Salvation By Grace Alone and The Judgement Of Our Lives According To Our Works
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A Perfect Example of Salvation by grace alone
Most of you in the room, are way too young to remember this history; but it was one of the great stories of the world at the time, and I am sure you would have been reading about it in the Newspaper had you been old enough to do so. It was recently made into a movie, I think for the second or third time.
It was one of those horrifying stories of human evil that fascinate people for some reason. I am speaking about how the city of New York was terrorized by the serial killer known as the son of Sam for two years in 1976 and 1977.
During those two terrible months when the killings were occurring and the police were desperately seeking to find this man and having no success whatsoever; this man whose name was eventually learned was David Berkowitz, murdered six young women, injured a number of others (both men and women), and blinded with a gunshot one young man.
His Modulus Operandi (his way of working) was what made him so difficult to catch. The victims had nothing in common; he had no reason to single them out for his violence; he selected them at random walking in a street or sitting unsuspectingly in a car and he would simply walk up to them and open fire. Point blank range, most of the time.
Then he gained even greater notoriety when he began writing letters to Jimmy Breslin who was a famous columnist for the New York Post newspaper. Breslin had been writing about the murders, and now suddenly the murderer was writing to him.
It was to Breslin that David Berkowitz disclosed his name, the son of Sam. Sam was a neighbour, as it turned out, whose dog kept Breslin up at night with his backing.
His letters to Jimmy Breslin reminded people, and particularly criminologist, of the letters that Jack the Ripper had written to the London press during his killing spree in the late 19th Century.
David Berkowitz was finally apprehended, almost by accident, and he was taken, of course, to court. Psychiatrists studied and examined him. Berkowitz was claiming insanity but all the Psychiatrists argued that he was faking it.
And so finally, when it appeared that he would be convicted at trial and there was no point or use in attempting a defence; he pled guilty to the various murders. Those were days in the United States when it was impossible to execute a criminal, and so David Berkowitz was sentenced to 365 years in prison.
Now I tell you that story because today, David Berkowitz claims to be a committed follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has maintained that claim over a number of years. He has been in prison now for more than 30 years and most of that time, as a Christian. In fact, I have seen letters written by David Berkowitz, to the son of a friend of mine, a presbyterian elder in Nashville, Tennesse.
He had heard that David Berkowitz had made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and so he wrote him a letter in his penitentiary in New York just to encourage him. And David Berkowitz wrote back, and pretty soon, they were having a correspondence back and forth.
I used Berkowitz as an illustration in sermon a few years ago in Colombia, South Carolina, and a man came up to me after church and said that he had just recently got out of the same prison where David Berkowitz is incarcerated and he wanted me to know that there was nothing phoney, nothing false, about this man's profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Berkowitz was still a committed Christian as he was years before. He works in the prison chapel to disseminate gospel material to the inmates. This is no fake conversion. It is not a deceptive effort to look good to the general public. David Berkowitz will never get out of prison. He will die in prison. There is no possibility of his being paroled.
It is not so hard for me to believe that someone like David Berkowitz who did what he did is a Christian now. We have had men in our congregation in Tacoma who have done terrible things and gone to prison for them. For murder, in one case; for child molestation, in another case. I have no doubt about the presence of God's grace in the lives of those me or of the transformation that the Spirit of God has worked in their lives.
Now obviously, I cannot pass final judgement on the genuineness of somebody else's profession of Christian faith: particularly some that I don't even know. But we can't believe, can we, that it is impossible, that God should save a man after he had done such terrible things as David Berkowitz had done? We cannot think that it is impossible that David Berkowitz is saved if we believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We cannot say that Christ is able to save moderately evil people like us but he could never save somebody as bad as the son of Sam. But are you prepared for the storm of protest that would fall upon you if you were to suggest in public that David Berkowitz, the infernal serial killer of New York City is going to go to heaven and is going to live in eternity with everlasting joy upon his head, when many of his victims, and the families of those victims, whose lives were so terribly devastated by his crimes, are going to go to hell!
Nothing so starkly, nothing so powerfully illustrates what it is we actually believe about salvation as that. That a serial killer should go to heaven and live basking in the glory of God forever for no other reason than that by the grace of God and the working of the Holy Spirit, he was led to ask God for the forgiveness of his sins. But you see, that is our doctrine. That is the confession of our hearts as believers. "You were murderers to", the Lord Jesus says, "You liars, you haters of other people". Let there be no thought about our goodness relative to someone like David Berkowitz. We can only think that if like the world, we lower the bar so far that we can't help stumbling over the top of it.
The worst demon in hell can still say that I am not as bad as he is. We were put into the world, our Saviour said, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength and with all our mind and our neighbour as ourself.
Page 2 ⇦ Previous | Next ⇨ Page 4
A Perfect Example of Salvation by grace alone
Most of you in the room, are way too young to remember this history; but it was one of the great stories of the world at the time, and I am sure you would have been reading about it in the Newspaper had you been old enough to do so. It was recently made into a movie, I think for the second or third time.
It was one of those horrifying stories of human evil that fascinate people for some reason. I am speaking about how the city of New York was terrorized by the serial killer known as the son of Sam for two years in 1976 and 1977.
During those two terrible months when the killings were occurring and the police were desperately seeking to find this man and having no success whatsoever; this man whose name was eventually learned was David Berkowitz, murdered six young women, injured a number of others (both men and women), and blinded with a gunshot one young man.
His Modulus Operandi (his way of working) was what made him so difficult to catch. The victims had nothing in common; he had no reason to single them out for his violence; he selected them at random walking in a street or sitting unsuspectingly in a car and he would simply walk up to them and open fire. Point blank range, most of the time.
Then he gained even greater notoriety when he began writing letters to Jimmy Breslin who was a famous columnist for the New York Post newspaper. Breslin had been writing about the murders, and now suddenly the murderer was writing to him.
It was to Breslin that David Berkowitz disclosed his name, the son of Sam. Sam was a neighbour, as it turned out, whose dog kept Breslin up at night with his backing.
His letters to Jimmy Breslin reminded people, and particularly criminologist, of the letters that Jack the Ripper had written to the London press during his killing spree in the late 19th Century.
David Berkowitz was finally apprehended, almost by accident, and he was taken, of course, to court. Psychiatrists studied and examined him. Berkowitz was claiming insanity but all the Psychiatrists argued that he was faking it.
And so finally, when it appeared that he would be convicted at trial and there was no point or use in attempting a defence; he pled guilty to the various murders. Those were days in the United States when it was impossible to execute a criminal, and so David Berkowitz was sentenced to 365 years in prison.
Now I tell you that story because today, David Berkowitz claims to be a committed follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He has maintained that claim over a number of years. He has been in prison now for more than 30 years and most of that time, as a Christian. In fact, I have seen letters written by David Berkowitz, to the son of a friend of mine, a presbyterian elder in Nashville, Tennesse.
He had heard that David Berkowitz had made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and so he wrote him a letter in his penitentiary in New York just to encourage him. And David Berkowitz wrote back, and pretty soon, they were having a correspondence back and forth.
I used Berkowitz as an illustration in sermon a few years ago in Colombia, South Carolina, and a man came up to me after church and said that he had just recently got out of the same prison where David Berkowitz is incarcerated and he wanted me to know that there was nothing phoney, nothing false, about this man's profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Berkowitz was still a committed Christian as he was years before. He works in the prison chapel to disseminate gospel material to the inmates. This is no fake conversion. It is not a deceptive effort to look good to the general public. David Berkowitz will never get out of prison. He will die in prison. There is no possibility of his being paroled.
It is not so hard for me to believe that someone like David Berkowitz who did what he did is a Christian now. We have had men in our congregation in Tacoma who have done terrible things and gone to prison for them. For murder, in one case; for child molestation, in another case. I have no doubt about the presence of God's grace in the lives of those me or of the transformation that the Spirit of God has worked in their lives.
Now obviously, I cannot pass final judgement on the genuineness of somebody else's profession of Christian faith: particularly some that I don't even know. But we can't believe, can we, that it is impossible, that God should save a man after he had done such terrible things as David Berkowitz had done? We cannot think that it is impossible that David Berkowitz is saved if we believe the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We cannot say that Christ is able to save moderately evil people like us but he could never save somebody as bad as the son of Sam. But are you prepared for the storm of protest that would fall upon you if you were to suggest in public that David Berkowitz, the infernal serial killer of New York City is going to go to heaven and is going to live in eternity with everlasting joy upon his head, when many of his victims, and the families of those victims, whose lives were so terribly devastated by his crimes, are going to go to hell!
Nothing so starkly, nothing so powerfully illustrates what it is we actually believe about salvation as that. That a serial killer should go to heaven and live basking in the glory of God forever for no other reason than that by the grace of God and the working of the Holy Spirit, he was led to ask God for the forgiveness of his sins. But you see, that is our doctrine. That is the confession of our hearts as believers. "You were murderers to", the Lord Jesus says, "You liars, you haters of other people". Let there be no thought about our goodness relative to someone like David Berkowitz. We can only think that if like the world, we lower the bar so far that we can't help stumbling over the top of it.
The worst demon in hell can still say that I am not as bad as he is. We were put into the world, our Saviour said, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength and with all our mind and our neighbour as ourself.
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