Christian Relationships – Billy Graham – Christian Dating Magazine

I’m going to acid we bow and prayer our Father and our God we thank thee for these that thou has sent here tonight and we pray that all of those whose hearts you have already prepared may respond and say yes to the claims of Jesus Christ for we ask it in his name our man I want you to turn with me to Luke’s Gospel the tenth chapter now Jesus gave this little story and answer to our two questions posed to him by this lawyer master what shall I do that I might inherit eternal life now the first mistake the lawyer made was there’s nothing you can do to inherit it you cannot inherit eternal life from your parents or your grandparents you could say I was born in a Christian home but that doesn’t make you a Christian or born in a Christian community but that doesn’t make you a Christian you could say you were born in a garage but that doesn’t make you a motorcar now the second question he asked was this who is my neighbor who is my neighbor now there are three things wrapped up in that question who is my neighbor first it was a social question who is my neighbor my neighbors the person who is close to me of course my boyfriend my girlfriend roommate husband wife mother father person next door your professor your friends but today we must take a wider look because of modern communication and modern technology the whole world has become our neighbourhood and everyone is our neighbor that lives on this little planet because we are a small planet and we have technology in our hands now that have made this a very very small planet and we are demographically moving closer and closer to each other and we’ve become a neighborhood without becoming a brotherhood and this is one of the great problems that we face in the world today and Jesus said thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strengthen mine and thy neighbor as thyself there are several relationships in loving our neighbor that I would like to mention tonight the first is the race question I remember back in the early day 1950s when we were just starting through Pearson who was a columnist of famous columnist in this country wrote me a letter and he said delay he said would you be willing to go to Clinton Tennessee that was the first incident big incident we had racial incident that we had in the 40s and 50s was in Clinton Tennessee he said do you have guts enough and courage enough to go there and preach to an integrated audience and I said yes I do if you go with me and he went with me and I remember senator Kefauver in different ones of the Senate were then they sat on the platform and the head of the white Citizens Council had declared that he was going to blow up the meeting or he was going to stop the meeting else he was going to do something that it would never be held the meeting was held the gospel was preached and one of the first people that came forward to receive Christ was the head of the white Citizens Council and from then on he found out that he was to love the black man and that he had a responsibility in this race question you see the story of this Good Samaritan is really a story about a race question because the Jewish people of that day had very little to do with the Samaritans they were of a different ethnic background and this is a story that Jesus tells directly to teach who our neighbors are our neighbors our people of a different race or a different cultural background and we’re to love them when Jesus went back to his hometown in Nazareth he was well received until he spoke about the race problem and when he spoke about that they tried to stone him and then secondly there are the rich and the poor relationships in the world today the rich nations the poor nations the rich people in the poor people in James – it says hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him but he have despised the poor and we read the statistics pouring out about two thousand people a day starving to death or 1 billion in the world today her on a starvation diet you see and we spent so much on dieting in this country you know we’re all getting too fat and in much of the world they’re trying to start eating and we’re trying to stop eating and somehow there’s an inequity in the world that we have to face now the gospel of Christ has no meaning unless it is applied to our fellow man who hurts and is in need and I would like to ask you a question tonight when is the last time that you shared your life with another person or someone of another race or your material goods with the poor or your knowledge with those who crave knowledge or your skills with the untrained you stopped to teach them what you know and then thirdly there’s the relationship with the opposite sex that’s an important relationship for young people that just stood up a moment ago I heard about a 13 year old girl whose mother took her aside and said honey don’t you think it’s time that we talked about the facts of life and the girl said I sure do mother what would you like to know now instant sex we’re told is in while enduring relationships are down play now this was a problem and the oldest look in the world job and job said I’ve made a covenant with mine eyes why then should I look with lust upon a maid the Apostle Paul told young Tim Timothy to flee youthful lusts Peter said abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul now we say there you go there’s God again telling us we can’t have a good time no God is not saying that there’s nothing wrong with sex we’re all here tonight because of sex and it’s a wonderful gift of God God gave it to us but we’re to use it properly he meant it was to be used within the confines of marriage and he says thou shalt not commit adultery well there are many relationships I could talk about that involve us in loving our neighbor trying to protect our neighbor trying to help our neighbor I could talk on parent daughter and son relationships the Bible says honor thy father and thy mother and lambdas column states that there are millions of young people who love simply everybody except their parents in other words they cannot forgive their parents and they have a struggle with their parents and their parents have a struggle with them and they seem to be such a generation gap and there should be a bridge and the bridge can be Christ because Christ can help you to forgive as Christ forgive you of your sins you can help Christ can help you to forgive your parents and help you parents to forgive your children and to love them because they’re the closest neighbors you’ll ever have and they come under this when Jesus said thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself we could talk about the international relationships under this business of neighbourhood probably the greatest social and moral problem facing the world today are the web of mass destruction we look at the Middle East at the moment with its explosive situation there and some small country could fling a bomb and start a chain reaction and a great part of the world could be burned up now I want to get back to this story before my time is gone now you notice in this passage Jesus said a certain man the Bible teaches that God loves you as an individual you’re not just a person lost in a crowd here tonight you’re an individual before God people talk about mass Avengers them this is not mass any time you get two or three people together that’s mass and if you get 5,000 or 10,000 that’s mass and you get a little bit more that’s mass but we’re individuals and you’re standing or sitting before God tonight is an individual not just someone lost in the crowd he sees you as though you were the only person living tonight and Jesus said a certain man he loves people and Jesus hugs us one by one because he loves us and greater love hath no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends and the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and while he was on the cross he was thinking about you because he was God he could look down the centuries and call you by name on that cross and say I love you I will forgive you if you will come to me and then the man in our story was on his way to Jericho from Jerusalem now Jericho was a border city and it was a center of black marketing and crime and international bandits and the road from Jerusalem to Jericho in those days was called the bloody way but it was also a great city of priests and it says a certain man the certain man that Jesus is telling about fell among thieves which stripped him of his clothes and wounded him now all the world is a bit like that sin is rampaging through the world it’s ravaging humanity violence and terrorism robbing and raping and all the things that we read about in the newspapers and all the things that we do the little things that are called sin in the Bible now there came along some what I call salvation quacks the world is full of false messiahs there are over 400 people claiming to be Christ in Los Angeles alone I read some time ago I don’t know how many in Tacoma or in the state of Washington so there came by a priest now you’d think a priest would certainly help a man that’s broken and crushed and knocked out like this man was but he passed by on the other side he probably had a religious conference he was going to a very important wedding that he had to perform I don’t know but he represented religion in all of its forms and Paul wrote the timothy of those having a form of godliness but denying the power there are and I want to tell you this religion doesn’t save anybody religion is man’s attempt to reach God Christianity is God’s attempt to reach man there’s a vast difference jesus said Ye are they which justify themselves before men but God knoweth your hearts for that which is highly esteemed among men as an abomination in the sight of God oh yes we can be religious leaders but be insincere then it says a Levite came by he stopped and looked at this man and passed by on the other side now this Levite represented the law the Ten Commandments people say they can be saved by doing the best they can about keeping the law a poll was taken recently in New Jersey that said 92% of the people said they hope to go to heaven but most of them were unsure not certain now the Bible says you can be sure you mean to say Billy that I can know that I’m saved I can know I’m forgiven I can know I’m going to heaven yes you can know it Paul said I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day I’m going to heaven because of the mercy of God I’m going to heaven because of the grace of God I don’t deserve it I deserve judgment in hell I’m a sinner like you but I have repented of my sins and receive Christ into my Savior and I’m trusting in the cross of Christ so the wounded and the derelict man was left to die the priest and the Levite unable or unwilling to help him then there comes a man along with from another race another religion and he could have felt no responsibility at all but he did he was the Samaritan he had compassion owning a former prime-minister of one of our countries recently said I’ve never known such a time in his lifetime in my lifetime when there’s such a shortage of love this Samaritan of another race of another religion went to him he didn’t just love him and leave him Jesus doesn’t just love us but he died on the cross and he died for us and for you but God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us I’m the scripture here in this passage of Jesus’s teaching says that this man went over and bound up his wounds and poured in oil and wine but he did something else God doesn’t just convert us and change us tonight but he goes with us he keeps us and brought him to the inn and took care of it Christianity is good news not just good advice good news that you can be forgiven that you can have a new life and that you can make a commitment to someone who will love you and go with you from here tonight to help you change your way of life The Washington Post last year quoted James Russell law as saying once to every man in nation comes the moment to decide in the strife of truth with falsehood for the good or evil sad once in your life you have a moment to decide tonight is the night for many of you and he may never come again like it is tonight the scripture says he that being often reproved shall suddenly be cut off and that without remedy there comes a moment when you face God as you do tonight and you face the cross and you must decide and I ask you to come forward in these meetings and stand in front of the platform and say symbolically by coming I do indeed repetitive I sin and receive Christ