Put God First | Billy Graham Sermon #BillyGraham #Gospel #Jesus #Christ

[Music] Now, the fifth chapter of Acts, the fifth chapter of the book of Acts—just one phrase out of it—and I'm going to take it totally out of context because I want to talk to young people primarily tonight. [Music] The scripture says in the fifth chapter and the sixth verse, "and the young men. " Tonight, I would like to see out of Birmingham, Alabama, and out of this Crusade, I would like to see young men and young women arising and going forth to help change our nation and change our world.

There's enough spiritual and moral power in this stadium tonight that could change the nation and change the world if we begin to march for Jesus Christ. Young people all over the world are marching for every cause in the world, and I believe tonight the time has come for us to declare ourselves and start marching in earnest for Jesus Christ. Mr Chow in Lies said in China the other day to a group of people from Minnesota, he said, "You know, the hope of America is exactly the same as the hope of China.

" He said, "The hope of China and the hope of America is in the young people. " Well, our hope is not in communism; our hope is not even in democracy; our hope is in Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God. That is our hope, and we have our hope anchored to that.

But I've noticed that all over the world, young people are marching. Red China got them to march by the millions in what was called the Red Guards. Down in Italy the other day, the neo-fascists doubled their power in the Roman government, or in the Italian government, by going after the young people.

So, young people from the left and young people from the right are beginning to march. Now, in my generation, 30 years ago, they clashed in a war in which millions of people perished: young people marching for Hitler, young people marching for Mussolini, young people marching for the people of Japan, young people marching in America, young people marching in Britain—all marching with guns. They began to shoot each other, and blood splattered across this planet as it has never been splattered in history.

We pray that it will not happen again in our generation. But young people are now on the move; young people on the march. These young people want a say in national affairs; they are wanting a say in how their world is going to be.

But I find, in traveling among young people and talking to high school groups and college groups personally and on the campus, that young people today feel several things very deeply. I think that young people today feel that they've been deceived. They feel that somewhere along the line, we and our generation have deceived them.

Well, young people have been deceived, but young people, tonight I want to tell you, every generation has been deceived, and especially this one—because the Bible says the devil is the great deceiver; that's his business—to deceive you. He's called, in Second Thessalonians, "the lie. " Jesus said he's a liar and the father of lies.

The devil's business is to deceive you; he tries to deceive you, and he does so in every generation by saying that you can give your life to pleasure, you can give your life to the making of money, and you can let these things be your gods, and that they will satisfy you and you'll find fulfillment in them. [Music] And after a while, the bubble is going to burst. When you're young, he tells you that you can take the drug route and find mind expansion and peace of mind by taking drugs, and you soon find that you're in bondage.

You soon find that you've been deceived. You are being deceived; you're being brainwashed every day by the devil, and he uses every agency in the world. Sometimes I fear even the church to deceive you, and sometimes the church is guilty of keeping you from the real Jesus, the real Christ who can forgive and satisfy and change and transform, and who comes to love and to hold your hand and to be your friend.

The devil wants to deceive you. He's called in the Bible "the deceiver. " You see, he deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden; he deceived her into believing that if she ate of that fruit that God had forbidden, that she would become like God.

He said, "You're really not going to die; there's no judgment; there's no hell. " And she believed him. She believed a lie.

So, the very first generation of people that ever inhabited this planet were deceived, and man's fall from God began with a deception of the devil, and Satan is deceiving you in this generation. After a while, you can have success; you might reach the top, but there's a loneliness, there's an emptiness. You find that the power that you wanted, the money you've made, the glamour that you've had doesn't satisfy totally and completely.

Eric Siegel, who wrote Love Story, was quoted in the paper recently as saying, "I can't tell you where I'm going, but I imagine wherever it is I'll be alone. " [Music] Jesus said that materialism without God is disastrous. He said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God.

" He said, "Beware of covetousness, for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things that he possesses. " The devil says all you need is security from the cradle to the grave, and you'll be happy. I remember once that the Archbishop of Canterbury said, "You know, we in the church worked hard for the welfare state, and we've.

. . " Got it, but we found out that that didn't bring happiness and peace to the hearts of our people.

There's something else; you can be rich, but if you're without God, what do you have? You have nothing. The Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy and said, "Instruct those that are rich in this world's goods not to be proud.

Don't fix your hopes on the uncertain things that money can buy; fix your hope on God. " Jesus said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. " Put God first; God will take care of the rest.

But if you put money, pleasure, and power first, you're going to be deceived. You're going to come up empty; you're going to come up short-handed. This generation of young people can express themselves more than any generation, at least in America and in some parts of Europe and some parts of the world.

You're not able to express yourself in much of the Eastern world. The older generation, when actually the older generation has been deceived too, and we've been deceived by a supernatural power called the devil. So let's put the blame where it is: on the devil.

Secondly, I find that young people, wherever I go, are frustrated by failure. You know, depression can become very great in adolescence. When you're at the age between about 16 and 22 or 23, you can have terrible periods of depression, a sense of insecurity.

You've not quite left boyhood; you've not quite gotten into maturity in manhood, and inexperience can lead to great depression. In our generation, where we have so much leisure time, you can be preoccupied with nothing. If you don't have a goal, a motive, a purpose, or a meaning for living, you can be preoccupied with nothingness, and you can be absolutely empty.

This leaves you depressed. Sometimes you're depressed, and sometimes you have an ego trip—egotism. You try to show off and try to show that you're a man, in this way or that way, by doing eccentric things to try to gain your place in the spotlight of your little world.

The Bible says that we're sinners. Now, you know, I don't think in my generation we've gotten over to them the truth. What is the truth?

The truth is that you have inherited a deadly disease, and it's going to kill you. That disease is called sin. That's a disease—a spiritual disease.

The Bible says the result, the wages of sin, is death. Now, we haven't gotten that across. I read the book "Nicholas and Alexandra"; it's been made into a motion picture.

It's the story of the days before the Russian Revolution, when Nicholas was on the throne in Imperial Russia. They had a little boy, a little prince, and he had a disease. When he hurt himself, he would bleed, and they couldn't stop the bleeding.

It's called the royal disease, and as I understand it, the carrier of it is through the woman. Here, the queen, Alexandra, the empress, felt that she was responsible, and she carried this terrible guilt. This drove her to a false prophet, a false priest by the name of Rasputin, one of the most vile and wicked characters in history.

That led to the destruction of Russia and the rise of communism. Now, there were many things wrong in Russia; I'm not entering the political part of it at that period. I'm only saying that this little boy had a disease, and because he had a disease that he had inherited from his mother, this eventually led to a series of events that led to one of the greatest historical moments in the history of the world.

Now, you have a disease. There's absolutely no cure for your disease; it's going to kill every one of you. It is appointed unto man once to die.

There is only one possible cure, one total cure, and that's why Jesus Christ came down to this earth. He came and shed His own blood that a cure might be provided by God for you. It's the only cure for the disease that we all have.

You've got it, whether your face is black or whether it's white or whether it's brown or whether it's yellow. Whatever language you speak, whether you speak with a northern accent or a southern accent, whatever you are, whoever you are, you've got the disease, and it’s going to kill you. It'll kill you physically; you're going to die.

It'll kill you spiritually, because when you die, your soul is going to go out into eternity, lost and separated from God, according to the teachings of Jesus. You'll also wander about in darkness, lost from God, lost from your loved ones, lost from everything good and lovely and right and holy. Jesus described that situation as hell.

There are many of you here tonight that are lost souls, living in hell right now or hell on this earth. But if you're outside of Jesus Christ, the Bible says you're infected with this disease. The wages of sin is death; the soul that sinneth shall die.

You're under the sentence of death; you're just awaiting the execution. There is only one cure, one serum, one medicine that will work. God guarantees it.

I know it will work; it's worked in every generation for tens of thousands of people that have put their trust and their faith in Jesus Christ. It'll work in your case tonight if you'll trust Him. Yes, you may have a feeling of failure, so when you have this feeling of failure, what do you do?

Some people turn to sex. I read in the paper the other day that Billy Graham said. .

. That sex was sin? That is not true!

I've never said that in my life. If it were not for sex, I wouldn't be here tonight; neither would you. The Bible teaches that sex is not sin; it's the misuse of sex that's sin.

When we misuse it, you say, "But, Billahan, our sophisticated modern generation—the pill—is taking care of all our problems. " Is that so? Then why is illegitimacy five times greater now than it was 20 years ago, per capita?

Why is VD now at epidemic proportions throughout the country, until it's become one of the major diseases to be dealt with in the United States? The Bible says to flee fornication. The Bible says it's wrong to have sexual experiences outside of marriage.

Let's just tell it like it is; tell it like the Bible says. You may not agree with it; I'm not asking you to agree with it. I'm not trying to force it down your throat.

You can make up your own mind. I'm telling you this: the Bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and the Bible says if you commit that sin, you're going to pay for it in your body, in this life and in the life to come. It's a sin.

And then there are thousands of young people in this state of failure, and the syndrome of failure commits suicide. It's the second leading killer on university campuses today: suicide. Some go to drugs.

Did you know I read the other day that six percent of American young people are now experimenting with hard drugs? I could hardly believe it, and there's no cure. The United States government spends an average of $65,000 to try to cure one addict, and we only have a one percent cure rate.

They're only arrested; that's how dangerous and terrible this drug business is—not only in America but in Europe and throughout the world. But it's a strange thing: in China, they say there are no drugs. Young people don't use drugs there—of course, they're not allowed to.

But here in America, with all of our freedom, we have a plague upon us. It's like a cancer that could destroy our society. In fact, the Bible intimates that there will come a time when an entire nation will someday be drugged.

It doesn't say America; it doesn't call the nation by name, but it says the nation will be drugged, and we will become soft for the kill, like Rome was in her latter days—drugs. And then there's loneliness. Young people feel a sense of failure, and so they are very lonely.

An actor wrote in a national magazine last week, and he said, "I've reached zero level. " He said, "You know, I go on the stage and I act, or I go before the cameras and I act, and they think I'm a great guy. I've been nominated for the Academy Award; I've had all of the money that a man could make.

But he said, when I get home, I reach zero. Take the mask off, and he said, I'm the loneliest guy in the world. He said, 'If I only had somebody's hand to hold that really loved me.

'" I want to tell that actor tonight, if he's watching: you can hold the hand of Jesus. He loves you; He'll forgive you. He'll come in and be your friend, that sticketh closer than a brother.

He wants to come and hold that lonely hand of yours tonight. He wants to come and give you purpose and meaning in your life. Then I think that young people are searching for a challenge—they want something to challenge them.

You know, we read a lot about the fellows that go to Vietnam, and I've been over there several times, and I've talked to them. I heard a fellow interviewed on television the other night; he was a pilot off one of those carriers, and he said, "No, sir. I wasn't drafted.

I'm here of my own choice; I want to be. " They asked him, "Well, why do you want to be? " He said, "I want to serve my country, but I also like the daring of it; I like the challenge of it.

" And you know we want a challenge; that's one reason we like football—that's one reason we've gone sports crazy. We like a challenge; man was built for a challenge. Why not also have a spiritual challenge?

A challenge to change the lives of men and women, take the loneliness away, take the sin and the guilt away? Why not the challenge to follow Jesus Christ and change the world with love instead of hate? What a challenge we've got tonight!

And then lastly, I find that young people all over the world, at least in the circles that I move in, want to believe something—to really believe in something that's intellectually logical, something that will satisfy their hearts and give them an experience—not a drug experience, but a spiritual experience that they can have every day. Well, I want to tell you: if you come to Jesus Christ, you've found it! Because when you come to Jesus Christ, it makes logic; it makes sense.

It satisfies the intellect. Though you cannot come to Christ intellectually alone, because your mind has been affected by sin, and your mind and your judgment have been warped by sin—you have to come by simple childlike faith. But you also can have an experience; you can sense Christ, you can feel Christ!

And what a wonderful thing it is, all day long, to have a power about you, a strength about you, a glow about you, no matter what the circumstances may be—in a hospital room or wherever you are. Are you can overcome those feelings of despair and depression and physical handicap by a greater power, the power of the Holy Spirit that comes to live within. Oh, I want to tell you, there are times when I feel Christ so very close that I feel like standing up and dancing a jig.

There are times when I feel like shouting, "Hallelujah! " And then there are other times when, Christ, I can't even touch Christ; I don't even feel Him at all. My mother is here tonight, and I remember when I was in school, I wrote to her one day many years ago—she's forgotten—and I said, "Mother, you know, for the last few weeks I haven't been able to get anywhere in my prayers, and I don't feel Christ.

" She said, "Son, you have accepted Christ as your Savior, and whether you have feelings or not, the moments that you don't feel anything are the moments when He may be the closest because that's the moment that you must walk by sheer faith. God may be testing you. " How wonderful to have a faith to believe!

A faith that could change the world and certainly a faith that could change your world and your life. I came forward like this in a meeting one night many years ago, and I started in a whole new direction. It could happen to you!

I'm going to ask hundreds of you—young people and older people as well—to get up out of your seats right now and come stand in front of this platform and say, "By coming, I do receive Christ; I want Him to be my Lord and my Master and my Savior. " If you're with friends and relatives, they'll wait. If you've come in a bus, they'll wait.

Just get up and come—men, women, young people—hundreds of you, right now! After you've all come down here and you're standing here, I'm going to have a prayer with you, say a word to you, and give you some literature, and you can go back and join your friends. I'm going to ask that no one leave the stadium now as hundreds of people come from all over this great stadium and make this commitment.

Why do I ask you to come forward publicly? Because Jesus said, "If you're not willing to acknowledge me publicly, I'll not acknowledge you before my Father which is in heaven.