Chapter III: Common Excuses

This morning we want to discuss the excuses outsiders offer for not obeying the gospel.[2] If you start out to do some personal work and to lead people to the Lord individually, and that is the most effective way to lead them, you’ll find them making excuses. There are twelve or fifteen excuses which will probably cover 95 per cent of the cases. If you become familiar with these, and know how to answer them, you’ll be able to handle most of the objections you meet. I have heard all these excuses offered many times. If you set out to do some work tomorrow—work of this nature—you will find people offering one or more of these excuses. Let us state and briefly discuss them.

1. “_There are so many doctrines preached I do not know which one to believe. If wise men differ about which church is right, how then can I be sure?_” Well, friends, wise men are still differing about what sort of food you ought to eat. The doctors have not yet decided what is the perfect diet; but you haven’t quit eating while the doctors argue. You are more practical in dealing with your stomach than you are in dealing with your soul. You keep on eating the best you can while the scientists search for the perfect diet.

Furthermore, I never heard anyone offer this excuse who was a Bible student. It is always offered by those who do not study the Bible, because anyone who is able to study can find the answer. I could entertain you at length, and maybe profit you as well, by giving you a number of examples of individuals who have studied the Bible independently in search for the truth, with always the same results. Anyone who will take the time to investigate God’s word, doing his best to lay aside his prejudice and his bias, if he is sincere and honest, will be able to understand God’s will well enough to obey the Lord on this earth and be saved everlastingly. The man who offers this excuse is simply not willing to make the investigation necessary to gain the enlightenment or information which he needs.

2. “_For me to be baptized for remission of sins would be to say that my parents are lost._” Of course, that implies that his parents are already dead and that they were never baptized for remission of sins. I answer this objection by giving a concrete example. I visited a lady in West Virginia and anticipated that she would make this excuse. In fact, when I entered the room I could see the tenseness in the muscles of her face. She was expecting me to say that her father had gone to hell, and she was all set to get angry when I did. But I disappointed her. I didn’t say it. I have never said that to anyone. I do not see how it can do any good. There may be times when I am convinced that it is so. But after one is dead there is no need to discuss it.

My approach was this: “I am willing to admit that your father was just as good as you think he was. There is no reason why I should deny this. But remember, if your father was as good as you think he was, then he did the best he knew, he lived up to all the enlightenment he had; because if he had not done so, he would not have been a good man. He would have been a hypocrite. So we will just assume that your father did the very best he could. Then you are not as good as he was unless you do the very best that you know, and you know that you ought to be a Christian. You know you ought to be a member of the church we read about in the Bible. You know that you ought to be baptized for remission of sins. If you don’t obey the gospel, then you are not as good as you say your father was.”

The tenseness left her face. She relaxed and talked more reasonably. Before the meeting closed she obeyed the gospel. If your father and mother are dead, if they are on their way to heaven, and if they are conscious, then they certainly want you to obey the gospel so you will go there, too. If they are not on their way to heaven, if they are conscious of being on their way to the other place, then they certainly want you to obey the gospel, for torment in fire is one misery which is so terrible that it does not love company. The rich man did not want his brothers to come to the place where he was in hades.

3. “_I am better now than some of those who are in the church._” In a sense that might be so. Morally you might be better than the worst hypocrite in the church, but why do you want to select the lowest standard that you can find? I have often wondered why a decent man will select a hypocrite in the church, or an immoral, disloyal, unfaithful church member as a standard by which to measure himself. To do so is certainly no compliment to yourself. We do not use such standards in other matters. We want the best standards in the affairs of this world and even though your comparison be true, it still remains that the best man in the church is far better than the best man on the outside. And the average man in the church is better than the average man on the outside. Furthermore, when you stand before the Lord Jesus Christ you will not be judged according to any human standard, but according to the word of God Almighty.

4. “_There are so many hypocrites in the church that I cannot afford to become a member of it._” When one makes this excuse I don’t say, but I feel like saying, “Well, come on in, brother; there is always room for one more.” The man who offers that excuse is a hypocrite himself. That’s not what keeps him out. It is just an excuse for not coming in. Furthermore, there are hypocrites in every organization in the world. There are hypocrites outside the church. You can’t get away from the hypocrites by staying outside the church, because they are not all inside the church. The church doesn’t have a monopoly on them. Most of them are still on the outside, and you will be with them as long as you remain there. Furthermore you’ll have to spend eternity with all the hypocrites, those that are now in the church and those that are now outside the church. So, if you want to get away from hypocrites, there is only one way to do it: become a Christian and tolerate the few hypocrites in the church while on this earth you dwell, then go home to heaven to be free of all of them forever.

5. “_I’m not good enough to be a Christian._” If you were, you wouldn’t need to become one. The gospel is for people who need to be better. The gospel is for sinners. Sinners are the raw material out of which Christians are made. The people who were saved on the day of Pentecost were not such good folk to start with. They were murderers. They had murdered the Son of God. Yet they could be saved. If you are not worse than the men who, with wicked and lawless hands, nailed the Son of God to the cross, then you are not too mean to be saved. In fact, Christ is able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him. His power is not limited. One of the most wonderful things about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it makes no difference how dark or black your record may have been in the past, you can have it washed clean and white as snow in the blood of the Lamb. His blood is able to wipe away all your sins; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool; though they be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow (Isa. 1:18). There is no one too wicked to be saved if he is willing to believe in Christ, repent of his sins, obey the commandment to be baptized, and remain faithful thereafter.

6. “_Well, I’d like to become a Christian, but I’m_ _afraid I can’t hold out._” People say a lot of things they don’t mean to say. They use a lot of words sometimes when they don’t realize what they are saying. So does the man who makes this excuse. Let’s just look at it a minute and see what a fellow really says when he states that he is afraid he can’t hold out. If you analyze his excuse, it simply means this: “I’m on my way to hell and there is nothing I can do about it.” He didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t intend to assume such a hopeless attitude. “I’m just on my way to hell and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Why nobody, not many people at least, believes that! And yet that’s virtually what you say when you say, “I’d like to be a Christian, but I am afraid I can’t.”

God is not the author of such hopelessness. The Bible says, “Whosoever will let him take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17). The Bible teaches that God “will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13). The Bible plainly declares that all of those who will may come. Anybody who is willing to try can be saved. To say it is impossible for you to be saved is to dispute the word of God Almighty. I do not believe you really want to do that.

7. “_I don’t know enough yet._” That could be so. I think I have seen some people of whom that was true. But you can learn enough in a very few minutes. Do you know that in every example of conversion we have in the Bible, the people who were saved obeyed the first sermon they heard? In every case! Now, if those people who lived nearly 2000 years ago could learn enough from one sermon to obey the gospel, how long should it take one today? In every instance they obeyed the first sermon they heard. It didn’t take long, did it? I have worked with people whom I had to teach for a full year before they would obey the gospel. Of course, I admit that I am not as good a teacher as Peter or Paul, but when I read to you just what those men said, then, after all, they are doing the teaching. People of that day could learn enough from them in just an hour or so to obey the gospel. Surely it ought not to take one several years now to learn the same. After all, you don’t need to know much to be saved. You don’t need to know everything. If you wait till you know everything before you do anything, then you’ll always do nothing.

In order to be saved, you simply need to know that you are lost, that Jesus is able to save you, and what he wants you to do in order that he may save you. I can tell you that in less than a minute! “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16). “Repent and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Now, that is enough if you are willing to accept it and obey it. Even if you didn’t know it when you came, you now know enough to be saved.

An illustration which I frequently use is this: Suppose I start to drive to Columbia, Tennessee, tonight. I get out here on the street and say, “Well, I can’t see the way to Columbia. There are many crooks and turns and ditches between here and Columbia. I might have a wreck and kill myself, so I just won’t start.” That would be silly, wouldn’t it? Why, I could see a few yards ahead of me and I would drive on in what light I had. As I moved on the light would move on and if I kept on going, I would likely reach Columbia or any other place to which I started.

That’s the way it is in going to heaven; you can’t see your way from here into the Pearly Gates. If you could, you would be walking by sight and not by faith. “But the just shall live by faith” (Hab. 2:4). You can see the first step, and if you will take it, you will be able to see a little bit further. Take the second and then you can see still further, and if you keep on going, you will reach the goal.

“If a man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself” (John 7:17). They that will to do His will shall know. You can see or learn the way as you go along. Remember this, if you know of just one commandment that you have not yet obeyed, you do not deserve to understand another until you are willing to obey the one you do understand. If a man does not love the truth, God will send him strong delusions that he may believe a lie and be damned (2 Thess. 2:8-12). If you know truth and are unwilling to act upon it, you do not deserve to know any further truth. If you keep on despising what truth you do have, then God will take even that away from you. He will send you a strong delusion that you may be deceived, may be deluded and may be damned forever. It is a dangerous thing for one to trample under his foot the word of Almighty God. If you know of even one commandment which you have not obeyed, obey it now.

8. “_I live a good, clean life, I treat everybody right. I pay all my debts, I tell the truth, I am loyal and faithful to my family, and I am just as good as a lot of those folk in the church. The church can’t save you anyhow, so I think I am all right._” Now, you know the answer to that, don’t you? It’s found in the tenth chapter of Acts. I always like to suggest that the man who makes that sort of a statement compare himself with Cornelius. He was a just man. He treated everybody right. He feared the Lord. He prayed to God always. He was charitable. He gave much alms to the poor. And he was such a good man he had won the favor of the Jews over whom he was serving as the head of an army of occupation! He had a good reputation, even among them. Yet he was not good enough to go to heaven without obeying the gospel. He was told to send for Peter, who would speak unto him words whereby he should be saved. He was not yet saved.

If you have ever committed just one sin, you cannot go to heaven until that sin is washed away by the blood of Jesus, for sin cannot enter there. Surely there is no one who would say that he had never committed one sin. You don’t have to commit a great big catalogue of sins in order to be lost. Just one unforgiven sin will take you into torment. If you’ve ever done wrong on a single point, then you’ll have to repent of that and obey the gospel in order to go to heaven when you die.

9. “_I’m waiting for someone else. I’m afraid my parents or husband or wife would object. This religion is unpopular and would cause me to lose my social standing._” This is really three excuses in one, but in each case the person is being influenced by what someone else thinks, instead of being influenced by what God says. A familiar answer to such excuses is that every tub shall set on its own bottom. You’ll find that in Romans, chapter 14 and verse 12, “So then each one of us must give an account of himself unto the Lord.” It doesn’t use the word “tub,” but it says the same thing. “So then each one of us must give an account of himself unto the Lord.” When you get to the judgment day, neither your father nor your mother, brother nor sister, husband nor wife—nobody else can answer for you. Therefore, no one else should be allowed to _live_ for you. No one should be allowed to make your choices or decisions because they cannot answer for you.

Someone made a remark that one of the nice things about the Catholic Church was that the members allowed the priests to make all the decisions, that they rather expected him to make their choices for them. My answer was that that would be all right if the priest could also answer for you. But the priest cannot answer for you. Therefore, you’d better not let him make your decisions. He might not make a decision that you would want to stand by on the judgment day. Nobody can answer for you, therefore nobody should be allowed to choose your course. In the light of God’s word you must accept that responsibility yourself.

Furthermore, if you want to get your husband, wife, or somebody else to obey the gospel, the way to get them to do it is not to wait for them but go ahead and lead the way. Step out and do it yourself. In West Virginia a lady told me that she would obey the gospel but that she was waiting for her husband. I knew that was not a good excuse and I tried to get her to see it. One evening while we were singing the invitation song I stopped and made this remark, “If I were you, I’d rather go to heaven alone than to go to hell with my husband.” Evidently she knew that I was talking about her, for when we began to sing again she came down the aisle. The next day her husband also came. If she had waited for him, they might both still be on the outside. Now they are two of the most faithful members in the congregation.

A lady at Madison, Tennessee, made the same excuse. She even went so far as to say, “If you’ll just talk to my husband and get him to obey, then I’ll come along with him.” I told her that wasn’t the right attitude. The next Sunday at church she came down the aisle to make the confession and be baptized. When I met her, she stopped and whispered to me, “Brother Dark, I wish you would go back and talk to my husband.” He was just two steps behind her and she didn’t know it. That’s the way to get your husband to come! That’s the way to get your wife to come! If you wait for somebody else, then you’ll be lost.

There was a lady in Chattanooga who didn’t wait for her husband. She went to church. Her husband tried to keep her from going. That’s unusual. Most husbands like for their wives to be good whether they are or not. But this husband didn’t want his wife to go to church. He told her she couldn’t have any money to give to the church. She began to take in sewing to make money for her contributions. That made him angry. He said, “You can’t use that sewing machine, I paid for it.” So she just kept on going without any money to contribute. He saw that he was defeated on that point so, in desperation, he locked up her wardrobe. He said, “I paid for those Sunday dresses and you can’t wear them to church.” She defied him again and borrowed some dresses from the next door neighbor and other ladies in the church and just kept on going anyway. He felt like he had to do something about it, so he went over to the meetinghouse to see if he could find out what could be done. He stood on the outside and listened. It didn’t sound as bad as he thought it would. Before the meeting closed he was baptized. Suppose his wife had been fainthearted and had refused to go ahead without her husband. He now says that he used to be the meanest man in Chattanooga and I’m inclined to agree with him.

I heard another story of a lady who was influenced by her husband. She was attending a revival meeting and he was going with her every night. One night while they were dressing, she said something about going to church, and he said, “No, we’re not going to church tonight, we’re going to the show.” She replied, “I can’t go to a show. The revival is going on. You know that! I have to be over there!” He said, “No, we’re going to a show.” She kept on insisting that they go to church and he kept on insisting on going to the show. Finally he said, “Now, I’ve been going with you every night, and it’s only fair that you go with me tonight.” She still refused. Then he said, “If you don’t go with me tonight, I’m not going with you any more.” So she gave in.

On the way to town he stopped beside the road. His wife asked him what was wrong. He said, “I’m not going to the show. I just wanted to test you out. I was planning to obey the gospel. If this thing is as important as you and your preacher say it is, then you ought to have gone on tonight regardless of what I did. Before I accepted I thought I would test you out.” I admit that he treated her pretty rough; but after all, you can’t afford to let even the person whom you love best on this earth keep you from doing that which is right. It would be an act of unkindness. If you love someone, you ought not to let him keep you from doing right but you ought to go on anyhow and use your influence to get him to come along with you.

10. “_There is plenty of time yet._” This one will probably take more people to hell than all the others put together. Procrastination is the thief of souls. I’ve never talked to but one person who said he planned to die and go to hell. Others say, “Yes, I’m going to change my ways. I know that I’m lost and I’m going to change.” But when? “Well, sometime.” A man who talks like that never gets it done. When I go into a man’s home, talk to him, and urge him to obey the gospel and he says, “Well, I’m going to think it over; I’m glad you came and I’ll think it over,” I go away without much encouragement. But if a person tells me, “Yes, Brother Dark, I’ll be over there next Sunday night and be baptized,” then I know something is going to happen. That is the only way to overcome the tendency to procrastinate.

I talked to some people at Madison one evening about 5 P.M. Immediately upon entering the room I learned that they knew what they ought to do. They had attended our meeting often and they knew that they ought to be baptized. They understood the plan of salvation. I remarked to them that one could get into the habit of procrastinating. I said, “Every time you repeat the act of putting this thing off this habit becomes stronger. If you aren’t careful, it may get you bound so tightly that you will never overcome it.” They came forward that night and obeyed the gospel, less than three hours after I had talked to them, and are now two of the most faithful members in the church. Afterwards the man told me that the remark about procrastination had prompted him to act immediately. He realized that he had got into the habit of putting it off. This habit was getting stronger and stronger. He had to exert his will power to overcome it.

None of these excuses are any good. They will not stand the test of the judgment. I doubt that you would even have the audacity to mention them before God. There is no excuse for failing, or for delaying, to do what you know God has commanded.

IV
The Best Resolution

The best resolution that you can make today, if you haven’t already made it, is the resolution to quit doing wrong and to begin doing right. It is preceded by faith; it is followed by baptism. The resolution to do right will naturally lead to baptism, for that is a part of doing right. Won’t you say at the beginning of this new year, “I’m going to resolve now that from this day henceforth I will live for God”? If that be your resolution, come forward and make it known while we stand and sing.