There was never a moment of any day
that ever dawned in which he was not
completely at the Father's disposal, so that we
read in the 15th of Romans in chapter
3 that even Christ could not please himself.
Then how in this wonderful life could there
have been one hour of greater significance than
another?
The hour is come.
Was there then in the life of Jesus
Christ one hour more significant than another?
There was never a moment when there wasn't
the complete, unsullied, unspoiled, unblemished expression of the
will of his Father in terms of his
yielded humanity.
And yet this hour was the hour to
which he lived.
It's an hour to which reference is made
on a number of occasions.
In the 7th chapter and the 30th verse,
Then they sought to take him, but no
man laid hands on him, because his hour
was not yet come.
In the 20th verse of the 8th chapter,
these words spake Jesus in the treasury as
he taught in the temple, and no man
laid hands on him, for his hour was
not yet come.
In the 13th chapter and the 1st verse,
before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus
knew that his hour was come.
In the 1st verse of the 17th chapter,
these words spake Jesus and lifted up his
eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour
is come.
What hour was this?
It was the hour without which the Lord
Jesus would have been born to live in
them.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the continuing
verse in chapter 12, verse 24, except a
corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone.
I'd like to read that same verse to
you out of the Amplified New Testament.
I assure you, most solemnly I tell you,
unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, I want you to listen
to this very carefully, it remains.
It remains.
Just one grain.
Never becomes more.
Listen to this carefully.
But lives.
Lives.
It remains and lives by itself alone.
It remains and lives alone.
So that but for this hour, the Lord
Jesus would have been born to remain, and
he would have been born to live forever,
but to be eternally lonely.
You see, the Lord Jesus, if he had
never been God as he was, and he
was never less than God, nor ever will
be, he is eternally in equality with the
triune deity.
But had he never even been God as
man, he could have remained and lived.
For it is sin that separates man from
God.
It is sin that are the cause of
death as wages.
And even in his sinless humanity, he would
have had the right as man to enter
into his Father's presence forever, even had he
never been God.
He could have lived and remained forever, but
to be eternally lonely.
And I want to examine that with you
a little more closely for the next few
moments.
You see, there are those who would have
us believe that when the Lord Jesus Christ
came into this world, he just lived the
life of a beautiful man.
He gave utterance to the most wonderful philosophy
of life, and that being a Christian involves
gazing upon the matchless example that he set
us, and seeking to emulate the pattern that
he set.
That if you and I muse long enough
upon his teachings, then ultimately somehow it will
rub off on us, and we'll be like
him.
Now, let us examine for one moment.
What would have happened if the Lord Jesus,
coming into this world, had lived for thirty
-three years that wonderful, sinless, spotless life that
earned the just acclaim of his Father, in
whom there was no sin, but he had
bypassed the cross, followed Peter's advice, and having
lived to give us this matchless example, had
then returned to heaven?
What would have been accomplished by the life
that he lived, for you and for me,
today?
In order that we may find the answer
to that question, I'm going to ask you
to turn with me to the tenth chapter
of the Epistles of the Romans.
Romans in chapter ten, verse one.
My brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to
God for Israel is that they might be
saved.
For I bear them record that they have
a zeal of God.
They're deeply religious.
They have very earnest convictions, and they practice
religion with considerable enthusiasm and loyalty.
And that was true.
And there's no question of a doubt but
that many of them practiced religion with great
sincerity.
Though there were many hypocrites numbered amongst the
Pharisees, there was a countless multitude of men
and women who practiced religion in the best
way they knew.
They had a zeal of God.
But, says the apostle, not according to knowledge.
It was an uninstructed faith.
It was an uninstructed practice of religion.
When somebody acts in a way that is
not according to knowledge, it means that they
are acting in ignorance.
They don't know the facts.
So we need to discover the nature of
their ignorance.
And he goes on to tell us, verse
three, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness,
and going about to establish their own righteousness,
had not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of
God.
Because they were ignorant of the nature of
the righteousness of God, it still seemed to
be a valid possibility on their part to
establish a righteousness of their own that would
be acceptable to God.
This was the nature of their ignorance.
The righteousness of God is absolute.
And only an absolute righteousness can ever satisfy
the demands of His righteousness.
When you and I seek to establish our
own righteousness, it falls hopelessly, pathetically short of
the utter demands of God's righteousness.
That is self-righteousness.
And must be repudiated.
Our righteousness is the best that man can
do.
Ours is filthy rags.
I may remind you, you need not turn
to it, but in the thirty-ninth psalm,
we read this, Behold thou hast made my
days as an handbread, and mine ages as
nothing before thee.
Verily, psalm thirty-nine, verse five, every man
at his best state, every man at his
best, is altogether vanity.
That is the word of God.
Every man at his best is altogether vanity.
Hopelessly, pathetically inadequate in the light of the
demands of a righteousness that is absolute as
God Himself.
Then the fourth verse of the tenth chapter
of the Epistle to the Romans goes on
to say this, For Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness.
Christ Himself is the only other man whoever
walked this earth before the first man fell
into sin whom the law could not accuse.
In colloquial language, He was the last word
in righteousness.
He was everything that the demands of God's
righteousness could make upon a man in utter
consummation.
He was without sin.
Sin is the transgression of the law.
Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
The Lord Jesus never took one single step
nor spoke one single word nor did one
single deed other than in an attitude of
total, utter, complete, unquestioning dependence upon the Father.
There was in His person the complete fulfillment
of all that the law of righteousness that
had been penned by His own divine fingers
upon tables of stone.
This found its full fulfillment in Him.
So we may discover this fact that the
righteousness demanded by the law God's righteousness can
be totally equated with the righteousness of the
life of the Lord Jesus.
Whether it be the righteousness demanded by the
law or whether it be the righteousness that
was demonstrated by His life both of these
righteousnesses were absolute.
If I therefore want to know what the
life that the Lord Jesus Christ lived 1
,900 years ago can do for you and
for me now all I need to ask
myself through the word of God is simply
this.
What can the righteousness demanded by the law
do for you and for me now?
For the righteousness demonstrated by His life may
be equated with the righteousness demanded by the
law.
Whatever the righteousness demanded by the law can
do for me now then the righteousness demonstrated
by His life can do for me now.
Is that a valid reasoning?
Well, let us examine what the righteousness demanded
by the law can do for you and
for me today.
In the third chapter of the epistle to
the Romans, Romans chapter 3 and verse 19
Now we know that what thingssoever the law
saith, it saith to them who are under
the law.
Imagine here's a man or a woman who
looks up into the face of God and
says I demand, I ought by my own
deliberate choice I demand to be judged upon
the basis of my performance in the light
of the demands of your law.
I don't want redemption.
I don't want forgiveness.
I don't want all this stuff about conversion
or being saved or regenerated or born again
or converted.
You can keep that.
I demand to be judged on the basis
of my performance.
You know that what the law has to
say, it has to say that such a
man is that.
And it might well be that even in
such a gathering as this there are some
tonight who would seek to be justified before
a holy God on the basis of their
own performance.
Well let us read on.
Now we know that what thingssoever the law
saith, it saith to them who are under
the law to this end that every mouth
may be stopped and all the world may
become guilty before God.
Therefore by the deeds of the law there
shall no flesh be justified in God's sight
for by the law is the knowledge of
sin.
In other words, all that the law in
its utter righteousness can do for you and
for me as guilty fallen men is to
shut our mouths, expose our guilt, and prove
us guilty.
The law teaches us that we are guilty.
The law proves us sinners.
The law stops our mouths and wipes the
boast from our lips, exposes us in all
our desperate depravity and need.
The law is our schoolmaster to bring us
to Christ, the prophet, the priest, and the
king, the redeemer, Jesus, Savior.
But in our helpless loss this day we
might find by grace alone acceptance in the
beloved.
Justified by faith, clothed with the wedding garment
of His righteousness, for Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness to everyone that
believes.
The amazing thing is this, that God was
prepared to impute or credit all your guilt
and mine to the guiltless Jesus Christ upon
the cross, that to you and to me
today there might be imputed or credited all
the guiltlessness and righteousness of Christ Himself.
You know as well as I do that
this is the basis of our redemption.
This is the basis of our justification by
faith.
Justified.
God looks at me just as if I
never died because He looked on Him just
as if He committed all my sins.
The law proves me guilty, stops my mouth,
exposes my sin.
It's the schoolmaster.
It's God's plumb line.
But the life the Lord Jesus lived demonstrated
the righteousness demanded by the law.
If in the depravity of my heart because
of what is called the flesh, which weakens
the law, I cannot submit to the demands
of the law.
For the carnal mind is enmity against God,
is not subject to the law of God,
neither indeed can the all-wretched man that
I am.
As we have heard already so vividly this
week, who shall deliver me from the body
of this death that is constantly within me,
hostile to God my maker, that repudiates His
claims upon me, that loves to transgress His
law and takes the law as a delightful
occasion to defy God to His face.
If the law weakened by the flesh finds
me only guilty, then the life of Jesus
Christ that He lived 1,900 years ago
that is equated with the righteousness demanded by
the law can only prove me guilty.
The flesh that disqualifies me from fulfilling the
law disqualifies me equally from imitating the life
of Christ.
I can no more follow His example than
I can submit to the demands of the
law.
Whether I compare myself to the demands of
the law or compare myself to the demands
of His life, both prove me built guilty.
Both, both plunge me into despair.
Isn't that right?
So what can the life that the Lord
Jesus Christ lived 1,900 years ago do
for you and for me today?
You may never just have thought of it
this way.
The life He lived 1,900 years ago
condemns us as soundly as the law itself.
And if Jesus Christ had been born on
that first Christmas day only to live that
matchless life and go straight back to the
Father from whom He had come, He would
have left us only doubly condemned by the
law and by His life.
Then why did He live a life like
that that can only condemn us now?
The answer is very simple.
The life He lived qualified Him for the
death He died.
Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul
is counted free.
And God the just is satisfied to look
on Him condemned and pardoned.
He knew how wicked man had been.
He knew that God must punish sin.
So out of pity Jesus said, I'll bear
the punishment instead.
God made Him to be sin for us
who knew no sin.
That we might be made the righteousness of
God in Him.
He suffered the just for the unjust to
bring us to God.
He was delivered for our offenses.
He was raised again for our justification.
The Bible leaves us in absolutely no doubt
whatever.
He was wounded for our transgressions and He
was bruised for our iniquities.
And it was the life that He lived
that could only condemn us, that qualified Him
for the death that He died.
That can't be deemed.
Now, that's familiar territory, isn't it?
But that isn't the gospel.
That is part of the gospel.
That is the threshold of the gospel.
That, if I may put it this way,
is the baby language of the gospel.
He died historically, 1900 years ago, on the
basis of the sinless life He lived that
you and I might be acquitted on the
basis of His vicarious atoning sacrifice.
He paid the debt that we might go
free.
But that isn't the whole story.
Otherwise, we could dismiss and go home.
I want to ask you this question.
Given that you've come to understand the statements
that I have made, and I suppose the
very vast majority of this great company of
people here tonight can look back to the
day when they not only came to recognize
these facts as true, but acted in obedience
upon the truth of them, and have entered
into all the good of His redemptive acts,
and can say, praise God, I know my
sins are gone.
But may I ask you this question.
Given that you have received the Lord Jesus
Christ as your Redeemer, who died for you
historically, 1900 years ago, once and for all,
by this one sacrifice for sins forever, to
reconcile you to a holy God, would you
tell me this.
Does the knowledge that your sins are forgiven
for His dear sake in itself equip you
for a life of God like that?
Does the knowledge that your sins are forgiven
because you have claimed Christ as your Redeemer,
you have pleaded His precious blood, you've named
His name, you've called upon Him, and you
have been accepted by the Father in the
Beloved, and your name has been inscribed in
the Lamb's Book of Life, would this rich
assurance of your eternal destiny and security in
itself impart to you any new capacity to
live a different kind of life from the
life that you lived before you were redeemed?
I'm going to submit to you tonight that
the knowledge that your sins are forgiven adds
absolutely nothing to your spiritual capacity to be
a different kind of person.
It may create within you quite legitimately a
holy ambition to be different.
Out of a sense of gratitude and love
and a sense of duty to the One
who died for you, because of an emotional
attachment and a sentimental regard and a deep
sense of loyalty, you will want to be
different, but the knowledge that He died for
you, and your sins are forgiven because He
died for you, in itself does not impart
to you any new spiritual caliber of living.
And if all that Jesus Christ did when
He came to this world 1,900 years
ago was to live that sinless life, to
qualify Him for that redeeming death, and then
go straight back to Heaven, that wouldn't be
much of a salvation.
It would be a salvation that made you
fit for Heaven and left you hopelessly inadequate
for Earth.
And yet all too often this is the
gospel that is preached.
Come to Jesus and have your sins forgiven,
now roll up your sleeves and show Him
how you love Him.
I have a deep regard for those who
love the Savior and who in their misguided
zeal would encourage you to do the impossible
without the only One who makes the impossible
possible.
But I'm going to suggest to you that
it has been the source of untold sorrow
and bitterness and disillusion on the part of
God's people.
We've got a long, long way farther.
You see, if when we were enemies we
were reconciled to God by the death of
His Son, the historical fact, much more, here
is the superlative of our faith, this is
the dynamic that makes the Christian life a
working proposition.
If when we were enemies we were reconciled
to God by the death of His Son,
and much more being reconciled, we shall be,
as a continuing process, saved by His life.
So we have to add a second statement.
The first is the life that He lived
qualified Him for the death that He died.
But here is the second.
The death that He died qualifies you to
receive the life that He lived.
That's the genius of the gospel.
This is what puts heart into it.
The life that He lived qualified Him for
the death that He died.
But the death that He died qualifies you
as a forgiven, redeemed sinner, unquitted on a
holy basis to become the recipient again, now
in the present tense, of the life that
He lived then, 1900 years ago.
So we discover that the life that He
lived then can only condemn you.
But isn't this brilliant?
It's the life that He lives now, in
you, that saves you.
And the Christian life is the life that
He lived then, lived now, by Him, in
you, because He is the only person capable
of living that kind of life.
This is the good news of the gospel.
Faithful is He that calleth me.
Come unto me.
He'll do it.
He is Himself the dynamic of every demand
He ever makes upon the redeemed sinner.
It is God that worketh in you both
the will and the do of His good
pleasure.
Christ in you.
The hope of glory, the only hope.
Christ liveth in me.
The source of all His own divine activity
and the origin of His own image.
This was His hour.
For except a grain of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it remains and it
lives on and on and on forever, eternally
lonely.
But what happens when a grain of wheat
goes into the ground and dies?
Through death there is the release of life,
and it isn't long before a new corn
is passioning, and beneath blue skies and the
warm rays of the sun, the golden swaying
field of a ripened heart.
Every golden field of corn is a graveyard,
life bursting through from death.
And in that new beginning year of corn,
thirty, sixty, a hundredfold, the life, the same
life, the life germ there, life has been
imparted into the heart of every new grain
through the death of the origin.
That's why the Lord Jesus died.
He said, I am come that you might
have life.
This is what baffled the disciples, of course,
for the three years in which the Lord
Jesus taught them.
They just couldn't grasp it.
Why should He stubbornly set His face like
a flake to go to Jerusalem?
Why stick your neck out?
Why deliberately go into the Lamb's den?
They just couldn't see the point.
Until after that appearance of the Lord Jesus,
subsequent to His resurrection, He showed them His
hands and His feet, and He began to
unfold the Scriptures in such a way that
at last their understandings were enlightened.
Now He says you're going to see the
point of it all.
It left you baffled and bewildered, disillusioned and
afraid.
Now, you tarry in the city of Jerusalem
until you are endued with power from on
high.
And as a result of the life I
live, which qualified me for the death I
have already died, you now are going to
be qualified to receive by my indwelling Holy
Spirit the very life I live.
So that the things that I did you
will do in greater works than these.
Because you are going to be added to
my new corporate body on earth, and the
life that I have lived clothed with the
sinless humanity that my Father fashioned for me
in the womb of Mary, this new body
my Father is going to present to me,
a corporate body.
Having been with you, I am going to
be in you.
I will not leave you comfort.
You will receive power from on high.
And the power that you will receive from
on high will be nothing less than my
presence.
I will come to you and live in
you.
And Petey you're going to become my lips,
and John you're going to become my hands.
As members of my new body, each individually
added to the other in the corporate whole,
under my headship, possessing my life, I am
going to continue to do and to teach
the things that I began to do and
to teach in my own humanity, in your
humanity.
You know as well as I do that
the Acts of the Apostles is the continuation
of what Jesus began to do and to
teach.
The only difference was that he now did
it in terms of that redeemed humanity that
having been reconciled to God was now re
-inhabited by God, for God.
And the first ripened golden ear of corn
was 120 grains strong.
As on that first day of Pentecost, 120
men and women received no body less than
Christ himself.
As he presenced himself within them through the
Eternal Spirit, as the Father for 33 years
had presenced himself in the Son for 33
years through the Eternal Spirit.
So that as the Father was in the
Son, now the Son was in them.
But as the Father had sent him, now
he was going to send them.
That his life in them might go on
reproducing all down the ages.
The hour has come.
Now you can see what a wonderfully rich
gospel it is we have to preach.
You never invite anybody to come just for
it, forgiveness.
You never invite anybody to come to Jesus
just to get to heaven.
There's only one valid reason why you and
I should ever invite any man, woman, boy
or girl to come to the Lord Jesus
and that is for the Lord Jesus.
That he himself might step into their humanity
and fill them with himself so that their
bodies might become temples of the living God.
So that they might literally be baptized by
the Holy Spirit into his body.
They might become living members individually of his
corporate body in general.
And that is why you see every genuinely
spiritual church is an evangelizing entity.
For the Lord Jesus is the one who
came to seek and to save that which
is lost and given right of way in
any individual member however humble, however young.
He will be about his ancient business in
and through every single living healthy member of
that body.
The total church evangelizing all over the world.
Jesus Christ in action.
Jesus Christ in business.
But just a minute.
If there was an hour for him, that
his life might be reproduced in others.
And that life has been reproduced in you
and me.
There must be an hour in your life
and mine.
If that divinely imparted job is to reproduce
in others.
That's the right.
Not only across on the hill, but across
in the heart.
For every belief that the latent lordship of
his divinely imparted life might be released to
the world around us.
For remember this.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the
earth and dies, it remains.
Just one grain.
Never becomes more but lives by itself alone.
And it is possible for you and for
me to be spiritually regenerate on the grounds
of redemption and receive nothing less than the
very life of the risen lord himself.
And for that life to be indulged within
our human spirits, never to find its way
into activity through our souls, never to be
released in terms of behavior, action and quest
for a fallen humanity.
Did you ever hear a grain of wheat
thinking?
Did you ever listen to a grain of
wheat talking to itself?
It's quite an interesting experience.
And if you just follow me with your
imagination for a moment, we'll listen in very
carefully.
As a grain of wheat looks into the
mirror.
And this is what it says to itself.
I rather like me.
I don't know that I've ever seen such
a shapely grain of wheat.
Now, mind you, it says to itself.
I did go to a special series of
meetings.
And I listened to some men preaching.
And you'd never believe the nonsense they talked.
Do you know what they said?
They said that unless you're prepared to let
go of what you are, you will never
become what God intended you to be.
Now, did you ever hear anything quite so
stupid as that?
When I look at myself in the mirror
and see what I'm capable of, see the
caliber of my being, head and shoulders above
any other grain of wheat I know.
And they tell me that until I'm prepared
to let go completely of what I am,
disintegrate, just die, I'll never become what I
was intended to be.
They talked about some indwelling principle of life
that could never be released until I was
prepared to die.
Now, can you imagine anything quite so stupid
as that?
As if any person had the right to
let go of what they were in the
hope that some mystic something would develop through
them.
Supposing I did die and something did happen,
I wouldn't know what I was going to
be anyway.
It might come out a cabbage.
Or a spring onion.
Or a carrot.
No, no, says the grain of wheat.
I know what I am.
I know what I'm capable of.
Did you ever hear a grain of wheat?
Talking to it, sir?
Latent lordship of a hidden life, only released
through death.
Nonsense!
Every man's got to stand on his own
two big feet and stick out his own
big chest and carve his way.
Even in terms of Christian service, it's what
I am that counts.
And God should consider himself extremely fortunate that
he's got folk like me on his side.
Did you ever hear a grain of wheat?
Talking?
Do you know what happens to a grain
of wheat like that?
It remains.
It does.
Alone.
And the longer it sits, insists on being
itself and refusing to die, the tougher it
gets, the harder its heart, the thicker its
skin, and the more difficult it becomes to
release the life that is.
I was in Santa Fe just a few
weeks ago, a few days ago, and I
visited the museum there, and the custodian explained
that certain cobs of corn had been found
over 800 years ago, and other seeds in
some of the Indian graves.
And he said every year they take some
of these seeds hundreds of years old and
plant them, and they grow.
Mustn't that be a surprise to them?
Can you imagine being a seed or a
grain of corn for several hundred years and
then suddenly discovering that you never became what
you were intended to be?
Can you imagine that?
Mustn't that be a wonderful surprise?
And can you imagine this grain of wheat
after 10, 15, 20, 30 years of vindicating
itself and being itself, justifying itself, capitalism?
Suddenly it looks back over the past and
finds there's nothing much to show for it
anyway.
Looks at its face again in the mirror
and it's become wrinkled and taut and hard.
And it has second thoughts about those stupid
preachers.
Maybe they were right.
Maybe I was fool enough to be over
-persuaded by myself or by my friends.
Maybe there is a principle of life that
would give me some real reason for being
here that's never been released.
Anyway, it's too late to hope for much.
There's nothing to lose now.
Maybe there's everything to gain.
And so at last that little grain of
wheat decides to fall into the ground and
die.
And the moisture begins to attack that tough,
hard skin and break into that toughened, hardened
heart.
And strange things happen.
They do.
There's a sort of tickly feeling around the
back.
And when the grain of wheat looks around,
it's got a tail.
Extraordinary thing.
I've been a grain of wheat for twenty
years and never had a tail.
Who would have believed that?
But what do you do with it when
you've got it anyway?
Should it go that way or upwards or
downwards?
It's a bit curly at the moment, maybe
it needs straightening up.
And you know, while it's perplexed and baffled
at this spontaneous expression of life that it
never knew it possessed, it suddenly discovers that
there is a principle in action that is
already shaping its ends.
That a latent lordship is already being released
because it has been prepared to die.
And that little taproot begins to burrow its
way down.
And it's hardly got over the shock before
there's a tickly feeling up top and it's
got another tail.
And this is really baffling.
Because this is obviously in the wrong place.
Probably needs surgery.
And what do you do with this?
But it discovers just as surely as the
root goes down, the shoot goes up.
Controlled by an unseen lordship that has been
buried, unrecognized, unreleased, unrealized for twenty years.
Listen, this isn't just a story, this isn't
just a parable.
Men and women, I'm talking about you.
Some of you men and women have been
converted ten, twenty, thirty.
Some of you may even have been preachers
for fifty years.
And you've never yet discovered the principle of
life that was buried within you in the
day that you were spiritually regenerated.
It's possible for you and for me in
our pig-headed self-esteem, in our very
sincerity and zeal in serving God, to endunge
and to imprison the Son of God within
our souls.
And we become the dried-up, withered, useless
things we are, on the shelf, remaining living,
we'll get to heaven.
For the life has been imparted by the
Divine Spirit, but we're quenching and prostrating and
grieving the Spirit of God.
Busy being ourselves, when the one thing that
the Father wants is for the opportunity for
His Son to be Himself.
And just as the little plant is coming
into being, a big, fat, clumsy farmhand comes
along with his great big, fat, clumsy hoof
and treads on it.
Turns it upside down.
And you could imagine that little grain of
wheat burying its head in its hands and
sobbing.
My little world all turned upside down.
Look at my circumstance.
I knew I couldn't lie.
It was too good to be true.
And do you know, in the midst of
its tears, it discovers that the root begins
to turn down and the shoot begins to
turn up.
It discovers that this principle of life, now
released, knows exactly what to do even when
its little world and all its human circumstances
are turned upside down.
This is the rest which is prepared for
the children of God.
Nothing, nothing can confound you.
For there is implanted within your soul the
life of the One who is never less
than adequate at any time for any situation.
No matter what threat may come your way,
no matter how dark the clouds on every
horizon, no matter how fierce the storm that
may break upon your head, you can be
sitting in a dungeon with silence, in the
dirtiest part of the dungeon, and you can
have such a praise meeting that you keep
the other prisoners awake at night.
And you can imagine the sort of conversation
these two had.
Paul looking to Silas, what do you think
God has in store for us?
Sometimes he puts us in the grand hotel,
but he must have something very, very special
for us to stick us in a place
like this.
I say, Silas, what do you think God
has in mind?
And Silas' things
don't look too good and they don't smell
too well, but I say, Paul, isn't this
a thrilling life?
To know that every day that dawns is
a sheer adventure of God unfolding His eternal
purpose.
And they've burst into song, and just as
they're singing together, suddenly Silas says, Paul, look
out!
And they've ducked, and there's an earthquake thrown
in.
And do you know when the dust has
settled and they rub their eyes?
There's a man waiting in the inquiry room.
Do you know, Christian men and women, that
you and I have got to learn to
live lives like that before and leave it
to the congregation.
I find that in the Acts of the
Apostles it was always the congregation that appealed,
Sir, what must we do to be saved?
Sir, what must I do to be saved?
But you see, in those days the Holy
Spirit was doing the work.
All the preacher had to do was be
faithful to the truth in a supreme, unshatterable
confidence.
But as he preached the truth in general,
the Holy Spirit was making it the truth
in particular to one another.
But you've got to be prepared to spend
the night in a dungeon.
You've got to be prepared to shipwreck.
You've got to be prepared to sit with
your feet in the stocks and have rotten
oranges thrown at you.
You've got to be prepared to be stoned
to death and left bleeding and dying on
the gutter and look up in heaven and
see your own Savior standing, not lifting one
single finger to help you.
Not one.
Because he's planting you into death, that out
of your blood flowing in the gutter there
might come out of the soul a part
of an apostle called Paul.
We've lost the art of living dangerously because
we're too busy being ourselves ever to trust
God to release his lordship in terms of
our humanity.
We don't know what it is to be
expendable for God.
And then at last the little shoot breaks
through the hard, crusted surface of the earth
and breaks out into the light of day.
And the warm rays of the sun begin
to beat upon it and it grows.
And it's not like any other single plant
that ever grew for every spontaneous expression of
life that is released when the lordship of
Christ is released is always, always, inevitably a
perfect original.
God never intended you to be as a
Christian any copy of anybody else.
God never intended that you should be brought
up with a pattern imposed upon you that
brings you out in a certain mold.
God redeemed your soul that your body might
be inhabited by Jesus Christ himself.
That the life he lived then might be
lived now.
And how he lives his life is his
business and nobody else's.
And your life will always be the perfect
original of the divine expulsive expression of the
life of Jesus Christ.
Can you imagine anything quite so thrilling as
that?
I want to ask you this very simple
question.
The moment a grain of wheat has gone
to the ground and has admitted its need
of dying, how much control does it have
over the future?
How far can a grain of wheat that
goes into the ground and dies shape its
future end?
From the moment that it is prepared to
die it has absolutely no say at any
time about anything.
The life within controls its destiny.
And I want you to know this.
So long as you intend to plan your
own program, insist on your own blueprint, shape
your own end, you'll never know the spontaneous
life of Jesus Christ making its quickening resurrection
impact on the world around you.
You may impose your pattern upon others but
you'll never reproduce life.
For, said Jesus, the flesh profiteth not.
Hath a noble the mould in which you
may fashion them?
It is the spirit that quickeneth.
Only God raises the dead.
Only God restores life.
I want to tell you this.
That as there was an hour for him
that his life might be imparted by his
divine spirit to your spirit, so there must
be an hour for you.
And for that young man or young woman
on the threshold of life here tonight, I
want to tell you this.
That every horizon beckons you.
Heavy golden with blessing.
If only you'll be prepared through death to
allow his life to be released.
To sign yourself away for God, in reckless
abandon become expendable, in complete unquestioning availability to
Jesus Christ.
I cannot promise you what it will involve
for you because I do not know.
I know that he knows for he knows
the end from the beginning.
And you and I are created in Christ
Jesus unto good works which God hath before
ordained that we, that we should walk in
them.
It may give you six years to live
for all I know.
That's all it gave Stephen.
Six months to live.
It may give you a lifetime of suffering.
It may send you to jail.
If God wants to reach some poor miserable
sinner in some concentration camp, he has the
right to put you there.
Of course he has.
Don't imagine that evangelists are simply men called
to travel around the country in luxury.
If God wants an evangelist in a concentration
camp, he simply takes one member of his
body who has learned to die and become
expendable for God.
And he puts him there for three days
or three years or thirty.
And I wouldn't invite one man, woman, boy
or girl to walk down any church to
come to Christ who wasn't prepared for that
quality of Christianity.
I would consider it an insult to Jesus
Christ.
Because I want to tell you this, the
life he lived qualified him for the death
he died.
But the death he died qualifies you exclusively
for the life he lived.
And he demands his lordship.
And you not only rob yourself and impoverish
yourself beyond all human description, but you rob
him as you claim your inheritance in Christ.
Fancy robbing Christ of his inheritance.
This is normal Christianity.
This isn't fanaticism.
This is the quality of Christianity that evangelized
the world in one single generation.
They didn't have jet planes.
They had donkeys.
They didn't have electronics.
They didn't have loudspeaker systems.
They were just flesh and blood inhabited by
God.
The artist, way up on the trapeze, stood
back to admire his own handiwork.
He'd been painting the most beautiful picture on
the underside of the cathedral dome.
And as he paused in his work and
stood on the platform, he was intoxicated.
And he drank in the sheer genius of
his own handiwork.
Beautiful.
Could never have dreamed that it would turn
out so wonderful.
And completely enraptured, he stepped back to take
a better look, from a point of better
vantage, and stepped back into his death.
But he was totally unaware.
He was intoxicated.
He was drinking it in.
It filled him with himself.
And just at that precise moment, his assistant,
up on the platform, looked up.
Just at that identical moment.
In one split second, he grasped the situation.
One step, and he would plunge to his
death.
And picking up a bucket of paint, he
threw it against the ceiling.
And the artist leapt forward in a rage.
He said, you spoiled my picture!
Said his assistant, quietly, yes.
I spoiled your picture.
But I've saved your life.
All right?
Choose now.
Which would you like?
Your picture or your life?
That's your choice.
Whatever picture it may be you have painted,
whatever dreams you may have cherished, my invitation
to you tonight is to die.
Die.
That the latent Lordship of His hidden life,
Christ, living in me, may be released to
an eating world.
This is evangelism.