Reminder again of the meeting tonight at 7
.30, preceded by our prayer meeting at 10
minutes to 7.
We're encouraged by the number of people coming
to the prayer meetings.
We'd ask you to join us this evening
at 10 to 7 in prayer and be
in prayer throughout the day for Mr. Reedhead
as he'll be speaking tonight.
Remember the book table and the tapes that
are available, the tapes of the meetings that
we already have are already available.
You can purchase those at the table plus
the tapes of Pastor Reedhead's services that are
available at a special price.
You might want to look those over.
We're glad again to have Pastor Reedhead speak
to us this morning hour.
Thank you.
You've received the sheet that I talked to
you about yesterday and I'd like to have
you fill it in, bring it up to
date.
The first number that you have, number one,
is conviction.
And the scripture that I asked you to
have as a key scripture opposite the word
is John 16, 7 through 11.
And number two, number, pardon me, number one
is, I'm sorry, I made a mistake.
First one I ever made, so you will
be gracious to me.
Number one is awakening.
And number two is conviction.
And number three is repentance.
And we'll deal with the scriptures relating to
them a little later.
I don't want to get my tang tumbled
and give you the wrong scripture since I
started out giving you the wrong.
Number four is faith.
I want you to turn to Hebrews 11,
1 to 6.
This is what I consider the key scripture.
Now everything we're saying in this time we're
spending together relates to Hebrews, the second chapter
and the third verse, how shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation?
That is our theme, so great salvation.
But today the fourth step on this, and
remember what we've stated, everything in the Christian
life that begins as a crisis is preceded
by a process and followed by a process.
We don't talk to people about the crisis
primarily.
We talk about trying to find out where
they are in the process and move them
in the next step.
Because if we should somehow short circuit everything
and bring them to the crisis, then all
we've got to do is find some way
to go back and cover the ground that
should have been covered, would have been covered.
God can do all of these things in
a minute.
I won't restrict him.
But when God does it, they're all done.
It may take him only a minute to
do it or five minutes or one day
if that's his privilege.
Most of us, I've found, have a little
longer process in which these things, awakening, conviction,
repentance, and faith can occur in as little
time as it takes to state it.
But when it does, they're all there and
they're all affected.
And normally we see a person and we
say, this man, this boy, girl, man, woman
isn't even awakened yet to their need.
And so we pray to that point and
use appropriate scriptures.
And then when we sense awakening, we just
trust and pray they don't fall into the
hands of some speed expert that's going to
give them four things to say uh-huh
to and tell them they're Christians.
If we're concerned about them, we're going to
pray for them that they'll be convicted, that
they're now sensitive to the fact that something
is wrong, but they aren't quite sure what.
And so we're going to use the word
of God and ask the spirit of God
to minister to them until they discover themselves
and take sides with God against themselves.
They're brought under conviction.
And when we sense that, that there's some
awareness of their crime against God, then we
can talk to them about repentance and bring
those scriptures to bear upon their minds and
tell them that God has commanded all men
everywhere to repent and that repentance precedes faith.
And except they repent, they're going to perish.
And they're going to say, well, what does
it mean to repent?
And then you can tell them that the
essence of sin is I'm going to do
what I want to do.
And that means a total change of mind,
change of policy or practice from pleasing self
to a commitment to please God.
And that if they're ever to know forgiveness
and pardon in eternal life, they've got to
settle the issue right here as who's to
be boss.
Now that's the crime.
They've been boss.
Now, do you notice something a little different
from what you've heard from time to time
in the past?
Have you ever heard people say, we accept
Jesus now and six years later at a
summer conference, we accept him as, accept Jesus
as savior.
And six years later, we accept him as
Lord.
Well, uh, that is not biblical.
Thou shall confess with thy mouth, the Lord
Jesus, or literally Jesus is Lord.
The essence of sin is I'm going to
do what I want to do.
And the essence of repentance is from today
on, I'm going to please God.
And there's no service, no saving merit in
it at all.
It's just a change of attitude from who's
going to be boss to the, uh, from
the fact I've been boss up till now.
And from here on, I'm going to do
what God wants me to do.
Now that's repentance, a change of mind.
And we are told that we are to
be transformed by the renewing or the changing
of our mind.
And at any point in our Christian pilgrimage
that we discover that our mind is not
in accord with his, the issue's already been
settled back there.
We don't have to fight it again.
We're going to go right on in the
changing of our mind always to conform to
his mind as he's revealed it.
Now we come to faith.
And we were going to see it in
Hebrews 11, verses one to six.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped
for, the evidence of things not seen.
For by it, the elders obtained a good
report.
Through faith, we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God.
So the things which are seen were not
made of things which do appear.
By faith, Abel offered unto God a more
excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained
witness that he was righteous, God testifying of
his gifts.
And by it, he being dead yet speaketh.
By faith, Enoch was translated that he should
not see death and was not found because
God had translated him.
For before his translation, he had this testimony
that he pleased God.
But without faith, it is impossible to please
him.
For he that cometh to God must believe
that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Now it's arbitrary that we've stopped there.
Suffice it to say for the moment, however,
that this is the only definition of faith
that we have in the scripture.
Faith is a substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen.
I put it this way, faith is the
sight of the soul.
It's the eyes of the human spirit.
It's the ability to see what isn't there
yet to see, but what's going to be
there because it ought to be there.
Faith, therefore, I just would simplify to say
the sight of the soul.
That's an oversimplification because there is more to
it than that.
God's chosen illustration of faith is Abraham with
Isaac.
Do you recall that God had told Abraham
that he was to take his son, his
only son Isaac, down to the place that
God would show him, the place of sacrifice.
We know that was Mount Moriah where the
temple was built.
Take him down there and to offer him
to the Lord.
Now Abraham was a man of faith and
trust and obey are always the same.
They're two sides of the same coin.
So he obeyed, but God never gave him
a roadmap, told him how to go.
And so what he did, he could have
gone from where they were down to where
he had to go, perform the sacrifice, and
return the same day.
But I don't blame him.
He went a little bit east about a
day's worth, and then he went a little
bit southwest about a day's worth, and then
he came in.
Now I know he wanted that time with
this young man.
He'd come to love him, so he made
it a little bit longer than he otherwise
might have needed.
Now God didn't scold him for that because
he knew his heart.
And when they got to the foot of
the mountain and he was going to go
up, he said to the servant, he said,
now you wait here.
Now here's faith.
He knew exactly what he had to do.
He had to go up on the mountain,
he had to put some stones together, he
had to gather wood and lay it there,
he had to have his son lie down
on that wood, he had to raise a
knife and kill his son and set the
wood afire.
That's what he knew what he had to
do.
He knew what a sacrifice was.
But listen to faith.
You'll remain here for we will come again
unto you.
He had a resurrection faith, and he said,
I'll do it, but God promised that he
was going to bring me a seed from
this land.
And if God wants him well and good,
but God's going to give him back to
me, gave him to me in the first
place, he'll give him back to me again.
Now that's faith.
That's God's illustration of faith, that God is
able to do what he has promised.
And God promised that he was going to
give Abraham a seed through Isaac.
And he was there to do it.
Now if you'll turn please to Romans, the
fourth chapter, you're going to get a little
insight into what God wants this faith of
Abraham to mean to you.
Verse nine.
I'd like to read all of it.
Verse three says, for what sayeth the scripture,
Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto
him for righteousness.
And then in verse eight, blessed is the
man to whom the Lord will not impute
sin.
In verse nine, cometh this blessedness then upon
the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision also.
For we say that faith was reckoned to
Abraham for righteousness.
How was it then reckoned when he was
in circumcision or in uncircumcision?
Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision.
And he received the sign of circumcision, a
seal of the righteousness of the faith, which
he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might
be the father of all them that believe,
though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might
be imputed unto them also.
And the father of circumcision to them who
are not of the circumcision only, but who
also walk in the steps of that faith
of our father Abraham, which he had yet
being uncircumcised.
For the promise that he should be the
heir of the world was not to Abraham
or to his seed through the law, but
through the righteousness of faith.
Therefore, in verse 16, it is of faith
that it might be by grace to the
end the promise might be sure to all
the seed, not only to that which is
of the law, but to that also which
is the faith of Abraham, who is the
father of us all.
As it is written, I have made thee
a father of many nations before him whom
he believed, even God who quickeneth the dead
and calleth those things which be not as
though they were.
Now, why did I read that?
I'll tell you why.
Because the kind of faith exercised in coming
into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ is
of the utmost importance.
Because the promise made by God to Abraham
was not only to Abraham, his seed according
to the flesh, but everyone that would savingly
embrace God's dear son, the gift of his
love.
And that everyone born into the family of
God through faith in Christ was to receive
the promise, the heir to the promise made
by God to Abraham, in thee and in
all thy seed shall all nations of the
earth be blessed.
And everyone born into the family of God
has the promise from God made to Abraham,
namely for a worldwide blessing.
Now will you understand a little better why
in Acts 1.8 it says, after that
the Holy Ghost has come upon you, you
shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem
and in Judea and in Samaria and unto
the uttermost part of the earth.
Why?
Because we're the heirs of the promise made
by God to Abraham.
In thee and in thy seed shall all
nations of the earth be blessed.
So we're talking about a faith that not
only savingly unites us to Christ, but brings
us into a relationship where the promise that's
made to Abraham can be fulfilled.
Now in the years that God's privileged me
to go over here and there serving him
and preaching, I've discovered that there are several
kinds of faith and they need to be
identified.
The first one that I have found is
what I call a head faith, namely an
intellectual assent to what is written in the
Word.
There are multitudes of people in the church
that think themselves to be born of God
because they have intellectually, mentally assented to what
they read on the page.
And dear friend, the fact that you may
have agreed that what God's Word says is
true does not mean that it is true
in you.
It's true on the page.
But is it true in you?
We must distinguish between what our minds perceive
and our hearts have received.
There's a great deal of difference and multitudes
of people there are who think themselves to
be right with God who have nothing more
than the blueprint of the house that should
have been built on the rock.
Now both two houses, one built on rock
and one on sand, had everything in common.
Both of them had the same floor plan.
Both of them had the same front facade.
They had the same number of rooms.
Everything about the houses was similar except one
was built on rock and one was built
on sand.
And I personally have the opinion, and I
don't make it a test of fellowship, that
those who have an intellectual assent to the
plan of salvation, that have never built it
on the rock of awakening and conviction and
repentance, will be those that in that day
will find that their little house has been
torn down by the flood of God's wrath.
An intellectual assent, a mental agreement with what
is written, is not the faith that we're
talking about.
Then I find a second kind of faith,
and it's equally devastating.
It's called, I call it a dead faith.
I found this among our Muslim friends when
we were in the sedan.
I'll never forget the time that Said, our
cook at the mission home in Khartoum, came
to us.
It was Sunday afternoon.
The next, well that evening actually, they were
starting out.
They were going to drive from Khartoum right
on across the desert until they came to
Lagos in Nigeria, about 3,500 miles of
the hardest drive in the world.
And the missionaries were going.
That's how they were getting there.
And Said was going with them to cook
and also to go home.
He had left his home 44 years earlier
on pilgrimage to Mecca.
He'd been to Mecca twice, and now he
was going.
And he came to a bedroom where my
wife and I were, knocked on the shutter,
and we went and opened it, and he
said, I want to say goodbye to you.
I'm leaving.
He'd learned some English.
And I said, Said, you've been a very
devoted man, haven't you?
He said, yes, I've been hodged twice.
I've been to Mecca twice.
I said, have you fasted every Ramadan, every
Ramadan since I was a boy?
That's a whole month where they neither eat
nor drink nor swallow their spittle from sun
up until sun down.
And he said, I said, have you tithed?
Now, the tithe to the Muslim is not
10% of what they earn.
It's 2% of what they possess every
year.
And I said, have you prayed?
And they pray five times a day.
Oh, yes.
I have been to Mecca.
I have observed every Ramadan.
I have tithed.
I have prayed.
Said, do you have peace in your heart?
Do you know if you died, you'd go
to be with God?
Oh, no.
No, I don't have that.
I've done this in the hopes that my
good works may be such that when I
die, Muhammad will reach down and take my
hand and help me across the abyss that
I don't have to suffer.
I want to serve.
I don't have the kind of peace you
Christians have.
What did he have?
He had a dead faith, ritual, rites, taboos,
things he couldn't do, things he could do,
things he could eat, things he couldn't eat.
And he'd observed them all.
But he was a dead faith.
If I'd have said, is Muhammad living in
you, he'd have laughed me to scorn.
He said, Muhammad is buried and his ashes
are there in the Kaaba at Mecca.
If I'd have said to him, does God
ever reveal to you that you're his, he'd
have laughed again.
Of course not.
That didn't happen.
He had a dead faith.
There are multitudes of people that name the
name of Christ who are associated with Christian
groups that have accepted rituals and accepted taboos,
and they abstain from this, and they observe
that.
They've been baptized, or they've been catechized, or
they've had this, or they've had that.
But salvation is not a system of doctrine,
not a system of taboos or rituals.
Salvation is a person.
He that hath the Son hath life.
They have a dead faith, everything but Christ.
Now there's a third kind of faith that
we found here and there.
It's called a devil's faith.
This is an emotional response to the horrors
of hell and the beauties of heaven.
It's the kind that the demon expressed that
day when he said, we are told to
judge us before the day.
He had faith that Jesus Christ was the
God and that he was going to judge
them, but he remained a devil.
We've been told that the devils believe, and
they tremble, but they remain impenitent devils nonetheless.
A devil's faith, that's an emotional response.
I don't want to go to that horrible
place, and I like what I've heard about
heaven, and I want to go there.
And so I'll believe anything I need to
escape the one and gain the other.
It's a devil's faith.
You say, what is there left?
Well, I'll tell you what's left.
If you turn to Romans chapter 10 and
verse 9, you'll find what's left.
Because here we have a very distinct, a
very definite statement and delineation as to the
kind of faith that savingly unites one to
Jesus Christ.
In verse 8, but what saith it?
The word is near you, it's nigh thee,
even in thy mouth, in thy heart, that
is the word of faith which we preach,
that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus, or literally Jesus to be
Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart, ah
now, that God hath raised him from the
dead, thou shalt be saved.
But do you understand why it's so important
for us to have awakening to the need
and conviction of the crime and repentance?
Because he will not grant saving faith to
anyone who hasn't repented.
They can have an intellectual assent, they can
appropriate doctrines and submit to ritual, and they
can have an emotional response, but, oh you
sung it, did you know what you sang?
I know not how this saving faith to
me he did impart, or how believing in
his word wrought peace within my heart.
Saving faith to me he did impart.
What do you mean?
Do you think for a one moment that
an impenitent wretch who's trying to bargain with
God can stretch the arms of his mind
and spirit 2,000 years into the past,
and see a Jew dying on a Roman
gibbet, and believe that the death of that
man could change his eternal destiny and his
character?
Without help from God.
No, quicken, quicken, quicken faith.
It's saving, that's heart faith, in response to
repentance.
Now, that's why Paul taught to the people
in Ephesus, I was with you night and
day from house to house, to the Greeks
and to the Jews and to all their
teaching repentance toward God.
And faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, but
in that order.
For it's thus that heart faith is released.
What does it mean to believe?
The word literally means to be, exist, live,
or have your being, leaf on, in accordance
with.
Believe, belief is to live or exist in
accordance with.
Now, it's been so abused that it's gotten
down to this little tip your hat to
what's written that I call head faith.
But the word in the Anglo-Saxon, as
the King James translator used it, was a
good word.
The illustration of it would be back in
medieval Britain, when a lord, a duke, some
important noble has an estate.
He's in a battle and one of his
serfs, who's fighting alongside of him, stands between
him.
He's down, he's wounded, and the serf stands
there and battles off all until they can
take the duke away and spares his life.
And in response to that, the duke gives
freedom to this man.
We'll call him John, and we'll just call
him John Freeman, so he can get a
little insight.
John Freeman.
And he's had some land that has been
given to him, and he has a team
of horses and some cattle and some chickens
and ducks.
He's got his own little place, doing what
he always wanted to do, farm and live
for himself.
But because he was once related to the
duke, he is still a subject to call.
He promised that when he was given his
freedom.
If I ever need you, John, will you
come?
Oh yes, I'll come.
So one day into this tranquil farmer's yard
comes a livery horseman.
The duke has called for you, John Freeman,
to be at the castle tomorrow at sunup.
Why?
We're being threatened, and we must mobilize.
Bring your bow, bring your arrows, bring your
spear, bring your halberd, bring it.
Anything you have, we need you.
So that day he gets ready.
His wife understands.
They don't sleep much that night.
They talk, visit.
The last thing he does about 2 or
30 in the morning is go in and
stand and look down at the little baby
in the crib, his son John.
He may not come back, but he has
pledged.
And so he starts out carrying his arrows
and his spear and his halberd, and he's
going off through the night toward the castle.
When he arrives, others are coming in, and
he goes into the courtyard and waits.
When daylight comes, the door opens and voice
calls, and he's the first one called because
he's a Freeman.
And so he comes in, and the duke
is seated there and says, John, how are
you?
Oh, I'm fine, your grace.
John, will you take my sovereign?
Will you take it?
Will you bite it?
Oh, you know I will.
And so one of the attendants comes over
and gives him a gold coin.
And John puts it between his teeth, and
he puts pressure on it and leaves his
tooth print in the soft gold.
That's as good as a fingerprint.
He bit the duke's sovereign.
He took it, and he bit it, and
it's put back, and his name is written
on it.
What does that mean?
The duke says, John, you do believe on
me, don't you?
Yes, I do, sire.
What did he mean, believe?
He means to live, to act in accordance
with the rule and the government and the
command of the one whose sovereign he has
been.
Now that's where the word belief came from,
to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and
so commit ourselves to him that we're going
to live and exist in accordance with his
will, as best we know that will, as
long as we live.
We're going to bite his sovereign.
We're going to believe on him.
We're going to have faith in him.
And it's not just to agree that what's
written is true.
It's much more than that.
It's a total personal commitment to the sovereignty
of the one on whom we believe.
That's what our faith means.
With the heart we believed on him, not
just that he did something, but because he
is who he is and did what he
did, we're going to obey him and love
him and serve him as long as he
gives us breath.
Now that's the people that we would call
believers.
Are you a believer?
If you are, if you've been born into
his family, you've come to number five, the
new birth.
In response to that faith, that kind of
faith, two things happen.
In heaven we're justified.
The record against us is changed.
That is our standing before God is all
as the just as if I'd, the meanings
in the word, just as if I'd never
sinned.
Our sins have been laid on Christ, counted
to him, forgiven, pardoned, washed away, remembered against
us, no more forever.
That's legal.
That takes place there in heaven.
And in our hearts, we're born again.
God, this Holy Spirit quickens us, our spirits
joined by him in that life-giving touch.
We become, as it were, new creations.
He has restored contact with us.
We have been born again.
Now let me illustrate.
What does it mean to be dead in
sin?
Well, obviously we've got to use illustrations appropriate
to our day.
And I think one of the best illustrations
is a television set.
You get up in the morning and you
go to put your television set on to
see the early morning news, and nothing comes
on.
No sound and no picture.
And you turn to your wife and you
say, well, the TV's dead.
Now what's that mean?
That it's annihilated?
Does it mean that it's during the night
all rusted down?
You take a whisk broom and take the
insides out of it in the dust pan?
It's just all rusted away?
Now when you look at it, it doesn't
look dead.
It's all right there.
What's happened?
Well, a connection has been broken.
Some transistor is out.
Some wire is loose.
It's just separated.
And death always means separated.
Separated so it doesn't work.
Now God made us with receiving sets to
know him.
We have a receiving.
We live in three elements.
We live in three atmospheres at the bottom
of three oceans, if you wish.
The first ocean we live in is the
ocean of air.
And we got a receiving set.
We call it our lungs.
And we can get air to our lungs
through two normal ways, through our nostrils and
through our mouth.
And if someone wants to cover your mouth
and pinch your nostrils, in a few minutes
you're going to be a statistic.
Because you've just got to have air.
In it you live and move, and from
it you have your being.
And you must have air.
And you got a receiving set.
Now the second atmosphere we live in, or
ocean we live in, is electronic sound.
And all around us is electronic sound.
You know, there's so much electronic impulse here,
sound here, that if we were to bring
it all out so you could hear it,
we'd have to take the pews out, put
in shelving up and down the rows here,
wherever there's a row, and we'd have to
put radio receivers on and television receivers, short
wave, long wave.
If we turned it all up to 100
decibels, probably the whole building would just shatter
down.
There's a whole ocean of electronic sound surrounding
us.
But you got to have a receiving set
to separate it and to hear it.
And there's a third atmosphere in which we
live.
It's called God.
Paul said, on Mars, he'll in him we
live and move, and from him we have
our being.
And we have a receiving set to know
God.
And it's called the human spirit.
But as long as the human being who
owns that spirit is living in rebellion against
God as a traitor, that has never been
convicted of his crime and never repented of
his crime and never exercised faith, that receiving
set is dead.
It doesn't work.
But when God in his sweet grace and
wonderful power responds to that kind of faith
that we've been talking about, the first thing
he does is to repair that receiving set,
that human spirit.
Now, the tragedy of easy-believism is that
the products of it get their assurance, whatever
it may be, that they're a child of
God, not from God but from somebody else.
And the consequence is when they begin to
doubt or question, and you're not there, you're
the one who gave them their assurance, then
they're in trouble, and a lot of them
are just going to go away.
I tried it, and it doesn't work.
We find today, in present-day evangelism, it
takes about 200 first-time decisions for Christ
to get one person that'll go on living
for Christ two years later.
Because so many of them have just been
the products of the efforts of people, that
when the people go and the hoopla goes,
they're back right where they were and nothing
is real, and so they just wash the
whole thing off.
But if they've been born of God, and
God has repaired that receiving set, and they
find out from God that they're his child,
makes a difference.
Let me illustrate.
Back in the early part of the 19th
century, 1837 to 50, Charles Finney was having
meetings in upstate New York, and he, God
was blessing him, and he incurred the wrath
of the Presbyterians, of whom he was an
accredited clergyman, because he instituted something new.
He invented and established what we call the
anxious seat.
He would set up a section in the
church, and he'd say, now this is reserved
for the anxious.
Now, who were the anxious?
They were the awakened, or those under conviction,
or those moving toward repentance.
And they'd be given a ticket with their
name on, and they'd come in and they
could sit in this section.
And sometimes when Finney was preaching, he'd go
over and he'd talk for a time to
the anxious.
One time when he was in Albany, New
York, he was in a church there, and
the entire State Supreme Court of New York
State came to the meeting.
And midway in the service, the Chief Justice
of the State Supreme Court of New York
stood up and just stood there, and Mr.
Finney recognized him and said, Mr. Chief Justice.
And the gentleman said, Mr. Finney, you have
carried your case.
The evidence is convincing.
If you are prepared to open the anxious
seat, I am prepared to come.
And he came down into there.
And in the course of that meeting, every
member of the State Supreme Court of New
York State came to the personal knowledge and
experiential knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
But because he established this new and novel
thing, the Presbyterians kicked him out.
And then the Congregationalists took him in.
Henry Ward Beecher in New York City invited
him, and he became into New York and
into that section of the Congregational Church.
But Lyman Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher's brother, and
they were both brothers of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
but Lyman Beecher was pastor up in Boston,
and he didn't want Finney in the society
he was part of.
And so he began to raise claims that
Finney's converts didn't stand.
Ten years after Finney had been in Rochester,
New York, Henry Ward Beecher appointed a blue
ribbon committee of outstanding citizens to go to
Rochester and make a study of the converts
that had been there, that had been made,
made professions of faith ten years earlier when
Finney was in Rochester.
And you know what they found?
They found that 85 percent of those who
had made professions of faith under Finney's ministry
in New York ten years later were living
for Christ!
Now compare that to one half of one
percent two years later, and you get some
idea how far we've gone from the Word
of God.
I say it this way, dear heart, no
one in the universe has the right to
tell a person they're born of God except
the Holy Spirit, who is the spirit of
adoption.
He has never ceded that right to anyone.
He reserves that as his sovereign prerogative.
The only one that has the right to
tell a person they're born of God is
God the Holy Ghost.
Turn please to Galatians chapter 4 verses 4
to 6.
Now let the Spirit of God speak to
your heart through this portion, this very important
portion of the Word.
But when the fulness of time was come,
God sent forth his Son, made of a
woman, made under the law to redeem them
that were under the law that we might
receive the adoption of sons.
And because you are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of his Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father.
Do you understand?
Because you are sons, because you've been born
into the Father's family through faith in the
Lord Jesus Christ, God sent forth the Spirit
of his Son into our hearts, whereby we
cry, Abba, Father.
You know, when John Wesley began to preach
in 1737, the churches of England closed to
him.
He had to preach even at Epworth, where
his father had been rector, outside.
They wouldn't let him in the church.
He stood on his father's tomb and preached
to all the people of the village.
And the reason that he did that was
because they closed the churches to him was
because he said, it isn't enough to have
your name in the church book being baptized
as an infant.
It isn't enough that you've been catechized, that
you've been taken into the church as an
adult.
You must have the witness of the Spirit
that you're born of God.
And they wouldn't let him preach in the
churches.
Now, at first, he was very hurt about
this.
Then he realized that this is God's way
of letting him get to the people.
So from then on, he accepted this as
being the divine method, and he would send
somebody into the community where he was planning
to go that week to tell the pastors,
the rectors of the Anglican church, that's about
all there were, that he was coming.
And would they let him use the church?
You always ask to go in.
And the word went back, no.
And then the rector would send people all
through the village.
Wesley is coming, and he'll be here on
Wednesday, and we won't let him use the
church, and don't go and hear him.
What would you pay for that kind of
advertising?
Now, I know it worked.
I remember when I was a boy up
here in North Minneapolis, for some unknown reason,
my mother leaving home, leaving me with a
babysitter, said, and my little brother said, now,
children, whatever you do, don't put pussy willows
up your nose.
And I'll tell you the truth, we never
thought about it, but we couldn't wait until
she was out of sight.
There must be something wonderful about putting a
pussy willow up your nose.
We had to go to the doctor, and
he had to snare it out.
So you'll understand how God provided for Wesley
when he said he had a thousand people.
He had a thousand people, because the rector's
got them for him.
And what did he say?
No one has the right to think themselves
a child of God unless they have the
witness of the Spirit to the new birth.
And they go, what's that?
Feeling?
No.
Emotion?
No.
Well, what is it, Mr. Wesley?
And then he would quote Job, there is
a spirit in man, and the inspiration of
the Almighty giveth him understanding.
And he would quote, the part of a
man that knows the things of a man
is the spirit of man that is in
him.
And he'd say, the part of you that
knows you're here and not somewhere else, the
part of you that knows you're married and
not single, or single and not married, the
part of you that knows you're a man
and not a woman, or a woman and
not a man, that part of you is
the part that God joins in the new
birth.
And when God quickens your heart in this
new creation, He tells you and you know,
because you know that you know.
Do you understand?
That's what the witness of the Spirit is.
Let me close.
I was talking to this theme at an
InterVarsity alumni meeting up in the Upper Peninsula
in Michigan, at Cedar Campus or Point, whatever
it is.
When I finished, one of the staff members
from New York City, Harriet Marsh, who attended
the church in New York, said, could I
speak?
And she came to pulpit, or the rostrum,
and she said, many of you know that
my parents were not Christians, but perhaps you
didn't know that my father was an atheist
and my mother an agnostic, at the least,
probably an atheist as well.
I never went to church except for one
funeral and a wedding until I went to
college.
But when I got there to Douglas College,
which was the women's section of Rutgers, New
Jersey State University, she said, I saw one
young woman whose face was so radiant, whose
personality was so charming.
I asked about her, and I found out
she was a believer, a Christian.
The one who was in charge of assigning
rooms was a friend of my parents, and
I asked if I could become the roommate
of this young woman when her senior roommate,
who was leaving at the January, left.
And so I was given the privilege of
moving into that room to be next to
this person.
I was only with her for a short
time until just seeing her and talking to
her, and listening to her pray and speak
put a great hunger in my heart, and
I opened my heart to come to Christ.
And I went to prayer meeting, and I
went to Bible studies, and it was just
a new life to me.
But there was one professor over at Rutgers
who knew my father and knew me and
shared their atheist views, knew my mother, and
he would take me out to lunch and
asked to see me and would look for
me.
And every time he did, he said, Harriet,
you've got to give up this ridiculous nonsense,
this religious superstition.
You've got to stop it.
And he worked on me and worked on
me.
You've got too good a mind.
You're too brilliant a student.
You can't.
Until finally, I just succumbed, and I went
to my roommate, and I went to the
Bible study, and I said, look, you're nice
people, and I like you, but I've been
deceived.
I'm not a Christian.
I know it's just been a mental, emotional
thing, and because of your warmth and your
attractiveness.
So I'm giving it all up today.
I don't want to give up your friendship,
but I don't want you to ever talk
to me anymore about the Bible or about
Jesus.
I'll never come to your prayer meetings, your
Bible studies.
I want to be friends, but just not
that.
And they agreed, because you see, she didn't
say the important thing, don't pray for me,
because if she'd have said that, then she'd
have said she wasn't an atheist.
So she ignored that, and they prayed for
her.
Well, one day in the library, Harriet came
across that agnostics prayer.
You know what it is, don't you?
Oh God, if there be a God, save
my soul, if I have a soul.
And she thought, huh, now that's all right.
That's kind of honest and fair.
So she knew her roommate was out, and
she went back to the room and locked
the door, and she said, well, I'm going
to do that as one last thing.
And so she's practicing, oh God, if there
be a God, save my soul, if I
have a soul.
And so she said, well, I used to
kneel, so I'll kneel, and I'll close my
eyes, and then some people fold their hands,
so I'll do everything.
I'll kneel and close my eyes and fold
my hands, and she's practicing, oh God, if
there be a God, save my soul, if
I have a soul.
And then she gets quiet, and she starts
out, and her first words are, dear heavenly
Father.
It had dawned on her what she'd said,
and she started to laugh, she started to
cry, she got up, she opened the door,
she ran down the hall to where the
girls were in the Bible study, and she
came in, and she said, it's real, it's
real, it's real.
Why?
Look what you just read.
And because you are sons, God sent forth
the Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
whereby you cry, Abba, Father.
Do you see it?
Do you understand it?
Faith, a new birth, and the witness of
the Spirit.
Those you minister to must come that route,
and if you've been brought any other route,
today's the day to take care of it.
Let's pray.
Father, look deep into our hearts this morning,
find us where we are, and if there
be unfinished business in any life, may this
be the day when wisdom is exercised, instead
of going to lunch, they go to the
place where they can meet Thee.
And Father, for those of us that have
unsaved loved ones and friends we're burdened about,
now we've seen the steps of awakening, and
conviction, and repentance, and faith, and the new
birth, and the witness of the Spirit.
Oh, Spirit of God, help us to be
laborers faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ, to
honor Him for His name's sake.
Amen.