I want you to think with me, beginning
at least with Matthew chapter 22 and verses
34 through 40.
This is an important scripture, and I will
emphasize that importance in just a few moments.
I'd like to have you mark it, and
even mark the occasion when your attention was
called to it, and if you wish to,
mark the initials or the name.
I remember some years ago, a dear lady
came to me and said, you know, and
she had her Bible and she had the
scripture underlined in my name and the date.
You brought that same message at such and
such a place, and I had to admit
it, that was true, because I feel that
the Lord may have had somebody else there.
He wanted to hear it that hadn't been
there the first time, so I've never been
too intimidated about that.
But it's only been the last few months
that this scripture has been pressed on my
heart in an unusual way, and I know
the last time I was privileged to be
here was in 1969, so I don't think
any of you are going to find that
the date, name, and initials are alongside of
this scripture verse tonight.
But you may do that in the morning
messages as we're ministering from Ephesians, and again
I say without apology.
Now listen carefully as I read, as old
Daddy Bias used to say, the scripture is
what God said, and the sermon is what
the preacher thinks God meant.
And if you've got to remember one or
the other, always remember the scripture, because that's
what God said.
That's why I said Mark.
But when the Pharisees had heard that he,
the Lord Jesus, had put the Sadducees to
silence, they were gathered together.
Then one of them, which was a lawyer,
asked him a question, testing, tempting him, and
saying, Master, which is the great commandment in
the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God, saying, Master, which is the
great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
The second is like unto it, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyself.
Now notice the importance attached to this scripture.
On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.
Change that word hang to hinge, as a
door hangs upon the frame, and by means
of that hanging or hinging, one can go
into the room.
So I would have you suggest to you
that he is saying that if you want
to go into the room of the prophets
and find out the meaning of their message
to their day and time and people, then
you've got to understand these two commandments.
And if you want to go into the
room of the law and understand the law,
you must understand these two commandments.
And having said that, I have to be
honest with you and say that for most
of my ministry, most of the years of
service for the Lord, soon to be in
1977, will be 40 years since I was
first a pastor.
So during most of that time, I would
suppose that up until at least no later
than two years ago, this scripture was just
another part of Matthew.
And then it was called to my attention
by some people that had done a lot
of thinking and study.
They shared with me their feelings about it,
and I began to study it and to
meditate upon it.
And meditate.
I want to just pause on that word.
Some years ago, I was in a meeting
down in the First Alliance Church in Atlanta,
Georgia.
And in the morning service, the Bible hour
and the weekday morning, a dear little lady
was there and seemed to understand what I
was talking about.
There was that warmth and empathy that a
speaker feels with someone that's obviously been there.
And afterwards, she said, would you please come
and have tea with me this afternoon?
Well, I was some the one lady that
was with her said they gave me her
address and told me the one who was
caring for the nurse that was making this
part of her ministry at the time.
And so that afternoon, I went out to
the East Lake Alliance Church in the little
cottage in the back and had tea with
Aunt Harriet Williams.
You know her as the wife of J
.B. Williams, who was so instrumental in founding
St. Paul Bible College and then the Seattle
or the Simpson Bible College and had such
a ministry for Christ through those years.
And something I had said that morning, it
touched her heart.
And she said, wherever you go among our
dear Alliance people whom I love and have
sought to serve these years, will you tell
them something for me?
And I made a promise to Aunt Harriet
and said I would.
She said, please tell them that it's not
enough just to know the doctrine of Christ,
our Savior, our sanctifier, our healer, our coming
king.
It's important to know the doctrine.
It's not just to know enough to know
the scripture verses.
It's important to know the scripture verses.
Please tell them for me that there's something
else that we have to do.
And I said, Aunt Harriet, what is it?
She said, it's what you talked about this
morning.
Tell them that they must meditate on the
word.
They must think about the word.
They must digest the word.
It must be in their thoughts.
They must take it apart and fit it
to their experience.
They must ruminate because that's the word, what
the word meditate means, to chew it over
and over and over again until it, and
then she said they must meditate until God
reveals it.
Please give them two words for me, meditation
and revelation.
It's not just enough to know the words.
It must become inwardly, personally, vitally, experientially yours.
I know in my case as a missionary
coming back from Africa in 1948-49, I
knew there was something desperately lacking in my
life.
I'd been on the field.
I'd prepared to go, but I discovered when
I arrived that I'd carried with me some
things I hadn't declared at customs when I
came into the sedan.
I had rather counted since I'd graduated from
Taylor University where Sammy Morris was our patron
saint, that when I got back to Africa,
I'd be as prayerful as he and as
effective as he.
I guess I was counting quite a lot
on an ocean voyage in those days we
went by ship, or at least we did.
When I got there, I discovered that I
was just the same me 10,000 miles
from home.
I had the same problems, and I found
that I had carried with me.
I wasn't as spiritual as I wanted to
be, and the only way I could survive,
it seemed, was to prove nobody else was
as spiritual as they ought to be or
thought they were.
And so I became critical and censorious and
sarcastic, and I hurt people.
And when I got back, broken because I
did love the Lord Jesus and wanted so
to please him, and yet didn't know where
to find victory over my own traits and
tendency and habits of mind and thought and
responses to situations.
And so I knew something had to happen.
And so this particular spring in 1949, I
went to a pastor in Florida where we
were living and asked him what he thought.
Well, excuse me, it was at the beginning
of the year in 49.
And I asked him what he thought I
should do.
And he said, I think you need seminary.
Bible school and college are fine, but you
really need seminary.
That's what's going to help you.
So I matriculated at a fine seminary and
bought the books and had the room.
And I sat one night and looked at
them.
I'd read some of them and hadn't been
too impressed.
And I thumbed through the others and I
said, Lord, you know, the desperate hunger of
my heart, but I just don't think the
answer is going to come there.
And whereas I have great respect for this,
it's not applicable to my needs.
So the next day I dematriculated and got
out.
And so I stayed there.
I said to the bursar, if I was
honorable enough to be here as a student,
would you be so kind as to rent
me the room for about three weeks?
I have some study and writing I need
to do.
And so he did.
And I stayed there for that three-week
period.
And I took spiritual inventory.
I wanted to find reality.
You see, all those years from the time
I'd been a student in Bible school back
in thirty-five to forty, I had been
building into my Christian life that which was
being given me as the building blocks for
it.
And there had been good teaching, good instruction
that I'd received.
But something wasn't working.
I'd gotten a straight A in the course
on the Christian life.
But when I got to Africa, I had
to look at my report card to find
out that's what happened, because it just wasn't
working.
And so I began to go back to
find out what was real.
How much was theory?
How much was figment of the mind or
just ideas or intellectual insights or mental perception?
And how much was experientially real in my
life?
Well, this was 1949, and I went back
through the years on the mission field and
sorted for something real.
Oh, I know my failure had been real,
but the truth that I had learned with
my mind that the courses I had passed
somehow hadn't taken effect.
Then I went back down from forty-five
through the college years back to forty when
I had left Bible Institute in the early
years of pastoral experience.
And there again, it was words, good words,
ideas, other men's ideas.
And about this time, I began to view
my heart as kind of like—well, let me
put it this way.
Where do you put the leaves when you
rake them up in the yard?
We have a compost pit.
You know, we just gather the leaves, cut
the brush, and pile them up.
And there they sit, and they gradually become
mulch.
Well, that's what I thought my heart was,
kind of a theological compost pit.
I'd been plucking the green leaves off of
other men's trees, and I'd been just piling
them in on my heart, thinking that if
I could trace the leaf and identify it
and tell you what kind of a theological
shrub it came from, that was enough.
Well, what did I find?
I just found the kind of the metamorphosis,
the decay of what had been a good
truth from other people, but you know, it
just hadn't been transplanted.
It just was laid there in on top
of my heart.
Well, I got a little bit frightened.
I went back down through the years of
Bible Institute with all the splendid truth that
I had acquired and the insights that had
been helpful, and back down and still hunting
for reality.
And by this time, I said, Heavenly Father,
if there is nothing real in my life,
I'm going to be honest.
I'm going to declare it.
I will not fool myself or anybody again
unknowingly.
I'm going to hunt for reality.
I got right back down to that old
camp meeting similar to this, Red Rock Holiness
Camp Meeting in South St. Paul, Minnesota.
It was by a Methodist camp meeting, and
the speakers that year were John L.
Brasher from Alabama and Joseph Owens, who at
that time was president of John Fletcher College,
and Paul Reese, whom you know well.
And these were the three men that were
ministering.
There were giants in the land in those
days.
And God had spoken in a really a
very wonderful way to me.
I'd come from a Christian home and a
Christian background at about 12 years of age.
The pastor of our church had asked me
if I wanted to join the church, and
I had, and I did.
And I knew the answers to all the
questions.
Oh, yes.
And he said the day that he invited
me to come to be received into membership
with others, he said, I've talked with Sonny,
my nickname at the time, and I'm certain
everything is right with him because he's answered
all the questions.
Well, of course, I'd been taught the answers
all my life, and I had a fairly
good memory.
I knew what to say.
And so I was taken into the church,
and I mean taken in to the church,
because the next day when I told my
eighth-grade teacher, seventh-grade teacher, Elsie Born,
what had happened, the tears came into her
eyes.
And she said, why are you crying, Miss
Born?
All I said was, I joined the church.
She said, I heard what you said, but
I'm not sure you were ready.
Well, I don't know why I answered all
the questions the preacher asked me.
She said, there's more to being a Christian,
Sonny, than answering the questions.
I said, what?
Preacher didn't say anything else.
She said, no one's a Christian until Jesus
comes into his heart.
She said, you see, salvation is a person.
Salvation is God's Son.
And it's not just to believe he's in
the scripture and history and heaven, that he
died and was buried and rose again.
It's to receive him.
And then she turned to that verse in
2 Corinthians 13 and verse 9, examine yourself,
whether you be in the faith, and prove
your own self.
No, you're not your own self.
How did Christ be in you, except you
be reprobate?
And then she said, I'm going to pray
for you.
Well, she did.
And every once in a while, she'd say,
you know, if you'd stay in after at
recess and ask me, I have something I
could show you.
Well, you know, in those days you couldn't,
you couldn't witness, but there were ways if
you'd really care.
And she cared.
And so I'd say, Miss Bisborne, do you
have something to show me?
When the others had left the room, and
she'd open her little, their little New Testament,
and there would be my initials and that
date underlined.
And she'd read it to me, was honed
in prayer, you know, shined with tears.
And she'd put it into my heart, a
dagger of truth, the sword of the spirit,
to let God do its work, his work
with it.
Well, that had gone on till that camp
meeting.
And I'd come as lost as could be,
not knowing it, oh, thinking everything, well, the
reason I went was because one of the
girls in my mother's class was going, and
I kind of liked her, and I thought
it'd be nice to spend two weeks where
I could see her every day.
And so I went for that reason.
And I'll never forget, those men, they began
to preach the old camp meeting circuit, and
they'd alternate the times.
And I had to go, had to, or
else trouble, big trouble.
So I went, and I had a Cheviot
suit.
You know what Cheviot, they don't make it
anymore, thank goodness.
It was horsehair, it was spikes, little wire
spikes all through it.
And it was just like sleeping on a
curry comb, you know, it was just awful.
And that's the only suit I had, and
I had to wear it.
Boy, I couldn't wait to get home.
They thought I was neat.
I wasn't neat, I was just trying to
save the epidermis, that's all.
But it wasn't just the outside irritation, it
was the fact that as I sat there,
those preachers didn't have any respect at all.
They reached halfway across the auditorium, and they'd
point me out, and they'd wiggle their finger
under my nose, and they'd tell the people
the things I'd done, the things I'd tried
to do, and planned to do, and was
counting on doing.
And always, it made no difference where I
sat.
If I sat over there, it was like
this.
If I sat there, it was like this.
And so it seemed, until God showed me
how utterly lost I was.
And then there was an invitation given, and
that night, Just As I Am was sung,
and Paul Reese said, now there's, I've been
burdened last night.
There's someone, I don't know whether he's young
or old, that came to this conference thinking
he was a Christian, a church member.
But God has shown him or her, whoever
it is, I think it's a man, a
young man, boy perhaps, that he was, that
he's lost.
And he would have come on that first
verse, but he's hanging on to the pew
in front of him so hard.
Now you look, friends, up and down the
pew, and if you see someone holding on
to it, I dropped it as though it
were hot.
And the next stanza, I came forward.
And I'll never forget, when I was down
at the end of the altar, it was
full, and they got three quartets there that
year.
And I got the last man in the
last of the three quartets.
They said, well, you're not with anybody.
You go down to him.
You know, the Drake, so to speak.
Here's a little boy, twelve, so he's not
very important.
This boy came, but he was God's choice
for me.
He said, what'd you come for, son?
I said, to be saved.
He said, from what?
I said, I don't have a choice, do
I?
From sin.
And he said, well, good.
And I didn't know anything good about it.
And I said, why do you say it's
good?
I'm lost.
He said, that's why it's good, because Jesus
only saves lost people.
And until you know you're lost, you can't
be saved.
And so he then took me to that
verse, that thou shalt confess with thy mouth,
Jesus to be Lord.
And he said, that means to be the
king and the boss and the ruler, and
to be in charge of your life from
tonight on, as long as you live.
He's the one that's going to govern.
He's the one that's going to control.
He said, are you willing for that?
I said, I'm willing for that.
All right, he said, now I want to—I'm
going to just—you pray, and you confess to
Jesus every sin you've committed.
And if he tells you something you've got
to make right, you just tell him you're
going to do it, and remember what it
was, and make it right.
And then after you've got that whole mountain
of your sin up, then you thank him
that he died to save you from that.
And when you are sure he's forgiven you,
you tell me.
Wasn't that boy smart?
Wasn't he wise?
When you know he's forgiven you, you tell
me.
None of this telling me.
He was going to let the Lord do
the telling, because he couldn't stick with me
all the time to reassure me in case
he told me and it didn't stick.
He said, you get it from headquarters, then
you'll know where you got it.
And so I did just what he told
me.
He says, I'll keep people from bothering you.
And I went over the altar, and that
pile of sin began to mount up.
I wasn't very old, but it mounted up.
And finally I just said, thank you for
dying for the world, that's good.
And thank you for dying for sinners, and
that's better.
And thank you for dying for me.
And something stole into my heart.
The knowledge that he died for me.
And that those sins were washed away and
removed.
And I was forgiven.
And I was pardoned.
And I looked up and he said, I
said to him, he's done it.
He said, of course, I knew he would.
He always does.
Now, I took spiritual inventory and I went
down.
And you know, the last real thing that
ever happened to me in my Christian life
as of 1949 was that night in an
altar in the straw when I met Jesus
Christ.
The next day I went in and saw
dear Julia Hibbard.
Bless her heart.
I love her.
She was our children's worker.
And I said, Miss Hibbard, something wonderful happened
to me last night.
She said, what's that?
I said, Jesus saved me.
And she smiled.
She said, that's fine.
Now you need to be sanctified.
And she talked to me about that.
She took me into the altar and she
put words in my mouth.
And the day after I met God, a
Christian worker introduced me to presuming that because
I knew the words, I had what the
words talked about.
And so I had all those barren ears
because of a presumption that if the intellect
can perceive and the mind can receive and
the tongue can express, that the heart is
experienced.
And that's not true.
It's not true.
And as we're talking about here in this
text, first commandment, thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and mind
and soul.
It's a commandment.
He didn't say thou shalt have memorized verse
37 of Matthew 22.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.