Johnston in Jail

Years ago, when I was a much younger man, I preached my first public sermon in a federal penitentiary. Me and another man from church one evening drove two hours from Memphis to Mississippi to preach in a prison. When we got there, we had to pass through several security checkpoints.

Then we were led by a prison guard to a large cement room where three rows of wooden chairs were lined up in front of a little wooden podium. I was the man preaching that night, and I was as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. As we stood in the room, a heavy door opened, and in walked about 30 prisoners in their uniforms.

Then the guard introduced me as the speaker that night, and he left the room and closed the door behind him. He left me and my friend alone in that place with those hardened criminals. And as I looked around that room at the faces of those murderers and thieves and rapists, my blood ran cold within me, for I could just picture them getting angry at me for something and rushing me in a mob to hurt me or worse.

Well, I told them my text that I'd chosen that night was Psalm 40, and I told them I was going to read it right now to them and tell them about it because it spoke of a man in a prison. That this man, David, who wrote the Psalm, he was stuck in what was called a bottleneck prison, and I began to read Psalm 40 to them. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined unto me and heard my cry.

He brought me up and out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and I said what David was describing here was a bottleneck prison that back in ancient times, if a man was caught stealing or committing a crime, and they were out in the country, that man would be thrown into a hole in the ground, a cistern, or a bottleneck prison made of earth where the ground was wide at the bottom. There was a opening at the top which was more narrow, and the walls leaned toward one another so you couldn't climb out, and it was wet in there and miry in there and muddy in there and slippery in there, and it looked like a coke bottle, and all you had to do was just sit there and hope and pray and wait for someone to come by and pull you out because either you fell in there by accident or were put in there on purpose, you were stuck, literally stuck in the muck and mire of that prison until someone came by to rescue you by dropping a rope or a chain and pulling you out, or like the prophet Jeremiah was pulled out of the dungeon by placing filthy rags under his arms, or by Joseph when he was cast into a bottleneck prison by his brethren, he had to wait until a traveling caravan passed by and heard his cries. Some prisons have cells of cement and doors of steel.

This prison that David was speaking of was one of mud and loneliness and suffering. He had to wait to be pulled out by another, but no matter what the prison is constructed of, whether dirt and mud or cement and steel, a prison is a prison nonetheless, but you don't have to be incarcerated to be in a prison. Men have prisons of their own.

They are prisoners to physical addiction like booze or drugs or pornography, or it can be a prison of emotions like an unforgiving heart toward another. It can be a prison of grief that is unreconciled or a prison of physical pain and disease that medicine cannot alleviate or cure. Some men live in a prison of resentment.

Somewhere down the road someone wronged them and they're full of hate and resentment toward that person or persons, but whatever the prison may be, whether physically, emotionally, visible or invisible, there is one prison that's far worse than any of these mentioned and whose sentence is far greater and more severe, of which I speak is a spiritual prison where a man is unreconciled to God, to the God who made him. Man enters this world with a poison in his blood. For when Adam fell, we fell.

We're each born with a fallen nature, a spiritually ruined nature, and a bent toward sin, and it is sin that causes prisons to be built. Sin causes all the misery in the world. It causes tears to fall and hearts to ache.

It busts me up even to recreate this message tonight for you friends, but I'm gonna do it anyhow because it needs to be heard. Prisons have to be enacted and built to curb vice and murder and immorality. That's why we have them in our cities.

That's why we have them throughout our states, and my Bible describes sin as transgression of the law, and the sentencing of the law must be carried out upon all guilty lawbreakers. The final sentence would be carried out at a final judgment of all mankind, where the dead, small and great, will stand before the judge, the judge of all the earth, and shall not the judge of all the earth do right, but we each are sinners. We each are sinners who deserve punishment for our transgressions against a holy God.

Punishment in a lake of fire reserved for the devil and his angels. Trust me friend, when I tell you you don't want to end up being bound hand and foot and cast into that burning boiling lake of fire, but there is hope in our passage tonight friends, hope in a God who can hear our cries and listen intently to our prayers. Our text when it says he heard my cry, that means he cupped his hand to his ear and bent over to hear David more intently.

He bends his ear to us when we cry to him and pray to him because he loves us. He loves us so much that he sent his only begotten son into the world to suffer and die on a bloody cross for sinners like you and me. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Our passage from Psalm 40 says, blessed is that man that maketh the Lord his trust. Well that man is any man whosoever whether that man is a big sinner or a little sinner. If you turn to God for forgiveness of sin by faith and trust in his son Jesus Christ, then you can have everlasting life.

That's what the Bible says. That's what the word of God says. And in Psalm 40 the psalmist says that when he was delivered he had a new song to sing.

He brought me up and out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God, many shall see it and fear and trust in the Lord. I then said to those prisoners that our passage tonight tells us that there is hope here, hope for the one who puts his trust in the Lord, that you can have hope even in a hopeless place, a hopeless place like a prison, a prison that is man-made or a prison of your own making.

There is hope here. God is hope. Then I closed my Bible and I finished my message.

And when I did, my worst fears were realized as the men on the front row rushed me. I was frozen like I was made out of cardboard. My arms were at my side.

My eyes were closed in fear about what was going to happen. I felt arms around me clutching at me, but I was okay. I opened my eyes and the man in front of me had tears in his eyes.

The man just wanted to hug me and tell me how thankful they were for me. They were thankful for the message that night. They were thankful for the time I took to come visit them.

They had seen that God of hope that night and it gave them hope. Since that time, friends, I've preached over 2,000 sermons in churches and conferences and meetings. But that first public sermon that I preached to those prisoners will always be fresh on my memory and warm in my heart because God showed me that night that men are just men, whether inside or outside a prison.

We are all sinners without excuse and we all need a savior for sin in the person of Christ Jesus.