And verse 14, But God forbid, this is
the King James Version of course, But God
forbid that I should glory save in the
cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by which
the world is crucified unto me, and I
unto the world.
And verse 17, From henceforth, he's kissing everybody
goodbye here, from henceforth let no man trouble
me.
Demons don't trouble him, because he conquered them
all.
Let no man trouble me, for I bear
in my body the marks of the Lord
Jesus.
I heard years ago that a critic said
of the Apostle Paul, his mind was so
steeped in dogma, that it was a mere
machine for grinding out metaphysics.
Now if you don't know what metaphysics are,
see Barbara or any of the staff of
Brother David, and they'll explain it in a
couple of hours to you.
Anyhow, I don't believe that at all.
I don't believe his mind was so steeped
in dogma that it was a machine for
grinding out metaphysics.
Paul was essentially, in my judgment, a preacher.
He was also a poet, because he wrote
the greatest piece of poetry ever in 1
Corinthians 13, that amazing unsurpassable poem of love.
He was also a pragmatist, he had his
feet on the ground.
I guess David gets hundreds or thousands of
letters about the books he's written.
I get some, some very flattering and some
very flattening.
You know, the preacher's at a disadvantage in
one sense.
It doesn't matter how successful we are in
the eyes of the world, or in our
own eyes, the Lord says we're unprofitable servants.
And Paul said he was a debtor.
I'm not a debtor, I don't owe anybody
a penny I know of.
But he says I'm a debtor to the
whole world.
One of my critics wrote to me and
said, why did you write in one of
your books that the King James Version is
written in sleepy Elizabethan English?
I said, because it is.
I'm not very fond of translations as you
know.
But there are times when you sharpen some
of the words in the King James Version.
Moffat, and to a third of the modern
writers, turned this text round, that God forbid
that I should glory, said in the cross
of the Lord Jesus, in this way, what
I think is essentially sharp, no boasting for
me, none.
Said in the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ, by which the world is crucified unto
me, and I unto the world.
This is a day of boasting, boasting as
you said David, about the size of the
buildings we put up, the circulation of our
magazines, how many miles I've traveled.
Heard a preacher on TV, radio, I don't
use a TV anymore anyhow, but on radio
he was saying, I have preached in 130
countries.
Well what he preached on TV, I won't
let him preach in Camden Fair.
Why in the world spread your weakness all
over the world?
He thought it was a weakness, I thought
it was a weakness.
I have preached there, I have preached there,
I know so.
He starts name dropping.
It's a day of boasting.
Remember the psalmist said that he would not
boast, except in the Lord Jesus Christ, except
in God.
And Paul says, no boasting for me, and
he could have boasted more than any man
on earth.
Except in the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Paul fascinates me as a preacher.
I think the greatest poem ever written, outside
of the Bible actually, is written by F.
W.
H.
Myers.
And the whole book is on the apostle
Paul.
I want to read you just a part
of what he says about his preaching.
Oft when the world is on me to
deliver, lifts the illusion and the truth lies
bare.
The desert, the throng, the city or the
river, melts in the lucid paradise of air.
Only like souls I see the folk there
under, bound who should conquer, slaves who should
be kings.
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder,
sadly contented with a show of things.
Then with a rush the intolerable craving.
As he sees men and women of all
classes, all stations of life, intellectual, philosophical, material,
intellectual.
He says then, with a rush the intolerable
craving shivers throughout me like a trumpet call.
All to save these, to perish for their
saving, to die for their life, to be
offered for them all.
Therefore O Lord I will not fail or
falter, nay but I ask, nay but I
desire.
Lay on my lips the fire of thine
altar, seal with the sting and furnish with
the fire.
Give me a voice of crying or complaining,
O let my sound be still in their
ears.
Throat that would shout but cannot stay for
straining, eyes that would weep but cannot stay
for tears.
Quick in a moment, infinite forever.
Send an arousal better than I pray.
Give me a grace upon my faint endeavor,
souls for my horror and Pentecost today.
Then with a rush the intolerable craving.
I said a moment or two ago there,
that Paul recognized he was a devil to
all men.
He says there is neither Jew nor Greek,
which is race distinction, bum nor free, class
distinction, male or female, sex distinction.
He's a devil to all people, everywhere.
To me he is the most remarkable man
in history, after Jesus Christ himself.
He was born in the ancient capital of
the world, Tarsus.
He ended up in the military capital of
the world, Rome.
In between he went to the intellectual capital
of the world, Athens.
He went to the religious capital of the
world, Jerusalem.
He went to the corrupt capital of the
world, Corinth.
One of the old German commentators, Meier, not
F.B. Meier, Meier, says blessed and sublime
miracle of God, that in the very seat
of corruption, the headquarters of hell on earth,
which was Corinth at that time, it was
a super sodom, that the apostle could go
there and plant the imperishable truth of the
word of God.
He writes two stupendous epistles to it.
I say he is the most fascinating preacher.
He was known to kings, they trembled before
him.
According to tradition he was only five feet
one in height.
I think he had a colossal intellect.
He had an amazing pedigree.
I was reading again in Philips, he is
talking about surrendering everything to God as I
read to you earlier.
He says of his contemporaries, are they Hebrews?
So am I.
Are they descendants of Abraham?
So am I.
Are they ministers of Christ?
Are not.
Have a claim to this title.
Look at this silly game of boasting.
I've worked harder than any of them.
I have served more prison sentences.
I've been beaten more times.
I've faced death again and again.
I've been given the regulation stripes with the
whip, you know, that had the thongs of
copper at the end.
He says I've been beaten with regulation stripes
39 times, 39 times on five occasions.
Which is what?
195 stripes.
I've been beaten with robes three times.
I've been stoned once.
I've been shipwrecked three times.
I've been four and twenty hours hanging onto
a piece of wood in the Mediterranean.
In my travels I've been in constant dangers
from rivers, from bandits, from my known countrymen,
from pagans.
In the city streets, in danger in the
desert, in danger on high seas, in dangers
amongst false Christians.
I've known exhaustion, pain, long vigils, hunger, thirst,
doing without meals, cold, and lack of clothing.
Apart from all these external things, it's the
inward thing that crushes me, that David was
stoned about.
The care of all the churches.
If he took his shirt off, his back
was like jelly.
It was all lacerated with the licked as
lash.
I guess he limped, he must have done.
He couldn't be stoned the way he was
stoned and still have a fancy look on
his face.
This man is a danger to men.
He is known to kings, he's known to
jailers, he's got the greatest thing in the
world that any man ever had that ever
lived.
He was known in hell.
Preacher if you're not known in hell, I
won't give a hell of beans for you.
I don't care about your eloquence, I don't
care about your bible knowledge, I don't care
how far you've travelled.
If you're not known in hell, to me
you're a zero, plus zero, plus zero.
But the day he's known in hell, I'm
sure of that.
After this book, he will be anyhow twice
over.
My wife and I have read it, I
go to bed at nine at night now,
but we've stayed up till ten, and even
as late as eleven, reading that book.
Now he's revised it, I don't know whether
I want to read it, or I will
yet.
But you see that old rugged cross, we
didn't sing about the old rugged cross this
morning.
So despised by the world.
Do you know what the Apostle Paul says
about it?
He says, God forbid that I should glory,
save in the cross of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Do you know what?
He loved that cross so much, he says
to one of his students, I want to
tell you, and he says, I tell you
a weeping, that lots of these preachers are
enemies of the cross of Christ.
There are more enemies to the cross of
Christ today than ever.
The Jehovah's Witnesses use the name of Jesus,
the kingdom of Jesus, but they hate the
cross, they hate the blood.
Every modern cult hates the blood of Jesus.
Christian science denies the blood.
The Mormon, Latter-day Saints, forget it, of
Jesus Christ, forget it, they hate the blood.
The greatest offender of all is the Roman
Catholic Church.
They make capital out of it, they make
money out of it.
I was going to ask Winky, but he's
gone back to New Zealand now.
He was in a cathedral down in South
America, where they had one of these huge
hanging crosses.
Jesus on one side, and the Virgin Mary
crucified on the other side.
Now if they don't preach that, they declare
that she's co-redemptrix, denying the blood.
They say that when they pray over the
blood, over the wine, which the priest does
at six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.
You know the Catholic Church has five institutions
across America for the drying out of alcoholic
priests, why?
Because they drink wine, every hour on the
hour, from six to twelve.
Now look, they give themselves away for this
reason.
They say immediately they pray over that wine,
it becomes the blood of Jesus.
I don't know, tell me the blood of
Jesus intoxicates men?
They cancel out on theology.
The Apostle Paul lived in the light, in
the glory of the cross.
He says there's the cross of Jesus, by
which the world is crucified to me, and
I to the world.
No boasting for me except in the cross.
From henceforth let no man trouble me, because
I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus.
I read some of those marks to you.
His battered body, his colossal intellect is dedicated
to Jesus Christ solely.
I can summarize his life, at least for
myself, in many wonderful simple ways.
This one thing, his life was an explicit
life, he only had one thing to do,
in season and out of season, in weariness,
in fastings, in painfulness, in trouble, in distress,
in hunger, in poverty, whether he's abounding or
abiding, he says Jesus Christ is my all
in all.
I have no interest, he is the sum
total of my thinking.
I eat Christ, I drink Christ, I sleep
Christ, I talk Christ, I sacrifice, I breathe
Christ.
That's what he says isn't it?
He says Christ liveth in me.
I'm not going to ask you if you
have the gift of tongues, does Christ live
in you this morning?
You may have an expanded theology, I'm not
interested.
Does Christ live in you?
Is Christ your heart?
Is Christ your affections?
Is Christ your love?
Do you treat this world as a manure
heap?
That's what Paul says, every asset I have
I count them but dung, filth.
All my scholastic achievements, all my pedigree, are
they Hebrew, so am I.
I'm an Israelite, I'm a descendant of Abraham.
Are they ministers of Christ?
I am even more.
But he says the Lord Jesus Christ, when
Isaac Watts wrote that hymn, he lived before
Wesley, and when he wrote that hymn, when
I surveyed the wondrous cross, on which the
prince of glory died, he wrote, when I
surveyed the wondrous cross, where the young prince
of glory died.
You cannot find a hymn book today that
has the fifth verse of when I surveyed
the wondrous cross, except a little thing that
Keith Green and I put together, just the
words.
The last verse of when I surveyed the
wondrous cross says this, his dying crimson like
a robe spread all his body on the
tree, then am I dead to all the
globe, and all the globe is dead to
me.
Dr. Chaucer said to me more than once,
you know then, Christians don't tell lies, they
just go to church and sing them.
Isn't that true?
Beneath the cross of Jesus, I fain would
take my stand, but not as long as
I should.
I mean, it doesn't interest me too much,
I mean, there's a sports program on TV,
or the newspaper or something.
The last verse, his dying crimson like a
robe spread all his body on the tree,
then am I dead to all the globe,
and all the globe is dead to me.
Or beneath the cross of Jesus, the last
stanza says, beneath the cross of Jesus, but
on the further side, the darkness of an
awful grave that gapes both deep and wide,
the gates of hell.
But there between us stands the cross, between
me and that eternal death.
This is what kept him motivated.
I used to think that Paul had summarized
his life in his second letter to the
Corinthians, where he begins by saying that we
have a home eternal in the heavens, by
saying we must all stand at the judgment
seat of Christ, and then the thirteenth, fourteenth
verse, I thought was the very essence of
his life.
What motivated him?
The love of Christ constrains me.
I don't, I don't believe that that's the
main motivation.
I believe the main motivation is in chapter
1 of Philippians, verse 20, where he says
that Christ may be magnified by my body.
That when people look through my life, Jesus
Christ is clearer to them.
Come on you parents, is Jesus Christ clearer
to your children because they see through your
life all his love, all his devotion?
That Christ may be magnified in my body.
He, every preacher, should be the best example
of his own theology.
And Paul, in my judgment, was just that.
I say he was known to kings.
Isn't it amazing that this little man who
had no money and no home, no backing,
no army, no associates at one time.
He's a eunuch in the world.
You know, somewhere in 1570, an Englishman made
a big mistake, because they've made lots of
them since then too.
But it was John Donne, I think, who
said in 1570, every man is an island.
No man is an island.
But I tell you, every man is an
island.
I'm an entity.
There is only one David Wilson in the
world for which the devil rejoices.
We couldn't put up with two of them
anyhow.
Gwen couldn't.
You couldn't put up with two husbands and
she shakes her head.
Now, don't talk to me after meeting Gwen.
Okay, dear.
You know what I mean?
He is an entity.
God has put something in him, and it's
working out of him.
That book he's writing is going to chase
a thousand men out of the pulpit.
It's going to terrify me.
Sure I'll weep.
In God's name I According to science, we're
going to have the greatest barbecue in world
history before Allah.
Whole cities can be barbecued in a minute.
And if you don't want to take what
science says, take what the Bible says.
The Bible says Armageddon is coming.
Do you think I'm going to be a
normal man facing that damnable thing that's coming?
You think I'm ashamed of my tears?
I'll tell you, all of this quality of
preaching is going to, not mine, but the
Apostle Paul's, is going to save our generation.
I believe denominations are done with.
I think it's what the old lady said.
I go, what church do you go to?
She said, well I go to a different
abomination.
And though she was right, she was right,
she was wrong, she was right.
They've had their day.
There's some boy working on a plow this
morning.
There's some boy driving a bus in Alabama,
blackface maybe.
He's going to be one of the anointed
men that God's going to raise up.
Your sons and your daughters are going to
prophesy.
He's done with organized religion.
He's done with the multi-million dollar investment
societies of the church.
I believe those three things you mentioned, David,
are going to expire, they're going to die.
But the old rugged cross isn't going to
die.
I believe Malcolm Mugridge was right in his
last book when he said, we're living in
the days, this is the end of Christendom,
but not the end of Christ.
It's time to get this monolith out of
the way.
Time to get these men off TV, bleeding
people, bleeding.
One of them is going to open a
new big thing that will rival PTL.
You know what PTL means?
Pit of the listeners.
Anyhow, it's going to be beyond PTL, he's
going to have a bigger attraction for Christians.
Isn't that wonderful?
I'm convinced again that the more joy we
have in the Lord, the less entertainment we
need.
Look up in the face of God and
sing the words of Wesley, thou old Christ
art all I want, and more than all
in thee I'll find.
I cannot fathom the depth and the height
and the length and breadth of his love.
I cannot fathom the height, depth, length, and
breadth of his mercy.
I told Brother Dave Mullins, this year is
going to be a year of revelation to
him and to me.
We're going into new areas we've never dreamed
of.
The word of God is going to explode,
and for you Brother Green too I hope.
Good to see you this morning.
All these formidable preachers in front of me,
and I'm not a bit nervous.
Isn't it amazing, a little man without money,
without army, without any social standing, not wanted
in social life, not wanted in the synagogue,
and the king trembles before him.
Felix trembled.
The other man that's ruling part of the
Roman Empire says, almost thou persuadest me to
be a Christian.
How can you have this joy?
Look at my palace, look at my army,
look at my possessions, and I'm terrified.
I'm terrified somebody will steal my crown, I'm
terrified somebody will steal my kingdom, and you're
standing there moneyless, powerless in the eyes of
the world, and yet you say rejoice.
I told the kids, I'm not, I don't
like kids, people ask me if I have
kids, I say no I'm not a goat.
I've got children.
I told the children on a Friday night,
I said you know I could take you
out in this lovely sunshine and show you
all the stars.
You can't see stars.
I can, I'm proving it.
I just put you down in a well
that's about 80 feet deep, when it shuts
off all the other light you can see
the stars of heaven in broad daylight.
Do you know why some of you don't
see the bright and morning star?
Because it took, came up with this world,
magnetized with it.
Paul saw the bright and morning star in
a lousy prison.
You know people don't understand, again dear David,
taking weeks off and shutting himself up.
Well I'd like to do that sometime, in
fact we will do it sometime.
Here he is lounging in prison, somebody goes
in, what are you doing here scribbling away?
I would say six months ago you were
scribbling away.
Get out there, you can raise the dead,
you're the lyrical ministry, heal the sick, and
cleanse the lepers, raise the dead.
What are you doing here?
He said I'm just getting some, I'm working
as a secretary.
You're what?
I'm working as a secretary, to who?
The Holy Ghost.
The who?
The Holy Ghost.
I'm writing epistles that are going to go
on.
You see I say he had first of
all an explicit life, this one thing I
do.
He had an exciting life, he wrestled with
wild beasts at Ephesus.
He had an expensive life, everything he had,
my richest gain I have count but lost.
He didn't sing it emotionally, he did it.
He buried all his glory, he buried all
his assets, he buried all his achievements.
You know when he says forgetting those things
which are behind, we think he means all
the rotten things, I don't think so.
You know every one of us, preachers and
others, we're in great danger when we make
our achievements the ground of our confidence.
Look how many books I've written, look how
many mouths I've, no no, once my achievements
become the ground of my confidence, I've pushed
Christ out of the way.
Paul doesn't do that.
He's nothing, he says we're in to boast,
saving the cross.
Keep writing Paul.
He had an exciting life, he wrestled with
wild beasts at Ephesus.
He had an explicit life, this one thing
I do.
He had an expensive life, he laid everything
on one side, and he has an expensive
life because I borrowed his notes this morning.
You know the old lady had something going
for her when they asked her if she
liked new versions, she said no I like
the King James Version, good enough for the
Apostle Paul, she said it's good enough for
me.
Well she's right, he wrote it, didn't he
David?
So the Apostle Paul was right, the old
lady's right.
Isn't it great to have a notebook from
heaven?
While you poor guys are strutting around with
philosophy and all the other junk that preachers
try to get these days, you know, fantastic
things about an inch deep like Christianity Today.
Somebody asked Kyle Barth, what do you think
of Christianity Today?
He said it's Christianity Yesterday.
You know this is the most up-to
-date book in the world.
If this won't inspire you and fire your
brother, you're finished.
Do you know what Paul does?
He splits the human race into two groups,
only two, not rich and poor, not black
and white, not intellectuals and people who are
retarded.
He says there are only two classes of
people in the world, not rich and poor,
not the slaves and free men, just two
classes, those who are dead in sin and
those who are dead to sin.
There's no other territory.
Doesn't he say to the Ephesians, you hath
he quickened, who are dead in trespasses and
in sin.
We were talking the other day about charmers
of Scotland, he preached for 10 years under
10 commandments.
They must have given him good time to
preach.
Then he suddenly realized he was preaching to
the most model crowd of people in the
world.
They won't even ride their horses to church,
they're making them work, so they plow through
snow up to their knees in those churches
in Scotland, many still do.
Then one day he realized he was trying
to imply people were bad, but secretly they
were lusting and secretly they were eyeing women
or secretly they were doing this, that and
the other.
And then he said I suddenly realized that
they were not bad at all, they were
dead.
You hath he quickened, know who are dead.
Do you know why you didn't get far
when you came to, as you thought, to
the old rugged cross?
Because you said the wrong thing.
I don't know daily, Brother Green, if anybody's
preaching the gospel today.
We preach forgiveness, come and ask for forgiveness.
They do that every Sunday in every Roman
Catholic church, does it transform them?
I preached two weeks ago, was it, on
Sunday, on Isaiah 6 there, where Isaiah comes
before the blazing light.
Before thy never blazing throne we have no
luster of our own.
He sees Christ high and lifted up.
He had a vision of deity, he had
an inward vision of depravity, he had an
outward vision of duty.
And when he bows before the Lord Jesus
Christ, he says I cried.
I'm not quite, you know, my prayer life's
a bit slack.
I need a bit of help here.
No, no, no, what does he say?
He says things that people will not utter
today.
I'm undone, I'm unclean.
You can't get further than that.
Then the live coal is taken from off
the altar.
The altar had bars on it.
A sacrifice was there.
The fire was underneath.
The blood dripped from the sacrifice onto the
live coal.
And the seraphim takes a live coal, a
fire with a spot of blood on it,
symbolic of the blood of Christ and the
fire of the Holy Ghost, and put it
upon his lips.
And said what?
You're forgiven.
No he didn't.
He says thy iniquity is taken away and
thy sin purged.
We don't preach that.
We just preach forgiveness.
A man needs more than forgiveness, he needs
cleansing, he needs more than cleansing, he needs
indwelling.
He needs more than indwelling, he needs anointing.
I'm glad the Holy Ghost still says to
rich men that want to monopolize the Holy
Ghost, your money perish with you.
The full gospel businessmen were going to turn
the world upside down.
They've done some good.
They got more criticism from the evangelicals than
they got from the tavern.
Full gospel.
Old Tony Salomo, the old man, says it's
a full gospel.
He says we're always full before ever we
preach.
Didn't quite mean that.
The full gospel.
I've got news for you.
Criticize them as you like.
Do you know what?
The Salvation Army preached the full gospel.
Their battle song was full salvation, full salvation,
lower fountain, deep and wide, flows from it
to every land and nation from the Savior's
wounded side.
None need perish.
Dear old William Booth, he was half Gentile
and half Jew.
The half Jew shows his love for money,
but anyhow, he was half Gentile and half
Jew.
But do you know what the Salvation Army
did?
They entered 70 countries, not 70 cities, they
entered 70 countries in 90 years.
C.T. Stud burning his life out at
53 after his career in China.
Burning his life out there in the center
of Africa.
Heart of Africa mission he found.
Don't send me a man or a woman
he said who isn't baptized with the Holy
Ghost.
That's the secret to do it today.
I'm puzzled.
I ask the theologian here sometimes.
Oral Roberts says we have 4,000 students
here full of the Holy Ghost, and nobody
knows they're in town.
In God's name what's wrong with them?
It only took 120 to turn the one
that rolled upside down, that turned Jerusalem upside
down.
Now you've got 1,500 at your school.
What are you doing about it?
You and your wife had better get together
and ask Fried and Lindsay what's happening.
They've got 1,500 students full of the
Holy Ghost, nobody knows them in town.
At the end of the block there's a
string of prostitutes.
Around the corner there are kids on dope
and all the rest of it.
I'm not interested in theological Holy Spirits.
I'm interested in the Holy Ghost who comes
and makes a man the habitation of God.
Ephesians 2 he says you're dead in trespasses
and sin, and Satan has dominion over you.
At the end of the chapter he says
you're full of the Holy Ghost, which means
you're full of life.
They're full of wisdom.
It would mean he was a true Holy
Ghost.
We have a theological Holy Ghost.
But you see the cost is so much.
God forbid that I should glory save in
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by
which the world is crucified to me.
Now you've seen many things, but I know
one thing you've never seen.
You've never seen a crucified man.
When that man was going to the cross,
as dear Tozer said to me so often,
he said you know Len, if you saw
a man going through the streets of Jerusalem
with the cross, you knew one thing about
him.
He wasn't coming back.
Most of us go to the altar and
we go back again the same.
We haven't died to self or selfishness.
I don't believe you can die to self.