# 4 Men of Faith

Date: May 4, 2025

It’s a real joy to be back again tonight. Let me mention the book. It’s on the back, and we have a sufficient supply. The purpose is that you take the book. It has about 21 pages in it, and it deals with how to go to heaven when you die. Second, how to be happy while you’re still here waiting to go to heaven when you die. On one side, I have a little chart in the back of it. Here are the four steps to go to heaven—the Roman Road of Salvation. Once that’s settled, then you go up the sevenfold stairway to happiness, which is the filling of the Holy Spirit. This has been around for a while, but we have these all printed up, and then we put a QR code on the back. This is brand new. I have about five or six minutes when I explain how the fellow talked to me on the assembly line at General Motors and won me to Christ. After we get them to listen to that, then we want to give the book to the person we’re talking to.

When we put these together, I do a lot of work in Spanish churches. I’ve been all over Mexico, all over Central America, and all over California speaking to Spanish groups. I’ll be up in Illinois in about a month or so. We’ll have 1,500 or 1,600 Spanish people in the service in the evening, and so I had it translated into Spanish. Now, we have some Spanish copies. If you know any Spanish people, you might want to pick up a few of them to pass along. The fellow who put that together for me, I said, “Now, you’re going to like this.” I put my phone on there, it pulled me up, and I was speaking Spanish. It just delighted me to know that I could speak Spanish without learning. Then he came back again. He said, “Now, I think you’re going to like this even better.” He gave me seventeen languages. He has me speaking Chinese, Portuguese, German, French, Indian, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, even Polish. I can even be a Polack if I want. We’re going to translate it into some of those languages and print them.

What we’d like for you to do is to pick up one copy, or if you would like to have several, please help yourself. Take four, five, or six. I mentioned this to a meeting down in Mississippi, and I told them, “Folks, if you want to get some of these…” The fellow wrote and said, “I’m going to Cuba, can you send me a hundred?” I was in Spanish, and I did; I mailed them over, and he took them to Cuba and gave them away. Another guy said, “I’m going to El Salvador. Can you send me 100 in Spanish?” Another fellow said, “I’m sending a cart—one of those big crates—down to New Guinea. Can you get something to me?” I sent him 400 of them to ship over to New Guinea.

What we want you to do is take a copy or more and find some friend and say, “Hey, listen, this is exciting. Put your phone on there and listen to this, and let me explain to them what to do to be saved while you stand there and listen.” When you get through, it kind of winds up with an invitation. When we get through, you say, “Now, would you like to do that? Let me pray with you.” Then give them the book and let them have it in writing so that they can do it. That’s the follow-up. I want to get these out to as many as possible. I mentioned this morning, we’re working on a project to get 100,000 of them, and it’s coming along real well. You can get one, two, three, four, five, six—get as many as you like. I have a few in Spanish; you can pick up some of those if you like.

Also, I wanted to share with you, before I give you my text, I’ve been doing a lot of study of John Phillips, the real, real Bible teacher out of Wales. I mentioned this morning that little thing we gave in the insert—that’s his idea. It really has helped my wife and I as we work our way through that on a regular basis. To help me, I wake up at two or three o’clock in the morning, and I go all the way from A to Z. Then I’m ready to go back to sleep, and I don’t mind waking up if I can throw a little spiritual flavor to it.

John Phillips also said, I want you to know that the word “and” is identical in its translation to the word Selah in Psalms. The word Selah means, “Stop, hold up, let you hurry. Put the brakes on. Meditate on that. What’s that talking about?”

Now, we speed-read. I read the Bible six times last year by myself, and then my wife and I read it another time. So I went through it seven times, but we were going fast. We didn’t stop to meditate on that word or that word. When I heard what John Phillips said, he said the word “and” is found 99 times in Genesis chapter 1. It’s found 50 times in Genesis 2. He said the word “and” is found 37,078 times in your King James Bible. Every time it says “and,” it means, “Hold up, slow down there, quit just scanning across.” Stop and see what they are talking about.

I said, “I’m going to try that now.” I was reading through Psalm 1: “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, and standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and he shall be like a tree.” Huh? What kind of tree? I wonder if that was a sycamore tree, exactly like that. I wonder if that was an oak tree, or was that a willow tree? It talks about trees. I found about 75 or 80 different trees in the Bible. We know about maple and oak and, you know, apple trees and palm trees. I made a list of all the trees I could think of and went through, and I wondered which kind of tree. I don’t know. What do we do? What’s a tree? A tree has a lot to do with us. We cut a tree down and saw it up and use lumber to build a house. I live in a house that’s made out of tree. You do too. We cut those boards up and make a fence around our house, yeah. Then we try and make some flooring for our house. And then also, you know, we make toothpicks. I made a list of about 50 or 60 things. And then, don’t forget, my Savior died on a tree for me.

And I meditated on that word “tree” all through the Bible. Suddenly, when I hit the word “tree,” I just stopped. If I could do that with all the words in the Bible, imagine what my Bible reading would be like. So let me challenge you to pick out a word.

When David was running away from Absalom in Second Kings, he didn’t want to kill his son. So rather than fight him, he got some people to go with him. They left the beautiful mansion where they had linen sheets and great big—you know, probably had king-size mattresses. He had maids coming in, and he had the best of food and the best of service. Now he and several hundred people are running away to keep Solomon from killing them or to keep them from having to kill Solomon. They are going to be sleeping out under trees and in caves and all.

It says that Barzillai, who was an 80-year-old fellow too old to go with him, loved his king. So he sent—and that verse says that he sent—some beds, and he sent some food, and he sent some, and he sent thirteen things. Each one of them has an “and.” He sent that, and he sent that.

Now, my daughter Debbie is an English major, and she does my proofing for me. She says, “Daddy, you have too many ‘ands’ in your sentences, and you need to stop and put a period in there and make a new sentence.” So I called Debbie and said, “According to John Phillips, you and the Bible disagree, Debbie.”

When he read through that, he said, “I want to ask you this: What kind of beds? Was it a cot like you would take on a camping trip? I don’t know. Was it a sleeping bag that he laid down on the ground out there? Was it a pile of leaves that he put together? Did he use a log or a rock for a…?” Now, what kind of food was it? It wasn’t meat; it would rot. Or was it? What did he take?

All different things—each one of those things would have to be studied and thought about and meditated upon. You can do that with every phrase and every word in your Bible. You find that your Bible opens up in a brand new way, and you’ll enjoy it. You just come up on a word, and bang, you’ve got this much more time. You just want to keep going, and you don’t want to quit. So he made my Bible a brand new book. He really did.

I don’t know about you, but my Bible changes. I have a King James Bible, and it is infallible, inerrant, just like God the Father is immutable, unchangeable. God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, and your Bible are all immutable. But my Bible changes.

My first Bible was Mom’s Bible lying on the dresser in the bedroom. We had two bedrooms upstairs—two girls over there, and four boys in this bedroom. Mom and Dad slept downstairs. In Mom’s bedroom, there was a Bible. It didn’t have any backs on it. The covers had been torn off, and it was just kind of floppy. If you folded it open, you would find a picture of my grandma in her casket with flowers all around. If you flipped a little farther, you would find a four-leaf clover in a piece of cellophane paper that Mom found in the front yard, and she believed in good luck, okay? Then you would find a little curl off my baby sister’s hair from the first time she cut it; she cut a little curl off and put it in there for memory. Our Bible was a file cabinet. Nobody ever read it when I was…

When I was about 15 years old, I was walking down the street in Kansas Square, Pennsylvania, and the Salvation Army was having a street meeting. They were playing the accordions, the trumpets, and the saxophones. Some fellow walked up and handed me a Gideon New Testament. I took it home, and I started reading it. That was different than Mom’s Bible. It said things that the other one never said to me. I read about it; it was so interesting. And then I got saved.

When I got saved, I started reading that Bible; it was different than ever before. It said things that it didn’t say before to me because it didn’t matter to me then. But that’s me now. As I grew, I went through the stages. I got married; I read it as a husband. Then I had a baby, and I read it as a father. It was different every time. I went away to Bible College, and reading as a student was different than reading as an ordinary church member. Then I became a pastor. On and on and on everything happened. Then I got old, and I read about old, hoary heads. I said, “It’s me.” My Bible just keeps changing, and it keeps me so interesting; it never gets old. Isn’t that neat?

So listen, let’s learn to meditate. The Bible doesn’t say “read the Bible”—I did that seven times—but it says, “Meditate therein day and night.” So you can absorb in order that you might observe. You cannot be spiritual unless you are scriptural. There is nothing to base it on. The more scriptural I am, the more spiritual I will be. The more I understand the Bible, the more prayers will get answered, the better I like the whole thing. The more I like church, the easier everything is. So become scriptural. So meditate.

Okay. Now let’s turn to Mark chapter 2. We’ll have a sermon; the rest of that is just some stuff. Mark chapter 2, verses 1 through 5. I want to talk to you about the barriers to your blessings—things that will keep you from getting the blessings of God upon your life.

This is a beautiful little story, and if you are not careful, you will just pass over it and miss what it is saying. Verse one: “And again…” Be sure to keep in mind that word “again.” This is not the first time this has happened. “Again, he [Jesus] entered into Capernaum, and after some days it was noised [the word got out] that he was in the house. And straightway many were gathered together, so much so that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door. And he preached the word unto them.”

They came unto him bringing one sick of the palsy, which was borne [carried] of four. When they could not come nigh [near] unto him for the press, they uncovered the roof where he was, and when they had broken it up, they let down the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said unto the sick of the palsy, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.”

He talked about the fact that faith did this. This is not a story about a man getting healed, and it’s not a story about four men climbing up on the house and tearing a hole in the roof and letting him down. This is not a story about Capernaum. This is a story, like all the Bible, about me and you here tonight in this service. Every part of the Bible is [applicable]. The story of Job is not about Job; it’s about me and you. The story of Daniel and the Hebrew children and Moses and the bush—all are not about those people. If you want a verse for that, 2 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 6: The things that happened to those people back in the Old Testament happened as examples for us. And then verse 10 says, “for our ensamples”—for our enlightenment and understanding.

The Lord said, “I didn’t put this in there for history and social reasons.” When Jesus worked a miracle at Cana of Galilee and turned water to wine, he didn’t do it to solve their social problem. He did it according to [John 2:11]: “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”

John chapter 20, verse 21, says many other signs or miracles—35 of them recorded—and tens of thousands of them, because there are six or seven places where it says the multitudes came unto him, and he healed them all. Yes, that means a bunch of them. And it says many other signs or miracles did Jesus in order that they might believe. He didn’t heal a blind man so he could see. He didn’t heal a deaf man so he could hear. He didn’t do any of his miracles to meet the needs of the people. He did it so that they might believe. I have about 25 miracles listed in one of the chapters of…

Nobody could argue that those miracles had to be first-class, supernatural acts of God. It dawned on me one day: the Lord didn’t do any of that to solve my problems. He did solve 21 problems, and I’ve got about 30 more. But he didn’t do it so that I would have my problems solved. He worked a miracle that caused me to have two meals a day for two solid years—over 1,400 times I went and knocked on the door, and they gave me a big plate of food. They’d have two meals: lunch and supper. This was while I was going to college so I could work for Dr. Lee Robertson visiting and serving full-time. Otherwise, I had to go to a factory and get a job in order to feed my family. The Lord worked that out, and it was a supernatural miracle. But it didn’t do it so I could have money or food to eat. He did it so I could tell you about it and stir your faith, so you could believe a little better and have better faith. I tell those stories all the time. In fact, I preached my sermon on miracles here one time in order that people might have more faith.

Now it says here there are three periods in the life of Jesus: the period of obscurity, the period of popularity, and the period of rejection.

The period of obscurity is from the time of the virgin birth until the first miracle. We know absolutely nothing. We see him when he is 12 years old. A lot of attention is given to the virgin birth in the manger, and all of that has tremendous application. Then he disappears. Ever get curious? When Jesus was a little boy, how old was he? What was his first word? I know what my first word was. My brother’s first word, I know what it was. Usually it’s “Mama,” then “Dada,” and then “Brother.” My first word, you ready? Sutau. Sutau. What does that mean? My mom would go out on the front porch every morning and say, “Sue cow, Sue cow, Sue cow.” The cow would come, and she’d milk a cow. In the evening, she’d say, “Sue cow.” I heard that 475,000 times that I said, “Sue cow.” You probably know what your first word was, but you can’t tell me what Jesus’s was. Did Jesus ever play marbles? I can answer that, because the Bible says, “Marvel not that I say unto these things.” Did he ever have a girlfriend? I don’t know. You don’t either. I see him when he is 12 years old, and then he disappears again until he is 30. That’s a period of obscurity when we don’t know hardly anything, and the Lord has His reasons for it. That’s probably another sermon.

Then he enters popularity. From the time he worked that miracle in Cana of Galilee, man, they were coming to him, beating the door down, trying to get him to come and help them. Here’s this blind man who wants to see, and there’s that cripple man who needs to walk. There’s a little girl dead, and they want her raised from the dead. Jesus is busy, and he has to go somewhere and hide to keep away from people because they are seeking him out. That’s the two years. We have 30 years of obscurity, and two years of popularity.

Then, the very minute in John 6, when he says, “Now, unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you have no more part with me”—that was above their heads. He was talking spiritual, and they were thinking physical. They were thinking about drinking blood and eating flesh, and that’s eerie. He wasn’t talking about that at all; he was using spiritual terminology that was out of their ballpark. That lasted until the point when the people said they turned away and walked with him no more. From that time on, every time you see him, a scribe or Pharisee said, “Now Moses said…” but what said thou? Then there was rejection and refusal and so forth, ending up with the sacrifice on the cross of Calvary, because it was all designed and preordained by the Father to work out just that way—the period of rejection for a year and a half, which takes 33 and a half years.

This setting is in the time of popularity, and it says, “Again Jesus entered into Capernaum.” Capernaum was the place where the majority of the recorded miracles—of the 35 that are recorded—took place. It says Jesus is going back again, which means he’s been there before, and they knew who he is and they know about his miracle work and power. If the word gets out, he’s not going to be able to get a night’s sleep, and he’s not going to get a minute to rest.

It says he entered into Capernaum, and after some days it was noised that he was in the house. That means when he got in, I think he must have slipped in at night without telling anybody, and he went to a house. I don’t know whose house it was. In one place, he went to Simon the tanner’s house. They used to go up to Mary and Martha and Lazarus’ house, but he went to a house and stayed there several days without anybody knowing he was there. That’s what it said. Again, he went; he’d been there before. After some days, it was noised that he was in the house—the word got out.

How did the word get out? Human nature tells me that the lady was having wash days. She washed the clothes, took them out, and hung them up on the clothesline in the backyard. Next door, there was another lady doing the same thing, hanging up her clothes. The first lady said, “I bet you’d never guess in 100 years who is at our house.” I think she did real well to keep it for five or six days, don’t you? Now, women—I’m not going to get into that, okay? I don’t want to pin any women. But anyway, she said, “You have somebody at your house?” “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe it. Who’s out there?” “Well, you wouldn’t believe this. You know about Jesus of Nazareth?” She said, “Surely everybody knows about Jesus of Nazareth.” She said, “Would you believe he’s here at our house?” “Oh, come on. Come on. You’ve got to be kidding.” “No, no, he really is. He’s been here four or five days.” “Really?”

Guess what? Just as soon as that woman got in the house, she ran out the back door. Guess what? And then she went, and the first thing you know, it’s all over the place. Isn’t that the way it happens?

It might be that Dad went off to work, and he might have been sitting around where they cut those big limestones into square blocks, and they sit and chisel on them all day. There are about a dozen of them. A guy said, “Hey, fellas, you wouldn’t believe who came to visit our house and who’s right there right now.” Men are just as bad about that as women are.

Anyhow, the word got out. It says, “Straightway, many were gathered together.” How did that happen? Somebody came and knocked on the door and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, is Jesus really here at your house?” It doesn’t tell us what happened right then, but I’m going to tell you what happened. That woman went back and said, “Jesus, somebody’s out here wanting to ask about you. What shall I tell them?” Jesus said, “Show him. He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out.”

So Jesus said, “Well, sure.” He never turned away my dad who had a need. Somebody came in, they’re talking, and Jesus is helping. “Hey, is Jesus really here?” “Yes.” In a few minutes the room was full. In a few minutes the dining room was full. Then the kitchen was full. Then the front porch was full. Inasmuch as there was no room to receive them, so many people were there, the front yard got full all the way out to the fence. Then the street filled up.

When Jesus showed up and found out that place he’d been before, it says there were so many people they didn’t have room enough. Then the Bible says he did what anybody ought to do when they get a crowd together: He preached the word unto them. That’s why he let them come. They thought he came to heal them, but he came to give them the message of death, burial, resurrection.

By the way, there are 22 sermons in the book of Acts, preached by four preachers: Peter, Paul, Philip, and Thomas, I believe. Every one of them preached 22 sermons, and every one of the sermons had the same message: death, burial, resurrection, the gospel. That was it. So he preached the gospel unto them, and they came unto him bringing one sick of the palsy.

I have another question: Where did these guys get the idea to bring this guy? You say, “Well, some fellas are sitting around talking in a circle, whittling and spitting tobacco juice, how men do.” One of them said, “Why don’t we do something religious today?” Somebody said, “I heard that Jesus fellow is here, and you know old Sam over there is lying out on that front porch. Why don’t we go get him?” No, it doesn’t happen that way.

It says that as Jesus was preaching the Word—I’m going to tell you what I think happened. He was preaching the Word, and he had them standing on their toes, and he said, “Some of you probably know somebody out there in your neighborhood who needs to hear what I am saying to you. You ought to go out there into the highways and hedges. You ought to get them and bring them in here.”

An old boy was standing there, and he bumped into a guy. He said, “Excuse me, buddy, I didn’t mean to bump into you. I was just concentrating on what he was saying.” He was thinking about an old fellow down there. “When I came into town today, there was an old man lying out there on the porch, all crippled up, and I stopped and asked him, ‘What do you do out here?’” He said, “Have you ever heard that story about Blind Bartimaeus?” Yes, everybody has heard about that.

“When Jesus was coming by there, Blind Bartimaeus heard it, and he hollered and yelled, and they said, ‘Shut up! Shut up! You’re not supposed to be doing that!’ But he said, ‘Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And you remember Jesus stopped and helped him? Well, they bring me out here every morning at daylight, and they come and get me at dark and bring me back in. One of these days, I know Jesus is going to come down this road, and when he does, I’m going to holler and yell just like he did, and I’m going to get healed.”

That fellow said, “You know, he’s out there right now. He doesn’t know Jesus is here.” The third man standing there said, “Fellow, I’ve been listening to what you’re saying. Why don’t we go out there and get him?” They said, “Well, there’s only three of us.” They didn’t need to be four of us. Another guy said, “I’ve been listening to you; I’ll go with you.” I’m convinced that the four guys left there. They left church to go out and get somebody and bring them where Jesus was. That’s what he said for us to do: Go out in the highways and hedges. He didn’t say bring them in here and get them saved; he said, “Go out there and get them saved.”

So they went out there. What happened when they got out there? I just picture that fellow saying, “Hey, hey, buddy. You remember me?” “Yeah, dude, you’re the fellow who came out here this morning. We talked.” He said, “Would you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is here in Capernaum?” That old fellow probably reared up on his elbow and said, “Now look, fellas, if this is some kind of a joke, and if you’re trying to have some fun at my expense, please—this is all I live for. I eat, sleep, and breathe this. If you guys are playing a game of some kind, just go on, leave me alone, will you?” “No, no, honest, he’s really here. It’s really him.”

That old man said, “Fellas, if that’s right, if you help me get to Jesus, I want you to know I’ll be indebted to you the rest of my life.” I think one of those fellows—now I’m going to give you a little Wallace holiday here; you won’t find this in the Greek or the Hebrew—but I think one of them said, “I’ll tell you what, we’ve got to get a stretcher.” There weren’t any EMS trucks running up and down the street there, right? One of them said, “I’ll tell you what, there was an old axe leaned up against the side of the house” (you’ll find that in the Greek if you look there). They chopped down a little tree and cut the limbs off and made a little stick. Then there was a rake there, and they broke the handle off the rake, and they had an old stick off the tree and a rake. One of them took off his coat and put the sleeves over that, and the other one took off his coat or robe—they had robes—and they tied the tails together and made a stretcher. If you’ve got a better idea, I’ll be glad to hear it.

I read it one time, and I thought that guy just stood up and said, “Now, fellas, get out here and leave me alone. I’m not interested in that.” That’s not in your Bible. I think that fellow just boiled up and got tears and said, “Fellas, God bless you, thank you for being here.” Now, you and I will go out there, and we tell them Jesus is here at the church, and they’ll say, “God, I’m not interested in it. I’m a Catholic,” or “I’m a Jehovah’s Witness.” Not in this story. This fellow said, “Boy!”

So they loaded him up, and they took him down there. When he got down there, he ran into that wall of people. They could not get to him for the press—the squeezing, pushing, shoving, trying to get in there. Here’s a guy with a crutch and a bad left leg, here’s somebody who is blind, here’s a guy who is deaf, here’s the guy there that’s crippled, and his back is broken, and all that—all these people are waiting. The Bible says they came up on the back there, and when they got up there, they were moving around. I think one of them on the front left corner tapped the guy on the shoulder and said, “Look, buddy, could we get you to move over out of the way? You’re kind of a wall to us. Would you let us go through, take this old man? We need to get him up where Jesus is.”

Do you know what I think that fellow said? “Now listen, fellas. You see that? You see my limb here? You see my crutch? I’ve been standing here for an hour and a half trying to get in there. If anybody gets in there, it’s going to be me here. Okay? Now get in line like the rest of us.” What’s the matter with this guy? He’s self-centered. Me, mine, I. I’m an important one, and you don’t matter; I matter. Everything’s about me and mine and I. Self-centered. The Bible says, “All men seek their own and not the things that are Christ.” That’ll keep people from coming to Christ. If you have any self-centeredness about you, you’re going to keep people from coming to Jesus. It’s a wall. It’s a barrier.

This whole story is about overcoming. This is a story about not quitting when you have cancer or not quitting when your house burns down. This is a story about keeping on going when you have a car wreck and end up in the hospital with a broken back and a broken neck for four or five months. Or this is a story about how to cope or handle it when one of your daughters gets pregnant at home, embarrassing the daylights out of you and ruining the whole household. Or when divorce happens—name it, name it, name it. This is how to get over all that because all of those things happen to good people too. So you’ve got to be careful about getting self-centered. We call it selfishness—me.

I had a fellow named Jake Null. Jake was a town drunk until he got saved. He got into the taxi business and started making good money. One day he came to me and said, “Preacher, I’m going up to Wilmington, Delaware, to get me a suit. Do you want to go with me?” I figured if Jake was going to get a suit and wanted me to go, he’d probably buy me one too. I said, “Yeah, Jake, I’m going to go with you.”

So we went to Wilmington Dry Goods. This was back in the early to mid-50s; there were no Walmarts and no Targets, but we had something sort of similar. That’s where you got the bargains. We got out of the car, and we started up the street after we parked. We had about a block and a half to walk, and we came to Wilmington Dry Goods. I was ready to go in, and I said, “Hold it, Jake, this is where we’re going.” He said, “No, no, I don’t buy clothes in there.” I said, “Where do you get them?” “I get them at Murphy’s up there.” Murphy’s was the exclusive men’s shop. You had to be a banker or a lawyer to buy up there. He said, “Goodness, I’ve never been up there.”

So I walked up there with him. When we went in, the doorman let us in and showed us the elevator. We went up to the men’s area. When we walked in, there were two or three guys standing there. Somebody had shined their shoes for them; they had brushed their teeth. They were ready. They said, “Gentlemen, welcome to our store. Can we show you something?” They even curtsied to us. This was really neat.

They took Jake over there. He spent all his money and bought a suit and didn’t have a penny left to buy one for me. But on the way up, I thought about the fact that we passed a little old woman walking along. She had two or three shopping bags, and her hair was all down on her shoulder. She’d been out there too long, and she was trying to find her way back up to the car where she had parked. She was dressed in a calico dress, probably made out of a feed bag, some kind. I looked real nice compared to her, and Jake looked all right. We didn’t pay attention. I ran into a man there who had an old cap on; he worked for the railroad, you know, and he had on a kind of coverall, some type, with a lot of grease and oil all over. I looked fine. Everybody on that street—they were ordinary people. We looked great compared to them.

But when we got in that store, man, here these guys were all fixed up. I felt uncomfortable. And Jake—you ought to see Jake! I was trying to shine my shoes; I was doing it because you could comb your hair in the shine of their shoes; it was like mirrors. I looked at Jake; he looked worse than I did. The point is, as long as we were down there bumming around with the rest of those people, we were doing fine. But when we got in the presence of somebody really fixed up, we began to realize we had a problem.

I’ll tell you, if we can hang around together and say, “Man, you have that problem too,” we can pick on each other. But I double-dare either one of us to get into the presence of Jesus for a little while. He’s perfect. If that won’t put you on the spot, that’ll show you where your wrinkles are, okay? That’ll show you that you need to get an iron out and press your clothes. I don’t know if anybody here is in trouble being selfish or self-centered. If you are, you are keeping somebody from Christ, and you need to work on that. Okay.

The first man they approached said, “Excuse me, buddy, we’re sorry we bothered you. Let’s move around, fellas.” They tapped on another guy’s shoulder and said, “Hey, excuse me, buddy, could we get you to move over and let us go?” The guy said, “What is it?” Before they could explain, he was looking around; he wasn’t paying any attention to them. When they finally explained, he turned around and said, “Look, fellas, I don’t have any problem with what you’re doing, but why do you want to get me involved? Go ahead and do your thing, but just leave me alone, okay?” Do you know anybody like that? Maybe you have a problem like that. You might be thinking, “Well, I’ll go, but I’ve got my own thing going on; I’m tied up. I’m busy.”

Maybe you are like Ferd Barnett. I hope nobody is like him. He was a wonderful fellow who moved out of North Carolina and brought his wonderful family to our area and joined our church—his wife, Mary Bell, and the four girls. I am still in touch with those four girls; they are having a reunion over in North Carolina this week and sent me a text about it because they were family to us.

We were having a workday from 10 to 12, and I needed a dozen men who would come for two hours. After calling seven or eight guys, we still needed 10 or 12. I called Ferd and said, “Ferd, here’s what we’re doing. I know this is Saturday, and you work all week, and I know you need to be with your family, but we need you for two hours. I promise you, if you come at 10 o’clock, we’ll turn you loose at 12, and you can go home and spend the rest of the day.” Ferd said, “Well, preacher, if I can’t find anything that needs doing around the house, I’ll come on down there.” I said, “Don’t come. We don’t want you.” He said, “What?” I said, “If you’re going to put it that way, we’re not interested in you coming. Just stay home, buddy.” He said, “Preacher, I didn’t mean it that way.” He was there just like that. He didn’t realize; he just didn’t think, but that was just his philosophy, his habit pattern. If I’m not careful, I’ll slip into that, and that will keep somebody away. This indifferent guy could care less about the poor guy on the stretcher; he was interested only in his own condition, and that was a problem.

Then they said, “Let’s move around over here,” and knocked on that guy’s shoulder. He said, “Now, what is it, fellas?” “Well, we have this guy. He’s down there on his porch, and we brought him down here, and we’re trying to get him in there. Of course, Jesus is going to heal people, and he’ll take care of him.” The guy said, “Fellas, that’s a wonderful idea. But look here: You’ve got this all wrong. Listen, you fellows are trying to take him in head first, and you’re going to get him hurt. Why don’t you turn the stretcher around and take him in feet first? And listen, you’re a great big, tall guy, and you’ve got this little old guy. You need to change places with that guy over there. And you guys need to turn that stretcher…” What’s the matter? This guy is critical. He doesn’t mind what they are doing, but he just wants to tell them, “That’s wrong, and this is wrong, and that’s wrong, and you ought to do it this way, and my idea is better.” That’ll keep people from Jesus—critical attitudes. They are doing it this way; they ought to do this, and they ought to do that. If you are not careful, you will do that about your church services, about the preacher’s sermons, and about the people. Be careful.

We had a sign we put up in our Sunday school lobby: “If you came in here without knocking, please leave the same way.” One of our Sunday school teachers put up “No grub glops in here.” One guy said that old boy was born in the objective case and the kickety mood. Old Bob Schuller wrote a book on “Some Dogs I Have Known,” and he pointed out this particular problem with us Christians: our critical attitude.

Well, they said, “Forget it, buddy. We’re sorry we bothered you.” Okay. They went around and tapped on another guy’s shoulder. He said, “Really? Now, what is it now?” “It’s this man here.” He said, “Well, we’re going to take him…” “Oh, that’s a great idea, fellas! Boy, let me help you!” “Oh, no, anybody but him! Not him! I’m not going to…” What’s that? I don’t know. This guy borrowed some money off of him and forgot to pay him back, and he couldn’t get over it. He said he’s crawled now, and he was willing to help anybody else, but not him, not him. Anybody here ever have somebody betray you, and you haven’t been able to get over it?

You need to listen to Jesus. He said, “How many times ought I to forgive?” They said, “Seven times?” He said, “Seventy times seven”—you know, or whatever, 490 times. We are talking here about a root of bitterness. I struggled. I had a ministry, and when I came to pastor, I had a buildup of my funds in the Wallace Ministry, Incorporated. It was lying there; I didn’t need to print any books at that time, and I didn’t need to make any thumb drives, and I didn’t have any flying expenses. So I just froze the account. A guy came, and he was really in desperate need, and I loaned him $16,000. When it came time to pay me back, he was going to pay me interest, but he never could get around to paying the principal, let alone the interest. I kept going; he kept making excuses, and he never did get it back. Never did. I come to church, and he’s sitting there in church while I’m up there preaching. Another guy came along, and I loaned him $45,000. I got $10,000 of that back. I see him singing in the choir. He was on the deacon body until I told him, “You get off that deacon body, or I’m going to make a nasty mess for you,” and he did.

I struggled with that. I got it settled, saying, “Lord, please forgive me.” So I wrote both a letter: “Your debt is forgiven. Forget it. Don’t worry about it anymore.” I got the best peace about it. My preaching improved, and I will live longer. I’m going to make it to 100. I still don’t have my money back, but who cares? I have life and energy, and I have the benefits and blessing of God. I pray for both those guys every day that the Lord will help them.

I met with the one guy and said, “I want to meet with you, but I don’t want to meet about the money. Let’s not even talk about that. What I want to do is talk about the judgment seat of Christ. If I understand it, at the judgment seat of Christ, you’re going to be assigned a position in the millennium for a thousand years.” The Bible says that one guy—ten people, all got a pound or a talent. Jesus went away, came back, and said, “Okay, how did you do?” He said, “I took your talent or your pound, and I have ten talents for it.” Jesus said, “Well done, good and faithful servant, but I’m going to make you ruler over ten cities”—cities, plural. There are no cities in heaven, just the city, the New Jerusalem. Cities all over the world. I’m going to make you a governor over ten cities for a thousand years, and you don’t have to be elected; you automatically get it. How about you? “Well, I didn’t know what to do, but I kept your pound.” Jesus said, “You remember what he said? ‘You wicked, lazy, careless, good-for-nothing!’ Kick it away from him; give it to the guy who has ten.”

I preached one day from my pulpit and said, “Listen, some of you guys here, you get to the millennium—I believe the Lord’s going to let me have a mansion, and Peter and Paul and James and John, and Jesus is going to have his place over here, and I’m going to have this place, and I’m going to have a gold doorknob, and I’m going to drive a big Lincoln Town Car with a gold radiator front on it.” And I said, “Some of you guys are going to live in a tar paper shack down in the woods, and you’ll have to come up and clean my driveway off and shine my doorknob every time you turn around because you haven’t done right in the day of grace, and for a thousand years you’re going to kick yourself.” I told that guy, “I’m worried about a thousand years for you because you’re going to have to pay that $45,000 back. For a thousand years, you’re going to drive the garbage truck, if there is such a thing as garbage in heaven, and you’re going to be in a tar paper shack.”

After I got through preaching, we were going to lunch. My little boy, Tim, said, “Hey, Dad.” “Yeah, Tim?” He said, “You know that sermon you were preaching on that tar paper?” “What about it, Tim?” He said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if God doesn’t stick you in one of them tar paper shacks the way you were bragging and boasting up here sporting.” Tim was probably right.

But the point is, if we are not careful, we will not be able to forgive people. People are going to tell lies about you once in a while. Somebody is going to cheat you. Somebody’s going to do you wrong. You’ve got to learn to handle it. There’s the example. What did they do to Jesus? They lied about him. They tricked him. They set up trying to find something he could say that they could make an issue out of, like they are doing Trump. And then they crucified him and killed him. And he said, “Father, forgive them.” Paul did the same thing.

Read Paul’s epistles. He knew about this endeavor. I went down to Florida for a whole revival meeting—it was my first revival meeting. At nighttime, we had a little lady there. She was scrawny, skinny, had a little old faded dress. Her husband would come sliding into the parking lot—it was a shell parking lot down in Florida. Instead of putting gravel, they’d get shells from the beach area, put them down, and pack them down. It was solid, not macadam or hardtop, but shell—kind of dusty, but solid. This parking lot was like that. He’d come sliding in there, the door would open, and four or five kids would come climbing out. Mrs. Phillips would get out, and she’d go in, and he’d turn around and be gone. Then you’d hear him come in at the end of the sermon and pick her up; he wouldn’t come inside.

After a couple of nights, she said, “Brother Wallace, I want you to pray for a little boy.” I said, “Which little boy?” She said, “My husband, Little Boy Phillips.” That’s what they called him. I said, “Really? What do you want me to pray for?” She said, “He said he’s going to come with me tomorrow night, and I hope you’ll pray for him, that he will get saved.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

So I started praying, “Lord, save Little Boy Phillips.” Well, that night he came in, pulled in just like normal, and stopped. The kids all piled out and ran in, and she got out, and he got out and came in. He was sitting about two-thirds of the way back while I was preaching. He got nervous; this was something he hadn’t been used to. He reached in his pocket and got some cigarettes. He put one in his mouth; he was ready to light it up. His wife saw what he was doing, put her elbow into his rib cage—you could hear it all over the church; it cracked—and she went, “Ugh!” So he put it back in there.

We got through, I gave the invitation, and we held on as we sang “Just As I Am.” We said, “Let’s sing it again.” After 55 verses, I said, “We’ve got to cut it off.” I couldn’t wait any longer. So I said, “Okay,” and we had to dismiss. He didn’t come forward. But just as soon as I got through, he walked out to the end of the aisle there, had that cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and took a puff out of the corner. The smoke went up in the church from the first puff.

So I slipped out the side door, went around there, and caught him on the front porch. I said, “Mr. Phillips, I couldn’t help noticing how troubled you were in there. I wonder if there is anything I could do maybe to help you with what we were talking about.” He said, “You see there?” I did. There was a great big scar that went from the middle of his neck all the way around the back. It was almost—about an inch wide and almost an inch deep. I don’t know how he ever did that, how he ever lived through it. It looked like he never had a stitch. He said, “Just as soon as I kill the fellow that put that scar there, then you can talk to me about that stuff.” I said, “Mr. Phillips, you’ve been nursing that so long your heart and your mind are set. I don’t think I could talk to you for a hundred years and do you any good.” I turned around and walked off. There was nothing I could do to help him. He was callous like a rock hard because anger and bitterness had turned him into stone. That’s what it will do to you. Just the least bit of bitterness will get harder and harder, hard against it.

What are we going to do? I could keep going; I’ve got about a dozen more things, but I think we get the point. All of our false affairs—now I’m not going to go any farther because I’ll run into me. It sure is living, and I’ll be blocking up the way there, and I don’t want to embarrass you. So we’ll just quit right there.

So I read here that these fellows looked down, and they apologized to that old fellow. They said, “Sir, listen, we’re so sorry.” You can’t do it now like they used to do it at those big city meetings like Oliver Green and B. R. Lake and then Jack Hiles and John Rice and all of them. You just keep doing it. So they took the old man back, laid him down, and apologized to him. They left him lying there, and he lay there the rest of his time until he died, and he never ever got healed. If that said that, I’d quit reading my Bible—not quit preaching. It doesn’t say that at all.

He said, “Well, why don’t we go get him up on the roof? We don’t have to worry about a hole; we’ll let him down right in there where Jesus is, and we don’t have to worry about any of these people.” That’s overcoming. One of them said, “Man, I can do it,” so they crawled up there and started knocking a hole.

When I said, “What in the world are they doing?” He said, “Well, they’re making a hole.” Boy, you never have done it around here like that before. You just start doing something, and you’ll have somebody in the car saying, “Man, we never did that before. What’s going on here?” Well, okay. He started letting that man down, and guess what Jesus did? All these people had been waiting—it was his turn and his turn and her turn and her turn. He said, “Well, you folks, would you all mind just waiting a little while?” He put priority on that guy. He said, “Let him down here. Your faith impresses me.” And he touched that guy and healed him. That fellow went out the front door, healed.

Now, that is in that story, according to Wallace. I don’t know if you can see that. But if you meditate on it, you’ll probably see four or five things I didn’t see, and you’ll think of things the Spirit of the Lord shows you—things that I didn’t even think of as we came to it. Everybody has had a lot of different experiences. I can preach the sermon, and we’ll have a hundred different people apply it in a different way because you related to that, and you related to that, and you related to that. The Spirit of the Lord coordinates all that. We preachers don’t have to worry about it; we go crazy trying to figure that out. So what does the story mean to you? I don’t know.

There are three people in this story. One is the man on the stretcher. Is anybody here not saved? We are trying to get you to Jesus. [If you think] “Leave me alone. I’ll do that when I get good and ready,” no, that’s not in the story. That fellow said, “Please, fellas, if you take me to Jesus, I want you to know how grateful I’ll be.” That fellow is in the story. Then we have these four guys. They represent people who care enough to go out of their way. And then we have Jesus in this story, and he’s ready to take care of whatever. Everybody here fits in the story somewhere. So find yourself, and we’ll have our invitation.

Original File: Bro Tom Wallace -＂4 men of faith＂ Sunday PM 05⧸04⧸2025 [lDB5KL4QJRQ]