Now, I suppose that you know that anniversaries
are a mental hallucination, or at least there's
not much to them, really.
I've often smiled to myself to see the
world go mad with the introduction of a
new year, when I remember that the calendar
has been changed quite a number of times,
and nobody knows exactly when the year goes
in, when it goes out.
It doesn't make much difference, really.
And yet, being here as we are in
this society where we find ourselves, it is
not possible today to speak without remembering that
a new year of our Lord, as we
call it, 1961, comes to an end today,
and the new year, 1962, which follows it,
begins at midnight tonight.
So I want to talk to you about,
not about the past, because that is gone,
but about today and tomorrow, one being with
us and the other one soon to be
with us.
Now, yesterday is beyond recall, and we could
all do ourselves a wonderful world of good,
we'd remember that, starting now.
Lord, yesterday is beyond recall.
The sun went down, Lord, and when it
went down, it destroyed all possibility that I
can do anything to correct what was done
last year.
And we should remember yesterday our mistakes, for
instance, not to repeat them ever, and not
to spend a lot of time lamenting them,
but we should remember them only that we
might never repeat them again.
And then our sins of yesterday, they may
be forgiven.
There's no reason why at all we should
carry one minute of today any sin which
we have upon us.
If we have any sin upon us, it
would be the ideal thing that we all
arrived here this morning, pure inside and outside.
But being human, the chances are that there
are fragments of sin just as you hang
a coat or any garment away a while,
it does get linty and it must be
cleaned, it must be brushed.
So the human spirit is like that.
In more biblical language, I think I might
say that having traveled during these 364 1⁄2
days of 1961 over the dust of the
world, we need our feet washed today.
So that we can do, our Lord can
wash our feet and wash the dust of
the journey from us, and we must see
that this is so.
We must have all these sins beaten out
of existence by the blood of the everlasting
covenant.
But now, with our mistakes and sins gone
and forgiven and cleansed away, with our determination
they shall be repeated no more, what about
tomorrow, what about the year that lies just
ahead of us?
How can we face it and be sure
that we shall have Christian victory for the
coming year?
Well, I've chosen a text here, this written
by Paul.
The man Paul was an amazing man, and
he could condense into a few words what
the average man would take a book to
say.
I've written eight or ten or twelve books,
but I have never been able to say
in a whole book what the man of
God Paul could condense into one sentence.
And he put it here into this highly
condensed sentence.
Watch you, that is, you watch, stand fast
in the faith, put you like men, be
strong, let all your things be done in
love.
Now let's look this over and see what
we can get out of it for ourselves
in order that we might a new year,
cheerfully, hopefully, expectantly, and live it victoriously.
Now he first says watch ye, that is,
turned around, you know, the subject put after
the verb, it's the old way of doing
it, in parenthesis.
You watch, he said, now you people watch,
which reminds us of the words of Jesus
when he said that we were to watch.
Everybody was to watch, what I say unto
you I say unto all, watch.
And so the Christian must be alert.
Now if you imagine that you're going to
get through this 1962, just muddle it through
and be victorious in it, you're going to
have to think again and think correctly the
second time, because the Bible says that we've
got to watch.
The poets picture men as loafing and dreaming,
but the Bible pictures men as watching.
Now if this were heaven, or if this
world were inhabited by a heavenly race of
beings, I would say that loafing and dreaming
would be a pretty good luxury, and we
could all get down to the hard work
of loafing, always the hardest work, loafing and
dreaming.
But the scriptures teach us that we are
living in times of emergency, and that there
is a civil revolt on in the moral
world, and that we're caught in the middle
of it, and that therefore we positively cannot
afford to loaf and dream, particularly followers of
the slain lamb.
We dare not loaf and dream, but we've
got to keep watching.
And there are reasons that we should watch,
I say.
There's an enemy abroad, that's another one, the
enemy, the devil, who walks about seeking whom
he may devour.
This enemy, the devil, is a real enemy.
He's a real enemy, and he goes about
seeking whom he may devour, and you look
good to him.
He would love to have you as a
good spiritual morsel, this coming year.
He'd like to destroy your usefulness, he'd like
to injure your testimony, he would like to
shill your love, he would like to harm
your faith, he would like to make you
less useful, he would like to get you
caught somewhere where you couldn't get loose, so
that you couldn't do much for God during
the coming year.
He'd like to do that.
Some people don't believe in the devil, they
don't believe he exists.
But I remember a criminal once who was
busy robbing banks and doing all kinds of
other criminal acts, and they were beating down
his neck pretty close, and he knew he
couldn't stand it very much longer, couldn't keep
ahead of the police much longer, so he
got a public relations man to help him.
I don't know how he got him, but
he got him.
And this PR man got it started that
this criminal had been found dead.
So they buried a fellow, and they said,
well, public enemy number one or two or
three, wherever he was, is dead and gone,
and the police relaxed their vigilance.
And as soon as the police relaxed their
vigilance, he went to work again, and he
managed to get himself a sack full of
somebody else's money, while the police nodded with
their feet on the desk, saying, thank God
that criminal's dead.
He wasn't dead, he only had himself reported
dead.
Now there are lots of liberal preachers in
Toronto this morning, that if they ever mention
the devil at all, except when they're mad
at their wife, if they ever mention the
devil, they do it apologetically and with a
superior smile, and say that he's dead, the
enemy's dead, the devil, ha ha, the devil
is dead.
No, the devil's only got himself reported dead,
my friend, in order that you may relax
your vigilance.
And while you're relaxed, then you'll get busy,
get busy on your family, on you, on
your body, on your nervous system, on your
business, on your testimony.
You'll get busy on you, because you think
he's dead.
He's not.
You've got to be watchful this year.
How I'd love to tell you that you
could just lie down comfortably on a cloud
and float effortlessly onward during these years, but
that isn't so.
And there isn't any teaching anywhere in the
New Testament or the Old that allows us
to believe that we're going to float off
to heaven this year on a pink cloud.
We are not.
We're going to have to be watchful Christians,
because these are not only times of emergency
with an enemy abroad, but there are dangers
in the way.
Like where I grew up in the mountain
state of Pennsylvania, they had one railroad running
through a mile or two from our place,
but distances were small then.
You could stand on a hill and look
across and almost touch over the hill, so
it would seem in the clear air.
And the Pennsylvania Railroad ran through, and I
was, of course, interested as a boy in
railroads.
They had no airplanes then, but they did
have trains.
And I was interested because of two things.
They divide their tracks up into sections, and
they put a section boss over that section,
and he has a certain number of men
under him.
And their business is to keep the track
up all during the year.
Every kind of weather, rain and storm and
blizzard and heat and cold, that track has
to be kept up.
And the section boss of any given section,
I don't know how long the sections were,
it was, say, five miles, just a rough
guess, and he kept that up.
He had that to do.
And then another man took where he left
off.
But how did he know where to put
his track?
On Thursday morning, we say, when he met
the boys at six o'clock with the
sun just up, and said to them, Now,
boys, we go to such and such a
place.
I had them numbered.
In order to work this morning, was a
piece of track there, and he said, How
did he know about that?
Well, they had another fellow.
They called him the track walker.
And I was interested.
I don't think that I was ever ambitious
to be a track walker.
I think I had ambition to raise chickens,
fight Indians, and to be a section boss.
But I don't think that I ever had
ambition to be a track walker.
But I was interested in it.
Now, the business of the track walker was,
he had to have, he didn't have flat
feet.
He had to have good feet and a
good sharp eye.
And so they started him here at where
the section began, and his business was to
walk to where the section ended.
I said five miles, that would be quite
a journey.
And back, and that was his job all
the time.
Looking for broken rails, looking for weak ties,
looking for spikes that had got worked out
by the rumbling vibrations of the trains, looking
for any washout under any section, looking for
something some bad boy, excuse me, but I
used to be one of them, would put
across the rails, wonder what would happen.
Nothing ever did, fortunately.
But we used to do those things as
kids.
And they had to watch all that.
Some bad boy, whose last name began with
T, should pull a piece of metal off
across the track, wondering what would happen.
He found that and took it off before
the train came through.
That was a track watch, a track walker.
That was his business.
It might have been said of him, Watch
ye, all of the goods that passed over
those lines, and all of the people more
valuable than all the freight, more or less
they were in the hands of the track
walker.
He had to find any weak places in
the lines.
And that's exactly what our Lord says.
Walk circumspectly, in another way.
You who waited laboriously through Latin back in
your high school days, remember that circum means
round and spectro means look.
So we have a man walking, looking around.
So many Christians just stumble ahead.
And of course at the end of the
year they come up all bruised and battered,
if they come up at all, because they
haven't walked circumspectly, looking around.
If there was any track, a rail loose
or a tie broken, they didn't know it.
They were stumbling along.
But Paul says you can't afford to do
that.
If you're going to have a spiritual victory
for any day, and now we say for
1962, you're going to have to get the
habit of walking, looking around, because there are
dangers in the way.
But also there are treasures likely to be
overlooked if you're not very watchful.
I noticed one thing in my preaching, I've
had to fight it down the years, and
that is to overlook everything that was all
right and attack that only which was wrong,
or mention it.
And that gives the impression sometimes that I
only see what's wrong.
Well, I don't.
But then if I were a doctor, I
don't suppose I would have men so healthy
that they were dangerous sitting in my waiting
room out there?
I'd have men who had something wrong with
them, or who thought they had something wrong
with them.
Any doctor knows his business is to look
after the sick, not to pet the healthy.
And everybody knows that a business of a
man of God, particularly if he has upon
him anything of the spirit of the biblical
prophet, is not to scratch the backs of
the fat saints, but to watch over the
weak and the sick and the troubled and
those who are in danger, and call their
attention to the washed-out bridges and the
broken rails, in order they might not run
off the track.
The trouble is that in doing this, we're
likely to cultivate a habit of overlooking the
good things that God has done for us.
You know, God has been good to us
this last year.
God was good to you to let you
live at all.
I know you're nice.
I understand all about that.
You're nice, and all that.
But nevertheless, if you had your deserts, you
wouldn't have lived this year.
The fact that you're here and reasonably alive
is all due to the good grace of
God, who didn't judge us according to our
sins, nor reward us to our iniquities.
I take every day as a bonus from
God.
I don't deserve another day, but God gives
me a bonus.
Every time the sun rises, God says, Give
the boy another day.
And I don't figure on too many days.
I don't know how many there'll be.
People live to be 90, and I'm only
in my early 60s.
I could be around here yet when some
of you are old and bent, that are
now quite young.
I don't know that.
I only know that every day is a
new day from God, and I want to
cultivate the habit of seeing God's provisions and
looking for the answers to prayer.
If we are properly thankful for the answers
to prayer, we'll never have a lack of
answers to be thankful for.
That's a quotation from somebody.
Now the second thing he says is to
stand fast in the faith.
The Bible always approves steadfastness.
Steadfastness is a virtue when it's found in
the saint and a vice when it's found
in the sinner.
The man who stubbornly refuses to change his
ways is a sinner, and he's on his
way to a sinner's future.
But the saint's virtue is virtue in the
faith.
It's a great sight to see an old
man standing in the same place he stood
as a boy.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
There was Samuel, and Samuel was just a
little kid, I don't know how old, so
young that they had to leave a candle
burning for him.
That would be pretty young, I'd say maybe
three or four years old.
He heard a voice saying, Samuel, Samuel, and
he woke and said, here I am, Lord.
First he went, of course, to Eli and
thought it was Eli.
Eli explained it was God.
There was the young boy Samuel, a Christian.
God whispered secrets for him when he was
only a lad so small that they had
to leave a candle burning because he was
afraid to go to sleep in the dark.
Many, many decades later, I don't know how
many, this man Samuel, now old and ripe
and matured and full of the grace of
God and scarred with the long trip and
covered with wounds of the battle, stands up
before his God, anoints the right thing, gets
him started, and then lies down.
Very started, maybe seven or eight years before,
Samuel was as an old man where he
was as a boy, in the grace of
God, in faith.
We are steadfast, he said, steadfast in the
faith.
Now someone says, but are we not to
grow?
Well, yes, we are to grow in grace,
but there are some things you can't grow
away from.
There are some things you can only stay
by steadfastly.
For instance, a young artist, a very young
artist, decides that he wants to paint pictures,
so he goes down to the artist's supply
and buys himself some brushes and a palette,
and an easel, and a canvas, and frames,
and lots of tubes of paint, of every
color.
Now there he starts, and you know if
he goes on to be as famous as
Rembrandt, he can't get beyond that.
He can get beyond his technique, he can
get beyond the knowledge he has now.
He's supposed to grow in knowledge and in
ability, but he can't get beyond the seven
primary colors.
Those seven primary colors will appear in everything
he paints from the hour he begins as
a teenage lad until his hand is too
old and shaky to paint anymore when he's
in his eighties.
He began with the seven primary colors, mixed
and so mixed as to bring any color.
Well, for instance, if he wants purple, he
takes blue and red.
If he wants green, he takes blue and
yellow.
He mixes to get his colors, but he
has to stay by those same colors.
Somebody comes along and says, throw away those
colors, aren't you going to make any advance?
No, if he's going to remain an artist,
he's not going to make any advance.
I admit, now, for the sake of the
argument, that I have seen pictures, modernist pictures
in the galleries of the continent that I
figured that somebody threw something away, and I
wasn't sure what it was.
But there was one more thing that should
have been thrown away, and that was the
picture itself.
But we're talking about sane people now, not
about bootlegs and artistic nerd wells.
But he's going to stay by his seven
primary colors.
It's wonderful to see him have the sense
to know where to begin and know where
never to leave, and yet he can make
progress within the framework of the seven primary
colors.
And so there are some things that nothing
can ever invalidate.
For instance, love and faith and God and
Christ and holiness and spiritual service.
These things we'll begin with, and these things
we'll end with when the sun goes down
on our earthly life.
We began with this when we gave our
hearts to Jesus Christ the Lord, and we've
had these.
They are the primary colors.
Faith and love and hope and trust and
confidence.
These and others like them.
Everything we do, they're compounds of these primary
colors, and we never can leave them.
We can go demanded, we can lose interest,
but we never can discover any truth that
can invalidate them.
For instance, Genesis 1.1. In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth.
John 1, Paul 1 to 14.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God, and you know the rest of it.
1 Corinthians 15.
For I delivered unto you first of all
that which I also received, how that Christ
died for our sins according to the scriptures,
that he was buried, and that he rose
again the third day according to the scriptures.
Now there we have some of the primary
colors.
God created the heaven and the earth.
The God who created the heaven and the
earth became flesh to dwell among us.
He died on a cross and rose again.
These are some of the great truths of
the Word, and you never can know enough
to invalidate these.
You never can find out so much or
make such intellectual or moral advances that these
become old hat.
Always they're relevant, always they're there.
So the scripture says, stand fast in the
faith.
I'd like to tell you that our faith
is not on trial.
Some of you no doubt read in the
newspapers and read with a good deal of
horror that gentleman that came up from Columbus,
Ohio, and told a bunch of young people
that in effect the scriptures were not inspired
and they weren't to believe anything they didn't
want to.
Well, of course, he imagines that he is
a very advanced thinker.
Friend, 50 years ago, 60 years ago, they
were saying the same thing.
Those boys haven't thought of a new thing
in years, not a new thing.
That's so old that it's turned brown with
age, and here's a very brilliant young fellow
telling these young people about it.
You know, high school people have a tough
time of it, and they have a tougher
time when they go to college.
I just replied to a letter recently from
a high school girl in New Jersey, and
I smiled at it because it was funny,
but I sympathized with the poor kid, too.
She began, Dear Dr. Tozer, I have concluded
that life is very confusing.
And then she went on to tell me
that she was listening to people she called
intelligence and men of prestige, and they're denying
what I've been taught from my childhood to
believe the Bible to be the word of
God and so on.
So she said, Life is very confusing.
And I wrote her and said, You sure
said it that time.
Life is confusing.
And I tried to explain to her and
give her scripture and help her out the
best I could, but I smiled at the
fact that she found it out.
Oh, she'll find that it's worse than she
thought it was.
But I told her to look to Jesus,
the author and finisher of her faith, and
he'd take care of the confusion.
So that you needn't worry about anybody coming
up with anything this next year that will
invalidate the faith or in any wise change
the truth of it.
No, somebody's going to put a man on
the moon one of these days.
What anybody would want to do it for,
I can't imagine.
It's a dusty place.
You'd sink to your waist in cosmic dust
if you went there.
There's no atmosphere there, so you'd have to
wear one of those Buck Rogers space helmets.
You couldn't walk around because the gravitational pull
is so light that you'd go floating away,
and the whole thing's messed up.
There's no reason for anybody to go there.
Look at all you've got out here in
western Canada.
Look what all they've got out here in
the western United States.
Look what we could do with what we've
got.
We've got to go floating away to the
moon.
I don't know why, but either Russia or
the U.S. will put a man up
there probably in 1962.
Maybe they'll miss the first shot or two,
and we'll have the terrible spectacle of a
man they can't bury, and can't find, and
can't locate, and can't stop, and can't do
anything with.
Floating around until the Judgment Day in an
aluminum capsule.
It'll be a terrible thing.
I don't know who'll go up, but oh
boy, I know who won't.
I know who won't.
I can't tell you who they'll send, but
I know who they won't send.
Unless, of course, they put me in irons
for something, and chuck me in and say,
see you later, because I just wouldn't go.
I'm satisfied with the earth.
I don't say that I'm pleased with it
altogether, because there's sin here, and I know
a better land far, far away, but I
also like the earth better than the moon,
because I'm an earth man, and I'm not
a man in the moon, or plan ever
to be.
So they'll never be able to find anything
anywhere.
I see in the telegram yesterday that once
one man wrote saying that there was more
than a possibility, I think it was there,
that they would have a man on Mars
within this year, or very shortly.
There's another place I'm not interested in, not
at all.
He counteth the stars, he knoweth them by
name, and he telleth all their number in
the planets, too.
That's all I want to know about the
stars until I rise above them and look
down.
But remember this, when they get their man
up there, living or dead, it won't change
one truth of the scriptures.
It won't mean one thing will be changed.
God will still be God, God will still
be the Creator, he'll still be the sovereign
God running his world.
Sin will still be sin, and righteousness will
still be righteousness, and heaven will still be
heaven, and hell will still be hell.
So stand fast in the faith, I say
to you.
Don't let any people of so-called intelligence
frighten you out of your Christian faith.
You began in the right place, now keep
right on until the Lord returns.
Then it says, put yourselves like men, and
he's talking to women as well as men,
and that, of course, means courage.
Courage is a first manly quality.
No matter what qualities a man has, he's
not a good man if he's a coward.
Women can put up with an awful lot
from their men, and I guess you do.
I suppose you do put up with an
awful lot from your men, and vice versa.
But there's one thing you won't put up
with.
If he's a simpering coward, you've turned your
stomach.
You can't endure a cowardly man, because God
says, equip yourself like a man, and one
of the first manly virtues is courage.
We've got to have this this coming year.
Don't look for any place to hide.
I heard a little song on the radio.
I listen to the news, and sometimes waiting
for the news to come on, I have
to listen to a few other things, which
I don't particularly like.
There's a new one out, have you heard
it?
A grown man, now mind you, a grown
man, I suppose he's grown.
He has a baby, and I suppose he's
mature, and he sings a little song, and
the song says this, something about when I
am tempted to be dishonest or to tell
a lie or something, I run right straight
to my baby's arms, and the little boy,
baby, makes me strong again.
Now, I'd just like to see this.
In the light of all that's here in
the world and the courageous men that have
lived and the Saints and markers, I'd just
like to see that I wouldn't turn away
and be sick.
But I'd just like to see a man
who is tempted to do something wrong, breaking
down and running home to an 18-month
-old baby and crawling right into his arms
for refuge.
I don't know, does God make a fellow
like that?
I don't suppose so.
But the people that listen to that and
like it, what kind of brains have they
got, if any?
Courage, we thought.
Now, would you want to be married to
a simpering coward like that that comes whimpering
home to you, licking his wounds?
No.
We demand that a man has some courage,
that he faces up to life and takes
it on the nose and comes back for
more.
That's the kind of man, if I were
a woman, I'd want to be married to.
He could be lonely and have a Roman
nose and have four-clock shadow and all
that, and I could still put up with
him.
But the moment he came running home to
the baby's arms for a place to hide,
I'd want rid of him right then.
I think that'd be one good excuse for
divorce, if there was any excuse.
Get rid of that sissy.
Courage, God says, acquit yourself like men.
Be strong.
He means you women, too.
Strong.
Strong in courage.
Be strong.
Now, there are two sets of virtues, two
sets of human virtues, the masculine and the
feminine.
He said elsewhere, my son, be strong.
Be strong as a soldier.
That's the masculine virtue, as I've said.
As a soldier, as a wrestler, as an
explorer, as a worker, as a businessman.
Be strong.
Moral strength.
Then there's the feminine set of virtues, and
the odd thing about it is they're supposed
to be so tender that actually it takes
as much strength to have them as it
does to have the other kind.
Listen to this.
Here I don't mind telling you is the
chapter that disturbs me more than any chapter
in the Bible.
Not the 23rd of Matthew.
No.
Not the 19th of Revelation.
No.
The chapter that disturbs me the most is
this one.
Though I speak with the tongues of men
and of angels and have not love, I
am become a sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy
and, you know, all the rest, I am
nothing.
Though I bestow all my goods to feed
the poor and give my body to be
burned and have not love, nothing.
Charity suffers long in his kind.
Love envieth not.
Love vaunteth not itself, never boasts.
Love is not puffed up.
Love does not behave itself unseemly.
Love seeketh not her own.
Love is not easily irritated.
Love thinketh no evil.
Love rejoices not in iniquity.
Love rejoices in the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes
all things, endures all things.
That disturbs me, because without that love you
might better never have been born.
Yet it is possible to be some kind
of Christian, speak with tongues, have the gift
of prophecy, understand all mysteries and have all
knowledge and be a great Bible teacher and
a great preacher and a good pastor and
be a member of the board and have
a reputation of feeding the poor and giving
even the body as a martyr and have
not love and still find at the end
that it's nothing at all.
It takes as much strength to have the
feminine virtues of love as it does to
have the masculine virtue of courage.
And there both should be present in every
Christian.
But, you know, God has not commanded impossibilities,
and there's where I take comfort.
God has never commanded impossibilities.
If he commands me to be strong, strong
in courage, strong in love, strong in the
masculine virtues, strong in the tender feminine virtues,
if he's commanded me, he also has provided
fully for this.
And I give you three things here.
I want to talk about the Holy Spirit
to the young people Thursday night, incidentally.
And I'd like all my young people friends
to be present Thursday night.
Now, two things I want to give you
that he can make us strong.
One, the Spirit's infilling.
You will have no strength, I have no
strength, but the Holy Ghost being God has
all the strength there is, and he offers
himself to us to fill us as the
air offers itself to our lungs.
The second is the Lord's indwelling.
Once he's in, he dwells within.
And the other is prayer and the scriptures.
Now, these can make any man strong, any
woman strong, and keep them strong through all
the years.
And he's provided the Spirit's infilling, the Lord's
indwelling, and prayer and the sacred scriptures.
Weakness is not to be excused because God
has provided means to make us strong.
Be strong, he says.
And finally, do all in love.
Love is by all consensus of all saints,
the queen of the virtues.
Whatever else we have, love is the queen
of the virtues.
Paul uses a beautiful expression.
I read a book not too long ago
by some literary critic on the figures of
speech of Shakespeare.
He went through all his works to discover
the amazing and beautiful and vivid figures of
speech.
Well, there was another man who knew how
to do that, too.
His name was Paul.
Paul, in one of his epistles, I'm not
sure what occurs in two of them, tells
a lot of virtues that we have.
And then he says, above these things put
on love.
And because it says, above these things put
on love, we say, well, Paul meant that
love was above all that.
But Paul said, over these things.
Paul was telling us how to dress.
And he said, now, over all this, as
the bridal ground, put on love.
Love is the shining raiment of the Saints.
No matter what you have underneath, do not
dress for the public until you have on
the shining raiment of love.
I say love is the queen of the
virtues, yet it's the rarest thing in the
Church of Christ.
And this ought to drive us to our
knees in terrible penitence.
Nothing concerning this Church, whatever, and this does
not refer to this Church, and nothing that
ever happened here has led me to say
this.
This is something I've gathered out of the
past, but I've thought of this.
I'd rather fall into the hands of the
police than to fall into the hands of
carnal Church members.
I would.
I'd rather have a big, tough cop lay
his hand on my shoulder and say, come
with me, than to have a big, tough
deacon lay his hand on me and say,
come with me.
Because I'd get treated all right at the
station.
And I have been treated marvelously well by
the Saints.
God bless them.
I guess God knew I was treated.
He just let everybody treat me nice.
I haven't been kicked out anywhere, haven't had
anything failed, haven't split anything, haven't failed on
anything that I know of.
So I've never had anybody come to me
and say, you've been around long enough.
But if they did, I suppose I'd have
to endure it.
But I have seen it happen.
And I have seen God's people, supposed people,
do things so cruel that no cop would
do it.
No tough cop would do it on the
beat.
So I say, love is the queen of
the virtues, and yet it is one of
the rarest things in the Church of Christ.
Oh, sing about it, love divine, all loves
excelling.
Joy of heaven to earth, come down, fixing
us thy humble dwelling.
Sing about it, close the book, and act
contrary to it.
For this coming year, my brethren, let's do
all in love.
It doesn't mean we sit around like a
koala bear, you know, pretty little soft thing.
We can be tough, and we have to
be strong, and we have to stand for
the things of God, and we have to
be bold, and we have to have courage,
but we can do the whole thing in
love.
Just as a surgeon, a surgeon that has
his amethyst, knocks somebody out, there they lie,
white and bleeding evenly, and the surgeon puts
up his scalpel and operates.
He doesn't do it because he's mad, and
he doesn't do it because he doesn't love.
He does it rather because he's got something
of humanitarianism in him.
I don't think anybody could ever be a
doctor that didn't have an amazing amount of
love for people in him.
Do you think so?
It's amazing you've got to love people in
order to be a doctor.
Any surgeon who operates does it.
He may have a number of motives, but
one of his motives has been, or he
wouldn't be there, that he likes people and
likes to make them well.
So a surgeon may cut deep, but he
does it in love.
I believe that we as God's people have
to be bold and courageous and stand out
there and witness for Christ under all circumstances
and dare to stand for righteousness no matter
what it costs us, but do it in
love.
If we have to use a scalpel sometimes,
do it in love.
I've never been able to figure out why
somebody doesn't kill me, because I go around
these Bible conferences and places, I tear them
up one side and down the other, poke
fun at their nonsense and their religious claptrap
they've dragged in, and instead of their getting
angry and chasing me out of the camp,
they invite me back for the next year.
God's been very good to me.
Maybe it's because I've never been mad at
anybody.
I may talk awfully tough, but I'm never
mad at anybody.
I like people and I like to see
them grow in grace, and if I have
to use a scalpel occasionally to correct some
of their faults, I'll use it, but as
soon as they've come out of the ether,
they'll see me smiling.
I wasn't mad.
I just wanted to help them.
So let's vow for this coming year to
have the victory by watching, always watching around
about us, by standing fast and not allowing
anybody to jar our fate, to put ourselves
courageously like men and be strong and finally
do everything in love.
Shall we not vow this year these two
vows?
There will be pain, but I will never
inflict it.
I expect to receive pain, but I will
never give any.
To quote that great citizen of the world
again that I quoted two weeks ago, Lincoln.
He was an old man, and a little
while before the assassin's bullet brought him down,
he said, not to boast, but humbly as
he could say humble things, he said, as
far as I know, I have never consciously
added an unnecessary ounce of suffering to the
weight of suffering borne by mankind.
It's wonderful to live and die like that.
Never an unnecessary ounce of suffering to the
suffering of mankind.
God knows they suffer enough.
My poor little old mother was so sympathetic,
she would always pluck her tongue, pluck, pluck,
pluck about this and that.
She lived and died in tender sympathy for
her fellow man.
I guess I got a little of it.
Maybe God added a little, because I find
it hard to read the newspapers these days.
The widows, the orphans, the families burned up
in little homes.
Death comes to a man on the highway
and leaves four or five little tiny babies
behind, and a wife who's frantic and doesn't
know where to look.
Suffering, grief, everywhere.
You can be sure, there's a lot of
it in Toronto, but would you do this?
By God's grace, be sure you don't add
anything.
Don't add anything.
Do all that you do in love.
That'll be a victorious year.
God will see that you have it, and
you will have it.
Amen.