I thought about this simple thing this morning,
that men's opinions of God change very much
in the passing of time.
But God's opinion of man never changes.
It's established once and forever in his word.
I want us to think about a psalm
which is a favorite of mine, the 51st
psalm.
Just to remind you, there are 150 psalms
in the Bible.
Sometimes they call it the psalm of the
day.
It still is, I believe, the Jewish hymn
book.
It still gives us the most profound expressions
that can be found in song with all
our modern singing.
No one touches the heights or the depths
like the psalmist.
Out of the 150 psalms, roughly half of
them, which is 75 in case you don't
know, 75 of them were written by David.
Of the 75, 18 of them are autobiographical.
That is, they all spin around his own
experiences.
There are seven penitential psalms.
One of them has to be the greatest,
and surely it is this 51st psalm.
Until fairly recently, I guess some of you
will remember anyhow, Leonard Bernstein was the maverick
conductor of what, New York Philharmonic Orchestra?
Very distinguished, very capable.
He wrote that great mass that was sung
at the funeral of Kennedy.
And he's a classical pianist in his own
right, an exhibitionist.
A friend of his was in Europe, and
he brought back a dog-eared manuscript, took
it to Leonard Bernstein's house.
Incidentally, he lived in the same house where
John Lennon was killed outside.
But the man said to him, Leonard, play
this for me.
He looked at the manuscript, he said, I
can't.
He said, you can, but you won't.
He said, I can't.
Why not?
This is an old manuscript, it's 200 years
old.
I paid an exorbitant price for it in
Europe.
Again, Leonard looked at it and said, I
can't play this, why not?
He said, if I could have crept up
by the side of the organist as he
was working this music out, and I could
have caught his spirit, his cadences, his expressions,
maybe I could have done it.
There's a gap of 200 years from the
time he wrote it to now, and all
the atmosphere has evaporated.
You know, that's very true about the Word
of God too, except the Spirit of God
takes it, the letter killers.
In case you haven't noticed, this psalm is
a monologue.
David includes no one else.
How did he say it?
How did he write it?
He sure didn't dictate it into a machine.
I doubt if he had a secretary.
In your Bible, it's, I don't know anything
about type, Martin is here, he might know
what type this is, but it's some kind
of type on a white sheet.
It's punctuated with commas and periods.
It's written in ink.
No, this psalm was written with blood.
It is not punctuated with stops and commas,
it's punctuated with groans and tears and agony.
You know, if actors were to say their
lines like most preachers preach, they'd never get
through that audition.
They'd be rejected the first time.
Years ago in Scotland, an envious preacher watched
the clouds trying to get into a theatre,
and every night they were turned away in
their hundreds.
And he thought about his empty seats in
his church Sunday by Sunday.
So he made it his problem, his task,
to visit the actor, a famous Shakespearean actor.
Maybe Burton that just died was the greatest
Shakespearean actor that ever lived.
He could quote almost every word that Shakespeare
wrote, and he wrote tens of thousands.
If you ask Hamlet the second act, he'd
quote it like that.
What did Lady Macbeth say so-and-so?
He'd quote it, quote it, quote it.
He was soaked in Hamlet so that he
knew the thing from beginning to end.
It was dramatic.
Well, the actor said to the preacher, the
reason I packed this place maybe is this,
and the reason you don't pack your place
maybe is this.
I make artificial things look real, and you
make real things look artificial.
I heard a preacher last Sunday on TV
for a few minutes.
He talks as though he's giving a weather
report, and bad weather at that.
He's about as tasty as uncooked fish, and
I don't wonder people turn, when Dave Wilkerson
was in Detroit a few weeks ago, amongst
all those Muslims and other people on the
streets, he asked those kids, lusting, fighting, scarred
as they were, smelling evil on their bodies,
smelling badly with their breath, he asked them,
who is your favorite radio, TV preacher?
Time after time he said, we don't listen
to them, all they want is our money.
Isn't that shocking when kids in the street
under the grip of the devil can only
say you want our money?
How did David recite this thing?
I say he punctuated with sobs and commas,
not stops and commas, but sobs with grief.
How do I know?
Because he's come to God with that which
alone is acceptable to God, when we come
to him as sinners.
Let me say this first, the constitution of
the psalm is fascinating as far as I'm
concerned.
In verse one, let me say, how he
say, what does he say?
Have mercy upon me, O God.
He doesn't say, pity me, Lord, I'm in
trouble.
He doesn't say, excuse me, Lord, I've broken
a commandment or two.
He comes pleading the only thing that we
can plead.
Have mercy upon me, O God.
Over here in another psalm of David, 86,
he says in verse 5, for thou, Lord,
art good and ready to forgive, and plenteous
in mercy unto all them that call unto
thee.
Verse 15, that thou, O Lord, art a
God full of compassion and gracious, long-suffering
and plenteous in mercy and in truth, which
is borrowed by David from the 34th chapter
in Exodus.
Here is a man who is bowed down
in grief.
Of course, Shakespeare again, remember Lady Macbeth has
a black spot or a blood spot on
her hand, and what does she say about
it?
She says, well, here is, she says, this
damp spot, all the perfumes in the radio
cannot cleanse it.
David has a black spot of murder on
one hand, a red spot of murder on
one hand, a black spot of adultery on
the other hand.
And he comes saying, have mercy upon me,
O God.
Me, notice that.
Have mercy upon me, O God.
According to the multitude of thy tender mercies
brought out, my transgressions wash me throughly from
mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
Against thee only have I sinned.
You say, no, he sinned against Bathsheba.
I don't think he did.
He sinned with her, but he's making confession
here of his own sin.
He says, blot out my transgressions.
By real definition, transgression means I acknowledge my
rebellion.
I acknowledge my disobedience.
He hadn't gone into sin ignorantly.
He had been tempted again and again with
that woman, and then finally he commits the
horrible act of adultery.
So, there are three words here for sin.
Blot out my transgressions, he says.
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity.
Iniquity means I'm perverted because of my transgression.
I have let sin come and have dominion
over me.
Against thee only have I sinned upon me.
Wash me truly from my iniquity and cleanse
me from my sin.
I acknowledge my transgression, my sin, that to
some total of my transgressions and mine iniquity,
my sin is ever before me.
What a price men pay for sin.
Is he just being poetic?
Do you mean he sees his sin every
minute of the day?
Yes, he does.
He looks outside of his castle and there's
a young man standing on sentry duty, and
every time he sees a soldier, he remembers
the young captain he put to death in
order that he might steal his wife.
A baby cries back in the kitchen, the
baby of one of the girls that works
for him, and when he hears the baby's
cry, he's haunted with the cry of the
sin of the child of thee brought into
the world.
My sin is ever before me.
Against thee only have I sinned, and done
this evil in thy sight, that thou mightest
be clear when thou judgest, and be justified
when thou speakest.
I was born in sin, and in sin
did my mother conceive me.
Now there are two theories about the sin
of then.
One is that we're born with sin, and
if somebody says we're born with it, then
God sends us to hell for having it.
No, he sends us to hell for not
getting rid of it.
Are we born with sin, or is this
a get-out when somebody says, David here
says, I was born in sin, and in
sin did my mother conceive me?
Remember when Samuel went to anoint the sons
of, um, what was his name?
Jesse, thank you.
Thank you, dear.
They all were brought up before Samuel except
one.
Why wasn't David brought up?
Well, the theory is because he was not,
he was born out of wedlock, and they
didn't want to own him.
In sin did my mother conceive me.
Well, whichever view you take, man is still
a sinner.
If he isn't born with sin, it's soon
admitted into his life anyhow.
You know, it's one of the tragedies, I
think, of our day that people, when you
talk about holiness, they're more afraid of holiness
than they are of sinfulness.
One of the appalling things in the church
and outside of it is our woeful, I
would call it woeful, or appalling comfort with
sin.
I don't often listen to PGL, but very
often these nights I get, I go to
bed at 10 and I get up at
12, and work till 2 or 3.
And the other night, just after 12, I
turn on the news, and it slid right
into PGL.
And the little boy on PGL, as I
call him, was saying some of his wisdom
as usual.
I know it's when he called people to
the altar, they were smiling, one was chewing
gum, I saw no broken and contrite hearts.
David here is bowed down with guilt, he's
lashed with something that has a sting worse
than a scorpion.
There's plenty of them around here, if you
want to try a scorpion out.
I've had them accidentally, and they're very painful.
But if it's something that stings him worse
than a scorpion, what is that?
Conscience.
The old Methodists used to sing a hymn,
quicken my conscience till it feel the loathsomeness
of sin.
There's not much consciousness of sin anymore.
The preachers have changed their vocabulary.
There's not much preaching of hellfire on TV.
I've heard a preacher saying two or three
times, do you know I was at the
White House recently?
That's the second time I've been.
I thought, well, why I'd miss it.
Do you think Obadiah would have invited Elijah
to dinner?
Do you think Agrippa would have invited the
Apostle Paul to dinner?
Do you think Herod would have invited John
Baptist to dinner?
We don't carry eternity with us preachers anymore,
as far as I'm concerned.
We can step out of giggling in the
next room, and come and try to be
serious, and somehow we misfire.
There is no sense of guilt around anymore.
I'm sure you know this, there are no
adulterers anymore.
Few people having affairs, of course.
No wickedness, just weakness.
No iniquity, just infirmity.
Dear Lord, when I read some of these
old men that preached a hundred years ago,
let me say this.
We used to go to a church in
Ireland, where my dear wife is from, and
the pulpit was on a kind of a
stem, and it was only small, not as
big as this platform, and right behind it
was the door.
Now that church was about 200 years old,
and I said, well, why do you have
a door right behind a preacher?
Well, he needed it to escape when the
crowd got hostile.
Now we spoon-feed you, and you think,
oh he's a nice preacher, he's so nice,
he's so smooth, he never hurts me, never
says anything that upsets me.
Quicken my conscience till it feel the loathsomeness
of sin.
The background of this, of course, is extremely
dramatic.
It's the case of the this man, David.
He's got into trouble.
The Philistines have come up to him, and
he's terrified.
It says in Samuel 28, verse, pardon me,
1 Samuel 28, verse 5.
When Saul saw the host of the Philistines,
he was afraid, and his heart greatly trembled.
When Saul inquired of the Lord, the Lord
answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by
Urim, nor by prophets.
Then Saul said unto his servant, seek me
a woman with a familiar spirit, that I
may consider and inquire her.
His servant said, there is a woman in
Endor.
Saul disguised himself.
Notice that?
He didn't go in as he, you had
to disguise yourself to go somewhere?
Are you ever embarrassed to enter a certain
place which is questionable?
Saul disguised himself and put on a beret,
and he went with the two men, and
they came to the woman at night.
What a lot's done at night.
Men love darkness rather than light.
Why?
Because their deeds are evil.
Why did he disguise himself?
Obviously he didn't want to be identified.
Why did he go in the night time?
He didn't want to be identified.
He came at night and said, I pray
the divine unto me by a familiar spirit,
and bring him up, whom I shall name
unto thee.
Oh, so she brought up who?
Samuel.
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with
a loud voice.
I believe it is the only case in
history where a genuine spirit was brought up
from the other world.
Every other is a fake.
But notice, she put the spotlight on him.
Why dost thou deceive me, for thou art
Saul?
That must have been quite a shock.
The king said unto her, be not afraid
for what thou sawest thou.
And the woman said unto Saul, I saw
God descending out of the earth.
And he said unto her, what form is
he of?
And she said, an old man cometh up,
and he is covered with a mantle, the
prophet's mantle.
And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and
he stood with his face to the ground
and bowed himself.
And Samuel said to Saul, thou hast disquieted
me, to bring me up.
And Saul answered, I am so distressed.
The Philistines make war against me, and God
is departed from me.
Samuel said, whereof thou dost ask of me,
for the Lord is departed from thee.
Isn't that something?
Departed from who?
From a man who had the anointing of
the Holy Ghost, and was filled with the
Holy Ghost and prophesied, but he died of
suicide.
I heard a man say this week again
in that same show, don't you worry, God
will never forsake you.
It doesn't matter, you may leave him, he
won't leave you.
That is entirely against the scripture.
If the Spirit troubles you this morning, thank
God he's troubling you before you go to
hell.
The Spirit will leave you?
Well, this is what you can do with
the Holy Spirit.
Accept him, resist him, grieve him, quench him.
Now that's biblical, that's where my theology is.
Isn't that right, Brother Parrish?
The most miserable man in the world is
not the man who's lost a million dollars,
or lost his memory, or lost some other
thing.
The most miserable man in the world is
a man that God has forsaken.
Again, I remind you that this King prophesied.
The Spirit of the Lord was upon him,
he prophesied, but he died of suicide.
He popped his sword up in the ground
and fell on it, and he wasn't completely
dead.
So who killed him off?
An Amalekite.
Why was he in this trouble with the
Philistines?
Because God said, God utterly destroyed the Amalekites.
But he didn't destroy them.
He kept the best he said for God.
He didn't destroy the Amalekites, so the Amalekites
destroyed him.
If you don't let God destroy that sin
in your life, that sin will destroy you.
All the people, I remember preaching in Australia,
and the pastor said, you see the man
on the right there, that bald-headed man
near the back?
Yes.
Do you know 15 years ago he was
the most anointed man in the whole of
this vast country?
And it is a vast country.
Australia is wider from coast to coast than
America is from New York to California.
That man had traveled the country and left
a blaze of revival behind him, but he
trifled with sin.
And he was desolate.
He's like a man without a country.
Is there anything more desperate than a man
without God?
The whole highway of Christian living is strewn
with has-beens.
He has been a great great preacher.
He has been a great authority.
Shall I tell you the secret of backsliding?
I'm sure you'd like to know.
Neglect your devotional life and your prayer life.
No man is greater than his prayer life.
I don't care how many he talks to
on TV.
I had three preachers in my office the
other day.
I never mentioned their names.
I won't.
All asking about the spiritual life.
They thought about two students from one of
the best seminaries or cemeteries, if you like,
in Dallas.
What is the secret of stability?
What is the secret of maturity?
I tell you, number one, every preacher that
comes in my office has three weaknesses.
One, he isn't disciplined.
Two, he has almost no prayer life.
Three, he doesn't know a thing about worship.
No, no, no, that's just where I am.
Well then, before you leave seminary, if you
don't want to learn to pray in seminary
in any bible school around here, anywhere else,
you haven't learned anything as far as I'm
concerned.
Do you remember when the disciples came to
Jesus and said, Lord, teach us to preach?
No?
What did it say?
Oh, I see.
Oh, well, it was, it was Paul who
said, preach without ceasing.
Which some of us almost do, I think,
sometimes.
Oh, it was James who said, when you're
sick, preach to one another.
There's nothing the devil will attack more than
your devotional life.
Forget everybody else.
God doesn't make us in groups, he makes
individuals.
There's nobody who could pray at one time
like David, and yet here he prays this
penitential prayer, praising in agony.
Again, he doesn't say, Lord, I'm at the
top of the charts.
As you know, I'm right at the top.
I mean, people are going down the street,
clapping their hands and singing, Saul is saying
his thousands and David his tens of thousands.
I'm number one on the charts.
Oh, what an amazing man.
What an amazing fluctuation in his life.
He wrote some of the most profound songs
ever written.
You would have to go to Scotland to
hear people sing 23rd Psalm.
They have about half a dozen tunes to
it.
One is called Crimmon.
That was born in my days, which is
a long way while back.
There's an older one, Brother James is there,
that has a lovely lilt to it.
They have about five different tunes to the
23rd Psalm.
But you would have to go to Wales.
Gwen, Gwen isn't here this morning.
She's of Welsh extraction, as we say.
I used to love to preach in Wales,
oh mercy, how they would sing.
And when they got blessed, they'd sing in
tongues, the Welsh tongue.
And boy, when they sang there, there was
a mouse always came in.
I knocked him down my back.
Oh, they were so tremendous.
And one great hymn that they sang was
this, Great God of wonders, all thy ways
display thine attributes divine.
But countless acts of pardoning grace above all
other wonders shine.
Who is a pardoning God like thee?
Or who has grace so rich and free?
One of the greatest hymn writers ever, I
think he wrote more hymns than anyone else,
was Charles Wesley.
He put his brother's theology to music.
We think sometimes that sinners are just the
derelicts.
Those that dear David goes, and he's going
out again on Tuesday, pray for him, he'll
be away two weeks.
Meeting head to head, eyeball to eyeball, as
we say, on the streets of Detroit just
recently.
Crowds of young black Muslims there.
People running forward before they can make an
altar call.
Kneeling at his feet, holding his feet, weeping
at his feet.
And he said, Len, do you know that
most of my talk to already had an
experience of God years ago.
I was a Baptist, I was a Pentecostalist.
What are you doing now?
Prostituting.
I say sin doesn't appear to be sin
anymore.
The week, two weeks before when he was
in New York, they just set up their
music, was singing, a bunch of young ladies
came around him and said, we love Jesus,
Mr. Wilkerson.
You do?
Yeah.
They live in New York?
Well, we weren't born here, we work in
here.
Where do you work?
We're prostitutes.
But we love the Lord.
Isn't that something?
They can live in their degradation and go
to some house of worship and never be
broken and contrite, for that's an awesome word
that he says later when he says, the
sacrifices of God.
Now let me step back a minute.
He comes in all his disarray, morally, spiritually
bankrupt, morally bankrupt, and he said, thou desirest
not sacrifice, oh if I would give it.
Well, what way was there to God but
sacrifice?
They brought the blood of bulls and goats,
or doves, or the ashes of an heifer.
But he says, thou desirest not sacrifice.
Oh, I'd be glad to bring the whole
herd of cattle that I have if thou
will, if you'll accept it.
But you won't accept it.
Why not?
Because sacrifice without repentance is useless.
What does he say?
Thou desirest not sacrifice, else I will give
it.
And then he says, the sacrifices of God
are a broken spirit.
He mentions spirit three times, just as he
mentions sin three times in the first two
verses.
And he mentions cleansing three times in different
words in the first two verses.
He mentions sacrifice three times.
He mentions brokenness three times.
He mentions offerings three times.
He prays three prayers.
He prays the prayer of a sinner, have
mercy upon your God.
You know, there was an amazing period in
history, in the 1700s.
In fact, I gave Melody a little article
I'd written a while ago on that period,
which maybe will be in the newsletter.
I don't know if it's classified for that,
but anyhow, it's an amazing period.
Some of the greatest preachers, they lived in
the 1600s.
All the towering giants like John Owen, and
all that bunch of Puritan preachers that have
never, never, never been equal.
By the way, the second edition of Refiner's
Fire is in the press now, so if
you do not want one, we've already more
than 10,000 orders for it.
You better get it.
It's got some tremendous, tremendous stuff in it.
Preaching with a punch.
Preaching with authority.
The tragedy of modern Christianity is this.
We've lost, even in the church, we've lost
our sense of the holiness of God.
Come on, be honest.
Don't answer all different.
Did you come here to meet God this
morning, or did you come to hear a
sermon about Him?
Can you remember the last time you left
the sanctuary, and you didn't utter a word
for an hour or two?
That happened in the Welsh Revival.
I didn't witness it, but I did preach
in some of the Revival churches, or churches
that have Revival, as late as 1949.
There were some old ladies there that came
to our meetings and said, these are the
most impressive meetings since 1904.
I said, well how, how do you gauge
that?
Because the last four nights, we walked up
to the crossroads, and then they turn, and
instead of saying good night, they say Nostar.
Nostar.
And suddenly realize we walked all the way
from the church in the valley up to
here.
Mrs Griffiths said last night, have you noticed
that not one of us has said the
word any night this week after the service?
Because there's no sense of the majesty of
God, we have no sense of the sinfulness
of sin.
I've been bowled over for so many mornings
this week, between midnight and four o'clock,
meditating on a statement that I've read so
many times, but it never punched me out
like this week.
The word of John, when he said, I
fell at his feet as dead.
I shared it with David the other day,
and I said, Dave, how often do we
get felled?
Stunned.
We come into a gospel meeting as easy
as coming to a political meeting and go
out as easily.
Well I guess you know a year, was
it just over a year ago, when David
was preaching there at the Agape Force conference
in Dallas.
He suddenly faded out and fell to the
ground, and he said, well then twice, I've
had that experience of falling at his feet
as dead, and all the glory of heaven
has been revealed to me.
When revival comes, that is something which is
regular.
In recounting the awesome revival, I guess we
call it the Shang Tung revival, round the
turn of the century, Mrs Jonathan Goldforth says,
it was awesome to go to church.
You would go in the sanctuary, and we
would stand and sing, and sing, and sing,
and sing, and then realize we'd been singing
for six hours.
We would go another day, somebody would stand
up with an anointing in prayer, been waiting
on God all night, and burst out with
a torrent of revelation.
You hardly dare open your eyes, let you
saw God in his majesty.
You could feel the vibrations of eternity.
One day it was all song and adoration,
and we lifted to the third heaven.
Next day it was prayer that was awesome.
Sometimes it was sobbing, stammering prayer.
It was preachers groaning on the floor.
It was preachers that couldn't even get down.
Burden with guilt, shame.
There's an old man right now, 95 years
of age, in California, and I knew him
50 years ago.
He went through that same revival.
He said, Len, I know you've given 50
years.
Recently he said to me, you've given more
than 50 years in praying for revival.
I have about 60 as a matter of
fact.
But he said, Len, I want to tell
you something.
When revival comes, the sewers burst.
The man you thought was the most holy
man in the district gets up and confesses.
It's like opening the valve and letting all
the impurity out.
This conviction which has been riding, if you
like, in his bosom.
Okay.
The first day, Mrs. Jonathan Goffold said, it
was prayer that was unspeakably glorious.
The next day it was prayer which would
tear your eyes out, there wasn't a heart
out, there wasn't a single dry eye.
Everybody groaned in the spirit.
The third day she said, not necessarily in
this order.
You would go.
And whereas we had sung for six hours
or prayed for six, the next day the
whole congregation, two or three thousand people would
sit, and from morning till night, not a
word was uttered.
And she said, that was the most awesome
of all.
Beyond the awesomeness of singing or the awesomeness
of the stillness, be still and know that
I am God.
The doctor told you to say, Len, you've
got to keep this in mind.
As Christians, we're activists.
We think if we work through morning till
night and tumble into bed exhausted, we've served
God.
Not necessarily.
I believe if you win a hundred people
an hour to God, it doesn't necessarily satisfy
the heart of Jesus.
What is the first and greatest commandment, dear
missionary?
Know thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart and soul and mind
and strength.
And if you love him, you would serve
him.
It's the key to the whole thing.
David had loved God, and he'd known the
mercy of God.
He'd known the power of God.
Can you imagine him laid back, as we
say, on a hillside, the stars twinkling, and
he had his guitar.
No, guitars are backslidden harps.
He had a harp, and there he's playing
his harp.
And what's he doing?
He's singing, when the heavens declare the glory
of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.
I read a statement this week made by,
I think, an old Puritan, when he said
the most amazing thing in English prose is
the 40th chapter of Isaiah, and I've read
that over and over and over and over
again.
He said in that 40th chapter that God,
he says, lift up your eyes and behold
the host of the heavens.
He calleth every star by name.
If I had some, I won't put it
there, but let me say this.
If you put a one there, and then
you put 23 zeros behind it, those are
broken down zeros, but anyhow, that's a sextillion.
A sextillion is one with 23 zeros behind
it.
And the scientists say there were 40 sextillions
of stars.
Now, in England and Germany, a sextillion is
a one with 36 zeros behind it.
But then I read more recently that there
are estimated 50 billion stars in the Milky
Way alone.
You know that shaft of light you see
in the sky sometimes?
50 billion, and he calls them all by
name.
Isn't that beautiful?
Isaac Waltz has a hymn in which he
says he made the stars those heavenly flames.
He counts their numbers, calls their names.
His wisdom's vast and knows no bound, a
deep where all our thoughts are drowned.
What is a creature's skill or force?
The spiteful man, the warlike horse, the piercing
wit, the active limb, all are too mean
delights for him.
But saints are lovely in his sight.
I don't think God gets fellowships with stars,
or a beautiful countryside, or the Rocky Mountains.
He fellowships with individuals.
Now, David has had a marvellous relationship with
God.
Okay, let's see him there with his harp
again, singing that marvellous 23rd Psalm, as only
he could sing it.
It must have been wonderful.
I wish there was a recording of it.
The Lord's my shepherd, I shall not want,
so forth.
You can turn that round, work on it.
They're all in metres, the Psalms.
Or get a Presbyterian psalm book, or get
a Presbyterian psalm book.
And all the Psalms at the back are
in metres.
The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want, he
makes me down to lie.
In pastures green he leadeth me, the quiet
waters by.
Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely
follow me, and in God's house forevermore my
dwelling place shall be.
It's beautiful.
He writes the 23rd Psalm, he sings it,
but he's in a different situation from when
he said, when he wrote this psalm.
He says, Thou didst not sacrifice that I
would give it.
The sacrifice of God out of broken spirit.
What else does he say?
In verse 8, make me to hear joy
and gladness for the bones which thou hast
broken.
He hasn't got a broken bone in his
body.
He's using a figure of speech.
In 1951, I jumped out of a burning
hotel.
We had had two weeks of revival in
Dr. Salter's church, which he said were the
best revival in 25 years.
I had a prayer partner.
He hadn't been to bed for five nights.
Dear old Tom Hare.
Tremendous man of intercession.
We went to bed on the Friday night,
suddenly Saturday night.
About half past two, I heard fire, fire,
fire.
I thought, well, oh dear, this is terrible.
Somebody had a building on fire and it's
snow outside.
Wouldn't be where I was, of course.
I mean, how would the church go on
if I died?
Incredible.
Surely, that couldn't happen.
When I die, the world will stop, or
the church will, surely.
I mean, you know, I've put so much
into it.
Well, it happened to be that I was
in the frying pan.
The hotel we were in was burning.
A few weeks ago, a boy died from
a 30-foot tower in the Olympics.
Somebody said to him, how high is the
tower?
He said, from the ground up 30 feet.
Went at the top looking down 300 feet.
I was 30 feet up in that hotel
and I looked down in the middle of
the night.
There's the floor down there.
People shouting, jump.
I thought, yeah, that's fine.
No problem jumping.
You're putting the brakes on when you get
really to the bottom.
But I landed on my heels, crushed my
feet, what do you call the oscalsis, the
heels, crushed like fine sugar, the doctor said.
My leg was in three pieces, three breaks
in my back, both my feet broken.
I'm lying in the gutter outside the hotel
and a guy comes around the corner and
says, what are you doing here?
Well, obviously playing tennis, aren't I?
He said, you can't stay here.
I said, I don't want to.
Get up and go away.
I said, I can't, my back's broken, my
legs are broken, my feet are broken.
Oh, I don't think it's so bad.
I said, well, I do.
Well, he said, listen, you can't stay here,
so listen to this humour.
Something will come around the corner and run
over you and get hurt.
That's all I need.
Let me put you over there.
No, no, please don't lift me.
He put his hand under my legs here
and my back and, you know, when he
did, all those bones just screamed up and
gracious man, he laid me in about 18
inches of snow.
I wasn't ready for refrigeration.
I didn't want to stay there.
I soon began to shake and quiver.
But, you know, I'll tell you what I
learned.
I got this psalm, which meant a lot
of difference since then.
When I got all those bones broken and
there was no healing for a long while,
well, impossible to tell.
And David says, when I'm out of relationship
with God, I'm full of broken bones and
there's no way that they can be healed.
He says, a broken and a contrite heart
thou will not despise.
A broken heart, a contrite heart, a grieving
heart, a heart that's restless.
He's not finding some temporary antidote.
He wants that relationship that he had with
God to be restored.
Now, look at the difference in the psalms.
23rd Psalm, calm and beautiful.
In this psalm, he's like a boy that's,
to use a very simple, weak argument, like
a little boy caught with his hand in
the cookie jar.
Here he is loathsome in the sight of
God.
But the hymn quickens my conscience till it
is the loathsomeness of sin.
There are no mild cases of sin, any
more than any mild cases of cancer.
They're all deadly.
What does he do in this psalm?
He says, hide thy face, ease of holy
horizon, to behold iniquity.
How do you feel God thinks about the
average congregation in our churches today, where sin
doesn't matter anymore?
Full of adulterers and divorced people, and all
kinds of crimes that have been done.
There's no preaching against sin.
Oh, once God exposes his light on human
corruption, and only then do men cringe and
howl for deliverance.
Realize they've got leprosy, worse than leprosy, worse
than cancer in their breaths.
David here says, hide thy face from my
sins.
Do you remember the 139th Psalm, when he
said, one of the bravest things I think
ever written by man.
He said to God, search me, O God,
and know my heart.
Try me and know my thoughts, and see
if there be any wicked way.
That was when he was living as close
to God as he ever lived, or maybe
anybody else ever lived.
He did not fear the searching eyes of
God.
He hadn't broken the commandments of God.
He was walking in total obedience.
But here he said, hide thy face from
my sins.
Don't come with the searching eyes.
And all him said, search me, O God,
like he is talking about himself.
Search me, O God, my actions try, and
let my life appear as seen by thine
all-searching eye, to my eyes thy ways
make clear.
Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the
motives that control, the chambers where polluted things
hold empire of the soul.
Search till thy fiery glance hath cast its
holy light through all, and I by grace
am brought at last before thy face to
fall.
Search me, O God.
I believe a normal Christian life is a
life of holiness.
It's easy to sing that hymn holy, and
by the way, melody there.
I've heard that hymn sung around the world.
You can't sing it without moving me to
tears.
I didn't go to the concert last night.
I did something better.
I prayed for them.
We never sang that hymn with more delight
and rapture than when Keith Green thumped it
out on that piano in Brown's house.
We didn't have to sing.
He had his own interpretation.
He put additional words, additional notes into it.
I've heard people comment about that.
Oh, I remember, a lady came from Arkansas
one night.
The meetings we've been having down there in
the last days, which we're going to start
the last week of this month, are all
being well.
You know, people have come from Mobile, 700
miles to come to a prayer meeting.
You know, two lords of them come every
Friday night from Oral Roberts University and say,
why don't we have a prayer meeting like
that?
I said, ask the Oral.
You know, they come from seminaries.
Isn't it a shame that people have to
drive four, five, six hundred miles to a
meeting that's solely given to prayer?
Two seminary students in my office the other
day and I said, what seminary go to?
They told me.
What church to go to?
I go to so-and-so.
Oh, I go to another one.
Oh, I said, your church has 26,000
members.
How many come to the prayer meeting?
We don't have a prayer meeting.
I said, that's like me saying, give you
my Cadillac.
It was given to me, but I'm not
giving it to you.
But it's like me giving you the Cadillac
and say, take it, friend.
There's only one thing wrong with it.
What is it?
It has no mortar in it.
A church without a prayer meeting has no
mortar.
There is no more precious thing in the
whole world as I've preached in some of
the greatest churches in the world.
Preach with some of the greatest preachers and
pray with some of the finest men I've
ever met.
Sometimes people say, you've talked about prayer this
week.
Can we have a prayer meeting?
Yeah, we'll have it Friday night after the
meeting.
Tell all the preachers in town to come
and all the deacons and all the other
needy folk.
Bring them to a prayer meeting.
All this section is reserved for preachers.
We're not down on our knees 10 minutes,
but what they get up and action speak
louder than words.
They're not used to praying.
Five minutes on their knees, hmm?
What was it, something we heard the other
day, Martha, somebody was given what, 30?
What was it?
A period of time for what was it?
I've forgotten.
Something was said in news.
Well, one thing that was said in the
news was that some of the athletes in
the Olympics had trained for eight years, some
of them just to run for a matter
of seconds down the track.
One of the girls on the basketball team
was asked, don't you have to discipline yourself?
Yes.
Do you practice a lot?
Yeah, six to eight hours every day, six
days a week.
Doesn't it involve sacrifice?
Yeah.
You have to leave home?
Yeah.
What else?
Oh, this girl said, I haven't seen my
boyfriend for nine months.
Supposing you tell our students on our campuses,
you can't go home for nine months.
Boy, they cry their eyes out.
You have to discipline yourself for six to
eight hours every day in the presence of
God.
Remember, those gold medals are already tarnished.
They asked one young fella, what are you
going to do with the gold medal?
Do you know what he said?
Have it bronzed.
It shows the value we've put on it,
but that's all it's worth.
Paul says they do it for a corruptible
crowd.
Remember, the Olympics were there 400 years before
Christ was born, and they were more strenuous
than even they are today.
They didn't have vitamins and all the other
things that we have.
But getting back to it, we're living in
a day when there's little, if any, discipline.
Come on, go to bed at the same
time every night.
Get up the same time every morning.
Take time to be holy.
Forget your friends.
If they want to be skeletons spiritually, let
them be skeletons.
If they want to be poor spiritually, let
them be poor.
You're not going to be judged for their
lives, you're going to be judged for your
life.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to
the multitude of thy tender mercies.
He uses different words here now.
Blot out my transgressions.
Blot out means like, here, I erase this
thing here.
It's completely gone.
There you are.
Now it's gone.
Okay.
That's what the word blot means.
To blot out means to erase.
Wash me.
If you've been in oriental countries, you've seen
people, women, go down to the river.
They put clothes in the river, and then
they put them down, and they tramp them
out.
They're tramping the dirt out.
And that's exactly what that Hebrew word wash
means there.
Trample me.
If need be, crush me to get this
thing out of me.
Then he uses an amazing word, cleanse me.
There was a great Hebrew scholar years ago,
some of you must have read, he has
two great volumes, Dr. Eidersheim on Eidersheim's study
of the life of Christ.
It's the greatest classic ever.
You can still buy it.
Dr. Eidersheim, a Hebrew scholar, says you cannot
translate this word cleanse into English except this
way.
You can see that I thought, unfin me.
Isn't that beautiful?
Cut me loose away from my sin.
I say again, the normal Christian life is
a life of holiness.
We like to sing holy, holy, holy, and
then we go on and sing toward the
end, Lord holy, only thou art holy.
That's not what the scripture says.
Holiness originates with God.
Only he is originally holy.
He always was and always will be everlastingly
holy.
Our holiness is borrowed from him.
The command is to be holy, which literally
means be healthy in your spirit.
That's why the word holy comes from an
old Anglo-Saxon word, halig, which means health.
Or again, it means purity.
There used to be a great preacher in
England, of course there have been a lot
of great preachers in England, but anyhow, this
old preacher used to preach in Westley's Chapel
on City Road, London.
Mercy for the lack of me, I can't
think of his name at the moment.
He wrote a great book called The Burning
Cataracts of Christ.
I remember his phrase, he said, the man
that only wants his sins forgiven is toying
with religion.
The aspirations of the human heart, naturally, I
mean when God has come to deal with
them, is as David cries here, create in
me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew
a right spirit within me.
And then he says in the 12th verse,
restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.
Let me give you one of my latest
quips.
The more joy you have in the Lord,
the less entertainment you need.
Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.
And there's a king in America, do you
know who the king is, the queen?
The king is sport and his wife is
called entertainment.
And they're devouring, not only the man in
the street, they're devouring people in the pews,
they're devouring preachers.
Ask your preacher, what time do you go
to bed at night?
If he says it's none of your business,
say it is, I want to know what
kind of a man you are.
Ask him what kind of a prayer life
he had.
I don't ask people if they're saved anymore.
Who isn't saved?
From the white house to the jailhouse.
I look a person in the eye, I
say, does Christ live in you?
I was saved in, I didn't ask you
that.
I'm asking you, does Christ live in you?
Christianity is the only religion in the world
where a man's God comes and lives inside
of him.
A Chinese scholar was given a copy of
the New Testament.
He'd read the Quran, he'd read the Vedas,
and all the sacred books.
The man said to him, did you read
the New Testament through?
He said, I did.
What's the most amazing thing?
He thought the man would say the most
amazing thing I read was that Jesus Christ
was born of a virgin.
That he died and physically rose again from
the dead.
Instead of that, he said, the most awesome
thing is in Philippians chapter 2, or Ephesians
chapter 2.
It is?
Yes.
It says, in time past he walked according
to the course of this world, according to
the prince of the power of the air.
And then at the end of that same
chapter, it says you're the habitation of God.
He said, sir, does your God live inside
of you?
If so, that's the most awesome thing I've
read.
I've read the Quran, I've read the Vedas,
I've read all those other sacred books.
But I've never read where a man's God
comes and makes the man the habitation of
God.
I preached in a big church a few
years back.
I said, Martha, dearie, those trees at the
entrance of the church are wonderful.
Never seen trees like that in my life.
I know what the leaves are, but look
at all the little white flowers, white buds.
Well, I got to church a bit late
one night.
Well, I mean late for me.
I usually like to get there half an
hour before time.
As I went in here with the boys,
you know, while I draw this fleeting breath.
And then sticking the cigarette stumps in the
trees outside.
When I gave out my text, I said,
gentlemen, I'm going to preach this tonight.
I did, on Roman day.
And while you're looking for it, get out
your cigarettes and your matches.
You can all smoke.
What?
Deacons nudging each other.
We knew this guy was a crank.
I said, smoke.
This building isn't the temple of God.
This is the temple of God.
You defile it, till you go up to
the door of the church, defile it inside.
Of course, if you start smoking, I'll tell
you to stop.
But I said, this is a temple.
He doesn't dwell in temples, mate.
He dwells in a habitation.
What?
Full of carnality, full of guillotine, full of
pride, full of anger, full of secret lust.
David says, restore unto me the joy of
enough pain.
The bonds that you've got, this relationship that
you severed.
The only way that I can get my
joy back is for God to come in
full control.
First, you have to cleanse the habitation in
which he's going to live.
1937 was a great year in my life.
I met my sweet wife in a town
called Eccles, outside of Manchester, England.
We took a tent there.
We didn't know anybody.
It was our usual format.
Take a tent to a city, no backing,
no churches, no money, sleep in it, play
in it, weep in it, groan in it.
And figured in six weeks we could raise
a church of four to five hundred people,
or even sometimes eight hundred.
And we did.
And those churches are still standing now, fifty
years after.
We had no money, we had no backing.
We lived like mice.
We ate as little as we could, because
we had to.
Slept as little as we could, prayed as
much as we could.
We went to Eccles.
Martha came in with a bunch of other
nurses.
They always looked so beautiful, all sitting in
rows, you know.
And they wore white dresses and a blue
cape with a red lining.
And the smart girls would throw the red
over their shoulder, you know, to be more
attractive and distract you while you were preaching.
But anyhow, nearly all the boys fell in
love with the nurse.
One of them fell in love with Martha.
I believe I, I believe I love Miss
Wilson, and I want to, I want to
marry her.
Can I go see her tomorrow night?
I said, sure.
I said, before you go, I want to
tell you, I'm going to marry her.
Oh, well, I won't have any chance.
I said, well, I won't say a word
to her.
Well, I got the pride, and she's been
a very wonderful, wonderful wife.
But on the Friday night, one Friday night,
one Saturday night, I preached on Psalm 51.
There was a woman sitting at the back.
I've seen some ugly women in my life,
but she was the ugliest woman I'd ever
seen.
As I say, she had a nose like
a banana, and she was as wrinkled as
a prune.
She was dressed in black, and she was
sallow.
And at the end, I said, if you
have some need to meet God, if you've
a broken and contrite heart, you're welcome to
come and kneel here.
I'll pray with you.
The others all left the tent.
She came and knelt there.
And she sobbed, and she cried, and she
groaned.
Finally, I said, well, ladies, it's time to
do everything, and it's time to quit crying.
It's time to talk to God.
Well, I said, what's your problem?
She said, Mr. Regnall, 40 years ago, I
was one of the leading officers in the
Salvation Army.
One night, I quarreled with my partner.
There were always two women in one area
and two men in another, leading a corps,
as they called it, what we would call
a fellowship.
We argued that night, and I got angry.
I went home.
I took off my straw bonnet.
I tore it up and put it on
the open fire.
I took off my tunic and cut it
up and put it on the open fire.
I took off my skirt, cut it up
and put it on the open fire.
I stirred it all up.
And I took my Bible and ripped all
the pages out, put it on top.
And she said, Mr. Regnall.
She began to smile a little.
She said, it's so wonderful tonight.
I said, well, it was a wonderful preaching.
I've had a better time many times.
No, no, no.
I heard the voice of God the first
time for 40 years.
After I severed my relationship with him, I
heard William Boole, the founder of the Salvation
Army, preach as only he could preach.
I heard Colonel Brangle.
I heard all the so-called great stars.
But she said, for 40 years God has
never spoken to me.
I've had a heart of stone.
I've been to services.
I've never been moved.
Hymns don't move me.
Preaching doesn't move me.
Threatening doesn't move me.
And she said, tonight as you spoke there
and said, restore unto me the joy of
thy salvation.
I said, God, that's the only thing I
need in life.
I don't ask to live longer.
I don't ask you to ease my poverty.
I don't ask to pray.
I ask you to restore.
She said, you see, I knew the intimacy
of walking with God.
I had a love relationship with him.
I could really say personally, he walks with
me and he talks with me and he
tells me.
And it's gone.
I said, well, lady, 40 years of wasted
life.
I said, well, he can't give you that
back.
He can restore your peace.
He can restore your joy.
He can bring you into a living, flaming
relationship with himself.
You can trample beneath your feet the world,
the flesh and the devil, but it's not
going to bring 40 years of wasted life.
Do you know after that, that woman, every
time we opened the house of God, she
was the first at the door.
We had a prayer meeting every Sunday morning
at seven o'clock.
And I've seen her standing there in the
snow, shivering, her clothes were very thin.
And she would say, Mr. Ray, this is
a lovely morning.
Her name was Shepherd.
I said, well, Mrs. Shepherd, it's not much
of a morning for you.
You're shivering, it's cold, it's icy, oh, but
Mr. Ray, look, I have my joy.
I have my peace.
The love relationship is restored.
My whole world is a new world.
Dear old Duncan Campbell, I've prayed with him.
You met Duncan, prayed with him many times.
He used to pray at five in the
morning.
He couldn't pray until he had tea made
as black as your shoe.
He could almost stand up the spoon up
in it.
I couldn't drink it like that.
I told him it was Mobil oil.
But once he got anointed with his tea,
he got going.
Oh, how he used to pray.
Oh, when he told me about the revival
in the heavenly, Brother Duncan, please.
You make me feel as though God has
slighted me.
You make me feel as though, oh, what's
it going to say?
I preached around the world.
I preached to thousands.
Oh, forget it.
I never seen any brokenness like they saw.
Never seen that a moving of the spirit
of God like he saw.
Oh, how he used to say, there's only
one sin that God cannot forgive, and that's
the sin that's unconfessed.
If we confess our sin, it's not a
nice thing to be humiliated.
You know, I can remember the old days,
this precious lady, DeRancho, when you went to
a holiness meeting or a Pentecostal meeting, do
you know what?
There were more people at the altar before
the service than after.
The altar was lined with people praying the
glory down.
We were an old man who used to
thunder out every night.
Now, Lord, you come and walk in our
midst tonight.
And I was a kid about 12 and
I was saying, don't.
I thought God was going to come down
in his glory, you know, and I'd be
running for the door.
You know, we say, come Lord, you come.
If the Lord came to the average church,
there'd be chaos in the choir and panic
in the pews and the deacons would be
running for the door.
We don't know the glory of God, but
I'll tell you what, I believe it's going
to come back.
It's going to come back.
We're going to discover a majesty in God
that we've never, never, ever known before.
And with the glory, the revealed light of
God, there's going to come a consciousness of
sin such as never known before.
Just one thing.
Somebody sent me some little books recently from
Ireland.
They're life stories of famous people at Briggs.
One of them is about Jerry McCauley.
He was an Irishman who came to Boston.
He broke all records for drinking, violence, everything
else.
Ended up in jail.
If I remember, was in Sing Sing.
That's a name for a jail who sings
in Sing Sing.
Spent about 15 years there, but met God
there.
Came out into New York.
There's a famous street there just over Brooklyn
Bridge on Canal Street.
There's a famous building called the Water Street
Mission.
There were more derelicts and reprobates and sinners
and criminals converted there than any place in
America.
And Jerry, I believe, got saved there, and
then he started a place of his own.
But you know, he had a passion for
the lost.
My dear Dave Wilkerson, he could stay in
his nice home.
What do you want to go meet?
Take a risk of being hit and stand
amidst all the abuse and sin and uncleanness.
But where did Jesus go preach?
You don't go fishing in your bathtub, do
you?
If you do, you need to check with
a doctor.
You go where the fish are.
We sit in pretty churches.
I'll tell you what, I worked 20 years
ago with Dave Wilkerson when Teen Challenge was
first starting in New York.
There's one thing about those guys, you didn't
have to tell them they were sinners, they
knew.
You had to tell them you had an
answer.
There's a lovely hymn written in America.
Not many great hymns written in America.
One great hymn written in America that I
love.
We used to sing it in England, I
admit that.
It was written by H.
G.
Stafford, a very wealthy man.
He had four beautiful daughters.
He waved them goodbye and the ship called
the Le Havre from Pier 90 in New
York.
Before the ship got to England, it sank
off the rugged coast of Wales.
His four daughters perished.
His wife would stay.
They sent him news to New York, sitting
at his desk in his office.
Wealthy, wealthy, wealthy man.
The ship has gone down, your four daughters
are lost.
He got a piece of paper and he
wrote, when peace like a river attendeth my
way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever
my Lord thou hast taught me to say,
it is well with my soul.
The second stanza says, if Satan should buffet,
if trials should...
but the third stanza.
I stopped a meeting in the great Baptist
church in Atlanta about four years ago, on
the Friday night.
I said, look, everybody stand please, sing this
hymn.
Sing very carefully the third stanza.
My sin, not my sins, that's the fruit.
My sin, that's the root.
Oh, the bliss of this glorious thought.
My sin, not in part, but the whole
is nailed to the cross and I bear
it no more.
On the Sunday night, Dr. Stanley stood on
the platform.
He said, I don't know what happened, but
as we sang Friday night, Brother Amiel said,
look at the third verse.
Something snapped inside of me.
A deacon came to me.
He said, Brother Amiel, what happened to Dr.
Stanley happened to me Friday night.
He said, I told my friend at the
door, another deacon, he said, the same thing
happened to me.
I wanted God to deal with that root
of sin, the very fountain of rebellion and
uncleanness.
There are no degrees of purity, no degrees
of death.
There are degrees of life, there aren't degrees
of death, there are no degrees of purity.
Your heart and mine is either pure or
impure.
And if it's impure, it's an offense to
God.
If I'm harboring grudges, if I have pride,
if I have...
There is no other message in the world
like the gospel.
It's a mandate to go to the derelicts,
to anybody.
This psalm always reminds me of this, Hebrews
7.25. He's able to save to the
uttermost, and somebody said to the muttermost, and
to the uppermost, and to the guttermost.
There's no such thing as such a chronic
condition of sin that God cannot cleanse that
heart.
He is able to save to the uttermost
all who come unto God by him, seeing
he ever liveth to make intercession for us.
Again, I say the normal condition of the
Christian life is a life of wholeness.
He says, create in me a clean heart,
and give me thy Holy Spirit.
When Saul, the king of Israel, had an
evil spirit, he did evil things.
When a man has an unclean spirit, he
does unclean things.
When a man has the Holy Spirit, he
produces holy things.
You know, if Jesus could have solved ten
million arguments, if he just said one, change
one word.
If Jesus had said, by their gifts ye
shall know them, it would have killed ten
million arguments.
But he didn't say that.
He said, by their fruit ye shall know
them.
Gifts, I don't belittle them, who would?
They're wonderful.
There are many of them.
But you never saw fruit strutting, did you?
People strut with gifts very often.
Fruit is noiseless in its production, noiseless in
its purity, in its progress.
And that's what God wants in our lives.
My sin, not in part, but the whole
is nails of the cross.
In other words, when he died there, I
died with him.
Taking this illustration, here it is.
Here's a man standing up in the water
of baptism.
He goes down under the water.
As soon as he goes under, he's cut
off from the world above, isn't he?
He can't see it, he can't touch it,
he can't smell it, can't sense it.
Immediately he goes under that water.
It's symbolic of the fact that he's been
buried with Christ, therefore the world above has
no fascination for it.
Paul says, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I
live.
Not only that, but at the end of
Galatians 5 he says, and the world is
crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Now you've seen a lot of things.
Some of you men that went to war
saw some bloody things on battlefields, dismembered bodies.
None of us ever saw crucifixion.
Five, ten thousand people would follow a man
carrying his cross.
As Dr. Chaucer said, if you saw a
man taking his cross outside of the city,
you were sure of one thing, he wasn't
coming back.
Once he went there, you could throw rotten
fruit at him, rotten eggs at him, rocks
at him, filth poured on him.
Five thousand people there at night to see
that man crucified.
Six o'clock in the morning, not one
of them there.
The first to be there were the vultures
that came on the cross there, and stood
there, and pecked out his eye, and pecked
out his body, until his ancestors were hanging
out.
Then the dogs came and licked up the
blood.
There's nothing more horrible than an area of
crucifixion, with all those skeletons, dismembered bodies there.
Paul said, the world is crucified.
Is it?
Come on now, is the sports world as
ugly to you since you would say that
it still nationalizes you?
Do you spend more time watching ball games
on TV than prayer?
If so, that's your God, that's your rival.
The world is crucified.
Even the fascinating world of business, maybe, with
all its allurements to profits and success, it's
crucified to me.
And not only that, I'm crucified to the
world.
They said of Paul, here's a man with
the most colossal intellect in the world.
He taught with the Epicureans, and Stoics, and
poets, and others in what, the 16th chapter
of the Acts of the Apostles, and they
marveled that he knew so much.
He counted philosophy with philosophy, history with history,
poetry with poetry, and then finally, as Dr.
Stuart of Scotland said, he showed them, he
founded the trumpet blast of the resurrection.
What?
A man once died and rose again?
Yeah, you have to see Dr. Scotland.
You see, we're not saved by the death
of Christ.
We're saved by his life.
If he's still dead, we're still dead.
Buddha didn't die and rise again.
Confucius didn't die and rise again.
But Paul says, I'm an idiot to the
world.
Think of what that man could be doing
in the world.
He could be the greatest philosopher, greatest in
Socrates, greatest orator than Demosthenes, and here he
is huddled up with a bunch of people
that have prayer meetings in back rooms.
Look at his face, all scarred with stones.
Notice he limps.
He's been in prisons more than any criminal.
Are those the wages this glorious God gives
you?
Of course, he'd never heard, you know, of
name it and claim it.
That was his fault.
All he knew was prisons and persecutions and
hardship.
And you know what he did?
The poor insane man, this is what he
said, you know, I'm glad God's given me
grace to get through it at night.
If it were 25 hours in the day,
I'd never have made it.
Well, I pray this morning, Lord, keep me
from temptation, keep me from difficulties, and make
me a jellyfish.
You know what he says?
I glory in tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches.
Come on, have you got so far?
When your name is cast out as an
evil thing, when you're ridiculed and despised.
You see, once the heart is cleansed and
the Holy Spirit of God comes to control,
makes all the difference in the world, it's
no longer I, it's Christ that lives in
me.
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.
There is no joy in the world like
the joy of God.
And the man who wrote most about it
was writing in a stinking lousy prison cell.
And he says, listen, I've got a word
from God for you.
Oh, you have?
What is it?
We're going to make my money?
No, he says, rejoice in the Lord.
They should have been writing to him, he's
writing to them.
He hasn't had a square meal, he hasn't
had a bath for weeks, a month, maybe
years.
And here he is rejoicing in adversity, in
tribulation, in distresses, in reproaches.
Everything that we shun, everything that would make
character in us, make us strong, make us
tough for God.
Well, have you got that joy?
Can we glory in necessities, in reproaches?
I'm going to ask you to sing.
I don't know whether our choirmasters can strike
this up in the right place.
Maybe you will.
Okay, 139, 139.
Let's sing the first stanza.
I think it's the third.
The first and the third, let's stand and
sing.
When peace like a river attendeth my way.
Can you do it?
Can you teach it?
First and third, yeah.
When peace like a river, when
joy speaks in those roads,
quiet down in
this world, in this world.
My Savior, like
David, he brought me apart of a horrible
pit.
And something even greater than that, you saved
us from an eternal pit.
You brought us out of darkness into light.
And so we shall never go into eternal
darkness.
We thank you this morning for truth in
the midst of a world that's staggering and
stumbling over error.
We thank you for light in the midst
of darkness.
We thank you for life in the midst
of death.
God, we ask thee that we may crave
this purity of heart, be willing to let
you dissect us and show us ourselves, horrid
as it may be, to show us the
secret corruption, the vileness, the sin, the secret
lusts that hold empire over our souls.
We thank you the blood of Jesus Christ,
God's Son, can cleanse us from sin, and
not only that, keep us from sin.
He's able to save.
We thank you for every voice which is
a truthful voice in the world this morning.
Think of all the missionaries.
Think of our precious brothers and sisters in
Russia, or China, or other countries that maybe
haven't been to a fellowship for years, and
yet maintain their integrity.
And they can truly say what is poetry
to us, though he slay me, yet will
I trust him.
God make us like the Bereans, to be
noble.
Let there be distinctiveness about us, the distinction
of holiness, of spiritual health, and life, and
power.
We pray for all the ministries around, and
ask you to duplicate their power, strengthen all
the branches that they have across the world.
Keep us looking to Jesus, the author and
the finisher of our faith.
And may we be able to say, like
the Apostle, that we finished our course with
joy.
I give you praise in Jesus' name.
Thank you.
Bless you.