Lord, we are evidence of the wonderful hymn
that we have sung.
We know it's two centuries old, but your
love is longer than that, so longer than
that, older than that.
We bear the proof that Jesus, thou art
all compassion, and pure and bounded love thou
art.
When there was no arm long enough, and
no arm strong enough to lift us, we
thank you that your arm reached us.
As the old hymn says, from sinking sand
he lifted me, with tender hands he lifted
me, from shades of night to days of
light, O praise his name, he lifted me.
How blessed we are to be here tonight.
What if thy form we cannot see, we
know and feel that thou art here.
We're never sure when we come here who
will be here except yourself.
Circumstances often hinder our best desires.
We thank you that you never break your
promises.
You've no reason to.
We thank you for your amazing track record,
if we dare use that phrase, that never
in the history of the world have you
failed to keep a promise.
You've never let your people down, whether they
were individuals in prison or a million coming
out of Egypt, wandering through the wilderness.
You led them by a pillar of cloud
by day and a pillar of fire by
night.
We thank you for the pillar of fire
you've given us, your holy word.
A servant of yours in the old testament
said, your word is like a fire that
burns in my bones.
We thank you for this book.
We know it's not of human construction.
We know there's no alternative to Jesus Christ.
We know there's no alternative to your word.
It's not a book of imagination, it's a
book of inspiration and revelation.
Holy men of God, some wore very poor
clothing, some were shepherds, some were kings, some
were colossal intellects like the apostle Paul.
Others were very ordinary men, but they wrote
under divine inspiration, never dreaming that two thousand
years after, men and women all over the
world would be reading their writings.
I think just now, the day when Voltaire,
a contemporary of Letchley, said that within a
hundred years from the day he said it,
the bible would not be found except in
museums.
Now he's buried and gone to ashes.
But we thank you, your word is indeed
a mighty fortress.
Change and decay in all around we see,
but we thank you, your word is incorruptible.
You've already guaranteed it.
Thy word, O God, is forever and ever,
just like your kingdom is an eternal kingdom.
Just as our king cannot abdicate, his kingdom
cannot be destroyed, he cannot be overthrown, he
cannot die.
We thank you tonight that the head that
once was crowned with thorns is crowned with
glory now.
The cheek that once was smitten, the face
from which the hair was pulled, the face
into which some ungodly rascals spit, that face
is shining in eternity brighter than a noonday
sun.
We think of the revelation that Isaiah had
centuries before Jesus came, when he said he
saw him in all his majesty, in all
his glory, high and lifted up, and his
train filled the temple.
Even the cherubims used their wings to fill
to the blazing glory of the king on
his throne.
We come to worship you tonight.
We come to hear your voice through your
word, through the simple expression of the preacher.
We will be still and not about God.
We come from a world of turmoil.
Speak peace in this meeting, particularly to any
heart excessively troubled.
Speak a word of comfort to that person
who's been wounded and grieved.
We thank you there is a balm in
Gilead.
There is a physician there, beyond all human
physicians, a miracle-working God.
Whether you work visibly or invisibly, we care
not.
Again, we thank you for this word, which
is a lamp to our feet and a
light to our path.
We've sung, finish then thy new creation.
May this service help to finish that new
creation in us.
You have begun a good work in us.
You know we won't give up.
We may stumble and stagger.
At times maybe we rest too long, maybe
times we rush too quickly.
But we bless you for the Holy Spirit
who's given to us to be our guide.
Open your word, we pray, and open our
eyes, and then open our mouths to tell
what great things God has done for us.
We give you praise in Jesus' name.
All right, we're going to look at the
gospel as recorded by John in the one
of the best-known chapters, chapter 17.
Since I only live inside my own personality,
I don't know how you think, and I
guess there are some things which are very
common to us.
And one to me is that how often
I read the word of God and suddenly
it explodes.
I wonder why it didn't explode 50 years
ago, I was too dull.
Well, the fact was I knew so much
then that nobody could teach me, you see.
But a lot of that story, I've put
it in my head, so I've got it
in a nutshell, you see.
It will be correct to say that this
17th chapter actually begins in the 13th chapter.
In this 13th chapter of the gospel, this
same gospel, we move into a new dimension.
Jesus is speaking particularly to his disciples.
Now, before the feast of the Passover, when
Jesus knew that his hour was come, that
he should depart out of this world unto
the Father, having loved his own which were
in the world, he loved them unto the
end.
Now, then there's a gap, actually, and we
could really pick up the story here in
this 17th chapter.
I say the 13th chapter is an introduction
to the 17th.
I was reading that story in the 46th
of Ezekiel today.
You remember the man with a measuring line?
There's a river of water, take it as
a type of the Holy Spirit.
He measures a thousand cubits and there's waters
to the ankles.
He measures another thousand and there's water to
the knees.
I take that to mean this, or it's
my interpretation.
The river is a type of the Holy
Spirit.
If we've water to our ankles, we must
be walking in the Spirit.
We can't walk in the Spirit very long
before we get to our knees and start
praying in the Spirit.
That is, praying with the wisdom of the
Spirit and the authority of the Spirit.
Then the next measuring line, he measures a
thousand cubits and it's water to the loins.
Now, if you've been a wrestler, you know
that the strength is all here in the
loins.
Remember when Jacob wrestled with the Lord.
What did he get for wrestling?
You may say, I want to pray life.
You really do?
Really, sincerely want to pray life?
You mean you'd like the Lord to cripple
you so you have to pray?
What did Jacob get?
The Lord touched him where he was too
strong.
He hung on to the angel.
The angel hung on to him.
But then he wrestled until the angel touched
him in the hollow of his thigh, where
he was strongest.
And ever after that, he dragged the withered
leg.
I'm not saying this is the right thing
to do, but I do know people who've
actually ruined their physical lives, and some who
have actually ruined their business lives, because they
asked for a life of prayer, and God
took them at the word.
Sometimes this is called, has been called, the
longest prayer of Jesus.
If you do your homework and go through
the New Testament, you'll discover there are 19
prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, through the Bible, there are 650
prayers.
They'd make an interesting study, wouldn't they?
This is not the longest prayer of the
Lord Jesus.
I don't believe it is, anyhow.
It's the longest recorded prayer.
Someone said it's the most beautiful prayer.
I disagree.
I believe the longest prayer Jesus prayed was
in Gethsemane.
I believe it was the most awesome prayer.
So awesome that no one heard it.
These words speak Jesus, and lifted up his
eyes to heaven, and said, Father.
I heard Paul talking to somebody a few
days ago, and he said, my father.
He didn't know what a kick I got.
That was so lovely to me.
Sometimes my wife calls me the old man,
but I still love the old lady, even
if she does.
But when I thought my son said, I
heard someone say, my father.
Have you ever had to digest this, or
think of it?
I confess to you, I haven't.
I've read the Bible for 70 years, and
just this week this thought came to me,
meditating on this chapter, which shows how new
things can come.
That Jesus began his life without a father,
and the end of his life without a
father.
He started his life without a physical father,
and on the cross he said, my father,
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Think of all this amazing history between those
two awesome events.
These words speak Jesus, lifted his eyes to
heaven.
Now, we always close our eyes.
I don't know why.
I think I do know why.
Let me save myself there.
To save us from distraction.
I remember walking to Dr. Tozanovich one day.
He always came out with something that leveled
me to the ground anyhow.
One day he said, Len, remember, none of
us will go up to Jesus at the
judgment seat and look him straight in the
eye.
Not one of us.
You know, people talk as though we're going
to say, oh Jesus, oh I love you.
You'll be so terrified when you see him,
you'll will be speechless.
Oh, I've only seen one portrait of Jesus
as given in Revelation.
His eyes as, pardon me, his hair as
white as snow.
Mary Antoinette, you may remember in history, was
a young lady at 21 who got the
heart of the King of France, and she
manipulated him.
She was the most beautiful woman in the
world, they said, but she grieved him, and
he put her in a bath seal.
It's been destroyed now.
The walls were 30 feet thick nearly, I
guess, about the length of this room.
They put her there one night with this
fantastic hairstyle she had, this face that looked
as though it was enamel, those flawless blue
eyes.
They put her there in a cell.
Told her she would die in the morning
with the executioner's, you know, that horrid guillotine
chopping her head off.
They put her in that cell, smiling when
she went in, gorgeous.
She heard the bell at Notre Dame Cathedral
toll out night, hour after hour, five, six,
seven, and then at eight they took her
out to chop her head off.
But when they went in the prison cell,
that gorgeous young lady was a hundred years
old.
Her skin had all shrunken, her hair was
as white as snow.
Why?
Because she'd been living in terror.
These words spake Jesus, lifted his eyes to
heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.
I believe, I didn't check today, I'm working
on memory here, but I think this is
the seventh time that John mentions the hour.
Do you remember Jesus came to his, the
mother of Jesus came to him and said,
perform a miracle here at the marriage in
Cane of Gully?
He said, my hour is not yet come.
Remember the seventh chapter of John, he said
to his disciples, you go up to the
feast, I'm not going up, but three verses
after it says he went up.
He was saving time.
It's one thing that you young folk have
to beware of.
I think you should have a clock in
your room, in every room, in every college,
in every house, redeem the time.
He won't forgive you.
The Lord will forgive you, the clock won't.
People say faith can do anything.
If you believe that, I'd like to kneel
there and you pray over me and say,
Lord make Lenway, and it'll change him from
77 to 27.
Wouldn't I get up joyful?
I don't believe any of you have faith
to do that.
Faith can't do anything I want, it can
do anything God wants.
But God isn't there to manipulate it.
Mary Antoinette was a hundred years of age
in the morning.
She'd gone through hell and torment.
She'd heard that bell call.
Say, would you like somebody to bring you
a prophecy your grandmother made when you were,
say, six weeks old?
And she said, when you're 17 you're going
to have a major accident that will cripple
you.
When you're this, when you're that.
Would you like to read your future?
I believe Jesus had been reading his future
for many, many years.
As far as I remember, he's the only
person that came in the world with a
specific intention of dying.
His hair was as white as snow, his
feet like burnished brass.
That's why Dr. Thornton said none of us
were looking straight in the eye.
I was reciting to myself one of the
great hymns of Charles Wesley today.
Lo, he comes with crowds descending, ones for
favoured, sinners slain.
Lo, the tokens of his passion, though inglorious,
still he bears.
When he was resurrected, what did he do?
He showed them his hands and his feet.
How forsake?
Why in the world didn't he go down
the street and shout over the cemetery wall
and raise the dead as he said he
would do?
Why did he go to the river or
the lake and turn it into blood and
show his majestic power?
No, he showed them the tokens of his
passion.
Lo, the tokens of his passion, though inglorious,
still he bears.
Calls of endless exultation to his ransomed worshippers.
Hallelujah, Christ, the Son of God appears.
I say Jesus had been, oh, let me
say this.
What was the supreme desire of the Lord
Jesus?
Right.
What did he say?
Lo, I come to do thy will.
In the volume of the book it is
written of me.
He's saying here he wants to glorify the
Father.
Glorified?
Crucified.
I think he mentions glory about seven times
in this chapter.
Again, I didn't read them today.
The only way God can be glorified is
when he's crucified and all the things that
follow after, of course.
His supreme joy, he said, was I always
do those things that please the Father.
Never once in those 33 years did he
back off from the will of God.
He was never intimidated.
Go back for a minute here into the
seventh chapter of the gospel of Luke.
I'll go back, yes, okay, into Luke.
Let's go back into the second chapter.
Sorry.
His parents had been to the feast, remember,
one of the greatest feasts in the history
or in the record of that marvelous people,
the Jews.
Verse 43 says when they had fulfilled their
days they returned to and returned.
The child Jesus carried behind in Jerusalem and
Joseph and his mother knew of it.
That's the most incredible story in the New
Testament.
Incredible why?
That they'd been given the privilege of escorting
Jesus out of a womb right to the
cross, to the tomb, womb to the tomb,
and they lost him.
I thought there's a lot of bodyguard there
day and night.
When did they lose him?
They lost him immediately.
They came out of church, just like you
do Sunday morning.
You'll have forgotten the sermon before you've gotten
100 guys out of church, particularly if the
Cowboys are playing.
I think that's the greatest religion in Texas,
football.
They lost him.
Why?
They supposed he was in the company and
he wasn't there.
Remember the Resurrection morning?
She supposed it was the gardener.
She thought he wasn't there and he was
there.
They thought he was there and he wasn't
there.
Some people think if you build a gorgeous
church and put stained glass windows, have a
big pipe organ and all the trimmings that
the Lord is there.
Not so.
Not necessarily.
They supposed he had been in the company
and they sought him among their kinfolk and
they turned again.
After three days, you know you do pretty
good if you backslide and you make a
recovery in three days, you're doing pretty good.
Because don't backslide anyhow.
They lost him and rediscovered him in three
days.
Where?
In the temple.
I imagine they searched every room.
It was an enormous place.
One part was the upper room.
There were other rooms.
They sought him with despair and his mother
went to bed.
What do you think she did the first
night?
What would you do if you lost a
12-year-old boy?
Try yourself to sleep?
Think it would just be fine?
You think he'd do it the next night
too?
And the next night too?
He's not here.
Or maybe those men that you know come
every time down by the pool of Ceylon
selling goodly pearls.
They've taken him away.
Stolen him.
Finally they found him where?
I imagine Joseph pushing the door of the
sanctuary open saying, he's there.
Where?
Isn't it amazing a 12-year-old boy
is up on the front row asking the
wise heads questions?
It says hearing.
Does that imply he answered?
Hearing and asking them questions.
If you don't have a 12-year-old,
you haven't yet discovered how ignorant you are.
Oh heaven, you people need to pray for
extra wisdom.
I mean your boys don't have a computer.
You don't know what that means anyhow.
It's like buying your husband a sewing machine
for Christmas.
I would have loved to have been eavesdropping.
It's a lot of questions he was asking.
It would be very wonderful.
They'd be very wise questions, I'm sure of
that.
Do you think those wise heads ever forgot
that youngster?
Say that's the boy that came in the
temple that day and got us all puzzled
and embarrassed us.
I wish they'd lose him.
I felt like that about some church members
too.
But sorry we
lost the verse here.
Go from that incident to another incident just
as embarrassing, more embarrassing, in the fourth chapter.
Verse 16.
As his custom was, he went to the
synagogue on the sabbath day and stood up
to read.
Why?
That wasn't his job.
It was the rabbi or the chief rabbi
or one of the best of the priests.
They delivered up to him the book of
the prophecy Isaiah.
And he found a place.
He found a place.
I like that.
He wasn't going to read anything you know
that would not mean anything.
So he wrote from the 61st chapter.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me.
Do you wonder it closes the verse by
saying, and the eyes of everybody there were
upon him.
I don't know what his voice was like.
I'm sure it was majestic.
Maybe it was even at that day like
the sound of many waters.
What did he say?
The spirit of the Lord, verse 18, is
upon me because he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel to the poor.
Something they didn't do.
He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to
preach deliverance to the captives, recovering the sight
of the blind, and fed at liberty them
that are bruised.
You know that upset a lot of people
today.
Or they'd say in one pious phrase, Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
You mention healing, they think you're an idiot.
Well I happen to think that Jesus isn't
crippled.
I happen to believe that Jesus Christ has
more power and authority now than he had
in the days of his flesh.
And he had dominion over death, he had
dominion over lunatics, he had dominion over palsy.
Do you wonder he embarrassed them?
Oh yes, they said very piously, you know,
they read the 35th chapter of Isaiah, when
he's come the eyes of the blind shall
be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped,
then shall a lame man leap at the
heart, the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
He didn't read it, he did it.
So he embarrassed them.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me.
You know there's no greater thing this side
of eternity.
I'm sure Paul, you believe in that too.
When a man can say the spirit of
the Lord is upon me.
I won't give you two hoots for all
the decrees the preachers have.
You can have 32 and still be frozen
anyhow.
I'm glad money can't buy this, because no
man can lay hands on you and give
you the spiritual wisdom.
I don't believe so.
You can't buy it, you can't get it
by climbing the intellectual ladder of education, getting
some great degree in a university.
God almighty doesn't happen to read diplomas, and
I'm not facetious in saying that.
If you're going to be a preacher, covet
this, whatever it costs you.
If you have to fast one day a
week, if you have to miss two nights
in prayer, so what?
When I was in my 20s, many times
I wouldn't go to bed for three or
four days.
Stayed in the church after Sunday night service.
Went to church Saturday night, had a street
meeting till midnight.
Went to the church, wrapped up in a
cloth and lay at the side of my
books, my library there, to wait on God.
Some of you have read, I'm sure, old
Dr. Jowett.
He was a good Englishman, of course, but
anyhow.
He coined a phrase I've thought of thousands
of times, you have to bleed to bless.
You have to bleed to bless.
If the Son of God couldn't be a
real true blessing, as God wanted, without bleeding,
how can we?
He came to do the will of his
Father.
A century back in Scotland, there were three
famous brothers.
Andrew, I think one was Andrew Bonner, and
the other was, what was he called?
Horatio Bonner.
He wrote this lovely hymn, Go labour on,
spend and be spent, thy joy to do
the Father's will.
It is the way the Master went, should
not the servant tread it still.
Toil in honour, in thy toil rejoice, for
toil comes rest, for exile home.
Soon shalt thou hear the bridegroom's voice, that
in thy pride behold I come.
Men die in darkness at your side.
I don't care if you live at work
in one of the most fashionable up-to
-date computers.
The man across the other computer's dying without
God and without hope, as much as the
heathen up the Amazon.
It's much more sterling to see stark naked
people, isn't it?
Dying in some rotten, uncivilized country.
People in the world offer story, they're dying
without God tonight.
They can't spend their million.
People in Washington, trying to solve problems for
the world, can't solve their own marriage problems,
can't solve their own drinking problems, can't solve
their own gambling problems.
We're led by idiots.
This world will never be put straight till
the Prince of Peace does it, you can
be sure about that.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because he hath anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, recovering the
sight of the blind, to set at liberty
them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable
years of the Lord.
And he closed the book and gave it
to the minister and sat down, and the
eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened
upon him.
I don't wonder.
Well, if the ungodly people said he speaks
with authority and not as the scribes.
Preaching can be as empty as beating a
drum, and that needs authority.
Define it, if you like, as unction.
Define it, if you like, as anointing.
As the old teller preacher says, I don't
know what it is when I know when
it isn't.
When I don't have it, he said, I
know when I haven't had it.
It's that mysterious something that God is pleased
to put upon those who will travel and
wait for that anointing, without which preaching has
no power and has no authority.
I'm going to read this again.
The Spirit of the Lord.
No, I'll read a verse of 17, chapter
1.
Chapter 17, verse 1.
These words spake Jesus and lifted his eyes
to heaven and said, Father.
I say, when I heard my son Paul
say the other day to someone he didn't
know I was listening, say, my father, I
felt such a joy.
I know what kind of a son I
have.
An anointed man, a preacher, a pioneer in
one of the most difficult fields in South
America.
Doesn't look so old, but he's been there
about 25 years anyhow.
Can you remember Isaiah looking up into the
face of God and saying, Father?
Can you remember Jeremiah looking up into the
face of God and saying, Father?
Or any of those stalwart giants we think
of?
Take all the men, if you like, in
Hebrews.
Any one of them ever called the creator
of heaven and earth?
Isaiah doesn't do it.
He calls him the high and lofty one
who inhabited eternity.
He sits upon the circle of the earth.
He falls speechless before God.
Here Jesus has come through this long, long
period.
I'll suggest to you tonight, disagree if you
like, that I took to this point Jesus
had been in training for what's coming.
As I say, would you like to read
your own biography before you die, knowing it
was accurate?
That little fellow who sat there puzzling the
high priest and the distinguished people there was
possibly like some of the Jews that there
are in New York today, and I have
great admiration for them.
There's a sect there, I don't know what
you call them, Hathidic, is it something?
They wear flat hats and they've big black
curls coming down to their shoulders, and I
understand every one of those men can recite
the first five books of Moses, isn't that
right?
Oh, Hathidic, thank you.
Now you got that straight.
I don't know what it was, but it's
straight.
Can you imagine Jesus reciting all those books?
Can you imagine him reading again about the
virgin should bear a child?
Can you think of him reading through Isaiah
53?
Who hath believed our report?
To whom is the arm of the Lord
revealed?
He should grow up before him as a
tender plant.
He should be like a root out of
a dry ground.
There's no beauty about that.
There's no beauty that we should desire of
him.
I say, Jesus up to this time has
been preparing for this awesome thing that lies
ahead of him.
We can break this chapter up into many
areas, I don't want to do that.
I want you to notice, if you will,
when you read through John, I think about
33 times he mentions the world.
You know, one of the tragedies of the
world is, today is, the early church, the
world couldn't get on with the early church,
it can get on with us, we're not
a four-minute sign, we don't cause it
any trouble.
If we displayed some of the power of
God, they might take some notice, but we
don't do that.
Out is all theology, it's all paperwork.
I looked up these things today, just to
go quickly through them.
In 1 Corinthians and chapter 1, the apostle
Paul talks about the wisdom of this world,
which is foolishness with God.
Do you think God's interested that we've got
a thing floating up in the sky right
now, a machine full of technology, and it
can spy on the Russians?
Do you think that troubles God in eternity?
The wisdom of the world is foolishness with
God.
Friendship with the world is enmity against God.
How friendly are you with the world?
What secret society do you belong?
Some of you guys, Masons?
I actually used to kick the Masons around
a lot.
I clashed with one in Ireland, he said,
it's not a religion.
I said, well, why do you go to
a temple?
They meet in a temple.
Who meets in a temple except the thought
they go to worship?
The wisdom of the world is foolishness with
God.
The friendship with the world is enmity with
God.
1 Corinthians 7 says, the fashion of this
world passeth away.
John, in his first epistle, says, if you
love the world, the love of the Father
isn't in you.
You forfeit God's love as soon as you
get fascinated with the love of the world.
I read an article recently where the preacher
was saying, you know, so many people lose
their first love.
That's not what the Bible says.
The Bible says, thou hast left thy first
love.
You don't lose it.
I got an old coat.
It was about 20 years.
I lost it this week.
Boy, was I upset.
It's out of style, but it's good to
me.
It keeps me warm.
I was glad when I found it.
I lost it.
But the address to the people there in
the book of the Revelation is to people
who left their first love.
Something else got them, and they gave all
their consuming passion and desire to that one
thing that they got hold of again.
Love not the world, neither the things of
the world.
It's all about the lust of the flesh,
and the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life, which all belong to this
world.
What I'm wanting to say now, really, which
has been in the back of my mind
for days.
I haven't got hold of it as I
should.
I'm sure of that.
Chapter 13, Jesus introduces his disciples to the
Lord's Supper, and immediately introduces them to the
washing of feet, which has gone out with
most people.
That's chapter 13.
Chapter 14, in verse 26, he mentions there
for the first time the comforter, which is
the Holy Ghost.
That always reminds me of my dear old
teacher in England, old Samuel Chadwick.
He said, remember, he's the comforter, but he
is not.
These are his exact words, because I heard
them say so many times, and I've quoted
them many times since myself.
The comforter, which is the comforter, the Holy
Spirit is not a nursing mother to spiritualistic
children.
That word comforter in English, in Latin, is
comfortis, com-fortis, with strength.
What did Jesus say?
When the Holy Ghost has come, what?
You shall receive what?
Power.
In other words, you shall receive strength, the
Holy Ghost coming upon you.
Back in the 1600s, one of the giant
stalwarts of that day, that was the period
of Puritans, like John Owen and all that
crowd.
John Owen was maybe the greatest of them.
He said, the sin of men in the
Old Testament was against the Father.
The sin of men in the New Testament
was against the Son.
Well, I think we can say nowadays, the
sin of the Church very much is against
the Father, the sin of the Church against
the Son, and the sin of the Church
against most churches is the Holy Ghost.
They want the Holy Ghost to take and
lay a track, and he'll run down their
theology, but he says, forget it.
Now, this may be a pretty stiff yardstick.
You can beat me up next time you
come back.
I'm going to say it anyhow.
I believe every church is either supernatural or
superficial.
I don't believe in any middle ground.
I'm not interested merely in healings.
I've seen many, and I thank God for
them.
I've seen blind people get their sight, seen
people leap out of chairs.
It's not that I've not any compassion for
that, but the least emphasis that's put on
the Holy Ghost today is that when he
has come, he convinces the world of sin.
The Church is comfortable with sin.
I hear of churches now that have special
classes for young couples or young divorced couples.
Fifty years ago, you never heard of a
divorcee in the Christian Church.
You never heard of marriage counseling in the
Christian Church.
The meetings were so breathed upon by the
Holy Ghost, I dreaded to go in some
meetings even when I was 14 or 15
years of age.
In those days, if you went to a
healthy, spiritually healthy church, if it was a
holiness church, preaching the baptism of the Spirit
as purity, sanctification, or whether it was Pentecostal,
preaching the baptism of the Holy Ghost with
gifts.
Whenever he went to either of those churches,
Sunday night, if the service started at six
o'clock at half past five, the altar
was filled with people praying the power down.
We had one old boy took his coat
off.
Boy, did he shout as though the Lord
was dead.
Come down tonight.
I used to tremble.
I was scared.
I'm not facetious.
I imagine the Lord would come down.
I'd be terrified if he came.
You hear people saying, Church, Lord, you're welcome.
If the Holy Ghost came to some churches,
there'd be a stampede to the door.
David Wilson was telling me not long ago,
he said, Len, you know, I know God
has given me certain gifts, but they work
more in the open air, in the street
meetings, and in churches.
Last year, in New York, he pointed to
a big fellow, 350 pounds.
Boy, you better be watch what you're saying.
He said, you're running away from your wife,
and he ran away from David up the
street.
Came back 15 minutes after with his, well,
I won't say anything about the wife, but
anyhow, he was about 350 pounds, and she
was a little less.
And all the pickaninnies were running after that,
there were about five or six children coming.
He said, I was running away from my
wife.
I've been living an evil life.
When he went this year, that man met
him and told him how Christ transformed his
life.
Pointing out people in the crowd like that
doesn't make church too comfortable, does it?
We'd rather go to the church.
You know what it says as you enter
the door?
It says everybody keeps silent, and they sure
do.
If you said amen, they'd turn the fire
hose on you.
So, John 13 is, well, let's say it
again, repetition's good.
John 13 is where he introduces his disciples
to the Lord's supper, then he washes their
feet.
14, he says, let not your heart be
troubled.
Verse 26, he tells them about the Holy
Ghost coming, come fortish with power.
Chapter 15, the incomparable story of the vine.
Chapter 16, the marvelous introduction of the Holy
Spirit.
Chapter 17, this marvelous, marvelous prayer.
Then you go into chapter 18.
I will say this is disastrous.
I said, Jesus has been in training up
to this point for the most horrendous experiences
that a human being could ever know.
When Jesus spoke these words, let me go
back a minute and think of this.
So many people say that Jesus spoke this
17th prayer, this prayer in the 17th chapter,
with a sense of gloom and doom.
I don't believe that for a moment.
I believe he said it joyously.
Why?
Well, look at the last verse of chapter
16.
These things I have spoken unto you, that
in me ye might have peace.
In the world ye shall have tribulation, but
be of good cheer.
I've overcome the world.
Do you think a man's going into gloom
when he knows he's already conquered the world?
Hasn't he prayed in the 15th chapter that
they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves?
Doesn't he say in this 17th chapter, verse
13, now I come to thee, that these
things I speak in the world, that they
may have my joy, my joy to do
the Father's will.
Let that joy dominate your life.
He's not talking about happiness.
Happiness and joy are as different as night
and day.
Happiness depends on happenings.
Everything happens to go right, you go up
with them.
Everything happens to go down, you go down
with them.
But joy is a stable thing.
It does not depend on happenstance, happenings.
You know, usually when the king dies, he
disposes of a cattle to this person, and
horses to that person, and money to that.
What did Jesus, the king of kings, what
did he leave?
Well, it says, he says, am I peace
I leave with you.
Give them peace that passeth all understanding, and
if you've got it right, all misunderstanding.
Not just peace, my peace, the peace that
dominated him when they tried to push him
over the cliff.
The peace that dominates him now when he
goes into Gethsemane.
They may have my joy.
And again, in the 15th chapter, he has
prayed that their joy may be full.
But we want it on the platter, don't
we?
What does the Lord give us?
He gives beauty for what?
What does ashes mean?
Something's being burned to a cinder.
Maybe that's why we're afraid to be consumed,
because that God will reduce us to ashes.
All our plans.
When God's fire upon the altar of my
heart was set ablaze, my ambitions, plans and
wishes at my feet in ashes lay.
That's an old hymn.
But you know, God can do more with
the ashes than you can do with the
whole thing.
They may have my joy.
A joy unspeakable and full of glory.
A joy that can let him look from
the cross, all the ignominy of the cross.
A peace that passes understanding, where misunderstanding too,
when he's there on the cross.
But this is the gateway.
The most horrible thing is there in this
18th chapter.
We go from the sublime, majestic.
You know, I'm wondering why, because of a
certain book I read not too long ago,
I'm wondering why no one ever emphasized the
moral majesty of Jesus.
In that seventh chapter of John, he walks
into a crowded place.
They're all murmuring because of him.
That's him.
He raises the dead.
That's him.
He does miracles.
That's the man.
He torments people with his teaching.
The Pharisees are ashamed of him and embarrassed.
So are the Sadducees, so are the priests.
And yet he stands up in the middle
of a feast with more than a thousand
people in the temple, clothed on in moral
majesty.
He went and read in the scripture there.
Well, when he was even 12, he read
there and listened on the front seat.
I believe there he had a moral majesty.
In other words, he had a God-created
character.
In the seventh chapter, with all the murmuring
there, he's not embarrassed to say, you poured
out water every day.
And he stands in the place where the
priest has stood, and he says, listen, you
come unto me.
I am the water of life.
He said he is the bread of life.
He said he is the light of life.
Do you think they took that sitting down
kind of thing?
Who does he think he is?
He is the bread of life.
If you eat of him, you have life.
He is the water of life.
If you drink of him, you don't thirst
again.
He is the light of life that will
guide you.
He makes all these stupendous claims of things
that we can't live without.
We can't live without bread.
We can't live without water.
We can't live without life.
And we can't live without God.
Without Christ, you can exist.
And again, there are no alternatives to Jesus
Christ.
The only wise thing I know H.
G.
Wells said was that there's a God-shaped
blank in all of us.
I think he borrowed that, anyhow, from Augustine.
Because Augustine says we'll never be satisfied until
God takes up his abode in us.
You and I are supposed to be the...
that God is supposed to be in residency
in our beings.
I didn't read the verse.
I'm going to read it here.
John 18, verse 1.
When Jesus had spoken these words, words of
wisdom and comfort, in the 17th chapter, he
went forth with his disciples over the book
Kidron, where there was a garden into which
he entered, and his disciples, and Judas also,
which betrayed him, knew the place.
For Jesus often resorted there.
If you want to know the prayer life
of Jesus, you'd have to read this account
of the gospel given by Luke.
Luke says he was in the river being
baptized, and as he was praying, the Spirit
descended upon him.
Luke says he was on the Mount of
Transfiguration, and as he prayed...
If you want a new personality, I'll tell
you this, the only way to get it
is to have a prayer life.
Because you can't pray and be unclean.
You can't pray and have a grudge.
You can't pray and have bitterness.
We blame the devil so often.
Most of us sabotage our own prayers.
Who shall ascend into the hill of the
Lord?
The man that has received the decree?
The man that wears his collar backwards?
The man that has priestly garments?
The man that stands behind the normate desk
with stained glass windows?
No!
A man can be ploughed a field and
ascend into the hill of the Lord.
He that hath clean hands, that's our relationship
with the world, and a pure heart, our
relationship to God.
Again, those old Methodists used to sing a
great hymn, No Condemnation, Now I Dread.
Oh, I was going to read a verse
from here.
I've forgotten it now.
I don't know whether Charles Wesley based this
on this John 17, but I like it.
He says, Arise my soul, arise, shake off
thy guilty fears.
The bleeding sacrifice in my behalf appears.
Before the throne my surety stands and my
name is written on his hands.
He ever lives above for me to intercede.
He's on the way to do this through
this garden.
His all-redeeming love is precious blood to
plead.
His blood atones for all our race and
sprinkles now the throne of grace.
Five bleeding wounds he bears, two in his
feet, two in his hands, one in his
side.
Five bleeding wounds he bears, received on Calvary.
They poor effectual prayers, they strongly plead for
me.
Forgive him, O forgive, he cries.
Now let that ransomed sinner die.
The father hears him pray, his dear anointed
son.
He cannot turn away the presence of his
son.
His spirit answers to the blood and tells
me I'm born of God.
My God is reconciled, his pardoning voice I
hear.
He owns me for his child, I can
no longer fear.
With confidence I now draw nigh and Father,
Abba, Father cry.
Made possible only because of this.
Jesus who knew, and the Judas also which
betrayed him, knew the place.
For Jesus often resorted him.
I'm going to suggest to you, disagree if
you like, that Jesus had to approximate up
to this horrible experience he was going to
have in Gethsemane.
Again I say you'd have to read Luke
to find the prayer life of Jesus.
He's praying as the dove descends upon him.
He's praying there on the Mount of Transfiguration.
Come on, in a quick, don't answer audibly.
How many people were on the Mount of
Transfiguration?
Six, if you've got it.
Six.
Peter, James, John, Jesus, Moses, and who else?
Elijah.
Who did God speak to?
Pardon?
No.
To only one person, Jesus.
We say a thing, a lovely American hymn,
blessed assurance.
You know, God gave assurance to Jesus in
this pilgrimage, in all the crisis periods.
And there on the Mount of Transfiguration, the
Father answers from heaven, or calls from heaven,
this is my beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased.
If I die conscious, I don't know whether
I will or not, but if I die
conscious, I'd like to die conscious of the
Lord saying to me, this is my beloved
Son.
I have a very dear friend who says,
his one ambition in life is to hear
God say, you are my beloved Son.
Not a son, but the Son.
In other words, you're a chosen vessel unto
me.
How many miniature Gethsemanes do you think there
have been?
Jesus has prayed for his disciples, he's prayed
for himself in the first five verses of
the 17th chapter.
Verses 1 to 5, he prays for himself.
Verses 6 to 19, he prays for his
disciples.
Verses 20 to 26, he prays for the
world.
Read it and emphasize how many times as
you read it, I have kept them in
thy name.
He has prayed for unification for them.
That's about the most common thing used out
of this chapter.
Everybody see that Jesus prayed that we all
may be one, he did not.
Not in the way you think of it.
What did he pray for?
That they may be one, even as we
are one.
It's vertical before it's horizontal.
Charles Wesley, again, gave us that lovely children's
hymn.
I used to sing it to my mother's
knee every night till I was about 10
years of age.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, look upon a
little child.
Think, I guess, from, is it 2 Peter,
where it says, Peter talks about the gentleness
and meekness of Christ.
You see, in these days we think gentleness
means softness, and we think meekness is weakness.
The very opposite.
Jesus was meek, but he got angry.
Was he soft?
I'll tell you how soft he was.
He said to some people that were usurping
authority in his father's house, you're a bunch
of hypocrites, that's not very loving language, is
it?
He loved his own.
I don't ever read where he loved Pharisees
or publicans.
He loved sinners.
We're supposed to love everybody these days.
Only do we throw your Bible over the
wall and accept some church dogma, but that's
not consistent with this.
He finishes the 17th chapter, I've declared unto
them thy name and will declare it, that
the love wherewith thou hast loved me may
be in them and I in them.
And later he said he loved them right
to the end.
So now he's going into Gethsemane.
I can't recall the hymn, but I remember
we used to sing a hymn in England,
Go to dark Gethsemane, ye who feel the
tempest's power, your Redeemer's conflict see, and watch
with him one little hour.
Turn now from the world away, learn from
Jesus Christ to pray.
I guess you heard hundreds of times people
say, I remember the day I was saved.
If you're a Nazarene of the old holiness
folk, you'd hear them say, I remember the
day I was sanctified.
If you go to a Pentecostal church, you'll
hear them say, I remember the day that
I was born again.
I remember the day I was filled with
the Holy Ghost.
I've never yet heard the person say, I
remember the time when I went to Gethsemane.
You ever heard of Gethsemane?
In the heyday of his preaching in the
Welsh Revival, and he was only 23 years
of age.
Evan Roberts, who was an oversized man for
Welshmen.
They're a small race and then, but he
was a kind of a giant.
12 or 1300 people there, and suddenly he
crumbled.
You know, like you see those, I'm not
facetious here, you see them dynamite those buildings,
and they go down like that.
And he just fell flat, and he groaned,
and he roared on the platform in front
of 12 or 1300 people.
Somebody was going to lay hands on him,
and somebody wise enough said, the Spirit is
upon him, leave him.
He's having a Gethsemane.
It's an awful price to pay, but God
gives beauty for ashes, the oil of joy
for mourning.
We want the joy, but not the mourning.
The garments of praise, but not the spirit
of heaviness.
Jesus has prayed this awesome prayer, magnificent prayer,
majestic prayer, call it what you will.
Again, he's clothed in moral majesty.
He has a sense of unity with his
Father, the creator of the universe.
But he's going into the most horrendous, unimaginable
horror the world has ever known, by himself.
Using a hymn, earthly friends may fail and
leave us, one day soothe, the next day
grieve us, but our Lord will ne'er
deceive us.
He's going into that mockery, that foolish, burlesque
of a trial that he had before Pilate,
and before a Roman king.
He doesn't tremble.
What is he girded with?
He's girded with the righteousness of God, he's
girded with the fact, this is the way
that God has chosen for me.
Again, as Bonner says, this is the way
the master went, should not the servant tread
it still?
You know, most of us, if we're honest,
we want to go to heaven on easy
street.
Don't overburden me, don't talk to me about
sacrifice, don't talk to me about fasting, don't
talk to me about anguish.
He's going into this horrible experience of Gethsemane.
Read about it when you go home, read
the 22nd chapter, pardon me, the 22nd psalm.
He talks about the dogs are waiting for
him, and the lions are waiting for him,
the devourers are there, the unimaginable darkness that
there is there.
All thy billows have gone over me, if
I can use it, for I don't know
any better language, from that nerve-wracking experience,
that torturous experience on his body, his mind,
and his spirit.
He goes from there to something even darker,
it would seem to me.
What's darker than Gethsemane?
Well, the judgment hall again, he's diverted, he's
alone, then he goes on his way to
the cross.
I've read that over and over again this
afternoon, in Hebrews 13, 13.
Let us go with him outside the camp,
bearing his reproach.
Here he is, the holy one of God,
who's of holier eyes than to behold iniquity.
He's given it back to the smiters.
All the horror of Isaiah 53 becomes real.
We're told that by one man's sin, disobedience,
sin entered into the world, and because of
that, every graveside testifies to the sin of
Adam.
Every broken life, every jail that's filled with
wicked men tonight, every broken home testifies to
the sin of Adam.
But then we're told by one man's obedience,
many were made righteous.
You have this almost word-perfect picture of
Jesus there in Isaiah 53.
He's wounded for our transgressions and bruised for
our iniquities.
I've often wondered why the disciples didn't leave
the judgment hall behind him, cheering him.
Master, you told us this was coming up.
You said that wicked men will put you
to death.
Time and again you've read Isaiah 53.
He goes down from a place of judgment
to where?
To Golgotha.
He was always an outsider, so then he
was born outside of marriage.
When he becomes a young aggressive young man,
he's put outside of his own family.
They call him a madman.
That's how then your family do that.
Later they put him out of the synagogue.
Usually a great American evangelist, not oftenly quoted,
called Alexander.
His wife was English.
She wrote a hymn, a children's hymn.
We sang almost every week at home when
I was a child.
There is a green hill far away, without
a city wall.
I wonder why it was without a city
wall?
Which means of course outside the city wall,
where our dear Lord was crucified.
There is staggering under his cross, and he's
going to where?
Well, whether you like it or not, I'll
tell you where he's going.
He's going to the sewage farm.
Read Leviticus, read Numbers.
Where was he going?
He's going outside of the city.
Why?
Because all malefactors go outside of the city.
All lepers go outside of the city.
All the unclean go out of the city.
All the filth of the city is poured
out there.
And there he goes.
Nobody applauding, nobody cheering him, then scorning him
all the way down on his shoulder.
They shut out the lip.
They laughed him to scorn.
And God is silent.
This is his beloved son.
And then mystery of mystery says it pleased
the Lord.
It pleased the Lord to bruise him.
The Lord has laid on him every sin
you or anyone else ever committed.
Some people make a lot of the cross
of Jesus.
It wasn't the cross that killed him.
Surely it was our sin that killed him.
There used to be a teacher in Edinburgh
University, New College Edinburgh, years ago, a century
ago.
He was a Scotsman that had a fantastic
knowledge of Hebrew.
He taught Hebrew every morning to those university
students in the divinity class.
And he always used a Hebrew text Bible
as his textbook.
He went through Isaiah 53.
And one morning he stopped in his lecture
and he said, listen to this.
He quoted it in Hebrew, then in English.
His soul, not his body.
His soul was made an offering for sin.
I'll tell you what he said, how he
interpreted that.
They said, gentlemen, it was damnation and he
took it joyfully.
He takes you to pangs of hell.
Why?
I say he was born without a father.
He finished without a father.
Why?
Because he says, my God, why has thou
forsaken me?
I can understand Peter.
He was always vacillating.
I can understand Thomas.
He was always doubting.
I understand the frailty of God.
Here I am in a crisis moment.
If ever I needed you, it's now and
I'm deserted.
It was black as hell.
This hymn book, we might try and sing
it.
We never sung it.
Man of sorrows, what a name for the
son of God who came.
Ruined sinners to reclaim.
Hallelujah, what a savior.
Bearing shame, bearing
shame and scoffing rude.
In my place condemned he stood.
I've ever figured those three crosses here, the
central cross with Jesus, here's a thief and
there's a thief, and all the crowd are
going there laughing, mocking, scorning, and Barabbas comes
up and says to a buddy, you know,
I should have been on that cross.
That was mine.
That miracle working fellow took it.
Oh, what a marvelous man.
I'm glad he took my place.
I'd be writhing in agony.
When at last you see him writhing in
agony for you.
How in God's name do you get through
your prayers without breaking down at times?
I could have wept the whole day today.
Of course, modern preachers don't.
It's too embarrassing.
It's too infringing to preach.
You want to weep when you preach.
Don't get a hell of beans.
The man who does, preacher who doesn't weep
for the lost should expect people to come
and expect people to come and weep for
their sins.
The reason they don't come and weep for
their sins, he never weeps for them, that's
why.
The billows of hell broke over him.
Before he gets to Gethsemane, he can stink
the horrid, wretched drainage.
The drainage of the city went there.
All the corpses went there.
All the lepers only were allowed to walk
there.
Anybody deranged had to go and be put
outside the city wall.
Everybody they thought was unclean and undesirable was
put there.
Come on now.
You say that's a horrible figure.
Well, friend, let me tell you something.
You may be a church member.
You may have paid your dues and your
tithes, and heaven knows that will get you
to heaven, in some churches.
But honestly, let me say this.
If you're not born again of the Spirit
of God, you go to hell anyhow.
And it will be the misery of that
place I've described a million times worse.
When some of these proud preachers get there
and discover the girl they passed a hundred
times at the end of the block while
they were preaching salvation, she's selling a body
every Sunday.
All the people in the tavern, within a
few hundred yards of this building, just yesterday
I think it was, a precious man, 56
years of age, shot himself.
I wondered why.
I hadn't knocked at his door, I admit
that.
I wonder if anybody ever did.
I think the greatest tragedy in the world
tonight is not Ethiopia, as terrible as it
is.
It's not Afghanistan being raped and devoured every
day by the wicked vile Russians.
Disagree with me, if you like.
I believe the greatest tragedy in the world
tonight, I
believe the greatest tragedy in the world tonight
is a sick church in a dying world.
We dare to bear his name, and we're
destitute of power.
We've all the blessed excuse the modernists and
liberals have given us for not believing in
the Old Testament, for not believing the miracle
of working power.
I've said many times to Dale and Beth
and a few others, I'd be happy to
go to heaven tonight.
I've preached over 60 years, and I've had
some wonderful meetings, but I want to see
God do something in this garden valley ever
before I die.
The devil kicked us around like a football.
We were going to have a great church,
we got a great building down the road
there, and it dissolved somehow.
We had another great group up the road,
and they've gone.
What are we going to do, run away
and let the devil have the whole place?
I remember the first time I heard people
in the Christian Missionary Alliance Church singing a
hymn, Oh to be like the blessed Redeemer.
It made me think, I wonder if I
really wanted to be like him.
He was never popular, he was never very
well accepted.
Do I?
Come on, do you really want an intimacy
with God that he shows you the world
as he sees it?
I preached in a big church in Canada
a few years ago.
Two lovely girls, they're school teachers in England,
they're actually Welsh.
One of them came forward, she's a brilliant
scholar, I think he studied in some universities,
Oxford and wherefore.
She came to the altar and she wept
and wept.
I mentioned her name, I knew her daddy
well, I've known her for some years.
And when she got saved, she said, Please
God, she
said, Please God, will you show me the
world as you see it?
I said, do you really mean that?
Do you like the Lord to cut the
world into, like sometimes you take your rosy
cheek, the apple cut it into and find
it's all rotten and corrupt inside?
Would you like God to show you the
fallacy and hypocrisy of modern Christianity?
Would you like God to expose to you
the power and awesomeness of a devil, devilish
colony called Russia?
Here Jesus is lonely.
That's hard to take, isn't it?
It's harder to take when in a state
of anguish and a state of confusion, when
you feel the whole world is breaking to
pieces and God isn't doing much about it.
I think the most awesome thing in the
world tonight is for a person to dare
to say they're a Christian.
It makes me tremble, I'll tell you that.
Do you want to know the key to
preaching?
It's in the words of Jesus that we
read tonight, Isaiah 61, in which it says,
For this man will I look to him
that trembleth at my word.
I don't tremble at crowds.
I used to, my knees used to knock.
I don't tremble at crowds anymore.
I don't even tremble at the power of
the devil, I don't think.
But I tremble at the awesomeness of delivering
God's word.
Yes.
I believe in every meeting where God is,
somebody is born again.
By the same token, I believe in every
meeting where God is, somebody dies when they
reject the message of salvation.
You could go to hell from this meeting
where God is.
Jesus had his miniature Gethsemane, I'm sure, before
that final Gethsemane.
He had his repeated audiences with the Father.
I think maybe he even had miniature, as
it were, transfigurations where he communicated with the
Father and saw the glory and holiness of
God.
Do you wonder he was as strong as
a lion, that he didn't tremble before kings,
he didn't tremble before rulers, he didn't tremble
before the antagonism of hell when hell broke
loose on him?
He says, this is the will of God
that I'm here.
For this hour, he says, I came into
the world.
Everything up to here has been preliminary.
Everything's been an exercise in my spiritual life.
And now, Father, I'm ready.
I believe some of you can have a
death when you're in a class meeting.
You make a decision about a certain thing,
but there comes a time when you have
to make the final decision to die.
Die to your career.
Maybe die to a courtship.
Die to your plans.
And there's a moment when you die, and
then comes the awful revelation as to why
God has caused you to be saved and
filled with his Spirit.
Not just to be easy to live with,
though we should be easy to live with
if we're filled with the Spirit.
I'm sure Jesus was easy to live with.
Go labor on, spend and be spent, thy
joy to do the master's will.
It is the way the master ensured not
the servant tread it still.
Toil on, and in thy toil rejoice, for
toil comes rest, for exile home.
Soon shalt thou hear the bridegroom's voice, the
midnight cry of it.
But before then, men die in darkness at
your side.
I don't know why this came to me,
but in the 1930s, 1932, if I remember
correctly, I met Norman Grubb for the first
time.
He was the son-in-law of C
.T. Stead, that amazing Englishman.
They had a school in England.
Later they had, and I think they still
have a school at Washington, just outside of
Philadelphia there.
I was wondering why today they turned out
men of such tremendous spiritual quality.
Seemed every man that went out of the
classroom was a pioneer.
I think the first book that moved Paul
was Fenton Hall's Life, written by C.T.
Stead, written by Norman Grubb.
They remained, they produced such a race of
spiritual giants at that time.
Constantly they had fresh information.
People were coming in from around the world.
They didn't used to go out loaded with
cameras and all the stuff they take today.
They didn't go for a weekend giving tracts
out in Guatemala and think they'd done God's
service.
The original missionaries went out on a one
-way ticket, no return trip.
They had men again like Fenton Hall.
A little family in Ireland where a lady
has two little shops.
One she runs to pay the family bills
and the other one she runs to raise
children for missions.
She has four children on the mission fees.
She's paid all their fees and supported them
all their lives.
Do you know what the reason was?
Because they got sunk in the Word of
God.
Every morning, though they were busy people, every
morning their breakfast was eight o'clock.
It was nine o'clock.
They had an open service every morning in
the year.
Met around the Word of God from nine
o'clock till twelve.
I was privileged to share some of those
mornings.
I felt I could hide down the mouse
hole sometimes when I heard those mature missionaries.
Not just telling of their achievements in going
and pioneering in fields where it seemed as
hot as hell and as dark as hell,
but their intimacy with God.
And they would tell you the only reason
that they went as they did and carried
the load they did was because they had
such a revelation of the awesomeness of God
and of eternity.
The hour has come.
All the years of preparation, all the years
of opposition by the devil, all the opposition
by demons, all the opposition by the church,
and he's come to the final hour.
He said glorify your son.
As the father glorifies the son, the son
glorifies the father.
I know it's a dark way, it's a
bloody way, it's a lonely way, it's a
hard way.
I don't know, you can't imagine it, I
can't.
The Lord has laid on him, that precious
sheep of God, the Lord has laid on
him the iniquity of us all.
Wounded so I could be healed.
Rejected so I could be accepted.
Cast away and forgotten by the father for
a while so you and I could enter
the kingdom of heaven.
And yet we talk about our dry days,
our hard days.
I'm determined this year more than ever to
know Jesus Christ in a new way that
I haven't known him before.
I want to discover his majesty.
I want to discover that glory he had
with the father.
If I could be bathed with tears, so
what?
It's a short journey from here to eternity.
Once you get through, it's an awful long
way after that.
When we get inside the gate, we wish
we'd ask God for heavier burdens.
We wish we'd ask God for more difficult
tasks.
We wish we'd ask God to give us
something nobody else wants to do.
There's a world to be won, a more
difficult world I don't think there's ever been.
There was a meeting last week, and I'm
through with this, and Dave Wilkinson brought about
50 of his, really all his converts who
are now leading missions in different parts of
America.
50 of us, or 60 gathered together there.
One of them had come from Guatemala.
He was there when the Pope was there
about, what, three months ago.
I remember they flashed on the screen, here
is the Pope with an audience of 400
,000 people, but they didn't report what he
said.
He said to those 400,000 people, there
is one great enemy of the church in
South America.
It's evangelical Christianity.
What do you think of that?
Just before Christmas, the headlines down in El
Paso, a man called me said, the headlines
of our paper say tonight, the Pope says
to the 800 million Catholics, you do not
do not need to go to God for
forgiveness, just come to the church.
The usurper, the liar, has taken over.
There's never been as much opposition to the
true gospel of Jesus Christ as there is
today.
We don't go to a man on a
cross, he left the tomb empty, he left
the cross empty, that we might be received
to glory.
The hour is coming for all of us
before too long.
I beg you, I entreat you, find what
is the will of God for your life
and do it.
May not be exciting, may tell you go
be a businessman and get money and give
it to people on the mission for you.
He may also the whole cause.
But I tell you this, the supreme joy
of life is knowing that you're in the
will of God.
That's our number one problem.
Number two problem is doing it when you
know it.
But the thing is, once we have qualified
in his will, he'll give us all the
grace, all the strength.
He prays that they may have my love,
not a mushy sentimental love, that strong love
of God, the love that led him to
be nailed to the cross.
It was love that held him there, not
nails.
Those idiots that said, if you're the son
of God, come down and save yourself.
He could have done it easily and confounded
them.
He could have breathed on them and destroyed
them.
And he takes humiliation and slighting and ridicule
and scorn.
Again, in that garden where we shall never
understand, he was crushed.
Will you understand it if I say Jesus
didn't die on the cross?
He died in the garden to the will
of God.
That's where he died.
If he hadn't died there, he'd never have
died there.
The cross was an open manifestation that he
had died in the will of his father
there in the garden.
I come to do thy will, O my
God.
If the cup can pass wonderful, if not,
I'll drink it.
I don't know what you feel, but I
feel when I've...
I haven't said what I'd like to say
altogether, but I feel I live in easy
street.
Do you think you dare ask God tonight
for yourself, not your pastor, for a baptism
of compassion?
Maybe from here till you die you'll weep
every day so that other people don't weep
in hell.
You'll take time to call on God.
Seek his face and treat him.
Ask God to let you adopt a country
or adopt a people in your heart that
you're going to pray and travail for until
he is glorified there.
For that's what he's doing in the garden.
He's traveling for your birth and mine.
The pains of hell got hold of me,
he said.
It's not an easy way.
It's a difficult way, but it's a glorious
way.
And ask that we pray for a few
minutes anyhow.
Feel free to pray.
Maybe you want to pray for yourself tonight.
Maybe you do want to pray for your
church, that it's dry and unproductive, nobody has
any tears, nobody has any grief.
We live in a city.
What's our city got to 75,000 people?
Nearly all of them lost.
Nearly a million people may be over there
in Dallas.
Most of them lost despite all the churches.
Thank you.
Tell God you want to reveal his will
to you.
Ask him when the hour is going to
be when you have to make a major
crisis decision that will alter your lives and
maybe who knows tens of thousands of people
on a lost country tonight.
Let's pray for a season.