Thinking particularly of the 20th verse, according to
my earnest expectation and my hope, that in
nothing that I shall be ashamed, that that
with all boldness, as always, so now Christ
shall be magnified in my body.
I used to think that in the second
letter to the Chronicles of Corinthians and chapter
5, well, Paul gives us a kind of
summary there of his theology.
He believes that if we're absent from the
body, we're present with the Lord.
Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade
men.
We must all appear at the judgment seat
of Christ.
And then verse 14, I've always considered was
the thing that really motivated him.
He out-preached everybody, he out-suffered everybody,
he out-prayed everybody.
I thought that 14th verse, the love of
Christ constraineth me, was his main motivation.
Along, again, with the obligation to present Christ
in all his majesty, all his glory, to
remind us, as dear Keith said one day
in my office, we were talking about the
roads, he said, well, all roads lead to
the judgment seat, which is true, they do.
Whether a Democrat, an Autocrat, a Plutocrat, or
any other crat, or a Liberal, or what
you are.
Whether we're slaves or free men, intellectuals or
ignoramuses, black or white, rich or poor, all
roads lead to the judgment seat, without exception.
Now, I've come to this conclusion, reading recently
in Philippians here, that the motivation of the
Apostle, in his zigzag course, not up and
down spiritually, but zigzag in prison, out of
prison, in weirdness, in fastings, in painfulness, in
tribulation, in distress, in perils of his countrymen,
in perils of the deep, in perils of
Robert, whatever it was, the one thing that
motivated him, I believe, is in this 20th
verse.
As now always, Christ shall be magnified in
my body, or some put it, by my
body, whether it be by life or by
death.
The thing that gripped me as I read
it this week, Christ may be magnified, not
in my ministry, not in my miracles, not
in my super love, I out love everybody
else in the world today, I out preach
them, I out suffer everybody, but he says
that Christ may be magnified in my body.
If you turn over to the, where is
it, chapter 4, verse 8, this explains his
life, I think, he says, be careful for
nothing, be prayerful in everything, and be thankful
for anything.
That covers a lot of territory, doesn't it?
The King James Version, of course, the best
one, says, be careful for nothing, but in
everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known
unto the Lord.
I believe that's a territory in which he
lived and moved and had his being.
You know, this epistle is very beautiful.
You know why?
Because it's a love letter.
Some of you ladies remember the first one
you got, I guess it's stuffed away somewhere
now, tied up with a ribbon maybe, or
you threw it in the garbage as soon
as you read it, I don't know, but
anyhow.
Love letters are beautiful.
A fellow in our church fell in love
with my sister.
He wrote a letter to her.
Boy, Shakespeare couldn't have done better.
He saw everything.
She dies like stars and her cheeks were
rosy and she was this.
I never knew.
I've lived with her 20 years and never
noticed one of the things he said she
had.
Because beauty, again, is in the eye of
the beholder.
This is a lovely epistle.
For one thing, there's no mention of sin
in this epistle at all.
I think what Paul is actually saying here,
that in the greatest suffering you can have
the greatest joy.
We like the bonuses, we're not too anxious
to have the burdens, are we?
If you read the epistle carefully, you'll find
that 14 times he mentions joy.
And he's in a stinking hall of a
prison we wouldn't put a dog in these
days.
No bed in it, no creature comforts, no
rottenness food, just a hell hole.
And yet here he is sending a letter
of greetings and cheering to other people who
should be writing letters to him.
So with all the greatness and all the
pressure, he says it's possible to have this
boundless joy.
Again, he does not mention sin.
He mentions flesh once and then dismisses it.
He's showing us that there's a grace of
God far more exceedingly abundant than above all
that we can either ask or think.
The great old Scottish saint, Samuel Rutherford, some
of you know that great hymn, The Sands
of Time, was thinking.
He didn't write it.
But his cousins extracted phrases out of his
wonderful diary and put that marvellous, marvellous hymn
together.
I think it's maybe the greatest hymn ever
written.
But he said, I have to go into
the king's cellar to find the king's wine.
I remember old houses not far from where
we live.
We got in one one day.
The oldest son was a friend of mine.
He said, ever been in our huge underground
cellar?
I said, no.
We went in and there were all the
old wine racks.
We searched dozens.
They were all empty.
It's a blessing they were.
I'm sure I'd have got drunk that day.
I was so thirsty in that old basement.
But he said, look at the old wines
they used to keep.
Labels, you know, from Portugal and Spain and
here and there and champagne from France and
all the rest of it.
But they're not stored upstairs in the refrigerator.
They're stored or were stored in dungeons, in
the dark places.
And we would like God to serve up,
as it were, the wine of heaven just
while we're living on the level.
Without any interruption of trial or tribulation or
testing.
But that's not the way that God works.
Let me look over here a minute.
I've lost my marker here.
Let me see, I'll find it.
Well, oh, you can be looking right now
at Romans.
Well, you know it anyhow.
You know Romans chapter 12.
And think of the places where Paul talks
about his body.
He doesn't talk about yielding your mind, really.
He says in Romans 12, 1 and 2,
I beseech you, brethren, therefore, by the mercies
of God that ye present your body a
living sacrifice.
Not your brain, not your emotion, not your
spirit.
But if I said to somebody, look, here's
my watch.
Well, it's a fairly modern one.
You know, it doesn't have a battery.
It doesn't have to wind it up.
The old one they had works in, you
know.
They were marvelous old things.
They used to call them stem winders.
They're collective items now.
If I give a man my watch, I
give him the works, I give him the
hands, I give him the face, I give
him everything.
Well, if I present my body a living
sacrifice, surely I'm presenting everything that I have.
My spirit, my soul and my body, for
which Paul prays, you remember, when he's speaking
to the Thessalonians.
1 Thessalonians 5, 23, he prays, The very
God of peace sanctify you holy, and I
pray that your spirit and soul and body
be preserved blameless unto the coming of the
Lord.
Faithful is he that calleth you, who also
will do it.
So, I give my body in its entirety
to God.
A girl, not very well known in England,
years ago wrote a beautiful hymn.
All for Jesus, all for Jesus.
All my being's ransom powers, all my thoughts
and words and doings, all my days and
all my hours.
She goes on to say, Let my hands
perform his bidding, let my feet run in
his ways, let my eyes see Jesus only,
let my lips speak forth his praise.
All for Jesus, all for Jesus.
Then she says so beautifully, Since my eyes
caught sight of Jesus, I've lost sight of
all beside, so I'm chained my spirit's vision
gazing on the crucified.
Vision is so vital in the Christian life.
On that Damascus road, I don't believe the
Apostle Paul ever recovered from that experience of
being blinded.
Physically, he did.
His eyes were open, sure enough.
But I believe that he was blinded to
all the treasures of the world, as this
girl says.
Since my eyes caught sight of Jesus, I've
lost sight of all beside, so I'm chained
my spirit's vision gazing on the crucified.
Or if you want it in the words
of Isaac Watts, After you've seen him, my
richest gain I count but loss.
But as I've said so often, we use
that phrase, you know.
One day, when we, the things of earth,
after you've seen Jesus, the things of earth
will go strangely dim.
You know, I like to turn that around
and say when we get to heaven and
look back, the things of earth will look
strangely grim.
We live, we spend our time gathering sawdust.
Everything that we spend our lives to get
is perishable outside of the spiritual.
Paul says we're to what?
Present our bodies a living sacrifice.
So, the body can be a living sacrifice.
In the same verse, he said it can
be holy and acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.
Now, in its normal condition, it cannot be
that.
A human body is corruptible.
The flesh in us is corruptible.
But once he takes us in his infinite
mercy and Romans 5 is fulfilled and we
receive the grace of God and we receive
the peace of God and we begin to
walk with God, then we can present that
body which he will sanctify, a living sacrifice.
Holy, acceptable unto God, which is only our
reasonable service.
You know, this is a fantastic chapter, Romans
8.
Verse 1 says, There is therefore now no
condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus
who walk not after the flesh but after
the Spirit.
For the law of the Spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has made me free from
the law of sin and of death.
Now, come down.
Verse 7, oh, verse 6.
To be carnally minded is death, but to
be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Now, how can you harmonize death and life?
A man called me yesterday.
Talked, I'm sure, 40, 50 minutes from California.
Everybody's bewildered out there.
That's why so many of them come here,
you see.
But anyhow.
Oh, he was in despair about the carnality
mastering his life.
Oh, I'm a Christian.
I'm sanctified.
I said, you are?
Yeah, but something carnal dominates me.
Well, that's ridiculous.
How can you be carnally dominated if you're
spiritual?
This scripture is very clear.
To be carnally minded is death.
I don't know why.
I think preachers are the devil's advocates very
often.
They defend sin better than atheists.
Tell you you can't get rid of sin
this side of eternity.
You have to have it.
It has to have dominion over you.
When the scripture says it doesn't.
Oh, this man had just one sin of
the flesh that mastered him.
He could not in any shape or form
get the victory over it.
I said, well, get it nailed to the
cross.
That's the answer.
Again, Romans 6.
If we're buried with him in baptism, as
I use the illustration so often, if a
man is standing here in the water and
I bury him under the water, he's cut
off from the world above.
He can't see the world above.
He can't breathe the air above.
He can't talk to the world above.
He's cut off.
We saw some people baptized last week.
And I thought of them as they went
through the water.
Symbolically, they're saying, look, this is my grave.
I'm being buried to the world above.
It's idle pomp and fading joys, as one
hymn writer says.
Somehow preachers love to fall back on Romans
7, don't they?
Here is the greatest man that ever lived.
I heard G.
Campbell Morgan many times.
He's the most amazing Bible teacher I ever
heard.
He gave a great message on holiness to
about, I guess, 400 preachers.
And I kept squeaking out a little hallelujah
because it was in a Methodist church.
And, you know, that's almost like shouting hallelujah
in a morgue at times.
So I squeaked out a little.
Oh, people turned around and frowned on me,
you know.
So I thought, well, if you don't like
that, wait until he says it again.
So when he said it again, I said,
hallelujah.
Which was all right.
But when he'd taken us into the heavenlies,
he said, now don't think I'm preaching a
second work of grace or you can be
really holy in this life because even the
apostle finished up.
He did not finish up in Romans 7.
There happens to be a Roman date.
It happens to be in the Greek that
there's no difference, there's no division.
That's an artificial division.
And Paul says there's no answer in the
law.
Oh, wretched man that I...
Sure he said that.
Who shall deliver me from this death?
But if he stopped there, we'd be in
trouble.
He says, I thank God through Jesus Christ
my Lord.
That's why he starts Romans 8.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those
of us who walk not after the flesh
but after the spirit.
For the law of the spirit of life
in Christ Jesus has made me free.
I guess you know that I do not.
That's all right.
Thank you.
Take courage.
Well, that man's walked with God many years,
a dear friend of mine.
You know, every time I get in a
plane, I hate planes, as I say, facetiously,
flying is for the birds.
But every time that monster takes off and
I try and estimate how many tons there
are and tons of gasoline and tons of
flesh and tons of baggage and it goes
up like that.
If I had a feather here and said
go up, it wouldn't.
It would just come down.
But how does that monster keep going?
The law of gravity immediately leaves the ground.
The law of gravity pulls on it.
That's why it's harder to land the plane
than take off, isn't it?
You see, taking off you can put the
thrust and blast of all the engines and
up you go.
Coming down, gravity is pulling this way and
he's fighting that way.
So he has to control the two powers,
gravity and the power of the plane.
And it gets off because the power, the
thrust of those tremendous jets, I suppose you
know they were invented in England anyhow, but
anyhow.
Isn't it amazing when you see that thing
going down and you look at 300 passengers
in that plane, all the baggage, all the
luggage, all the gasoline, off it goes real
raw.
Soon you're seeing the land, it's either dropping
away or going up anyhow, but there it
is.
The thrust that's in there is greater than
the law of gravity.
Well then, what about the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus?
Oh, I love, as you know, I love
resurrection hymns.
Up from the grave he arose.
I like that.
As I said the other day when we
sang it, sing it with a sneer.
Death cannot keep its prey.
Sin shall not have dominion over us.
The law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has made me free.
Now that's a very wonderful text, isn't it?
Look at verse 8.
Romans 8, verse 8.
Okay.
So then, they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
Well, there you are.
There's your answer.
No, the answer's in the next verse.
But you're not in the flesh.
You're talking about this flesh in one place
and you're talking about a fleshy nature in
the other.
Galatians 5 where all the works of the
flesh are there which are manifest but also
corrupt.
But then you come down into the next
verse.
Verse 9.
Ye are not in the flesh but in
the Spirit if so be that the Spirit
of God dwell in you.
Look at verse 10.
If Christ be in you.
Verse 11.
If the Spirit of Him that raised up
from the dead dwell in you.
Good mercy.
What do you want?
Is the Spirit of God in you?
Is the Spirit of life in you?
Is the Spirit of the Son in you?
Is the Spirit of the Spirit in you?
Well how can there be room for carnality?
Knowing this Paul says that our old life
our old man was crucified with Him.
Nevertheless I live he says yet not I
but Christ liveth in me.
And the life which I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of
the Son of God who loved me and
gave Himself for me.
In Romans 6 again.
And verse 11 it says reckon ye yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin.
In the same verse it says reckon reckon
the body to be dead indeed unto sin
but ye are alive in God in Christ
Jesus.
The law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus has made me free from the
law of sin and of death.
That Christ may be magnified through my body.
I've never heard anybody preach on this text
never preached on it myself.
You remember the psalmist says upon an instrument
of ten strings will I praise thee.
What kind of a thing is that?
A guitar or something?
Harp?
You say I don't have an instrument of
ten strings.
Well supposing you would it is where you've
got two feet you've got two hands you've
got two eyes you've got two ears you've
got one tongue thank God no more and
one heart.
Ten strings.
That's why the girl says in that hymn
let my hands perform his bidding let my
feet run in his way let my eyes
see Jesus only let my lips speak forth
his praise.
Or an American hymn if you like take
my life and let it be.
What do you sing there?
Take my hands and let them move at
the impulse of thy love take my feet
and let them be swift and beautiful for
thee take my love my Lord I pour
at thy feet its treasure store take my
will that's the last area that we yield.
Take my will and make it thine.
Paul doesn't even say that Christ made me
magnified by my epistles.
Though he wrote at least I think he
wrote the greatest things that any human being
was ever allowed to write.
His magnificent epistles to the Romans to the
Ephesians to the Philippians again this is one
of his jail writings.
If you read it carefully we don't have
time to do that if you read carefully
through this let's read through the first chapter
you'll see the position and life of the
Christian.
If you read the second chapter you'll get
the pattern of Christ.
The third chapter you'll get the energy that
carries the Christian through this world.
Chapter four the Christian superiority to all circumstances.
In other words this epistle is the whole
character of the Christian life.
It shows Paul shows how to walk and
work in the service of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And he of course is the fire leader
he is the best example of it.
I've said before I may be saying many
times again I think that Paul was the
greatest genius the world ever saw.
Colossal intellect a will that never tired a
faith that never flinched a love that never
broke down the courage that nobody could dominate.
He stands cheerfully before kings he's as happy
in jail writing the epistle of love as
he is in any circumstance of life.
So he shows us that the man can
be complete however whatever race of genius he
has that he can be complete in God
without even being involved in this world outside
in its material concept or business concept he's
totally God's man.
I think it was Spinoza that talked about
a God intoxicated man.
That God intoxicated man is the apostle Paul
in my judgment.
In perils of the deep he doesn't shake
everybody else on the ship he's terrified he
stands by and the captain sends for him
and the captain says what's wrong with you?
Wasn't that a night last night?
I can imagine the captain said I've been
at sea for 50 years never gone through
a night like that.
I guess you were like the rest of
us cringing and holding on to your bed
terrified.
No he said I had a great night.
I had a great time a fellowship.
Fellowship?
Is there other Christian on board?
He said last night.
What's he called?
He said an angel from heaven.
A what?
He said last night I had an angel
visitor in my cabin.
Boy did we have a time.
Talking about the glory and majesty of God.
Everybody else is terrified.
You know I think that that experience that
he had I forget the chapter where it
is in Acts I think it's typical of
the end of the age.
Paul got on board that ship as a
prisoner.
And he ended as a pilot.
Everybody got the jitters.
Everybody was terrified.
Everybody was vomiting and yelling and screaming and
yelling and doing everything and there he is
glorifying God.
See what strange people Christians are?
You know he was so amazing that when
they skinned his back until it was raw
he said none of these things hurt me.
No he didn't.
All people say if you really get saved
and filled with the Spirit you know you'll
never be hurt.
You'll never have any troubles.
Well I must be back slim because I
get a lot of them.
He did not say none of these things
hurt me.
He said none of these things move me.
You could have a blast from hell and
not be moved if you're in the will
of God.
They'll hurt.
How can you get victory if there's no
battle?
He said we're more than conquerors through him
that loved us.
What are you conquering?
Ingrowing toenails?
Charles Wesley has a hymn in which he
says should all the hosts of hell and
powers of should all the hosts of death
and powers of hell unknown put their most
dreadful forms of rage and malice on I
shall be safe for Christ displays superior power
and boundless grace.
You see Paul touched the powers of the
world to come.
To us that's theology.
Just that's something we're grasping after almost in
blindness.
We're so happy to get rid of a
lot of rotten sins and thank God for
where we are but look at the territory
there is yet for us to reach for.
You know God's problem with Israel was getting
them out of Egypt.
They could have got out of Egypt into
Canaan in eleven days.
They didn't even make it in forty years
most of them.
We've got people now who have been saved
twenty, thirty years and another day older in
the spiritual life.
They're no more mature.
They've no more spiritual strength.
They've no more spiritual understanding.
They've no more spiritual revelation.
Why?
Because so often they've lived on meetings instead
of living on Christ.
I don't care where you go.
What school you go to and I thank
God for schools.
This school particularly again.
But remember you can't what do you do
when the school is pulled away from you?
See so many people get happy and blessed
when they're in an association or fellowship and
then you go and stick them up the
Amazon somewhere they go to pieces.
Can you imagine a man going to pieces
who let me go back here and quote
this exactly or here in Romans 8 again
verse 9 You're not in the flesh but
in the Spirit if so be that the
Spirit of God dwell in you.
And verse 10 if Christ is in you.
In verse 11 the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead.
I said in the class Tuesday night we
have a class here Tuesday night if you
want to come with starting with a person
this week.
In Hebrews 11 The Holy Spirit of God
is totally incapable of doing anything that's small.
The world in which we live is beautiful
carpeted with flowers and everything.
It was a ball of mud shut up
in the womb of the universe.
The Holy Ghost brooded over it.
Out of chaos brought cosmos and out of
wildness He brought this marvelous system of the
world.
He brooded over chaos He brooded over death
and brought forth life.
He brooded over the virgin of a little
girl that nobody noticed hardly going up the
street.
I've often thought of a little virgin Mary
going up the street pregnant and people suspicious.
Did you know about her?
Did you know she's keeping company with?
Did you know how far along she is?
They didn't think they were passing the crater
of the universe in that little woman.
So near to her and never recognized it.
Never knew it.
It's not like other people go to church.
They get within touching distance of Jesus and
they never touch Him.
They just go year after year week after
week and never touch Him.
The Holy Ghost came and did that miracle
in her.
Brooded over her and brought forth the most
amazing creature that this world will ever know.
Caught Wesley again.
You'll think I'm a Wesleyan.
Wesley says God was contracted to a span
incomprehensibly made man.
Here is the one that the heaven of
heavens cannot contain Him and He's shut up
in the little womb of a woman.
He made all the food in the world
and yet He has to sustain His life
from His mother's breast.
He owns the world.
He made it and yet He never owned
a stick in it.
He owns all things and yet never had
a dime.
But after He brooded over the universe after
He brooded over the virgin He brooded over
a bunch of men in their Peru.
They weren't all geniuses by a long way.
A lot of them were cowards.
And now they went streaming in the power
of the Holy Ghost.
I puzzled over this again today.
If you can help me write me a
dissertation on it.
We're supposed to have about what?
Fifteen million people in America today filled with
the Holy Ghost manifesting gifts and nobody knows
we're here.
Only 120 in the upper room and they
turned the nation upside down.
What's wrong?
What's the difference between their baptism and ours?
Tell me.
Maybe you're right there.
Partly right I'm sure.
But then after the creation that the Holy
Ghost did after the miracle of the birth
of Jesus after the men in their Peru
then you've got this wonderful word of God.
The creation holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
I heard of a local preacher saying not
so long ago the story of John is
a fish story.
Well sure it is.
Isn't about a donkey is it?
But all he meant was something a bit
fishy about it.
That's what he meant which is not true.
Because Jesus said does he deny what the
word of Jesus?
A man that denies scripture should renounce his
job and go sell hamburgers.
He came in as a fundamental believer and
he becomes a liberal he should get out
of the back door.
I'd fire him if I had any power
over that guy.
But here we have the Holy Spirit of
God creating through all kinds of men.
A man that climbs trees and gathers sycamore
fruit.
A man of colossal intellect at the other
end of the line like the Apostle Paul.
A shepherd like David.
A wise man like Solomon.
And yet the wonder of this book is
that it's so indestructible.
Men have burned it and banned it and
blamed it.
Isn't it?
Tennyson has a poem in which he says
men may come and men may go but
I go on forever.
Well the word of God is like that.
You know one of the great contemporaries of
John Wesley was a very very powerful speaker
in France by the name of Voltaire.
He ridiculed the scriptures.
One day he said in his little house
a hundred years from now Bibles will be
museums.
Well he didn't miss it by much did
he?
Except about a thousand million copies.
Bibles will be museum pieces.
People won't bother they'll be too advanced they
won't bother with the Bible.
One of the nice things that World War
II did was blow his little house off
the face of the earth.
But you know not long before a few
years before that happened a few years before
that happened the Geneva Bible Society bought that
house and distributed Bibles all through Europe out
to the very house where he said that
the Bible wouldn't even be existing in a
hundred years.
Here it is.
It's God's Word.
And it will last forever.
Thy throne O God is forever and ever.
Heaven and earth may pass away.
My Word shall not pass away.
Here it is.
Has all the power of God behind it.
So come on now.
The Holy Spirit of God who invaded the
lives of those men in the upper room
according to Romans 8 here the same Spirit
can raise that raised Jesus from the dead
abides in us.
He's risen us from the dead spiritually.
We can think and move and have our
being in God the Father and the Son
and the Holy Spirit.
Lowry an old, old Nazarene had a marvelous
book that's out of print.
It's called The Possibilities of Grace.
I never read it.
I've just peeped into it.
I have an old, old copy.
But I think of that so often.
It stretches out the possibilities of grace.
What's a good book say?
I have not seen, e'er heard, nor
hath it entered into the heart of man
what God has prepared for them that love
him.
That He has revealed it unto us.
Not to the world.
They stagger at it.
Impossible.
How amazing that a human being corrupted, defiled,
doomed, damned can be forgiven, cleansed and indwelt
by the Spirit of God and become a
living vessel of God.
God is yet to produce the greatest men
ever.
I don't believe God went off production with
Wesley and Finney and George Whitefield or the
great men who built the old spiritual empires
like Hudson Taylor and others that went to
China and Gilmore to Mongolia and Judson to
Burma and Cary.
The first missionary from England to India was
Cary.
I preached in his church once there.
Is it in Calcutta?
I think it is.
And there was another little man, Henry Martin.
I said to the class the other night,
I wish some of you folk would wake
up and use your brains while you're young
enough to use them.
There was a young lady singing on TV.
I love to hear these great singers.
She was a great singer, about 220 pounds.
Could she sing?
She's born in a little shack somewhere up
in the Mississippi area or somewhere.
Might have ended up serving hamburgers to somebody.
Somebody took her in the home.
She'd twinkle with a piano and then they
discovered she had a voice.
So they got her to sing.
I think she went to the conservatory in
Milan and various other places.
Now she can sing in about five different
languages.
Did somebody suddenly suspect that in that girl
was all this talent and all this ability?
No, they just gave her a chance in
one direction.
She took off in another.
Now look, if she can learn and I
guess now she's only about 26 or 27
or something.
Maybe at 18 she began to struggle with
playing, struggle with singing and struggle with languages.
You know, the Roman church is pretty smart.
There's a great college in Ireland called Maynooth.
You can send a ploughboy into that school
that can hardly do his mathematics or anything.
They'll turn him out in five years and
he can recite the whole math in Latin.
They have other convents where they take young
ladies, maybe average farmers' daughters.
They'll talk with them, show them maps of
the world, tell them the need in the
world, lack of education, lack of Christianity, so
forth.
Those girls will get down, oh, I think
I would like to go to South America.
OK.
Brazil.
What?
Portuguese.
All right.
Argentina.
Spanish.
Some other area.
You know, every time they send the missionary
out, the missionary knew the language before they
got there.
What did they do?
They went into the school system and taught.
Therefore, the churches didn't have to support them
because they were earning their money.
They didn't have to wait to stammer out
language for a few years.
Immediately they got off the ball, they could
speak the language.
Immediately they were put into operation to teach
in the schools and to teach religion.
In other words, when they went, they were
already accomplished in languages.
And again, because of that, they could sign
up in government jobs and there was no
support needed at home.
Now, here sometimes, very often with people, oh,
we'll take you on, but you have to
go around churches begging.
Ask them to support you.
Ask them to give you so much a
month, so much a month, so much a
month.
I think God must be embarrassed by the
church these days.
What beggars we are.
Why can't you use your brains now?
Get a language.
Get awakened.
Get stirred in your spirit.
Find out where God wants you.
There are lots of hell holes that need
the light of the gospel.
If you think you may have the courage,
why not pray about going to Russia?
Get behind that curtain there or the iron
curtain.
I think I'm right in saying this.
I'm not sure somebody can correct me maybe.
I don't think there are five missionaries in
the whole of Albania rather.
They purged Albania somewhere in the last century.
I think they put Christians in barrels and
sealed up the barrels and pushed the barrels
out on the tide as it was receding
out to the ocean.
And there they were cooped up in those
horrible things.
The sun coming in and roasting them.
No food, no anything.
They exterminated the church to that degree there.
But there's a challenge.
There's nobody in Albania.
Why not be the first to go?
What about getting behind the iron curtain?
Czechoslovakia or some of the other countries?
What about the, what, 800 million people in
China?
This week they said there were 700 million
in India.
It has about, what, 400 languages and dialects.
The world population now is the greatest it's
ever been in history.
There are more lost people tonight than ever
there have been in history.
And yet I think there's more indifference.
Sure we give a little bit to support
of misery.
We do this, we do the other.
But that great dominion of Satan is almost
unchallenged in the day in which we live.
Now it's in this same epistle, isn't it?
Yes, in this same epistle where Paul says
let this mind be in you which was
in Christ Jesus.
Well actually that literally is translated let the
love which dominated the life of Jesus, the
disposition of Jesus be yours.
And his was a disposition of love, of
concern.
Everywhere he went he went out doing good.
Well if that mind is in me I'll
tell you what I'm going to have some
restless minutes or restless hours.
I'm going to have to struggle with my
own conscience.
I'm going to have to struggle with the
light I have.
I'm going to have to struggle with the
challenge that comes to me from a dozen
different countries to get the message of Jesus
Christ there while it's yet date.
Christ may be magnified in my body.
He was magnified through his brain.
I'm sure God could have shared some things
he shared with any other person except Paul.
Magnified with his spirit, his hands, he wrote
his epistles.
He didn't type them.
He didn't dictate them.
He struggled with some kind of instrument, maybe
a quill, I don't know.
But every part of his being was coordinated
to the service of God.
That Christ may be magnified.
I mentioned this last Sunday morning.
Before long we'll have some lovely flowers around
here.
They're called dandelions.
Nobody cuts them and puts them on the
table in the house.
You may have 20-20 vision but you
haven't seen the beauty of a dandelion.
Not until you take a magnifying glass and
look through it like that and suddenly you
see it is the most exquisite flower maybe
God ever made.
But we don't see it with our 20
-20 vision.
You need a magnifying glass.
You look through it and when you see
it that thing comes alive.
That's what Paul says that Christ may be...
When people look at my life Jesus Christ
is clearer and nearer and more wonderful.
Is that true?
Do you think your children would say that?
Oh, my daddy and mummy.
I've never seen Jesus but I know Jesus
is like...
He's like my daddy.
As I said last Sunday old Jonathan Edwards
gets ridiculed, you know.
He took a stack of notes and he
read through them and he had a candle
here and his big frowning face and a
gravel voice and he reads through his sermon
the greatest, most famous sermon outside of the
Bible Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God.
And people all remember because he thundered.
They said that when people fell off their
seats instead of showing mercy he kind of
thrust the thing into them deeper the truth
of God.
People hung on to pillars that were supporting
the gallery because they were afraid they'd fall
into the abyss.
But he didn't spare them.
Bullard Dave was in my house the other
day.
Last Sunday night he preached in maybe the
largest church in Denver, Colorado.
He said, Len as we sat there I
was ready to preach and suddenly I was
overcome with grief and I just walked forward
and sat on the floor didn't go to
the pulpit and I began to weep.
God just gave me such a burden and
he said, look there's a congregation about 3
,000 he said there's a girl in here
who has been molested by a man, sexually
molested and the man is going to go
to jail.
And as he said it the girl about
16 ran down the aisle and she said
Mr. Wilkerson I'm the girl that has been
molested my daddy did it and he has
to go to jail.
David just groaned.
He said there must have been 15 or
16 other young women came there and said
my father or brother or somebody is assaulting
me sexually every week.
And he said my spirit just groaned and
he stayed there 50 minutes weeping.
I said Dave, bless you.
The average preacher would have said I just
had a kind of a little upset in
my spirit I feel there's somebody in trouble
I'd like a few of you to pray.
Raise your hands we're going to pray for
this girl.
She's in trouble I know she is.
Instead of that he swept all his theology
sermon on one side and obeyed the Holy
Ghost and the whole church broke up in
weeping and brokenness seeking God.
Same thing happened without ever having to open
his mouth preaching.
I'm sure that's the kind of spirit that
the apostle had because the spirit of Christ
indwelling in him.
It's the spirit of God dwelling in him.
The fruit of the spirit as I've said
if Jesus had ever said if he'd said
one word differently it would have killed 10
million arguments since Pentecost.
If he'd said by their gifts she shall
know them it would have killed a million
arguments.
But he didn't say by their gifts he
said by their fruits.
And the fruit of the spirit is number
one what?
Love.
The spirit of Christ is love.
God so loved the world.
Love again is the badge of discipleship.
Love was unquestionably to me a motivating power
in the life of the apostle Paul.
But he says my supreme driving power is
this that wherever I go I go to
the bond of the free to the barbarian
I go to the Greeks I go to
the intellectuals on Mars Hill I go in
prison.
Wherever I go I want Christ to be
magnified.
I don't want somebody to say if that's
Christianity I don't want it.
I don't want somebody to say you know
the way you live you blur the image
of Christ.
I want those people to look through my
life and say I see Jesus Christ.
Well that's what he dared to say.
He says Christ it doesn't say I'm saved.
He doesn't say I've had the baptism.
He says Christ lives in me.
It's much easier to say I'm saved.
It's much easier to say I've had the
baptism.
We're accepted on par with the rest of
the people in the church.
Supposing you stand up in the next step
in the past anybody want to testify you
stand up and say Christ lives in me.
Somebody say I never knew that.
Never even thought about it.
Go back to Jonathan Edwards sure he groaned
sure he but his daughter said people think
my daddy is a severe man.
A man that pours out judgment.
But she said in the home he lives
just like Jesus.
And every day my mummy comes out of
the closet.
She said her face shines like the face
of Moses because she spends at least two
hours in prayer with God every morning.
And oh when she comes through the house
there's something so different so fragrant.
Well that's what God wants isn't it?
He wants sin to have no dominion over
us but we have dominion.
You know the Greeks used to say man
know thyself.
The Lord says control yourself in the spirit.
What did he say?
Paul says I keep my body under.
I control it.
I control my passions.
I control my appetite.
He was never an excessive eater I'm sure
of that.
I don't think he was an excessive sleeper.
You know it looks a bit chronic when
you put it this way.
We live what 24 hours a day.
Supposedly we work 8 hours.
We have 8 hours free.
And we sleep 8 hours.
Put that into 60 years what do you
do?
You sleep 20 years.
You work 20 years.
And you're free 20 years.
Doesn't look too much when you take it
in the day does it?
8 hours free 8 hours to sleep 8
hours.
OK.
But when you put it in 20 years
sleeping 20 years of idleness maybe 20 years
of work it's a very very different thing.
Now this man is the man who eats
up the time.
He buys up the opportunity as the translation
says.
When he says redeeming the time which literally
from the Greek is redeeming the time is
buying up the opportunity.
This opportunity will not come tomorrow it comes
today.
So I buy it up I eat it
up.
I don't want to waste time waste money
waste opportunities.
You know it's not difficult.
It's not a case of living in a
kind of a steel shell.
It's a case of the Spirit of God
and the Spirit of Christ and the Holy
Spirit governing my life that He constrains me
when I'm too slow and He restrains me
when I'm too quick.
And it's joy to be in submission to
Him.
Paul said he's a bond slave of Jesus
Christ.
A happy slave of it.
A joyful master a joyful to serve a
master like that.
That Christ may be magnified by my body
he says whether by life or by death.
Doesn't matter which way.
Well there's no other way to live surely.
Having the body and the soul by the
power of the Spirit presenting my body a
living sacrifice number one holy number two acceptable
number three.
All packed up in that first verse of
Romans 12.
Which is really only the normal Christian life.
There's only one kind of Christian life really
that's a life of holiness.
We have a challenge before us tonight in
prayer.
We have a few.
Brother David Wilkerson is preaching in a college
tonight.
Preaching in a college tomorrow night.
Preaching somewhere I think in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
A brother that comes here sometimes Brother Bob
Roberts is going out on a mission this
coming week and then next Friday he and
a group of men I think ten of
them are going down to Belize again to
hold some evangelistic services there.
Chip Arnold was here last week.
Chip called in today his mother is quite
sick she has to have surgery on Monday
and he has a strep throat and the
doctor says well you can't go see your
mother because she may add to her problem.
So he requested prayer tonight for himself and
for his mother.
The news this week of course has been
about India which our precious friends love so
much.
If the Sikhs are being murdered murdering the
others I have an idea the Christians aren't
getting away with much freedom.
Do those men that work with you are
they still in prison in Nepal?
Young men in prison in Nepal north of
India only for preaching not for rioting just
for preaching.
You see if you serve the devil you
go to jail if you go to crisis
you go to jail.
So there they are those wonderful young men
up in Nepal that have it rough any
time anywhere in prison for Christ's sake.
Some liberated periodically they go in and come
out.
There's no safety.
What are the Christians suffering right now in
India tonight?
Must be appalling.
I'm amazed that rioting hasn't broken out in
Poland yet.
I think it will.
It's a very serious situation.
Yet I don't know anybody too anxious about
it.
Do you?
Check up for a minute have you shed
any tears over it today?
Have you missed a meal so you'd have
more time to pray and intercede?
Hmm Let my eyes see Jesus only.
We see the world its customs its fascinations
we get mesmerized by materialism.
We live in the present instead of we
should be living for eternity even now while
our feet are on earth.
We should be so different from the rest
of the tribe around us but I'm afraid
very often we're not.
The life which I now live in the
flesh what kind is it a life of
victory or a life of failure?
Is Christ magnified in my personality through my
mind through my spirit through my emotions through
my body or am I just Mr. Average
Christian a pew dweller?
I just pray my tithes and I love
the pastor and the world goes to hell.
You know all these are awesome men again.
I'm not suggesting for a minute if you
do everything that Paul did you'll become another
apostle of Paul not so.
That's already been done there's no more epistles
to write but we can become men of
like character and that's what God wants.
Emptied of self filled with God.
Not just having a mind of my own
but having the mind of God working through
my mind through my emotions through my heart
through my conscience through my will.
There's that restless troubled world.
People will die by the thousands maybe before
this business is over Lindia and go straight
to a lost eternity.
Two thousand years after Jesus was born.
Mercy on us.
There are more lost people without God than
ever.
What is it every day a quarter of
a million babies are born and they'll never
hear the gospel.
Every day at least a hundred thousand die
throughout the world that have never heard the
gospel.
This man has a consuming passion for one
thing that Christ may be known whether by
life or by death I don't care he
signed himself away one day when he died
on the cross with Jesus Christ he died
to all his ambitions he died to all
earthly honors he died to his nation he
was a tribe of Benjamin a seed of
Abraham he had every cultural advantage every intellectual
advantage I lay in dust lives glory dead
he said.
Hundreds of men have done it since.
I'm going to ask you to sing a
hymn and then we go straight to prayer.
Don't sing it if you don't mean it
please.
363 363 let's stand and sing.