January 27, 2003
Central Christian Church
St Petersburg, Florida
Joe Bedy
Sermon for the prisoners in
West Liberty Ky
“Dead Man Walking”
Greetings from Florida it was _____’ when I left Florida this morning. It is good to be here.
This is a nice church ya’ll have. Truthfully in here you have a better shot of being a true NT church than what we practice on the outside. The early church took all of their meals together; as a matter of fact they were always together. A lot like you guys here to night.
This is my first time in a prison. I have called on an inmate in the Pinellas County jail, but I have never been arrested or incarcerated.
I did watch a movie once called “Dead man Walking.” It is the story of a nun who tries to save the soul of a death row inmate who raped and murdered two teenagers.
What I remember most about the movie was the line ‘dead man walking.” After a death row prisoner had exhausted all of his appeals and stays of execution and his sentence had not been commuted he was led to the room where he would receive a lethal injection and on the way the prisoners and the guards would refer to him as a dead man walking.
I am here tonight to tell you that without Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior we are all dead man walking.
I am here to tell you tonight that the murderer or rapist who has confessed his sin and repented and received Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior will be more alive at the moment that the Lord returns or when he dies than he has ever been before.
I want to tell you tonight that we are born innocent, but it doesn’t take very long for us to live up to our sinful nature.
All of us have fallen short of the glory of God and all us have sinned. I have never raped or murdered anybody, but without Christ as my Lord and savior I am worse off at my death and headed to hell than the most vicious criminal who has received Christ.
Without Jesus Christ we are all “dead men walking.”
Open your Bibles to Ephesians 2.
Eph 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,
Eph 2:2 in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Eph 2:3 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
You and I are born dead; we are dead men walking, because we followed the world and its ways.
I did, I used to think I was somebody, a big shot, because I was a successful land developer and builder.
I fell for the lie that I could live however I wanted.
And Oh boy, was I smart, I didn’t need a God, and God was for sissies. What did I need a God for? I could provide everything for me and my family that we needed and then some. I didn’t need God.
Well, there are only two daddies in the world and the Devil was my daddy and I belonged to him.
V3 Put us all in the same boat, I am no better or worse than you. We are either saved and God is our Father or lost and the devil is our daddy.
I this world you or either in the condition of a lost soul or you are in the position of one of God’s children-what the Bible calls the elect.
We all lived (lost) that way at one time or another; maybe you are still living that way. Maybe you are here tonight you have come to listen, but you know the devil is your daddy.
Maybe V3 describes you, as it once described me, gratifying the cravings of my sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, I was by nature an object of His wrath.
For me it was pride and arrogance, by golly I was somebody and if I wanted to buy a Mercedes or own 3 boats that is what I was going to do. I was going to satisfy my flesh and the Devil was cheering me on all the way. Why not I belonged to him and he was my daddy.
And the whole time I was living like the devil the God of the universe loved me. He had already demonstrated His great love for me, by sending His son Jesus Christ to die for me, on a cross at Calvary and to purchase for me by His shed blood a place in paradise.
I was a dead man walking.
Well, the guilt and the shame they caught up with me, neither my wife nor I were Christians, we really knew nothing about salvation or grace. We believed eterrnal life was a joke, you died and that was it ashes to ashes dust to dust- You may as well go for all the gusto you can grab, because you only go around once in life.
I couldn’t look her in the eye anymore when I told her I loved her, because I knew love wouldn’t do what I had done to her. So I took a chance and I told her the truth.
I found myself in the middle of a bitter and expensive divorce for the division of property. It seemed to me like I was losing my wife, my children and all my money.
The divorce happened and we tried to reconcile 9 times from May of 1989 until February of 1990. I would go back she would send me away. I was paying for the big home that I lived in alone $2200 a month and another $2200 a month in Child support and alimony, we were in counseling but the marriage was going no place.
In February of 1990, Valentine’s Day I went over to her house for dinner, she fixed me my favorite meal fried pork chops. I brought a dozen roses.
Instead of putting the flowers in a vase, she threw them in my face. She said, “you brought me flowersin the past and I don’t trust you now get out don’t call don’t come back.”
I did something that night I had never done in our 17 years together, I pushed her against the wall.
I went to the tavern I got plastered, when the bars closed at 2:00 a.m. I went home. I took the .357 magnum out of the bedside table I pulled the hammer back put it to the side of my head and cried the shortest of all prayers, “Oh God, help me, save me, what is the meaning to my life?’
Have you come to a point in your own lives that you realize without Christ you are dead men walking?
Have you asked god to help you and save you?
Have you ever questioned what is the meaning to your life?
Your life has meaning you know.
I told you, I did not know the first thing about God. That Valentine’s Day in 1990 I didn’t know who came to me, but I heard these words in my spirit, I love you, I forgive you, but there are some things you need to change.
It didn’t happen overnight, but by May of 1994 I was a baptized believer and now by the grace of a living, merciful real God I stand before you as a minister of the Gospel.
God is my father now and the devil can get behind me, I’m done with him.
Eph 2:4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
Eph 2:5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved.
Eph 2:6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
Eph 2:7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--
Eph 2:9 not by works, so that no one can boast.
Eph 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
I was a dead man walking, but I have been saved by Grace and raised up with Jesus.
Your life has meaning because you are the workmanship of the Father who knit you together in your Mother’s womb.
If you are still a walking dead man He is here tonight to show you as He showed me the incomparable riches of His grace and kindness through Christ Jesus.
The same offer He made to me, He makes to you. None of us is too bad to be cleansed by the blood of Christ.
You can change your condition tonight, you can move into the position of becoming a child of God and tell the devil once and for all to get behind you.
The requirements are simple you must admit that you have sinned and fallen short, you must turn from that sin and be born again and you must be baptized, in the name of the Father and The Son and The holy Spirit.
You must then participate in the life of the Gospel, give your life to God and grow and be transformed into the likeness of the sin.
But if you will do this He will make you holy, when He looks at you He will see His Son.
He doesn’t care where you have been, but He cares where you are going. He wants none of you to die in your sins and transgressions and spend eternity in Hell.
Even if the consequences of our sins is death row, we can receive that lethal injection and within a twinkling of an eye Christ will come to take us home and we will be more alive than we have ever been.
Do not fear death my friends, do not fear men, but fear the God who has the power to cast you into Hell.
