Because now the love of God again is
shed abroad in the heart by the Holy
Ghost.
Not easily provoked, seeketh not her own.
This love beareth all things, it believeth all
things.
This is unreasonable, isn't it?
What is he saying?
He says love seeketh not her own, therefore
it's unselfish.
He says love is never provoked, therefore it's
unbreakable.
He says love beareth all things, therefore it's
unbreakable.
He says charity never faileth, that's unreasonable.
And he said it's the love of God
shed abroad in the heart, therefore it's unending
because God indwells it.
While ever you stay in obedience, you'll stay
filled and overflowing with love.
Four years ago, four years ago we were
living in Baton Rouge, and the Baptists were
having their state convention down in the First
Baptist Church in Baton Rouge.
There's a very fine-colored preacher going to
preach there, preach with Billy Graham.
Graham's very fond of him.
He's a man that went into that awful,
awful conflagration that they had in Watford.
If the gospel works, let's try down here.
And he's worked there and reconstructed that area
until they've got new homes and a new
style of living, all by one man who
had a great compassion.
I wanted to hear him.
And usually if something happened, he couldn't make
it.
He was fog-bound up in Birmingham, Alabama.
I don't know what the fellow preached about,
to tell you the truth.
I have the slightest idea about what he
said or his text, until he got to
the end.
And then he told us about a place
up in the Carolinas.
He said, you know what I'm convinced of?
The supreme need of the Church of Jesus
Christ is a baptism of love.
Love that envieth not.
What if the man can raise the dead?
What if the man has the gift of
dance?
What if the man can prophesy?
And you feel like a sparrow amongst among
a lot of peacocks that can sputter out.
So what?
You ought to glory in it.
He said a minister up there, I believe
he said in a Baptist church, had preached
a series of messages on 1 Corinthians 13.
And people were coming to hear this interpretation.
And one day he got a call from
the chaplain in the prison.
And the chaplain said, I understand that you're
preaching a very disturbing theory on love within
your church.
People have been hunting each other.
And they're full of spite and envy and
bitterness and backbiting.
And it's all got straightened out.
And your church is beautiful.
And he said, that's right.
I'm glad you heard about it.
He said, tell me this.
Has this love got under the doorway of
the church as it got out in town,
yeah?
What's on your mind?
He said, I'll tell you.
I've got a man coming out of prison
tomorrow, a jailbird, one of the roughest.
And while he's been in jail, the essence
of it was his wife has died, his
friends disowned him, he has nowhere to go.
Would you like to ask your people this
Sabbath day if there's anybody who would take
in this man?
He's dangerous to the nth degree.
He's never known love.
He's lived in a world where he thought
they were all jackals and tigers trying to
destroy him.
He doesn't know the meaning of love.
Have you really got a love that will
bear like that?
I'd like to think so.
Well, he said, if somebody will take this
man for three months in their home, will
you call me?
So after the Sunday morning service, he said,
would you take a seat?
I want to ask you a question.
And he asked the question, the question I've
just mentioned to you.
There's a man coming out of jail, and
he's not even a rough diamond.
He's a despicable, horrible character.
Would you like to show that love you've
been singing about and clapping your hands about
and rejoicing about?
Does it work out?
Would you like to bring me?
I don't know what he'll do.
Now he said, if there's a couple here,
we'll take this man in for three months.
Some of us will have to send food.
We'll have to buy him clothes.
We'll do some other things.
Would anybody be willing to take this man
in?
If so, would any of you couples stand?
He waited a second, and then the whole
church stood.
He got no problem.
He told the chaplain, and it happened a
second time some months after, and it happened
a third time.
And then he said one day, well, I
have the same request to make.
There's a man coming out of jail, and
he is a character I understand, and he's
in the same.
Stood up two or three times and being
pushed out of the choosing.
They stood up, gray-haired, lovely people, and
he said, thank you.
I've got the couple.
He took the man in his car.
He took him to the house.
They did everything for him, brought him from
a rotten prison cell and gave him a
beautifully furnished room with its own TV and
its own bathroom, and they bought him clothes,
and they fed him, and they looked after
him.
And man, his appearance changed.
He got dressed well and got his hair
cut, and his teeth were nice, and he
was very personable, as he did out there,
and put a little bottle of milk on
the step.
He went the next morning, and the milk
was still there.
Well, then he said, there's something wrong, because
the couple always leave a note if they're
going away.
So he climbed onto the window sill, and
there lying on the floor were the old
couple, battered, beaten, bloody, destroyed.
He called the minister, and the minister called
the police, and he said, I'll tell you,
we had some funeral in our church.
Half the city wanted to come.
Here is a man that had been given
every bit of love he could be given,
and he battered the old couple and stole
everything he could steal.
Well, surely there was a lot of sobbing
and weeping, and he spoke that beautiful word,
which is beautiful in that setting, greater love
hath no man than this.
The man would lay down his life for
his friends.
Some weeks after, he got a call from
the chaplain, and the chaplain was a little
stammering, and he said, well, I've got a
man coming out of prison on Monday, and
I wonder would any want to take him
after what happened.
And he said, well, I don't know, but
I'll try them.
He presented the case, and he said, I
know that many of you are still shocked,
and some of you at the first said
it's too big a risk to take those
men and never change.
They didn't say three men had gone straight.
They said one man had gone bad.
And he said, would you like somebody to,
would somebody like to take this man?
And the couple stood up, no.
Nearly the whole church stood up again.
And he said, I'm very glad.
I have been preaching a theory, but I've
been preaching something which is really practical and
very beautiful, that it works out to this
degree that when somebody would try your patience,
but love beareth all things, all the irritations,
it believeth all things, as bad as some
things may be, because it's the love of
God.
God doesn't give up on us.
The love of God is shed abroad in
the heart by the Holy Ghost.
Let me tell you one thing, and quit.
Again, there's a difference, you see, in the
day in which we live, all the values
of God.
We don't know the difference between love and
lust.
Used to say, when you used to say,
there's a young fellow in our church making
love to another girl you met, he was
spinning his overtures and trying to get a
favor and so forth.
You say making love now, it's a sex
act.
We don't know any difference in this stupid
rotten age between love and lust and laughter
and leering.
But I think the difference is this, that
love gives and lust demands.
Love will suffer.
Lust causes other people to suffer.
Love produces pleasure and lust produces pain.
Love produces rejoicing and lust produces remorse.
I preached part of this message in a
church, a very stately, fashionable church.
There was a young man sitting to the
right, and he sat up at first and
looked very bright.
Actually, he worked in a bank, and his
father was one of the outstanding citizens of
the city.
And as I preached, that man kind of
changed his atmosphere.
He seemed to change physically, and he looked
very worried, and he buried his head.
And as soon as I gave the benediction,
he shot for the door.
They were having dinner at the pastor's house.
And I heard the pastor sobbing at the
telephone, and he came back and he said,
excuse me, but this is just a bit
too much.
Did you see so-and-so sitting on
the right, a certain young man?
I said, yes, I did.
He said, well, I want to tell you.
He said that that boy belonged to one
of the richest homes in town.
They have a magnificent home.
He had a sister that was extremely beautiful.
And a little, oh, maybe two years ago,
she got tangled up with a fellow, and
eventually she came home with a sad story.
She was expecting a baby.
And mother said, well, this will kill your
father.
But one night when he was in a
good mood, she shed the news.
And the mother, well, they said, how shall
we tell John?
You know how proud he is of his
heritage, of the fact that we live in
a big home in the best part of
town.
What in the world shall we do?
One night they shared the news with John.
They hit the ceiling.
Get out of here.
The man, she's going with it.
You warned her.
He's a wastrel.
He's promised to marry her.
Well, I won't go to the wedding anyhow.
And I won't buy her a wedding present.
She's dragged our name in the gutter.
Send her away to another city.
That's exactly what happened.
I was preaching.
He said, the Lord was saying, yes, you
cannot love your enemies.
You can't even love your sister.
When she needed a friend the most, you
kicked her when she was down.
And the Spirit began to apply truth, truth,
truth.
And that's why he was squirming and wriggling.
And he called the pastor.
And he said, pastor, when I got home,
I made a long-distance call to my
sister.
My brother-in-law answered the phone and
said, is it John yet?
Well, get off the phone.
You've caused us enough trouble.
I must speak to my sister.
It's a matter of life and death.
Oh, is it?
Yes, yes.
She came to the phone.
He said, Mary, this is John.
Well, what do you want anyhow?
I'm sick, and the baby's sick, and my
husband's out of work.
And you're living in your palatial home.
We're living over a shop.
Well, he said, that's what I wanted to
say to you.
I'm sorry.
I've been a coward.
I've not been a brother.
I'm coming to see you.
You're not coming to see me.
You wouldn't give us $10 for everything.
You're not coming to see me.
He said, I know your address.
My daddy's taking a note to the bank
tomorrow to say that I won't be there
for a few days.
And I didn't bring you a wedding gift.
I'm going to give you $500.
That's all I have in the bank.
But I'm going to give you everything because
I love you.
Well, as he said this morning, he said,
I was listening to a sermon this morning
about love.
And you know, I've been a kind of
a nice, easy-going Christian.
I sat in a class and learned my
Bible and learned my...
But it never really got into any vital
place.
I still love the world.
I still love the pleasure of the world.
I still love the success of the world.
But he said, when that preacher finished today,
I just said, dear Lord, will you empty
my heart of earthly love, as Wesley said?
Nothing on earth do I desire but thy
pure love within my breast.
This, only this, will I require and freely
give up all the rest.
Wealth, honor, pleasure, and what else.
And he said, I want to tell you
anytime, anywhere that you can just come and
count on me.
You see, it was that kind of love
that sent men out to devastate the kingdoms
of darkness.
Do you know how old the average preacher
was in the first 50 years of Methodism?
Do you know how old he was when
he died?
Thirty-two.
And when a young man went home and
said to his bride, you know, darling, the
Lord has called me to the ministry.
She said, oh no, no.
Why?
You're twenty-four.
You've only got eight years to live and
we've got a child.
What are we going to do?
Well, I don't know, darling, but God has
called me.
The men that went with John Wesley were
not his equal intellectually, but they were his
equal spiritually.
Sure to read their life stories, they've been
written.
I was tempted to rewrite them myself.
I'd love to do it.
I might have got too flowery on it
because I'd be biased.
But they've been written under the title of
Wesley's Veterans.
They're published by a friend of mine.
I give David the title, the address, and
you can get them.
Oh, man, dear, you talk about loving.
One man was standing on a box in
a marketplace in New York, twenty-two miles
from where I live.
Two men came and knocked him down and
they wore clogs like those Dutch sabbos, those
wooden things.
And they had a steel rim around.
And he said, they knocked me off the
pedestal while I was preaching.
And one of them jumped on me and
he tried to break my ribs.
He kicked me.
And he said, we'll kick the Holy Ghost
out of you.
He said, you kick the Holy Ghost out
of me?
Do you wonder Methodism spread in a way,
dear?
Do you wonder William Bourne went into ninety
countries in seventy years?
Do you wonder the greatest young preacher and
orator in America, Brangle?
He was offered a building.
The man said, I'll build you a place
like Westminster.
I'll give you the most money of any
preacher in America.
Study Baker.
He wasn't making automobiles.
He was making carriages for rich people.
He said, Dr. Brangle, you stay here.
I'll build you the best church in America.
I'll give you the best surrogate.
You're an orator.
You're going to make a name for yourself.
He went to the Salvation Army.
The first day he was there, William Bourne
said, who are you?
He said, Dr. Brangle.
He said, we don't need doctors.
See, their theology wasn't so sick.
They didn't need any doctors.
So he said, we don't need any doctors
around here.
We need laborers.
He polished the shoes of all the students.
And they wore those boots right up here.
And they didn't have that stuff you lazy
folk have where you spray it on, you
know.
Pardon me.
But they used to have some black mud.
And you took it to the tap and
turned the tap on and let the water
run on it.
When your mother wasn't there, you spit on
it and mixed it anyhow.
That's what I did.
And then you plastered it on these boots
and then you let them dry.
Can you imagine 100 boots?
Because there was nobody with one leg.
There were 50 people there with two boots
and he had to polish every one of
them.
And he said, I was polishing one of
those boots and the devil came up and
said, you're a fool.
You could be living like a prince in
America.
And here you are polishing the boots of
fellows that don't know the difference between a
Greek root and a rhubarb root.
You're polishing the shoes of laborers and ignoramuses
and you're a scholar with a D.D.
degree and you know some Greek and other
things.
It is folly.
And he said, I looked up to him
and said, Lord Jesus, I love you.
Often when I'm praying, I sing the phrase
out of that hymn we sang tonight.
Not the whole hymn.
I just sing that, I love thee for
wearing the thorns on thy brow.
If ever I loved thee, Lord Jesus, tis
now.
And you see, love, if it's worked in,
love will be worked out.
You know, maybe it will surprise your wife
if you just turned to her tonight and
said, darling, I love you.
She hasn't heard that for years maybe.
Huh?
Squeeze her hand and say, I love you,
dear.
Many a man breaks his heart at the
sight of his wife's casket or the wife
at the sight of the husband and say,
oh, didn't he love her?
Didn't she?
No, no, they're not crying because they're crying
with remorse many times.
I treated her so badly.
I was careless so often.
Oh, sometimes it's sorrow, but more often it's
remorse.
One of the most saintly women I just
remember now, Mrs. McInnes in Sheffield, in the
bombing.
She was a marvelous woman of prayer and
she died in a prayer meeting we were
having one night.
And when they buried her, do you know
her husband stood at the side of the
grave and he wept and all?
He could say the most stupid thing you
ever said in your life at a grave
site.
Do you know what he said?
To think I ate all the bacon.
Do you know why?
He had little strips like that when he
came.
I want the bacon.
And he said she never got a bite
of bacon all the war.
And all he could say at the side
of the grave was to think I ate
the bacon.
It was like a serpent biting him.
But love gives priority to someone else.
Love says you can't overburden me.
I can bear all things, leave all things,
hope all things, and endure all things.
As for prophecies, they shall cease.
As for knowledge, it will pass away.
Now we know in part, but then we
shall know as we are known.
And the one supreme wonder of heaven will
be that everybody there is in love.
There'll be no hate, no bitterness.
It'll be a very beautiful place.
Is that love shed abroad in your heart
tonight?
There's a chorus, you know the tune.
Where's our good organist?
You can keep seated.
I won't make you stand up like the
other boy does there.
At least not for a minute.
And there's a beautiful chorus, you know.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on
me.
Now there's another version to that that I've
never heard sung.
So let me teach it to you.
I won't sing it.
I won't punish you so much.
The word to thee is love of God,
eternal love.
Pour thyself through me.
Nothing less than cowardly love do I ask
of thee.
Fill me, flood me, overflow me.
Love of God, eternal love.
Pour thyself through me.
All right, let's go to school.
I'll say it and you repeat it.
Love of God, eternal love.
Pour thyself through me.
Nothing less than cowardly love.
Do I ask of thee?
Fill me, flood me, overflow me.
Love of God, eternal love.
Pour thyself through me.
Now that's a prayer.
And if you're full of selfishness tonight, if
you've got bitterness in your heart, if you've
got some secret grudges, then you better be
very careful singing this because God's going to
deal with it.
Love of God, eternal love.
Pour thyself through me.
Nothing less than cowardly love do I ask
of thee.
This could change the whole direction of your
life.
The Lord might take you at your word.
You might have to give up a career.
You might have to stop studying what you're
doing and go into something else.
I sat here tonight looking at you and
I said, Lord, don't let me ever look
at people as though they're people.
And what do I look at you?
I look at you as eternally down people.
That a hundred million years from tonight you'll
be living in one place or the other,
having eternal hell.
That a meeting like this, if that love
is shed abroad in your heart, it may
break your heart, it may cost you some
tears.
If you don't mean it, don't sing it.
We're not here for a performance.
It's not a concert.
But if you say, my heart is so
cold, well, love is a fire, the Word
of God says.
That's what it says.
Love is a fire.
If your heart is weak, love is strength.
Love is power.
So if you've got a sour spirit, a
grudging spirit, a bitter spirit, you're going to
stand and sing this chorus and you come
and kneel at this altar and put it
right with God.
Will you do that?
I'm not going to beg.
I wouldn't have to beg if I said
I've got the crown jewels here.
Will you come and take them?
Love is the answer to every problem you've
got, don't care what it is.
A prayerless heart, visionless eyes, powerless life.
It's there.
So let's stand and try to sing this
now.
Love of God, eternal love.
Fill me, fill
me.
Is that love shed abroad in your heart
tonight?
Have you got grudges, bitterness, unforgiving spirit?
My prayer is that this church, here in
Marshall, this Presbyterian church, or the Bible believers
church, or the Episcopalian church over there that
the folk came from the other day, that
people will say of these churches, see how
these Christians love one another.
It will work a miracle in this city
that you'll hold the power up with your
grudge and your bitterness and your selfishness.
As we sing it, quietly, you come and
kneel here and meet God in this issue.
Eternal love.
Maybe you owe God an apology.
You love the newspaper, you love the sports
page more than you love prayer.
You love other things so that you excuse
yourself not coming even to the prayer meeting
or something else.
Why don't you end it, get rid of
it, this beautiful Sabbath evening in a very
sympathetic atmosphere and say, Lord, end the wreckage
of my cold, loveless heart.
Fill me with that love.
That we'll ask no questions, that we'll carry
any burden, that we'll share any burden.
Come right now.
There's my last call.
You come now.
Bring it to the Lord.
God bless you.
I'm going to ask you to take your
hymn books and sing just once again that
beautiful hymn that's blessed us so many times
this week.
1-3-5, Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of
all nature.
If you want to stay here and pray,
stay.
Fairest Lord Jesus, 1-3-5.
I'd ought
to give you a smile from ear to
ear or hear to yonder, I don't know
which, but it ought to make us very,
very happy.
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer than all
the angels heaven can boast.
When we see him in all his glory,
in all his majesty, all the burdens we
had, all the problems they looked just childish
and foolish and empty and nothing, just the
same.
So we're going to sing that stanza again
and then the last one.
Jesus is, we
praise our Lord.
Let's not stop doing that.
Our Father, we thank you, we praise you.
Grant that we may grow in thy grace
and not just taste and quit.
Help us to love with our love.
In Jesus' name, Amen.