So all things has its being in God,
and I want you to think of God
the Maker, God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth.
I want you to think of God the
Lover, God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son.
And I want you to think of God
the Keeper.
And if you're a real Christian, now if
you're not a real Christian, this doesn't, it
doesn't apply to you.
It doesn't apply to you if you're not
a real Christian, if you've not been born
anew and washed in the blood of the
Lamb, and this doesn't apply to you, and
there's no use in my trying to make
it apply.
But if you're a true Christian, this applies
to you.
And so the little lady got another thought,
and she said this.
She said, if this is all true, and
it is all true, then why be we
not all of great ease of heart and
soul?
She said, why aren't Christians the happiest people
in all the wide world?
Why aren't re-Christians the most easeful people
and the most restful people in all the
wide world?
Well, I'll tell you why.
She said, because we seek to have rest
in things that are so little.
This hazelnut, you see, brother, this little hazelnut
into which is condensed all it is, that
we try to find our pleasure in those
little things.
Now, I want to strip you down tonight
a little bit and ask you a question
or two.
Think with me a little bit.
What is it that makes you happy?
What is it that keeps you feeling good?
What cheers you up and chucks you up
your chin and gives your morale a lift?
Is it your job?
Is it the fact that you have good
clothes?
Is it that you're well married or that
you have a fine position?
Just what is it that keeps you, that
you're taking your joy in?
Well, that's our trouble, and that's why even
though we know that the immensity of God
is so vast that seen over against God,
everything even out to the farthest interstellar space
is just the size of a hazelnut.
It's nothing at all but a grain of
sand.
And yet we're not a happy people because
we multiply things.
We got our minds set on things.
We multiply things, and we increase things, and
we perfect things, and we beautify things, and
we put our confidence in things and God.
We have our job in God.
We have our husband in God.
We have our strong body in God.
We have our good job in God.
We have our home in God.
We have our ambition for the future in
God.
And so we put God as a plus
sign after something else.
For my brethren, all the great souls of
the world, from David and Paul and Augustine
and all the rest down to this present
hour, every responsible writer who has ever been
illuminated from the scriptures by the Holy Ghost
has said the same thing.
And whether he came from one school of
Christian thought or another, as long as he
was Orthodox, he said the same thing.
And particularly if he was spiritual, he said
the same thing, that our problem is that
we are putting our confidence in things and
not in God.
And this lady said, God showed me that
all the things that are are only the
size of a hazelnut.
Why, therefore, should I put my confidence in
a thing so little that God has to
hold it together?
Why should I trust things?
We multiply, I say, and we increase, and
still we're afraid and we're troubled and we're
anxious and we're unsatisfied.
And you know why?
I'll tell you why.
Because all that is beneath God sufficeth not
us.
God made you in his image and you're
stuck with it.
God did not make the chimpanzee in his
image.
He did not make that beautiful horse as
he galloped across the field.
He's a symphony in motion.
God did not make him in his image.
God did not make that beautiful bird that
the poet says sings darkly, and in shade
he covered his tombs, his nocturnal note.
God made him beautiful, but he didn't make
him in his image.
So God made only you in his image,
and you're stuck with it, man.
Sinner man, lost man, Christian man, you're stuck
with it.
You're made in the image of God, and
because you're made in the image of God,
nothing short of God will satisfy you.
And even if you happen to get saved
on this nickel-in-the-slot and escape
hell and take heaven, a modern idea of
evangelism that Jesus came in order that we'd
escape hell and go to heaven, that poor
little kindergarten view of Christianity, even if you're
that kind of believer, remember one thing, my
brother, that even you will find somewhere down
the years that you'll not be content with
things plus God.
You'll have to have God minus all things.
You'll have to come to a place in
your life that you say, Don't you have
things?
You'll have a suit, as they say here.
Richmond, brother, sure I have a suit.
And I have some pens here that I
get kidded for carrying around.
And what else do I have?
God knows I don't have much, only a
lot of boots.
But I do have boots.
And a wife and some children and grandchildren
and friends.
I have all that.
But just as sure as I set my
hopes and my comfort upon things and people,
I lose something out of my heart.
It dare not be things and God.
It dare not be people and God.
It must be God and nothing else.
And then whatever else God gives, we hold
it iron's weight and we hold it dear
for Jesus' sake and we love it for
his sake.
But it is not necessary to our happiness.
If there's anything necessary to your eternal happiness
but God, you're not yet the kind of
Christian that you ought to be.
For only God is the very rest.
I like that old expression very, as an
adjective, very rest.
Only God is the very rest.
So says the book of Hebrews.
And that word very there is another form
of the word verily.
When Jesus, our Lord, wanted to say something
that was so true that he wanted to
underscore it, he said, verily, I say unto
you, truly, truly, this I say, and only
God is the true rest, the very rest.
You see, God takes great pleasure in having
a helpless soul come to him simply and
plainly and intimately.
He takes pleasure in having us come to
him.
You know, this kind of Christianity doesn't draw
a big crowd.
Nobody wants this except a few of those
who have their hearts set on God and
they want God more than they want anything
else in the world.
They want the spiritual experience that comes from
knowing God for himself, that they could have
everything stripped away from them and still have
God.
That kind of people, listen, they're not vastly
numerous in any given locality.
So this kind of preaching doesn't draw vast
numbers of people, but I'll tell you what
it does do.
It's likely to draw the hungriest ones and
the thirstiest ones and some of the best
ones.
So God takes great pleasure, I say, in
having helpless people come to him simply and
plainly and intimately.
He wants us to come without all that
great over-larding of theology.
He wants us to come as simply and
as plainly as a little child.
And if the Holy Ghost touches us, we'll
come like that.
Now, my brethren, I said last week that
God had boundless enthusiasm.
I repeat it now, that God is boundlessly
enthusiastic.
I'm glad somebody is, because I don't find
very many Christians that are.
Or if they are, they're not enthusiastic for
the things that matter.
If they're going to have a movie, they
can get all steamed up about that.
If they're going to go on the moonlight
cruise, they get all worked up over that.
But if you just say, Look, look, behold
God, behold God, you can't get much enthusiasm
these days.
So I'm glad somebody's enthusiastic, and brother, God's
enthusiastic.
He's enthusiastic for himself in the persons of
the Godhead.
The persons of the Godhead are infinitely delighted
with each other.
The Father is infinitely delighted with the Son,
and the Son is infinitely delighted with the
other two persons of the Godhead.
He is delighted with his whole creation, I
repeat, and especially for men made in his
image.
Unbelief comes and throws a cloud over us
and shuts off the light of God, and
we don't believe what's actually here, that God
is delighted, infinitely delighted with us.
Here's a little prayer that was made, O
God of thy goodness, give me thyself, for
thou art enough to me, and I may
ask nothing that is less, and find any
full honor to thee.
God, give me thyself.
You know what a revival is, brother?
We make out that a revival is everybody
running around falling in everybody else's neck and
saying, Forgive me for thinking a bad thought
about me.
Forgive me for that nickel that I forgot
to pay back.
Or we say a revival consists of people
getting very loud and noisy.
Well, all that might happen in a revival,
but let me tell you, the only kind
of revival that will be here when the
worlds are on fire is the kind of
revival that begins by saying, O God, give
me thyself, for nothing less than thee will
do.
For anything less than God, anything less than
God, she says, ever me wanteth.
I like that little expression.
I said, O God, if I get all
this hazelnut, everything from the proton to the
farthest, remotest heavenly body, up and down the
scale, all the beautiful things of earth and
sky and sea and all the diamonds of
the mines and all the timber of the
forest and all the charm of the landscape
and all the riches of the cities, if
I have it all and have not thee,
ever me wanteth.
Translated into modern English, O God, it won't
be enough.
It won't be enough.
You know deep down what's the matter with
everybody?
Nobody would say it, and the average person
wouldn't believe it.
And if he heard me quote these three
words, he'd laugh in my face and say,
What are you doing, teaching Chaucer?
No, no, teaching theology, and then simply using
some old phrases to get it home to
him in a new way.
Friends, the problem of the world is, everybody
is saying and doesn't always say it, ever
me wanteth.
You know, there's a little shrine inside of
you, there's a shrine so far in that
nobody can know that shrine but you.
There is a penetralium, a deep, deep shrine,
far eastward in Eden, and it lies in
that great soul of yours, that soul that
is bigger than the starry universe, and there's
a shrine there and a garden and a
throne.
And no matter what you get, there'll be
a cry from that shrine, ever me wanteth.
O God, I'm still hungry.
God, I'm still hungry.
Who are they that commit suicide?
They're not the poor, they're the rich.
Who are they that commit suicide?
They're not the simple unknown fellow on the
street.
They're movie actors and politicians and people that
are widely known.
Good men, everything, as the song had it,
take the world and give me Jesus, and
we can have all the world and have
not Jesus.
And still there's a cry from deep within,
ever me wanteth.
And you know, I think this would be
the world's greatest calamity.
The greatest calamity for a human soul to
be made in the image of God, and
to be made with a spirit so big
that it can contain the universe and cry
for more, that it's bigger than the heavens
and the heaven of heavens, and the emptiness
of God, and go through the eternity to
come crying, ever me wanteth.
O God, forever and forever, O God, I'm
hungry, and I can't eat, and I'm thirsty
and can't drink.
Send Lazarus, that he might dip his finger
in water and put it on my forehead,
for I suffer in these flames.
And I wonder if the flames of hell
aren't kindled from deep in the shrine where
dry and cracked and parched the soul of
man cries, O God, ever me wanteth.
I've had everything.
I've had religion, I've had physician, I've had
money, I've had children, I've had wife or
husband, I've had clothes, I've had a good
home, I've had, I've had, I've had, but
O God, this is a little hazelnut, it's
nothing, and my heart cries, O God, I
miss that which I wanted the most.
You know, friends, really down at the bottom,
that's the problem.
That's the problem with Russia.
That's the problem in Washington.
That's the problem everywhere, ever, ever they want,
because they can get everything.
You know the old story of Alexander who
conquered the world and wept because there was
not more world to conquer.
Man has gone to the North Pole and
to the South Pole and now turns his
greedy eyes on the moon and on the
planets.
Have and get and get and have.
The richest nation in the world is America.
We've got the most.
We think we're in a recession, and still
cars are coming out longer and bigger and
looking more like jukeboxes than ever, and there's
still more money and more bank accounts.
I heard of a fellow whose deductions began
to catch up and did finally catch up
with his salary, but mostly it's not so.
After they've taken off everything that they want
to take off and can think of, still
the average fellow has more money than he
used to.
Back when I was a young fellow, a
man used to raise ten kids on a
dollar a day and do a good job.
Now we've got everything, absolutely everything, and yet
what country in the world is the most
troubled, had more breakdowns, more insanity, more murders,
more triangles, more bug houses, and more hostilities,
and more psychiatrists, more couches?
Here in America, it's rather a cynical thought,
an ironic thought, that the richest nation in
the world manages to have the most divorces,
the most suicides, the most juvenile delinquencies, proving
again that no matter how much you give
a man, if he misses God, he cries
every word he wanted and goes out to
do some crime.
And if you give him everything and then
add God to it, you have wronged him,
and he's wronged his own soul.
For God wants to be first and wants
to be all.
Money won't do it.
If you take the kingdom of God and
his righteousness, God will add money to you,
as much as you need.
If you take the kingdom of God and
his righteousness, God may send your way learning
and art and music and legitimate earthly loves.
God may send it all to you and
let you have it, but always with the
understanding that if you can take it away
again and you won't crumble, you still have
God.
God is all, and now I close.
Isaiah wrote, "...thy sun shall no more go
down, neither shall thy moon withdraw itself.
For the Lord shall be thine everlasting light,
and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended."
And the silkweaver of Germany wrote a kind
of wild paraphrase on this, running like this,
O past and gone, how great is God,
how small am I, a molten, illimitable sky,
amidst a glory deep and wide and high
of heaven's unclouded sun.
There to forget myself forevermore, lost, swallowed up
in love's immensity, the sea that knows no
sounding and no shore.
God over there, not I, more near than
I unto myself can be art thou to
me, so have I lost myself in finding
thee.
The boundless heaven of thine eternal love around
me and beneath me and above, in glory
of that golden day where the former things
are passed away, I, past and gone.
We've almost lost the scope, he says, of
the song of Solomon.
We've almost lost our ability to kneel barefooted
before such a burning bush as this.
When the Church has restored to her again
the kind of spirit that can understand what
Isaiah meant and what Ter Stegen meant when
he paraphrased Isaiah, then we will have revival.
Then we'll have the kind of revival the
Quakers had.
Then we'll have the kind of revival the
Methodists had.
Then we'll have what they had at Pentecost.
Then we'll have what the Quakers had.
Then we'll have what the Saints have had
down the centuries.
Wherever the fire glowed until the ages turned,
that's what they had.
So have I lost myself in finding thee,
have lost myself forever, O thou Son, the
boundless heaven of thine eternal love around me
and beneath me and above.
This is God.
Now, brethren, let's remember the text again, hid
with Christ in God.
And if you gain the whole world and
find not God in your own soul, what
is it?
It's worth nothing to you.
Then these days let's search, let's go home
to pray, let's get still, let's get quiet,
let's learn the wonder of silence, let's learn
the beauty of the secret seeking after God.
With our Bible before us open and our
knees bent, and all alone in humility and
penitence, let us cry, Only God, only God,
in God alone, take the world but give
me Jesus.
Will you do that?
We need it in this church.
You need it.
We all need it.
May God grant it.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord.