy
or girl who has come to Christ and sought Him as their own and
personal Savior, they have salvation. And thank God it is so great
a salvation. And it will take them safe and
home to heaven when this life is over. So salvation is so great. But then you'll notice the verse
says, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? I want you to notice tonight
that salvation is so great and neglect is so simple. Neglect is so simple. You know, if a man was sick,
And they persuaded him to go and see the doctor, see the physician. And the physician would say to
him, I know exactly what's wrong with you. Make his diagnosis. And he'd say, I'm going to prescribe
a certain kind of medicine for you. And I want you to take this
medicine three times every day. And very soon you will be well. The man might leave the doctor's
surgery, the script at his hand. He can go to the pharmacist. He can get the medication. He can take it home and set it
on the shelf. And he can die of the disease
if he doesn't take it, if he neglects it. And that's exactly
the way it is in the Gospel. There are men and women in Northern
Ireland, and they have had the privilege They have had the opportunity. They have heard the Word of God.
They were brought up in Sunday school as little children. They
sang their choruses. Even in our day schools, we learned
verses of Scripture. We have heard the Word of God
in Gospel missions. We have a Bible in our own language. We can read it for ourselves.
And sad to say that in many a home in Uster, You could write damnation
on the dust that sits upon the Bible. And I meet people and
they tell me, oh, I'm a loyalist and I would fight for the civil
and religious liberties that are in the Bible and I believe
the Bible and oh, I stand for the Bible and fight and die for
the Bible. And I say to them, would you
read the Bible? Would you read it? Would you
believe it? Would you act upon it that you
might be saved? Because neglect is so simple. And you see, there are many tonight,
and they are sincere. And in their heart of hearts,
in their mind, they are thinking to themselves, now some of these
days, some of these days, I am very busy. I am following my
career. Doing this and doing that and
settle down and all the rest of it. And we're trying to make
ends meet and trying to go forward. But some of these days I'm going
to sit down and I'm going to take the Word of God and I'm
going to take the time and I'm going to read the Word of God
and I'm going to give my heart and life to Christ. Now that's
what they're thinking. But they've never done it. And
what would happen If the Lord would call them out into eternity,
they'd be lost, why? Because they neglected so great
a salvation. They've made preparation for
many other things. They've maybe made preparation
for their children growing up, for their children's education.
They've made preparation for a holiday. They've made preparation,
they're looking forward to retirement. But they have never made preparation
for God's great eternity. They have neglected so to do. Dear friend, that is the surest
way to a lost eternity. Neglect. Procrastination. Putting it off. You remember
when Paul preached to Felix And he preached the Word of God.
Felix was troubled. But he said, I will hear thee
again some more convenient season. See, the devil's lie is tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. Don't
get saved tonight. Wait until tomorrow. Don't get
saved in the mission. Wait until some Sunday night.
The devil comes along and says to young people, you don't need
to be saved. Just, oh, get saved sometime. Later on, when you
have lived your life, when you have sown your wild oats, when
you have had a good time, then come and get saved. Paul preached before King Agrippa. And Agrippa said to Paul, He
said, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. Now sometimes
Bible commentators argue over whether or not Agripple was sincere. Was he sincerely saying to Paul,
because Paul said Agripple was an expert on all these things
and these customs of the Jews, was he sincere? Was he saying,
Paul, In my heart of hearts, I would love to be a Christian
just like you. Was he being sarcastic? Was he
praying to the crowd? Was he saying to those others
who were assembled there, all those Paul you persuaded me to
be a Christian to? I do not know. But I know one
thing, that whether he was sincere or whether he was sarcastic,
there are no almost Christians in heaven. That's for sure. You have to be not almost, but
altogether persuaded. And you have to receive the Lord
Jesus Christ as your own and personal Savior. The devil says,
you have plenty of time. But the Word of God says, we
read it tonight there in 2 Samuel 14 and 14, we are as water that
is spilt upon the ground that cannot be gathered up again.
The Bible says our life is swifter than a weaver's shovel. I served
my apprenticeship fixing sewing machines in the factories in
Belfast and then later on installing them and selling them and all
the rest of it. Part of my course when I went
to the tech down in Belfast was to be with the weavers so they
might learn about the cloth. And they had a great big loom
down there in the basement of the Technical College down there
in Belfast. And my, they had the loom working. They had the shuttle. And it
just flew across. You could hardly see it from
one end to the other as the cloth was being woven. God says, is
swifter than a weaver's shovel. It's like a dream in the night. It's like a vapor that appears
for a little while and then it vanishes. That's why, men and
women, you cannot afford to neglect salvation. We were singing about
tonight. If you neglect salvation, you'll never enter in. You'll
never, ever walk the streets of gold. And then I want you
to notice just in closing, salvation is so great. Neglect is so simple,
but escape is so impossible. How shall we escape if we neglect
so great salvation? Will not Then the Bible says
that if God spared not the old world, that's the antediluvian
civilization before the flood. And the apostle says, if God
spared not the old world, he said, if God spared not the angels
that fell, And if God spared not the cities of the plain Sodom
and Gomorrah, then I ask you the question, what makes you
think that God will spare you? He has given you his Son who
died for you on the cross of Calvary, who shed his precious
blood that you might be saved. And if you will not take him
as your Savior, the God who spurred not the angels that fell, the
God who spurred not the old world, but took him away with a flood,
the God who rained fire and brimstone down in Sodom and Gomorrah, then
he will not spur you." That's the truth of God's Word. Maybe
unpalatable, but it's the truth of God's Word in Luke's Gospel. Chapter 19,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who wept over that beautiful city of Jerusalem. He said in chapter 19, in verse
41, When he was come near, he beheld the city, and he wept
over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in
this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace, but now
they are hid from thine eyes, For the day shall come upon thee
that thine enemy shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee
round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even
with the ground, and thy children within thee. And they shall not
leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest
not the time of thy visitation. Jesus, who looked at Jerusalem
and who cried, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered
thee as a hen gathereth her brood. But he says, ye would not come. And he said, there's coming a
day when the enemies will come. Happened 70 years later. When
the enemies would come and they'd put a trench round about thee
and encompass thee round and keep thee in on every side. and
lay thee even to the ground." It was said they stopped crucifying
men because they ran out of wood. Terrible judgment this man. And
Jesus says why? Because thy knewest not the time
of thy visit. In other words, you did not take
the opportunity. He came on to his own and his
own received him not. Pilate said, choose one of these
prisoners. They said, give us Barabbas.
What'll it do with Jesus? Crucify Him! And then they said,
His blood be upon us and upon our children. They knew not the
day of their visitation. Listen, there's men and women
who have come and gone from Gospel meetings and they didn't know
it was the day of their visitation. They didn't know it was the last
opportunity. They didn't know it was the last
call. They didn't know it was the last
striving of the Spirit of God with their immortal soul to come
to Christ. They went out into God's eternity.
Salvation so great. Neglect so simple. And escape
so impossible. You know, with this I close as
a great preacher, he was a great theologian, great evangelist. And he had preached for many,
many years. And one night as he was speaking to a group of
students, one student asked him about eternal punishment and
hell. And they said, Could you give
us one word that really sums it all up? And he said, Hell is not just the fire and
the flame. It's not just the terror and
the torments, or the memory and its miseries, or the thirst and
the torture, the death and the dying, the cry and the crying,
the pain, the perdition, the damned and the damnation, the
sinner and the separation from God. He says that tragedy is
one word, forever. is forever. Friend, how shall
we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Don't be like those
people in the city of Jerusalem. They didn't know it was the day
of their visitation. Felix didn't know it was the
day of his visitation. Some were convenient. We never
read of a more convenient season. That's why it's imperative. That's
why we stress the importance. When God's Spirit bids you come,
sinner, do no longer roam, lest you seal your hopeless doom.
May the Lord bless His Word through our hearts.
How Shall We Escape?
Series Gospel Mission 2010
| Sermon ID | 1111101723158 |
| Duration | 44:11 |
| Date | |
| Category | Special Meeting |
| Bible Text | Hebrews 2 |
| Language | English |
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