The Book of Psalms is actually the Jewish
hymn book, and with all the modern songs
that we have, nobody has reached the heights
of worship and adoration that David the Psalmist
had.
That wonderful psalm, Lift up your heads, O
ye gates, and be lifted up, ye everlasting
doors.
Is there a modern tune to that?
You don't know?
You know one?
Oh, I won't ask you to sing.
It might be as bad as Mike, but
we'll find it one day.
Well, how many psalms are there?
150?
Out of the 150, there are eight penitential
psalms.
I believe all of them were written by
David.
Out of the eight penitential psalms, one is
the greatest, and that surely is the 51st
psalm.
I want to read a part of that
right here.
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 the only have I sinned, and
done this evil in thy sight, that thou
mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be
clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in
sin did my mother conceive me.
Behold, thou desirest truth in inward parts.
In the hidden part thou shalt make me
to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be
clean.
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than
snow.
Make me to hear joy, and gladness of
the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
Hide thy face from my sins, and blot
out all mine iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart of God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence, take
not thy holy spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation,
and of holy with thy free spirit.
Then, that's after he's been restored, after he's
been liberated, then will I teach transgressors thy
ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
I was thinking, as I think the brother
mentioned earlier tonight, about the glory of the
Lord.
Some people think the glory of the Lord
may come like the Shekinah glory.
I think the glory of God comes when
people who have been concealing sin for years
suddenly feel conviction, and they rush for mercy.
A brother told me tonight about a meeting
in Wisconsin, I think last night.
There were about 1500 people there.
The preacher was preaching on repentance.
Before he got halfway through, a man ran
up to the altar and said, I need
to repent, I'm living in adultery, I need
mercy, I need mercy.
I think that's the glory of God.
When suddenly the human heart is exposed to
the glare and majesty of God.
Leonard Bernstein, as many of you know, is
considered one of the greatest conductors.
I think he's conducted what, the New York
Philharmonic, or New York.
One state offers something for years.
He's considered a maverick because he breaks every
law in the book.
He'll jump off the podium when he's conducting,
or he'll join in the singing.
And the other guys don't like that, it's
not highbrow enough.
But in his own right, he's one of
the world's greatest classical professional pianists.
And years ago, a friend of his was
in Europe, and he bought a piece of
manuscript that he paid a small fortune to
receive.
He came home to Bernstein's apartment in New
York, and he said, I want you to
play this.
And Leonard Bernstein looked at it and said,
I can't play this.
He said, you can, you won't, but you
can.
He said, I can't.
Why not?
Where did you buy it?
I bought it in Europe.
It was written by a man 200 years
ago, playing one of those majestic organs in
one of the great cathedrals of Europe.
And he said, it's a masterpiece.
So Leonard Bernstein says, I know that, but
I can't do it.
He said, why not?
You've got the music.
He said, listen, if I'd been sitting up
in that choir loft, if I'd heard that
maestro really playing that piece, if I could
get all his moods and cadences, maybe I
could imitate it.
But you see, he's 200 years away, and
I just can't get the strength, I can't
get the measure of that man.
I can't just interpret him by his music,
the little black and white dots, whatever they
are.
You know, that's something akin to the problem
of the preacher.
I'm reading to you a manuscript tonight that
was written about maybe three, four thousand years
ago.
The atmosphere, the book itself carries no atmosphere.
The only hope that we can get through
is that the Holy Spirit of God who
inspired this will take it tonight and inspire
it to you.
Only then does it live.
The Bible itself says, the letter killeth, but
the Spirit giveth life.
Now this is an amazing psalm.
If you read it carefully, you'll discover it's
a monologue.
There's nobody in it but David.
He doesn't even talk about Bathsheba.
He doesn't talk about murder.
He talks about himself.
Have mercy upon me, O God.
According to the multitude of thy tender mercies,
blot out my transgressions, wash me throughly from
my iniquity, cleanse me from my sins.
I've sinned against thee.
He isn't pointing a finger at anyone else.
And he comes with this gorgeous word that
we have here, one of the greatest in
the vocabulary of the theologians, have mercy upon
me.
He has no excuses.
Again, I say this is a monologue.
In your Bible it's written on beautiful paper,
it's written with black ink, it's punctuated with
stops and commas and all the laws of
grammar.
Actually this psalm is written with blood.
It's punctuated with sobs and with tears and
with brokenness.
This man isn't dictating this to a charming
young secretary at the side of him.
He's talking to God.
He's a man that's crushed in a load
of sin.
There are at least three prayers in this
wonderful psalm.
In the first verse he says, have mercy
upon me, O God.
According to the multitude of thy tender mercies
brought out my transgressions.
Read it carefully when you're home.
There are three different words for sin, there
are three different words for cleansing that he
uses here.
But here is a man bowed down in
guilt.
Have mercy upon me, O God.
You see, nobody I think in the whole
Bible ever exposed his heart to the gaze
of people as much as did this wonderful
man David.
He was the darling of his nation.
He was a young man.
They had had a king before him who
was very great and very wonderful.
But before very long people were marching down
the streets having parades and they were singing
Saul has slain his thousands but David is
tens of thousands.
This man is hitting the charts.
He's written the most quoted, most wonderful psalm
in the whole of the word of God,
that 23rd psalm.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not
want.
Can't you see him on the side of
a hill there in Israel?
Many of course, many of you of course
have heard Keith Green, at least you've had
his records.
He used to come to my home often,
too often sometimes.
Two or three times a day.
Sometimes he'd bring his guitar and I used
to tease him about the thing.
He used to say there are no guitars,
guitars are backslidden harps.
I can't imagine David there on the hills
of Bethlehem when I consider thy heavens, the
work of thy fingers, the moon and the
stars which thou hast ordained.
What is man?
People are still asking the question.
You know there's a guy on TV sometimes.
When he's there I like to hear him.
He's called Carl Sagan.
You know Carl Sagan?
He's an atheist, unbeliever.
Do you know that man blesses me to
death?
He's so stupid.
Well isn't it amazing a man of the
intelligence of PhD has spent thousands of dollars
trying to find out where he came from
and he doesn't know where he's going.
Isn't that stupidity?
He's like a man sitting at the airport
with his baggage and a $10,000 suit
and a big ring and you know one
of these evangelist watches, $12,000.
And he's sitting there you say where did
you go?
Oh I don't know.
I've got all this luggage, I've got all
my, but I don't know where I'm going.
You say boy you need your head shaking.
But you know I like Sagan for this
reason.
Let me say this, amongst other things I've
always wanted, I've never had one.
I'd like a powerful telescope that looks away
there into infinity almost.
And Carl Sagan says do you know we've
discovered there's not one Milky Way with billions
of stars, there are hundreds of Milky Ways
with billions and trillions and quadrillions and sextillions
of stars.
Great.
It blesses me to death.
Why?
Because it says in the 40th chapter of
Isaiah that God knows the stars, he counts
them and he knows all their names.
Isn't that lovely for an atheist to admit
that?
That God counts the stars, he knows the
names of all of them.
Well if he knows the stars surely he
knows my name.
And he remembers I'm dust, that's what the
psalmist says.
He knows our frame and he remembers that
we are dust.
But here is a man, he's had all
the opportunities, the greatest opportunities that any man
has ever had in history.
He rules over a great nation and he
can control armies, he can control governments, but
he can't control his passions.
He's in trouble here.
And it's attributed of course by all the
writers it's attributed as the psalm of King
David.
Well I wrote a little note here tonight.
I was thinking about the different men in
history.
Here you have a man and he's dressed
with guilt.
Every time he hears a baby cry it
tears him up on the inside.
He remembers the child that he gave to
Bathsheba.
Every time he looks out of his castle
he sees a soldier standing there.
He remembers the brilliant young man he put
to death, he planned his death.
And here he is condemned, last with guilt,
tormented within a man.
You know the least emphasized work of the
Holy Spirit today is conviction of sin.
We want the blessings, we want the fruit,
we want the joy.
But I'll tell you the most miserable man
in the world is the man who really
gets to know conviction of sin.
Do you know why the world's in the
mess it's in tonight?
It's not politics, it's not Hitler, it's not
the cult, it's not the devilish things that
people teach me.
The reason we're in this mess in America,
what I call this moral desolation and spiritual
destitution, is due to one thing.
The pulpit has lost its authority, the pulpit
has lost its vision, the pulpit has lost
its power.
We're comfortable with sin.
Nobody commits adultery anymore, they're just having an
affair.
There are no phony cases, they're just having
premarital sex.
Nobody's guilty anymore.
Oh you don't preach condemnation, dear God.
I mean aren't you burdened enough with the
taxation and the possibility of an invasion of
Russia and other things?
But when it comes down to the issue
of dealing with this little thing in here
that we call the heart of man, there
is only one answer to the problem, and
that is the answer of the cross of
Jesus Christ.
I think one of the greatest hymns ever
written, let me put it backwards, I was
preaching in a conference in Wisconsin in 1953
I think it was, and as we finished
the service somebody struck up, so I'll cherish
the old rugged cross.
The next morning I was going to cross
for breakfast, I had to speak at nine
o'clock, and here's a lovely lady walking
over the grass, and she said, well that
was a great meeting last night.
I said it was, I noticed as we
began to sing at the end, so I'll
cherish the old rugged cross, the tears were
coming down your face, it's a wonderful hymn
isn't it?
She said, yes my husband wrote it.
Well it was doubly nice.
But you know we've got to go back
to the cross.
The most, the biggest lie I think the
devil has put on our generation is this,
that in history we passed Jesus Christ coming
up the road two thousand years ago, that's
a lie from hell, he's ahead of us.
Whether you go the broad way to destruction
or the narrow way, you're still to confront
Jesus Christ.
You may not hear it, you may hear
his voice and disobey him tonight, you've heard
his voice often, you've heard your mother praying
for you, you've heard somebody pleading for you,
you've heard that voice and you're deaf and
deaf ears, but listen, when you're lying in
the grave there at the voice of the
Son of God, you'll get up at that
very moment, you've no option about it.
You see we're all heading up for the
final checkout, whether you're a saint or a
sinner, you're cramming whether you know it or
not, you're cramming for your finals.
I wanted to preach, which would take me
about three days, in fact I preached on
it one night for three and a half
hours, three, no correctly, three hours and twenty
minutes on the judgment seat, but I can't
do that.
I want you to know something David, you're
welcome to this pulpit any time you want
to come.
You forgot to tell him so I told
him.
And when you come I'm coming with you.
So I certainly love to meditate on that.
I'll tell you what, it terrifies me.
I go into my office between midnight and
two o'clock and some days I didn't
even pick up my pen.
I didn't kneel.
The majesty of God is so real, the
awesomeness, that this whole world is going to
the final checkout counter.
There isn't a sin that's being committed unless
it's under the blood that won't be brought
to light.
The last thing that's crossed the mind of
Senator Kennedy is he's going to meet that
girl that drowned at Capiquity.
She didn't drown for the simple reason when
they got her body she had no water
in her lungs.
I understand she had a baby in her
belly, whoever calls that, but he's going to
stand, there'll be no exoneration, there'll be no
pope to plead for him, there'll be nothing
he can bring as a sacrifice.
He's going to stand there not as Kennedy
but as an ornery sinner in the sight
of God.
Every sin that man has done is going
to be brought to account in that great.
Can you think of that?
Isn't it awesome that the church slanders when
this is so true?
That men and women have not been alerted.
When did you last preach on flee from
the wrath to come?
When did you last preach that all wicked
shall be turned into hell and nations that
forget God?
We don't preach that anymore.
The sting has gone out of our preaching.
There used to be a time when conviction
of sin came and people went home.
And what did they do?
They couldn't sleep.
They go home now if they're troubled and
they turn TV on and wash it all
away.
They're terrified of facing reality.
But here is a man again confronted with
his sin.
And I acknowledge my transgression.
God can do nothing until he confesses sin.
My note on that was this, that Mary
Queen of Scots would have said I'm above
the law.
The law doesn't apply to me but it
does apply to her.
Mohammed would have invented or produced at least
a revelation that would absolve him from both
crimes.
Charles II would have publicly abrogated the seventh
commandment.
Queen Elizabeth would have suspended Nathan.
But this amazing man doesn't do anything of
the kind.
He faces up to the fact that he
needs mercy.
I love that hymn that says mercy there
was great and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.
What's wrong with this man?
He's the most famous man in the world.
He's he's had more victories than King Saul
has.
The people in the streets are singing David
Saul has slain his thousands and David is
tens of thousands.
He's riding a great wave of popularity.
He's put down his enemies the Philistines.
Everybody trembles at him.
This anointed anointed shepherd boy.
How amazing what a lesson.
Everybody else would have chosen Ahab.
No that's not his name.
His brother anyhow was a tall handsome man
and David is only a shepherd boy.
Isn't that a wonderful story of David and
Goliath?
I love that story.
I like to see that little boy David
with his sling and he went out and
what did he do?
The first thing he said I slew a
lion.
Then there came a bear.
I took the lion and I caught him
by the beard and punched his nose and
sent him home.
Then there came a bear and I destroyed
the bear.
Now comes Goliath.
Boy I'll get rid of him.
And Goliath is saying who's this little creature
coming here?
He didn't realize this man that stone he
had in his sling was more powerful than
an atomic bomb.
You know it seemed as though he'll never
do it.
He swings it around and lets it go.
This man has armor everywhere.
His breastplates, his armor on his legs, his
armor on his hands and his arms and
he's totally protected and yet he has a
little space here above his visor and the
stone went right through and right into the
head of Goliath.
And you know such a thing never entered
his head before.
Next thing he's laid out.
What a foolish thing.
God takes the foolish things.
Dear God now you can't go to many
schools.
You can't be a preacher.
I get young men distressed.
I want to go to a school.
I want to go in the ministry.
They say you can't go in the ministry
until you've got an education, until you've got
a degree.
So what?
Our pulpits are full of degrees now.
What are they doing?
They're in splendid isolation.
The emphasis is on the ice.
It's amazing here.
Here is a man loaded with guilt, as
I say, condemnation.
You know somehow we think that the salvation
that we offer is only for the down
and out.
It's only for the men who've got messed
up.
It's all right to be in New York.
We work, David and my other son and
Martha, we work with David Wilson when he
first started in New York 26 years ago.
And he gathered up the scum of the
earth, as it were.
Prostitutes came every night to the place.
Guys would tell you how many people they
killed, how many murders they've been in.
Gang rapes, gang murders, and the filth of
the earth.
It was an abomination to listen to it.
But how wonderful to be able to call
Hebrew 725 to somebody who says, listen there's
no hope for me.
I've been in prison 12 times.
I've been in so many rapes.
I've been in so many murders.
I've got a lust for all that's wrong
and all that's sinful.
And then you tell them about, and you
know what?
They had religion.
They had crucifixes around their necks.
Many of them never missed a mass or
missed something else, and yet they were perfectly
dominated by sin.
And then you say there's one by the
name of Jesus, he's able to save to
the uttermost all who come unto God by
him.
Somebody mentioned yesterday that wonderful book of Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress.
Boy Bunyan was some preacher.
Do you know when he lived?
He lived in the reign of Charles II
of England.
Do you know who was the leading preacher
in that day?
Nobody but John Owen.
The greatest preacher in history at that period.
The greatest preacher to all of some of
the Calvinists.
John Owen has about 16 volumes of sermons.
I have about six of them.
I've never read them.
But he's a great preacher.
Every time Parliament opened, the king sent for
John Owen.
You must give some orations.
Every time there was some distinguished gathering of
celebrities from the world, tell Dr. John Owen
he must appear in the Royal Chapel and
he must preach to us on a certain
subject.
So this man had favour with the king.
He had favour with the elite of England.
One day, he was summoned into the presence
of the king.
So he thought, well, I suppose I'm going
to get a commission to preach somewhere.
And the king in his archaic English said
to him, listen, Dr. Owen, I want to
ask you a question.
You are the greatest preacher in England today.
You have a colossal intellect.
You have marvellous reasoning.
You have rhetoric.
You have scholarship.
You read it all together.
You're the most stirring preacher that there is.
Is it true that you've been going up
the road to listen to a babbling Baptist
by the name of John, I nearly said
John the Baptist, John Bunyan?
So he said, yes, your honour.
He said, you, the greatest preacher, you go
to listen to an uneducated man like John
Bunyan?
He said, yes, sir.
I went into a shed where the roof
was leaking and the walls were not very
secure, the wind was blowing in, the rain
was blowing in, and I listened to him
for four hours.
I stood there astonished at the power of
a man, the authority he had, the wisdom
he had, the strength he had.
It was like arrows shooting into my heart.
I would listen to him for hours.
I don't understand why you do that.
Well, said Dr. John Owen, listen, sir, I
would gladly take off my robes.
He has to wear certain robes in the
presence of the King.
I would gladly take them off and throw
them at your feet if I could preach
like that man, that unlearned, unlettered man.
What happened at the upper room?
Did they all come out with degrees?
Well, the one thing for sure, they didn't
come out to do mimes.
Can you imagine them coming out of the
upper room with face and white hands doing
silly stuff that they have these days?
They came out of the room in the
energy of God, in the power of the
Holy Ghost.
Pentecost in Scripture is married.
It's married to poverty, it's married to power,
it's married to persuasion, it's married to prisons,
it's married to persecution.
Pentecost today is married to prosperity.
It's a million miles away from Pentecost.
There has to come another time when we
not merely sing what we sang tonight, but
actually we say, Lord, I humble myself at
thy feet.
I'm totally unworthy that I should even be
the least of one of your disciples.
So go back to John Bunyan.
Remember in his story he talks about the
man who turned his back on the city
of destruction to go to the city of
God, and he tells him to follow that
shining light, and he followed it, and then
the pilgrim says, I came to a place
that was somewhat ascending.
There was a wall on this side and
a wall on the other side, and then
right ahead of me I saw a cross.
And when I gazed upon the cross, the
burden loosed from off my back, fell from
off my shoulders, rolled down the hill into
an empty sepulcher, and I beheld it no
more forever.
And he gave three leaves for joy.
I think one for the Father, one for
the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost.
Listen, a Baptist got delivered of his sins
and gave three leaves for joy.
Well dear God, what should a Pentecostal do
if he gets rid of all this stuff?
He ought to have a war dance.
He ought to be magnifying the Lord.
Listen, my guilt has gone.
Sure it's for sinners, and it's for scholars.
The highest family in English history at that
period, when John Wesley was around, was the
Wesley family.
John Wesley's grandfather was a bishop, his father
was a preacher, they were all hymn writers.
So John Wesley's family, Charles Wesley, came into
a living relationship.
Listen, he was a communicant.
When that man got saved he was as
clean as Nicodemus.
There wasn't a thing you could lay on
him.
He didn't smoke, drink, swear, do anything.
He took sacrament.
He even went to pray with men at
three o'clock in the morning when he
wasn't saved.
Dear God, my problem with Wesley is he's
more spiritual when he wasn't saved than I
am when I am saved.
He loved the lost.
He came to Georgia to rescue the Indians
he said who were without God and without
hope.
And he slept where?
In some nice hotel.
No, he slept on the ground.
Woke up in the morning with his hair
frozen to the ground.
Couldn't release his arm in the frost.
Got one arm released, released the other, got
his legs free, got his hair free out
of the mud, stood up and he said,
I brushed the frost off my coat and
I sang the doxology to magnify God.
And he wasn't even born again yet.
He had such compassion for people in their
ignorance.
Dear Lord, I'm sick to death of this
psychology stuff.
I don't find the psychologist, Christian psychologist, getting
on a boat and going up the Amazon
and then going up the Oronoco River to
another place.
There are Indians there, have been there two
thousand years, they're without God.
They don't go and rescue them because they've
no message.
They come messing up Christians.
Oh, these poor little Christians, always trouble.
Somebody comes with a soft message and soothes
you, you know, and says, Well, dear ones,
you're really a problem.
Your image is too small.
Well, if you're a Christian, you shouldn't have
images anyhow.
Hark the herald angels sing, says Charles Wesley.
Add glory to the newborn King.
Adam's likeness now effaced.
Stamp thine image in its place.
So Charles Wesley has an experience of God.
Maybe his greatest hymn was, And can it
be that I should gain an interest in
the Savior's blood?
Died he for me who caused his pain?
For me who him to death pursued?
And here you have this scholar, this gentleman,
this brilliant man, accepting to royalty.
And then he writes this verse, No condemnation
now I dread.
You know, so you look so nice tonight
and inside of you there's something twisting, condemnation,
guilt, unconfessed sin, rebellion against God, and you'll
never have mercy.
I don't care what you do.
You can go through the ritual, you can
be baptized and come up.
All you do, you're going to dry sinner
and come out a wet sinner.
But this man has been radically born again
of the Spirit of God.
And if any man, I love that, there's
such a defiance in that word of Paul's.
Is it in 2 Corinthians 5 17?
If any man be in Christ, any man,
anywhere, at any time.
If you have a message less than that,
you then go to the heathen up the
Amazons.
You can't go to people in those far
off countries in bondage.
You can't go down the street to the
prostitute.
You can't go around the corner to the
drunkard.
And listen, be very careful.
He may turn around and ask you, you're
preaching victory over sin.
Do you have victory over sin?
Do you have victory over lust?
And are you pointing the way?
You know, our young people, they have so
many signposts pointing the way.
We don't need guideposts to point the way.
We need guides to lead the way.
We need guides in the pulpit.
We need guides in the Sunday school.
Anyhow, this man is burdened with guilt.
He's borne down with grief.
And so he comes and he cries, Have
mercy upon me, O God.
According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies,
brought out my transgressions.
Wash me truly from my iniquity, and cleanse
me from my sin.
Against thee, the only have I sinned.
You say that's not correct.
He didn't just sin against God, he sinned
against Bathsheba.
I'm not sure he did.
He sinned with her.
But I'm not sure he sinned against her.
She's part of the deal.
But he doesn't blame her here.
He says, I am the sinner.
You know, we all know what's wrong with
somebody else.
But it's when it comes to me being
feeling condemnation and guilt, and we start making
excuses about it.
But it's an amazing thing again.
And he says, Against thee, only have I
sinned, and none this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest,
and be clear when thou judgest.
Behold, I was straightened in iniquity, and in
sin did my mother conceive me.
He prays the first part of this wonderful
psalm.
He prays it as a sinner under condemnation,
under guilt.
And he uses three different words in the
first two verses for sin.
And he uses three different words there, which
I won't to emphasize at the moment.
He uses three different words there for cleansing.
I'm talking here about the urgency to get
rid of that thing.
If you had some diabolical disease and sin
as a disease, would you want to get
rid of it?
If you got rid of it, would you
keep quiet about it?
If you got miraculously delivered from cancer via
some medical prescription, wouldn't you feel obligated to
run out and tell everybody that there's a
deliverance for cancer, that they can be healed
and made whole?
If a man, you know, we ask some
people, are you saved?
They say, I don't know.
Supposing you're walking up the road, you have
a sack of 80 pounds on your back,
and somebody snatches it off.
And you say, somebody says, have you lost
your burden?
You say, oh, I don't know, let me
feel around.
If you lost your burden, you'd know pretty
quickly that that burden had gone.
And one of the most joyful things we
sang tonight, you know, I'd almost like to
stop the whole meeting and say, listen, you
sang a truth tonight, explain it to me.
What do you think?
Blessed assurance.
Why do you have assurance?
How do you have assurance?
Again, the Holy Spirit convicts of sin.
And the Apostle Paul, as we mentioned yesterday
about faith, in the ninth chapter of Romans,
he says, I call the Holy Ghost to
bear witness.
Do you do that?
Do I do that?
Can I call the Holy Ghost to bear
witness, that when I pray, I pray with
as much zeal and passion and longing and
yearning in the secret place as I do
openly?
Am I as consistent there as I am
publicly?
The Holy Spirit bears witness.
It was the favorite preaching of John Wesley.
He preached on that text more than any
other text.
The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that
we're born of God.
No condemnation, Wesley says, now I dread.
Jesus and all in him is mine.
Alive in him, my living head and clothed
in righteousness, divine bold, I approach the eternal
throne and claim the crown through Christ my
own.
There's nothing more awesome, I think, than seeing
God take the beggar from the dunghill and
make him a prince unto God.
Some of Wesley's greatest preachers were the vilest
men in the country.
He gathered a bunch of men round him.
They weren't intellectually his equal.
They weren't socially his equal, but spiritually they
were his equal.
They fasted when he fasted.
They submitted to all the rigorous life that
they had to live in those days, because
they'd been emancipated.
They'd lost their burden of guilt.
They got a message to declare to others
that he's able to save to the uttermost
all who come unto God.
You know, lots of people get neurotic and
all this stuff.
It's due to the fact, if you could
push it right down, it's guilt, it's condemnation,
it's hidden sin that has to be cleansed.
It has to be done away.
And so David prays here, have mercy for
me, my past sins.
And then he prays again.
He mentions in this chapter, he mentions the
Spirit three times.
He mentions sacrifices three times.
He says, thou desirest not sacrifice, else I
would give it.
Well, what can you do?
There's no other way to God.
We mentioned, was it last night, about Elijah.
And what did he bring?
He didn't bring a pair of turtle doves.
He didn't bring a handful of meal or
something.
The sacrifice of God are a broken and
a contrite heart.
A broken spirit and a contrite heart of
God, thou will not despise.
That's so very seldom real in our lives,
is it?
Brokenness.
You know, we've got used to sin.
We're used to it.
People can sin without any fear anymore.
Dear God, it used to be in meetings,
the Spirit of God would come like a
cloud.
People would go home and they wouldn't sleep.
They keep awake night after night after night,
as in the days of Jonathan Edwards.
When the whole community was visited with God,
and that's what I want.
I want God to come on the community.
Not just a blessing here and a healing
there and a vision over there.
I want the Spirit of God to come
until taverns are closed.
Nobody wants to drink.
Until people don't curse.
Until every home becomes a tabernacle where God
lives.
Where every father becomes a priest.
He ministers the things of God to his
family.
Where he becomes a king, walking in righteousness
and holiness.
David here, thank you.
I thought we'd get a hallelujah before the
week was over.
It's pretty dried up around here, okay.
But here.
Thou desirest truth in the inward parts.
That's an absent thing these days.
How many people have truth in the inward
parts?
If we have truth in the inward parts,
we'll have integrity.
There isn't much integrity around anymore.
There isn't much honesty around anymore.
As I've said before, the missing feature to
me in modern preaching, there are three things
missing.
Missing immensity, intensity and eternity.
I would like to hear preaching till people
can't do their office work.
They can't do any other work.
They say, my number one priority is to
get right with God.
I want to get rid of this guilt.
I want to get rid of this shame.
It's amazing how people can cover sin, isn't
it?
You know, we think of revival as a
happy time.
Oh boy, we shouted, we danced with more
blessing.
Listen, I talked with a man some years
ago.
He was 90 years of age.
He'd been in the Shang Tung revival away
there in China when the Holy Ghost came
on the whole community.
And he said, by the way, you know,
the meetings would start in the morning.
And the same thing is recorded by Jonathan
Goforth's daughter, or wife actually.
She said, when revival came, we'd go to
the sanctuary with maybe two or three thousand
people.
We'd go in at nine o'clock in
the morning and stand up and sing.
And we'd still be singing at five o
'clock at night without stopping.
And nobody got tired.
The next day you'd go and they'd start
praying.
And they'd pray from nine till seven or
eight at night.
And nobody got tired.
You'd go another day.
There wasn't a word of prayer.
There wasn't a word of singing.
But she said, we'd sit for five, six,
seven hours in total silence.
And that was the most penetrating of all.
Be still and know the time God.
You had no voice, no human voice.
Just the Spirit of God got down the
corridors of the mind, the avenues of the
heart, and began to stir memory.
You know, we don't mention conscience much anymore,
do we?
We don't believe in conscience, so we invent
a lie detector.
I go for the old-fashioned conscience.
But once guilt is really registered by the
Spirit of God on us.
You know, a man is not just a
sinner wandering away from God.
He's a rebel.
He has his fist up against God.
I will not have this man to rule
over me.
I'm going to run my own life.
And therefore, you have all the mess that
we have in the nation.
Our divorce courts are packed.
People say, but Brother Abner, remember, Sunday morning
in America, almost every church in the nation
is packed.
So what?
For how long?
An hour.
The jails are filled 24 hours a day,
every day in the year.
And it doesn't balance out.
The only reason jails are filled to that
degree, again, is that the Church of Jesus
Christ has lost vision.
Lost the sense of its wholesome task.
To say that Jesus Christ is able to
save to the end of us.
He says, wash me with hyssop and I
shall be clean.
Cleanse me and I shall be whiter than
snow.
Well, what did he know about snow?
Well, there was snow on Mount Hermon.
But did he know what modern science says?
Not only is every snowflake different, but every
snowflake has one little speck of dirt in
it.
There isn't a snowflake that comes down from
the sky that doesn't pick a little one
bit of grain of dirt in it.
But he says, wash me and I shall
be whiter than snow.
Make me to hear joy and gladness.
These are his requests.
Cleanse me.
Take away my deafness to your voice.
Then what does he say?
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.
Here he's praying like a backslider.
He remembers the heights that he had with
God.
He remembers the time when he could say,
the heavens declare the glory of God.
When he would lay for hours in meditation
and adoration of God himself.
But it's very different now.
In Psalm 139, he says, one of the
most daring things that's ever been uttered from
human lips.
What does he say?
He says to the holy God, whose holy
of eyes is too holy to look upon
sin.
And then he calls on God.
He says in Psalm 139, Search me, O
God.
Isn't that something?
Dare you say that tonight?
Brave as you are, secure as you are,
spiritual as you are, satisfied as you are.
Can you say to the holy one who's
going to search you with eyes of fire
of the judgment, you say, Lord, spare me.
Don't embarrass me there.
Search me, O God, my actions try.
And let my life appear as seen by
thine all-searching eye, to mine my ways
make clear.
Search all my thoughts, the secret springs, the
motives that control.
He bears his heart.
The heart that caused him to commit adultery.
The heart that caused him to murder, to
cover up the adultery.
He says, search this heart of mine with
all its impurities, with all its rebellions.
Where all my evil desires.
Search me, O God.
What does he say in this psalm?
Here he is, loaded with guilt, condemnation.
Terrified to hear the cry of a baby,
because it reminds me of the baby that
he fathered.
Looking on soldiers, he's ashamed because he knows
that he's put a soldier to death.
Does he cry here?
Search me, O God.
No, this is what he says.
Hide thy face from my sins.
Lord, don't go away, but don't go any
nearer.
And then he prays this awesome thing.
Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Do you know what?
If the Spirit of God convicts you of
sin tonight, you ought to run to this
altar before I finish speaking even.
There are people in hell tonight who would
like one more chance to hear the voice
of God, and they can't have it.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.
You don't have that joy, so you stick
in front of that dumb idol called television
to try and get a lift.
I say what I said last night.
Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy.
There's no joy like the joy of sins
forgiven.
To say no condemnation, now I dread.
The Methodists used to sing a hymn about
the first who was saved.
They talked about hell subdued and peace with
heaven.
That reminds me of when I used to
look across the aisle in the Methodist church.
We had a fellow there.
He was about the most wild man in
the whole community.
He got saved.
And you know, it was all right when
our preacher was there.
But when they sang that hymn, And can
it be that I should gain?
Surely at the end, he put up that
big hand.
He had a hand as big as a
shovel, I thought.
And a voice worse than anybody ever heard.
And it's strike up in the wrong key.
No condemnation, now I dread.
The preacher would jump in the pulpit.
But you see, this man had been liberated.
He had chains, he had fetters, he had
guilt.
He had habits that made him a victim.
He might as well have been chained with
chains of iron.
But what if you don't have chains of
iron?
Aren't chains as heavy if they're made of
gold?
Some of you have intellectual chains.
Some of you have moral chains.
Some of you have theological chains.
But when the Spirit of God comes and
begins to liberate, It's something entirely different.
Everybody gets emancipated.
I met my darling wife in a town
outside of Manchester about 1937.
She came with a bunch of nurses.
And I preached one night, Saturday night.
It was a cold, miserable English night.
It was summer.
It was terribly hot.
I think it was 65.
I don't think there were more than about
60 people in the meeting.
I preached on this psalm.
And I emphasized this.
I said, you know, when joy goes out,
you try to cram that space with everything.
As everybody went out, this one woman at
the back, I'm sure she was about six
foot two.
And she was surely an ugly piece of
work.
She came down the front in a black
dress, black hat, black outlook.
Never saw a woman looking so miserable.
And she grabbed hold of that little wooden
rail at the front.
And she shook like this.
So I said, well, lady, tell me, what's
your problem?
And she said, my problem.
My problem?
I said, yes, what's your problem?
Oh, she said, I can tell you that
immediately.
I heard the voice of God tonight, the
first time in 40 years.
And that big old rugged face cracked and
she smiled.
She said, Mr. Rainhill, in the meeting tonight,
when you said, restore unto me the joy
of thy salvation, I said, Lord, I lost
my joy 40 years ago.
She said, for 40 years, I've never had
joy.
I've never had satisfaction.
I've never had peace.
I'll tell you how it started.
She said, I was one of the most
promising women preachers in the Salvation Army.
And I had a partner.
And we would select the hymns and so
forth.
I got to the meeting this night.
My friend says, look, I've got the hymns
here.
She said, no, I've got the hymns here.
And the girl said, no, I'm going to
have my hymns.
And she said, we'd quarrel about it.
And at the end, she said, I said,
look, I'm tired of quarreling with you.
And here they are, they're trained officers in
the Salvation Army.
They're supposed to be saved and sanctified and
edified and everything else.
And she said, I went home blazing mad.
I took off my uniform.
I got my scissors and I cut up
the coat.
I took off the skirt.
I cut off the skirt.
And I burned it in the fire.
We have open fires in England.
And then she said, I took my Bible
and I tore it up page by page.
And I put that on top of the
fire.
I took my straw bonnet and put that
on the top.
And she said, immediately, I did that.
The light inside went out.
Immediately, I did that.
A loneliness came over me.
And it's been there for 40 years.
She said, Mr. Raven, you don't understand this.
I said, I think she said, no, there
was no man on God's earth could preach
in those days like William Boole.
I heard him preach.
If thou hast run with the footman and
they have wearied thee, how wilt thou do
in the swelling of the Jordan?
And she said, I would tremble.
But immediately, I got out of the atmosphere.
I went home and I went to my
sin.
After that, I heard his greatest preachers.
I heard Brangle.
I had Dr. Brangle preach, a brilliant American.
Do you know why he went over there?
He was the greatest oratory in America at
that time.
The senior orator in all the universities.
And he went to England.
When he got to England, they said, you
have to see William Boole.
So he said, who are you?
He said, well, I'm Dr. Brangle.
From where?
America.
I want to join the Salvation Army.
Do you know why?
The Salvation Army had a banner, which they
still have.
And it said on the banner, what did
it say?
Blood and fire.
Blood for the cross and fire for the
fire of the Holy Ghost.
They preached the baptism of the Spirit.
They never mentioned tongues.
But listen, they went into 70 countries in
90 years.
You're talking about Stavnerola.
Dear God, when a man's been in the
presence of God and he's in purity, everything
around him is impure.
Everything is ugly.
Everything is repulsive.
He sees people as though they have cancers
hanging all outside of them.
And this amazing man, Stavnerola, somewhere about the
1500s, got marvellously born again of the Spirit
of God.
Do you know why, what he was like?
He lived in the secret place of the
Most High.
So that when he was going down the
street and a priest was coming, the priest
would cross the street rather than look into
the eyes of that man.
There were kind of waves of power going
out of him, the power of the Spirit
of God.
There were no miracles.
There were no tongues.
There were no visions.
He preached salvation.
Truly, truly being born again of the Spirit
of God, that the blood of Jesus Christ,
God sent.
It doesn't matter how filthy you are, he
can make you pure, change you from pollution
to purity, change you from rebellion to being
a subject of the Most High God.
He got rid of all the trimmings he'd
had as a Catholic priest and he got
marvellously born again.
What happened?
He admitted that every priest practically was living
in impurity.
The Pope was living in impurity until he
tackled sin in high places and low places.
What did they do?
They finally arrested him.
They hung him up on a rope, pulled
him up and they let him crash to
the ground twelve times over.
The delivery bone in his body was broken
but he was rejoicing.
Why?
The whole fitch had been transformed.
Purity had got into high places.
The priests were getting saved.
The politicians were getting delivered.
The drunkards were no longer staggering down the
streets.
The women weren't doing prostitution.
It was a moving of the Spirit of
God.
But you see that man had a broken
heart and he had a broken life.
And there's no hope for us brethren.
We're not going to stand here and say
that way to heaven, that way to blessing,
that way to healing.
Forget it.
We've had men that had the greatest chance
in history.
You know if these men that recently fell
on TV, if they'd been liberals we'd have
said, you see the reason started they didn't
believe in the virgin birth.
The second thing they didn't believe in the
atonement.
The third thing they didn't believe in the
Holy Ghost.
They were not preachers.
They were the holiest men in the world.
They told us they were born of the
Holy Spirit.
They were filled with the Spirit and guided
by the Spirit.
But it doesn't guide us into immorality.
Listen, if you get filled with the Holy
Ghost it's terribly hard to sin once you
get filled with the Holy Ghost.
The first thing you have to do is
resist the Spirit.
The second thing you have to do is
to grieve the Spirit.
And the third thing you have to do
is quench the Spirit.
And that isn't easy.
I don't believe a man when he says
I've struggled for three years with pornography.
That's a reproach on God.
Didn't the Spirit convict a man of sin?
And he has to tread that down.
Doesn't the Word of God that he's preached
for years burn like a fire in his
heart?
Why the psalmist himself said Thy Word have
I hid in my heart that I might
not sin against thee.
You see today we're comfortable with sin.
Isn't that true?
Yeah, you'll stand and sing Amazing Grace to
save a wretch like me.
But if I say listen you wretches come
to the altar you'll get offended.
You'll stand and sing we're the whole realm
of nature mine.
And you'll sing about I surveyed the wondrous
cross with Isaac Watts.
And then when you get to the end
you'll sing poor contempt on all my pride.
But as I say listen you've got pride.
You've got the same thing the devil had
when he was kicked out of heaven.
But pride is there and arrogance.
And only the blood is able to take
it and to cleanse it.
I was preaching in a certain university.
There were as many people as there are
here maybe more.
And on the Monday night one of the
most famous preachers in America.
He's the national broadcast preacher for his denomination
he preached.
And when he finished there was a rush
to the platform.
Please sign my Bible.
They were wanting autographs or photographs.
I stood in line for a little while
then I went up behind him.
I said sir I'm not a hero worshiper.
And he looked well what do you want.
I want to tell you I enjoyed you
as look at these hundreds and hundreds of
teenagers.
Young married people pouring out of this university
tonight.
And I said I would go along with
about 99 percent of your message.
You did a good job.
Oh thank you he said.
But I said listen you made a terrible
blunder.
You spoke as though sin is permissible in
the life of the believer.
I said while you were preaching about sin.
I was thinking of a woman that came
to Jesus bowed in sin and guilt.
And Jesus smiled on her and said go
and sin less.
He said what?
I said oh you preach.
That's not what the Bible says.
He said to a woman at the other
side of the cross go and sin no
more.
You don't sin because you have to you
sin because you want to.
You sin in your sin.
This man likes lust and he lusts after
women.
This man likes greed and so he's greedy
for money.
You've got a besetting sin it says in
the what?
In the 12th chapter of Hebrews.
There's a besetting sin.
I love that scripture.
Let me go back a minute here.
One of the greatest broadcasting preachers in America
was Dr. R.
R.
Brown in Omaha.
I had the privilege of preaching in his
tabernacle.
And he said he talked with a lady
one day.
He said what's your favorite portion of scripture?
Oh she said Dr. Brown I so love
that word in the epistle of John that
says when we sin we have an advocate
with the father.
Isn't that wonderful?
He said I don't know it isn't in
my Bible.
She said surely it is.
I said well here you are lady show
me.
So she searched through and she found the
first what?
Epistle of John reading.
So she read it.
If we sin what?
Not when we sin if we sin.
Now there's another verse of scripture that says
when you fast.
You know we've changed the letters over.
We've changed it from when you fast to
if you fast.
And we've changed it from if we sin
to when we sin.
We don't have to sin in thought word
and deed and struggle.
We can have perfect victory over sin.
We can have dominion over sin.
It doesn't have to have power over us.
I was going to say I don't like
to use the word love.
I do love hymns.
I've got a whole rack of wonderful old
hymn books.
And years ago I was preaching at the
Keswick meeting in London.
It was in an area the street is
called Orange Grove.
It never saw an orange in a million
years.
But it's a wonderful gothic old building stained
glass windows.
The pulpit is as ornate as this is
ugly.
And it was beautifully carved.
And I stood there.
I got all of that.
I got all of that pulpit and I
put my feet there.
And I held on tightly.
Do you know why?
The pastor of that church used to be
Augustus Toplady.
He wrote Rock of Ages cleft for me.
Let me hide myself in thee.
What's he saying on him?
Be of sin the double cure.
You see the trouble.
I believe the preachers today are the most
guilty men this side of eternity.
They don't have a message.
You can't be saved by confessing your sin.
People do that in the Catholic church every
day.
And particularly weekends.
There's far more to it than that.
I need more than, I need more than
forgiveness.
I need justification.
I need more than justification.
I need adoption.
Dear God what a wonderful thing to be
adopted.
You stare at me and say well he's
only a little Englishman.
Forget it.
I'm royalty.
I belong to a royal priesthood and a
holy nation.
I'm supposed to live above the world.
Above the habit, the customs of the world,
the desires of the world.
So the hymn says what?
Be of sin the double cure.
Cleanse me from its guilt and power.
You see you don't have too much trouble
if a man is desperately on it.
You don't have much trouble with that man
that has guilt and condemnation.
He has a form of godliness but no
life in him.
You don't have too much trouble getting him
to the cross.
Your trouble is to get him on the
cross.
We say come to the front.
Come and find life.
I won't invite you to come for life
tonight.
I'll invite you to come and die.
Jesus isn't asking you to live for him.
He's asking you to die for him.
Abandon all your desires.
Abandon all your habits.
Abandon all your appetites.
And say for me Christ is not important.
It's not a case of Christ first in
your life.
It's Christ only.
Oh there used to be a slogan 20
years ago in America.
Take Christ into partnership.
He doesn't want partnership.
He wants ownership.
He's not going to be a sharer.
He wants to govern the whole of your
life.
And he's of a holier eyes than to
behold iniquity.
So this man cries.
Let me go back a minute and say
that precious woman got such a deliverance that
night.
I can't tell you the ecstasy I had.
If she'd give me $10,000 I couldn't
have been happier.
She went out.
She said Mr.Ramiel for the first time
in 40 years I've listened to preaching.
I've gone home and I've wept.
But only tonight did God speak to me.
And she said I've got peace back tonight.
I've got joy back tonight.
And you know from that night that was
Saturday night.
I went to the church in the morning
and it was about 6 inches of snow
outside.
I went to open the church for the
Sunday morning prayer meeting.
She was standing in the snow.
And all the years I pastored she was
the first person at every prayer meeting that
we had.
She said she don't know what it's been
like.
40 years of torture.
40 years of waking up in the night.
And guilt would come.
And condemnation would come.
And fear would come.
Boy she said everything that the devil could
bring he brought into my life.
And then in one split moment I knew
I was pardoned.
I knew he had restored unto me the
joy of his salvation.
There are some of you sitting here tonight.
Once this book was sweeter than the honey
in the honeycomb.
Now you can live a week and not
touch it.
There's a time when you do in prayer.
If you love people you want to be
with them.
If you love God you spend time in
prayer.
If you love people you want to talk
with them.
You say I love God you can't love
somebody you don't know.
Most of our people don't know God.
They know religion.
They know formality.
They know ritual.
They know how to clap and sing.
But really knowing God.
Hearing his voice.
Submitting to his voice.
Submitting to his commandments.
It's something entirely different.
So she prays have mercy upon me.
He prays then restore unto me the joy
of thy salvation.
Then will I teach transgressors.
Wait a minute.
I've rushed past something there I think.
In verse 10.
Create in me a clean heart O God.
Renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from thy presence.
Take not thy Holy Spirit from me.
Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.
Upon me with.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways.
Why don't you search?
Why don't you say I'm looking for something
lofty.
I'm looking for an experience of holiness.
I'm looking for an experience of sanctification.
For the very reason you know that man
in the pulpit doesn't have it.
He isn't leading the way.
But this man says you do it in
me.
Then will I teach transgressors thy ways.
Now listen to what he says in the
next verse.
O Lord open thou my lips.
And my mouth shall show forth thy praise.
What does he say that for?
He's not dumb.
But he said it's no good me opening
my mouth.
If my life is a contradiction to what
I say.
Let me go back a moment there.
He has an experience of God when he
says this.
That is just a little verse I skipped
over it.
It's in the context of that same word.
Make me to hear joy and gladness.
But the bones which thou hast broken.
Did you ever break a bone?
I told you I leaped out of a
Birmingham hotel in 1951.
In Chicago three stories up.
You know the world champion in the Olympic
games recently was asked.
When you dive off that high board how
high is it?
He said standing here and looking up it's
30 feet.
Standing there by yourself and looking down it's
300 feet.
I know what he meant I was up
in a burning hotel.
It seemed 3,000 feet up.
Jumped out got in the street with a
broken back.
Broken legs.
My left leg in three pieces.
Both my feet broken.
Three breaks in my back and there I
lay in the cold.
And a guy came so kindly.
You know I can't understand American humor.
He looked at me lying helpless at half
past two in the morning in the snow.
And he said what are you doing here?
Well obviously I was playing tennis.
What are you doing lying here?
He said you can't stay here.
I said sir I don't want to.
I said I can't get up I've tried.
And he lifted me up.
And he laid me in the bank of
snow.
Dear Lord.
I was there about two minutes.
I was shaking like this.
I thought well what's he going to do
kill me the slow process?
Then suddenly the ambulance came.
And the next thing I knew the thing
was screaming.
We were going down the road to the
hospital.
But you know when he lifted me up.
He put his hand under my under my
knee there.
And under my head and lifted me.
Every bone in my body screamed out.
I thought of this text.
Come on this should come to home to
some of you.
He says when you're out of touch with
God you walk with God.
And now something's come in.
Business has come in.
Sport has come in.
Christ is not the attraction.
Prayer is not the attraction.
Testimony is not the attraction.
And David says the bones which thou hast
broken.
You've severed your relationship.
The greatest pain in the world.
Is not a pain not even trouble for
women.
The greatest pain is to have conviction of
sin.
Is to have a burden of guilt.
To know that we've defied and defiled a
living God.
So he cries created me a clean heart
oh God.
I heard G.
Campbell Morgan preach many times.
I think I had a great life.
In the 80 odd years I've traveled.
I would go to a preacher's forum.
And one Monday I'd listen there to G.
Campbell Morgan.
The next time I'd listen to one of
the greatest preachers ever.
Dr. Sangster of Westminster.
Another time it would be Dr. Black from
Edinburgh.
Another time it would be Farmer all the
way from Cambridge University.
On occasion it was C.S. Lewis.
I listened to these great wonderful preachers.
And only twice did Campbell Morgan disturb me.
One was when he said preaching is my
life.
Rubbish.
You're in trouble if preaching is your life.
Christ is my life.
I can live without preaching.
I had to do it for two years.
I was ready to go around the world
and preach.
Instead they had two years in pain and
agony.
And all the therapy and stuff that I
had.
I can live without preaching.
I can't live without Christ.
The second thing was he preached a message
on holiness.
And everything he said I was saying under
my breath.
Of course, you know, all the preachers there.
Hundreds of them in their clerical colours.
You know, the chosen people and the frozen
people too.
And when he said something that was glorious,
I would say in a steadfast way, Hallelujah,
hallelujah, praise the Lord.
The fellow behind me kept looking at me
and said, Get out of here you lunatic.
And he kept going on an ascending scale
about holiness.
And I was just enjoying every moment of
it.
And then he said, now listen, remember, I'm
not preaching sinless perfection.
Of course he wasn't.
You say, well, we can live without sin.
We can live without practising sin.
There's no experience this side of heaven that
in a sense guarantees I won't make mistakes.
It's not sinless perfection.
It's not angelic perfection.
It's not Adamic perfection.
It's Christian perfection.
A perfection of love, a perfection of obedience.
What do you sing tonight?
Perfect obedience.
Why did you sing it if you don't
do it?
So, D.
Campbell Morgan gave this marvellous.
And then he said, look, I want to
caution you.
The blessed apostle Paul, with his amazing walk
with God, finished up in Romans 7 saying,
man that I am.
That's a lie from hell.
He didn't do that.
How does he finish in Romans 7?
In Romans 7, he says through the chapter
that the law is power.
You see, Romans 7 is a funeral march.
Romans 8 is a wedding march.
He knows a famous writing in English history.
What was his name?
He wrote Paradise Lost.
Pardon?
Thank you.
John Milton wrote Paradise Lost.
Do you know when he wrote it?
After he got married.
Then he wrote a better book, Paradise Regain.
Do you know when he wrote that?
After his wife died.
Now, those are two historic facts.
It's humorous, but there it is.
But you see, most of the features got
stuck at the bottom of Romans chapter 6.
Oh, wretched man that I am.
Who shall deliver me?
And he said that's where Paul died.
He did not.
That's a lie from hell.
There he says at that period in his
life, oh, wretched man that I am.
It's not I, it's sin that dwelleth in
me.
You go to Galatians 2.20, he says
it's not I, it's Christ that liveth in
me.
You can't have indwelling sin in the indwelling
Christ.
He won't stay where there's impurity.
He won't stay where there's pride.
He won't stay where there's greed.
He won't stay where there's lust.
You're trying to make Christ accommodate himself to
your lifestyle.
He says no.
Then he finishes.
Paul says, oh, wretched man that I am.
Who shall deliver me?
Can the priest deliver me?
No.
Can the sacrifices deliver me?
No.
Can holy days deliver me?
No.
What do I am?
What do I do?
Oh, wretched man that I am.
Okay, let's wind it up.
He doesn't stay there.
Oh, wretched man.
Who shall deliver me from this bondage of
death?
You see, a man could be crucified on
a cross like a letter T, and his
head would go back.
He could be crucified on a cross like
the average cross, you see.
He could be crucified on a cross that
was an X, and you stretched his limbs
out and nailed him to the cross that
way.
Or there was a cross which was merely
a big trunk of a tree with a
spike, and you stuck the man's body on
it and turned him and left him upside
down anyway.
But there's another crucifixion which was worse than
all of them, and that was if a
man killed another man, you took him to
the corpse of the man he killed, and
you stretched him on the corpse, and you
tied the living hand to the dead hand.
And then you stood the man up, and
you pushed him off, and he would struggle
with that wretched body that he had.
And Paul says, I have a body of
sin.
Who can deliver me?
You see, Romans chapter 6 says, if you
really, you know, if the Baptists believe what
they talk about, that when they're buried in
Baptism and raised in newness of life, they'd
set America on fire, they'd set the world
on fire, that they're in bondage to worldliness
and sin themselves.
So what?
You get this man going around with a
body.
He wakes up in the morning, he looks
into the glassy eyes of the corpse.
The corruption is beginning to stink, and he
wants to get away.
I happen to see that man on the
road, and I say, well, I'll set you
free.
I take my knife, and I cut the
ropes off him.
Or I start to cut them, then a
Roman centurion comes up to me.
What are you doing?
Oh, this is a friend of mine.
And I don't want him to die.
He's going to carry this body of death.
It's gradually going to creep into him until
he is full of maggots and corruption.
Don't do this.
Let me liberate him.
He says, you can liberate him on one
point only.
What is that?
That when you cut that corpse from that,
when you cut that corpse from that living
man, we take the corpse, and we tie
it onto you.
Are you willing to bear that body of
death in his place?
Oh no.
So the man goes staggering on.
We've got so many Christians now.
They've got rid of one or two dirty
habits.
Oh, you've grown out of your bad temper.
Are you?
Ask that woman who's been married to that
bad-tempered man 25 years.
Is his temper getting better?
That man who has dominated with lust, is
it getting less?
It's getting stronger.
So finally, the apostle says, oh wretched man
that I am.
The law can't do it, and this, that,
never can do it.
And he doesn't stay there.
He says, thanks be unto God, who giveth
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The only way to have liberty is in
bondage.
The only way to have life is to
die.
And we're invited to death.
Jesus didn't make any terms with a rich
young ruler.
He says, take up your cross and follow
me.
He didn't bargain with him.
And the only way that you and I
are going to have victory, perfect victory over
sin, is when we cry out with David.
Create in me a clean heart.
You know, thousands of people, and I'm not
trying to revive anything.
Thousands of people pointed the millions at Jimmy
Swigert and the PTL guy.
Okay, for what?
Messing around a little while with some harlot.
But wait a minute.
The law says, thou shalt not steal.
The law says, thou shalt not commit adultery.
But Jesus says, I say to you, if
you look on a woman to lust, and
you're lust in your heart, you've done the
same thing.
I was up in Michigan in 1950, I
think it's three.
There's a big handsome fellow there, about six
foot two.
I said, are you a pastor?
He said, I'm a missionary.
I said, to who?
He said, I've given my life to going
around the different, what do you call them,
camps that the Indians have.
Thank you, reservations.
And I said, how are you getting?
Oh, he said, I had some wonderful deliverer.
Let me tell you about one.
He had a fancy name, you know, Eagle
Feather or something.
And he was the worst man.
He was always fighting.
He was always drunk.
He was a devil of a man.
Everybody hated him.
And he said, in one of my meetings,
he just trumbled down and said, listen, can
God do anything with me?
My mind is dirty.
My life is dirty.
I hate.
I'm bitter.
I don't know a thing about love or
kindness and gentleness.
I'm a brute.
I'm a savage.
I'm a drunken.
I'm a fighter.
I'm an adulterer.
And the guy poured out his sin.
So he stayed with him.
And the man got wonderfully changed by the
power of God.
So the mystery was away for about a
year or more.
And he went back to the camp.
And when he got there, as he went
in, one of the young men came to
him and said, well, so glad to see
you.
So he said, well, how's Eagle Feather doing?
He said, well, he's in jail.
For what?
Well, you won't want to believe it.
He's in jail for committing adultery.
No, he's not.
Yes, he is.
No, he's not.
Yes, he is.
No, he's not.
Let's go to the jail.
So the jailer let them in through one
gate, through another.
And finally, there was Eagle Feather.
When he saw the man who had led
him to the Lord, he just put his
head down, began to weep.
And then he stopped and he embraced the
missionary.
And he said, well, what's going to happen
to you?
He said, well, I got sentenced for so
long, so many years.
For what?
He said, well, I committed adultery.
He said, you didn't.
He said, I did.
He said, you didn't.
Tell me the story.
He said, I came around through the trees
on my horse and there was a beautiful
girl.
I knew her.
She was a princess in another tribe and
she was skinny dipping there.
She had a stitch on and I pulled
up my horse and I got behind the
tree and I looked for a moment.
And immediately I felt, oh, I'm guilty.
I've lost it.
And he said, I jumped on my horse
and I galloped away as quickly as I
could.
What he didn't see was another man came
through following him.
And that man actually raped that girl and
blamed it onto him.
And he got a sentence for a number
of years.
And he said, I'll never forget the joy
that came to that man when I said
to him, listen, yes, you fell to temptation,
but you didn't in any way defile yourself
with that woman.
There's a sense of guilt that you have.
But he said, I don't have guilt anymore.
I told the Lord that in a warm
moment of weakness, I lusted after that woman.
It's never happened since.
You see, what these men did is one
thing.
But listen, they can stand and apologize as
much as they like.
But I want to tell you this terrible
thing.
The sin that they've done is in the
history books of America now.
People are mocking the Pentecostal message because the
leading men that have defiled it were not
the opponents of the Pentecostal message, but the
exponents of it.
That's why God is going to give us
a revival of holiness.
Not to vindicate the assemblies of God or
the Pentecostals, but to vindicate his holy name.
To show us that he can have a
people who want to walk in purity.
You see, so here's this wonderful, wonderful word
that this man has, creating me a clean
heart.
Well, how many of us believe Jesus is
coming?
Let me see your hands.
You believe Jesus is coming?
Okay.
Well, who's he coming for?
A who?
A what?
It begins with B.
Oh, Mike knew that.
That's one thing he knew.
The Lord's coming for a bride.
Boy, I've seen some weddings around the world.
I've been to weddings, I've seen brides, you
know, tall ones, small ones, wide ones, not
so wide, but wide, and thin ones, rich
ones, poor ones, educated, wise, otherwise.
But I've never seen a dirty bride.
I'm still wounded every day.
I think about these men who had the
world at their feet, and they've lost it
all.
And the history books will rise up against
them.
There are tens of thousands of young people
who will never go to church in America.
They curse, and everything else, because of these
men.
But wait a minute.
When they point their fingers at the church,
and they say, some of those preachers are
adulterers.
Some of those preachers run off with women.
Some of those preachers steal money, and so
forth.
That hurts me.
I go to a higher authority.
I go to the one who, according to
the hymn, the church is one foundation.
What does it say?
With her own blood he bought her, and
for her life he died.
In heaven he came and sought her to
be his holy bride.
So he's coming for a holy bride.
Supposing he comes five minutes from now, are
you in purity?
If not, you'll be left behind.
The scripture distinctly says that he that hath
this hope, if every morning you get in
your car, you say, Lord I hope those
are up to the day.
I'm ready to go up in a moment.
Are you?
Have you a grudge against anybody?
Have you any bitterness against anybody?
Are you really close with God in prayer?
Is this blessed word electrifying to you?
Are you faking the whole thing, in that
moment?
Supposing I had a bowl here, and I
could, I could take a handful of gold
and chips, and put all these pieces of
gold in there.
And in the other pocket I have a
handful of silver chips, and I put them
in there.
And I put an emerald in there that's
worth fifty thousand dollars.
I put a diamond in there worth a
hundred million dollars.
I put them all in that cup.
And then the last moment I take some
little bits, little scraps of steel, and I
drop them in.
Then I put a magnet over.
What happens?
Does the diamond at the bottom rush right
through to the top?
Does the emerald come up to the precious
thing?
No, scrappy little bits of steel leap up.
To the magnetism, where Jesus Christ is coming.
Is he coming for a dirty bride?
Listen to what he says of his church.
Forget all your theories about mid-trip, pre
-trip, pre-trip, post-trip, and any other
trip.
Forget it.
I find as I check with pastors, do
you believe right now we're living in a
Laodicean church age?
When instead of being guided by men of
God, we go by public vote of members.
Which is wrong?
Well, thank you for your patience in listening.
I'm going to preach on the morning in
intercessions.
So let the bishop close the meeting.
While listening to this tape, perhaps God's spirit
has been talking to your heart.
If you felt the need to draw closer
to your creator, why not start today?
God has provided a way for man to
enter into relationship with him forever through his
son Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, I'm the way, the truth, and
the life.
No man comes to the father but by
me.
The Bible says that as many as receive
him, to them give he power to become
the children of God.
You too can receive him right now by
asking him to forgive you of your sins.
And asking him to come into your life
and to be lord and savior of your
life.
If you'd like to receive Jesus Christ in
your life today, you can do so through
a simple little prayer.
Just open up your heart and repeat this
prayer with me.
Lord Jesus, I admit to you that I
am a sinner.
I believe that you died on a cross
for my sins.
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Please come into my heart and into my
life.
Please make my life acceptable unto you.
Thank you, Lord, for your gift of eternal
life.
And I receive you this day.
In Jesus name I pray, amen.
Now if you prayed that prayer with me
right now, you are a new person.
All your past sins and faults have been
forgiven by God.
And in his eyes you are a brand
new creature.
The Bible says that if any man be
in Christ, he is a new creature.
Old things have passed away and behold, all
things become new.
Now as a newborn spiritual infant, you should
seek the sincere milk of God's word so
that you may grow by it.
So read your Bible and pray to the
Lord often.
And seek out other Christians and enter into
fellowship with them.
We'd love to hear of your decision for
Christ.
And we'd love to give you a free
study of the book of John on cassette
by Pastor Chuck Smith.
Jesus never turned a spiritual or hungry or
thirsty soul away, but filled everyone who asked.
So we'd like to do the same for
you in his name.
So please write to us at the address
on this tape.
And tell us of your needs and what
the Lord has done for you today.
May the Lord bless you now and keep
you in everything you do and everything you
say.
Welcome to the family.
When our eyes We
want to see Jesus
Oh We
want to see Jesus To reach
out And
say that we love Him Open
our hearts
to Him And we want
to see Jesus We want
to see Jesus