I just did that for the ladies, because I know they're sitting on the edge of their chair saying, oh, I hope he blows those duck calls. Welcome to the Focus on the Family broadcast, helping families thrive. That's the duck call that helped make Phil Robertson famous and today we're going to hear how he became a believer in Jesus Christ. Back in high school, Phil was quite an athlete earning all-state rankings in football, baseball, and track.
In college, he was a starting quarterback for Louisiana Tech and got a master's degree in education. After graduation, Phil spent several years as a highly acclaimed teacher in Louisiana schools. But by the time he was in his late 20s, Phil had succumbed to alcohol and drug addiction and had abandoned his wife Kay and young sons. And that's where we're going to pick his story up today.
Here's Phil Robertson speaking at Gateway Church in South Lake, Texas on Focus on the Family. I was born of a woman like you. That's how we all got here, first birth. That first birth gets us on the earth, right? That got you on the earth.
That second birth gets you off the earth. Pretty cool. The mother of all stories.
God does work in mysterious ways. Before I became a child of God, I owned a beer joint. My little sister told one of the brothers at a congregation there in West Monroe, and I'm up in Arkansas, My little sister told that guy, one of the brothers, if you could convert my brother, if you could convert him, he would bring many, many people to Jesus.
And she kept on after him. And he says, I don't know, going to, how far is it? 75 miles. I don't know about going way up in there, you know, you know, going to a beer joint.
Is that where we're going? You have to go to the beer joint. That's where he is. Finally, she talks him into it. The guy walks in.
She brought the preacher. And the first thing I asked him was, you some kind of preacher? He said, I am.
I said, let me ask you something. You ever been drunk? He said, I have.
I said, so why are you up here telling me about getting drunk? Because you've been drunk just like I'm getting drunk right now, right? To make a long story short, that first meeting, he walks outside and tells my little sister when they get in the car, I don't think he's ready. A year later, I ran Miss Kay off, and Al was there. I think Jace was, too, a little baby.
I ran him off. I was like getting high, getting drunk. I was a scumbag and a heathen.
What's amazing is a year after the initial meeting with the preacher, my loving wife that I'd run off said, why don't you talk to him? Just sober up a little bit and talk to him. So she talked me into it and he shared with me what I'm fixing to share with y'all.
To make a long story short, I decided, since I didn't even realize who Jesus was, ah, too busy smoking dope and getting drunk, I'm thinking, how did I miss that? Couple of college degrees? No, they didn't say anything about God or Jesus when I was in college.
Did you at your college? Never brought them up. Father, Son, our Holy Spirit. The only time I heard the word God mentioned when I was in college was they would use His name in vain. So I decided, having been a heathen for 28 years, and I put on my brakes, the preacher didn't have to tell me to repent.
I knew what repentance meant. He didn't have to say, Phil, look, you can't go whoring around, you know, once you become a Christian. Let me explain to you what repentance means, Phil.
Old Phil knew that. And you know what? All of you know that.
Don't you? You know what doing good is. You know what love is. Joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.
We all know what that is. So I didn't need a big long explanation. I knew it was time and I was motivated by the gospel of Jesus. And I said, well, I've served the evil one all this time.
Now I'm fixing to serve God. So I go from this way to about face, and I'm going that way now. And I was committed to God and made a pact with him. I said, I'll run wide open for you, God, as fast as I ran wide open for the devil for 28 years.
So now I've been at this for 42. Heathen for 28, a son of God for the last 42. Trust me when I tell you, this last 42 has been way better than the first 28. The rarest of commodities has come my way. You say, what is it, Phil? What's the rarest of commodities? What is it that came your way? Peace of mind.
Finally got it. You're never going to have peace of mind without Jesus Christ, ever. It ain't going to happen.
Fits of rage, sexual immorality, hatred, discord, factions, envy, jealousy. You know the list of sins. I gave you the list, the fruit of the spirit, about five minutes ago. Now you're hearing the list of sins.
You want to keep that up thinking, boy, life will turn one of these days. I don't need no God, no Bible. Tell me about it. Now all I work with is people who are getting high, getting drunk, I'm dealing with them. And they said, well, if you just understand what I'm going through, I said, trust me, honey, when I tell you, I know exactly what you're going through.
I've been there. I didn't realize it was such a trap until I got out of it. I get out of the trap that Satan had me in, and I look back, and I said, what was I thinking?
The truth is, I wasn't thinking. So I've been delivered from Satan, so now... I went from getting high, getting drunk, to being a son of God, and now, shock of shocks, I'm rich and famous.
And you say there's no God? The problem with fame, one, it's a big headache. Two is...
Fame can't remove my sin or yours. It can't do it. And on top of that, you say, well, Phil, you said you were rich. It's not going to help me when it comes to being raised from the dead. All the money in the world is never going to be able to raise me from the dead.
Right? Better keep first things first. We have humanism and atheism and agnosticism and, you know, post-modernism and materialism, ism, ism, ism, ism, ism, ism. That's all I heard in college.
This ism, that ism, this ism, that ism. You know what they're all about? They're all trying to get around this story right here.
And none of them have succeeded. All of you, they're going to have your funeral and mine. You can go, yeah, they're going to have my funeral one of these days, and they're going to have Phil's too.
You can go like that, or you can say, like the guy told me one time, you're not going to put that on me. You're not going to tell me I'm going to die. I said, oh, you're going to die. He said, no, sir, buddy.
He gets up. He said, no, wait. I wanted to tell him the good news about the resurrection of Jesus, but he was saying, I'm not going to die. I said, oh, you're going to die.
So we're arguing about it. I said, well, everybody else has. And so are you, dude.
Live with it. Face it. I argued with him for 30 minutes, trying to convince him he was going to die. He left my house saying, ain't nobody telling me that kind of junk. Six weeks goes by, and the guy that brought him, he said, You know, the dude that was arguing with you about dying, Phil?
I said, I remember him. He said, he just did. I said, what happened to him?
He said he was knifed to death in a bar right up the road. I just wonder when he hit the ground, hit the floor, I wonder if he thought about our conversation. God had spoken to him through me six weeks earlier.
No takers. He said, nope, I will not die. I said, he's the only human I've ever run up on.
I've run up on a lot of them said they didn't sin. Of course, they were lying, which is a sin. But he was the only one I've ever run up on who said, I'm not going to die.
I said, oh, you're going to die. Face it. So are all of you, Texas. If in the beginning God did not create the heavens and the earth, if that's not what happened, you're not getting out of here. So what's the scoop?
You have two problems you cannot fix. You can't fix them. One is you came out of your mother.
I mentioned that earlier. You know what? You weren't a sinner because you didn't know what the law said.
You didn't know what lying was. You're about two hours old. You're in a little crib or you're at your mother's breast. You don't know what stealing is.
But when you hit them teenage years along in there somewhere, something happened. The commandments started coming and you did understand. What you had from Adam, what you inherited from him, was the ability to know the difference between the, you had the knowledge.
of good and evil. Remember what God told Adam, don't eat over there, because if you do, you eat of that tree, you'll know not only what good is, but what evil is. You don't want to go there, because if you do, you're going to die. Well, every last one of us found out what evil was at some point.
So you violate one of God's commands, you say, how many does it take? Just one. And you've been dead in your sins ever since.
You used to be dead in your sins and transgressions in which you used to live for the saved here. When you follow the ways of the world and you follow the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who works in those who are disobedient, you're like, oh my goodness. So when physical death comes along and you're already spiritually dead in your sins, You're cut off forever, eternally.
God's not like our government. Can't pay him off. Can't rope-a-dope him, get around him. You say, God is just. So for the saved here, I'm like, be thankful and you are blessed because your sins have been forgiven.
Your sins are covered. No sin will never, ever be counted against you. It'll give you peace of mind.
Knowing on top of that, you can be raised from the dead. How did it happen? Something rather large must have happened in year one, because we're all saying it's 2016 years since it happened.
What could have happened that your calendar is based on it? You say, well, what do they call all the years before Jesus showed up? That's one, two, three, four, five, six.
Six years since Jesus showed up, seven, eight, you get to 2016. You say, you call all the years before he got here, all the years before he got here. Right? You know why you're counting time by? The creator of the cosmos has become a human being coming forth out of a woman's womb just like all of you. Same kind of birth.
The difference between this one and all of you He got to the early teenage years and he grew in wisdom and stature. And he never made one mistake. He never violated the law. 100% God, 100% human, and he never made a mistake. That's why this Bible says, everyone who sins breaks the law.
That's you, but not him. In fact, sin is lawlessness, but you know... that he appeared, God becoming flesh.
If you could speak a cosmos into existence at a word, by faith we understand the universe was formed at God's command. Something like, I'm a redneck, something like, do it. The cosmos there, you're like. And that God becomes one of us and walks on the cosmos, one little bitty piece, earth.
He's walking on it. You talk about a story, you know what you call that? The mother of all arrivals.
The creator of the cosmos becomes a human being. I've never heard of that! You know why? There's no one like Jesus Christ.
No one. God becoming flesh, the creator of the cosmos, through him all things were created, he appeared to take away our sin. And in him is no sin.
Jesus is rehab. Right? You say, I get in Jesus.
Rehabilitation has come my way. No doubt about it. Redemption has come your way.
Holiness has come your way. You have to stay in Jesus. You have to walk as he did. While you're on the earth, you say.
And no sin can touch me. No sin can ever touch you. Under law, you have to be perfect. Under grace, you just trust God and try. And when you stumble, there's provision for your sin.
The blood of Jesus. It'll give you peace of mind. It'll get you off planet Earth alive. Because you're going, don't be like that guy that says, well, I'm not going to die.
Okay, you admitting you're going to die? Are you going to die? Yeah, everybody's saying, yeah. Have you ever sinned? You can go like, hey, well, I've sinned a few times.
Took a cross for your sins. For God in flesh to love Phil Robertson being the scumbag that I was. A scumbag.
I told you. Filthy language coming out of my mouth. Oh, it was pathetic.
I didn't know any better. Dead in my sins. The guy who wrote most of the New Testament? Murderer! We converted a guy because he was running dope across I-10.
African-American guy. He was a brother. He went to college in South Louisiana, hauled a load of dope across the great state of Texas.
The laws caught him. His mama, one of our sisters, asked me, to go down there and plead for mercy with the judge, Huntsville, Texas. I said, I'll do it. So I drove down there on the day the old judge sentenced him, and I got up and I made a plea for my brother, who was fixing to be sent to prison. Please cut him some slack.
Mr. Robinson, you have any problem with dealing with a drug dealer? The state of Texas dispensing justice against a drug dealer? I said, I have no problem with that.
I know what justice is. I'm asking for mercy, Judge. He gave my brother none. So 13 years later, after they sentenced him, I was there when they sent him up.
And Willie was there when he walked outside the prison gates. You say, y'all stuck with that brother every step of the way. He walked out of prison. Willie said, was it worth it?
He said, no, it was not worth it. Not at all. So 12 and a half, 13 years he spent in prison. I said, Paul.
I said, you come to my house. You stay there. No charge. You live with me.
Miss Kay, till you get on your feet. He married a girl who was half black and half Latino. We married him in my yard, and the local rednecks were driving by, launching their boat down the way, and they were looking over there, and they saw Mexicans, blacks, and rednecks eating cake and singing songs to God. And the rednecks, the rednecks of Roswell, when I pulled by, I launched my boat and I looked over and I saw all of that going on. He said, I knew right then there got to be a God.
They ain't shooting, they ain't cutting, they're all loving one another and singing songs of God, thinking God. Old Paul was there after being in prison all them years. You see what the family of God is like?
We are known for our love for one another. God became flesh, died on a cross for the sins of the world. Jesus is his name. Three days later, he solved your grave problem.
All of your problems have been solved. God did every bit of this. You can't earn it. You can't work for it.
It's all been done for you. It's free. And the bottom line is you're not getting out of here without it.
Don't kid yourself. You're arguing with your wife and cursing and carrying on. You're like, what am I doing? Repent. Turn to God.
Believe the gospel. Obey it. they'll baptize you in a few days.
The old you will disappear and the new you will come forth. God will seal the deal. Now that you purified yourself by obeying the truth, Peter said, love one another deeply from the heart.
heart for you've been born again. I told you the first birth gets you here. The second birth, being born of God, of water and the spirit will get you out of here. One thing's for sure, you're not getting out of here alive. You have no chance if you keep getting high, getting drunk, and wallowing around and filth coming out of your mouth.
You'll probably die an early death. You say, I have no shot to get out of here alive. None.
I'm saying, how could they have dreamed this story up? Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, constantly cleansing us from any sin. He's given us imperishable seed, implanted, that marks you for the resurrection.
I pray that you respond to that if you haven't. Father, we love you. We got one shot from my vantage to get out of here alive. It's putting our faith in you. and the death of your son on a cross back there 2,000 years ago and three days later raising him from the dead, guaranteeing ours.
Father, you have told us plainly as in Adam, all die. That is a fact. Irregardless of that guy that challenged me on it, but in Christ, all will be made alive.
Each in his own turn, Christ the firstfruits, and then when he comes, all of us. Father, for our loved ones who have gone on before us, the saved, they're still alive. They're just separated from their body right now. Their bodies are in the cemetery, but their spirits, their souls are with you.
And Lord, when you come back, Jesus, you're bringing them all back with you. That's why you have told us, Father. 1 Thessalonians 4.13, you told us we shouldn't grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. We believe Jesus died and rose again, so we know, Father, He's going to solve our grave problem.
he comes back. If he comes back before we die, he'll change us on the spot and we'll live forever. Thank you for that great hope.
Help us grab a hold of it with both feet, stand on it, not budge on it and live happily ever after. Thank you, Father. In the name of Jesus.
Amen. Boy, what a great reminder of the hope we have in Jesus Christ. And let me say, if you turn to God during Phil's prayer, please let us know.
We'd love the opportunity to congratulate you on the best decision you'll ever make. And we can send you a free booklet called Coming Home that will give you some direction on what to do next. And if you're intrigued by Phil Robertson's story, I'd highly recommend you get a copy of his book called Happy, Happy, Happy. My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander.
It features many more stories about Phil's younger days and the lessons he's learned over the years. Get your copy from us here at Focus on the Family. And remember, the proceeds will go directly into ministry as we do what we can to help your family thrive in Christ. Get your copy of Happy, Happy, Happy when you make a generous donation of any amount to Focus on the Family.
Just click the link on your screen or call 800-A-FAMILY. And on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here, thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ. price.