The chapter we had last week, the night
before last week, last week, fall, and the
week before, early, but we haven't, no, they
got back to, and then they said, ooh,
they got back to us, and John's part
of that, it's a terrible long row, and
they were only 20 minutes late.
Last time they went, they were four days
late, so they picked up a lot of
time this time.
Wonderful.
John's 14, so 17 times is just a
little less.
It almost bankrupts at least my vocabulary to
try to describe this amazing chapter.
I remind you again, it begins in the
13th chapter of this gospel, and as we
said, when you go in chapter 13, Jesus
reveals the Lord's supper and the washing of
feet, chapter 14, verse 26, he mentions for
the first time the Holy Spirit, a comforter
which is a holy ghost.
I always think of my old teacher, dear
Samuel Chadwick, used to say, remember that word
comforter, a holy ghost is a comforter, but
he's not a nursing mother for spiritually sick
people.
It's a bad translation.
Actually, that word comforter is a Latin word,
comforted, K-U-M-dash-F-O-R
-T-I-S, with strength.
Didn't Jesus say when the Holy Ghost is
come, ye shall receive power or receive strength
when the Holy Ghost is come.
It's been called many things, this amazing chapter.
You know, we're kind of limited in English.
For instance, we've only one word for love.
A woman says, I love my dog, and
then she says, oh, and I do love
my husband.
Maybe it's the same kind of love, I
don't know, but anyhow.
The Greeks had at least four different words.
But we interchange words carelessly in English, don't
we?
You see an accident, a very horrible accident
at the end of the street.
You say, it was awful.
It wasn't.
It was terrible.
This chapter is awful.
What do you mean awful?
It's full of awe.
That's what awful means, full of awe.
You want to stand back and survey and
see its majesty.
I think you can liken, or at least
I can, because I want to, Matthew, Mark,
and Luke as being the outer court in
the tabernacle of awe.
John 17 as being the holy place.
No, pardon me, Matthew, Mark, and Luke as
the outer court, John as the holy place,
and John 17 as the holy of holies.
We said again, you go from the 13th
chapter, keep going through the book, it's like
going through the river in the 47th chapter
of Ezekiel, where every time we take a
stride, the river is deeper.
Water to the ankles, to the knees, to
the loins, water to swim in.
And you can read this amazing gospel, as
we call it, the gospel of John, in
the same way.
Every chapter gets deeper, deeper, deeper.
What's the climax?
Well, there's a double climax, if you like.
See, this chapter is so awesome that so
many people have said this is the most
amazing prayer Jesus ever prayed.
I don't believe that.
It's the longest prayer Jesus ever prayed.
That is not so.
It is the longest recorded prayer.
People have said to me for 50 years,
why do you stress prayer so much?
Because Jesus did.
Jesus was being baptized in Jordan.
As he was being baptized, he was praying
when the Spirit descended on him.
At the end of his journey on the
cross, while the other evangelists tell us that
he died, Luke says, as he died, he
was praying, Father, forgive them.
Luke emphasizes every event in the life of
Jesus with prayer.
He went to the Mount of Transfiguration, and
as he was praying, he was transfigured.
Remember Romans 12, 1 and 2, says, be
not conformed to this world, but be transformed.
It's the same Greek word, be transfigured by
the renewing of your mind, the renewing of
your personality.
If you want a new personality, the best
place to get one is in the place
of prayer.
He prayed.
He spent a whole night in prayer before
he chose his deacons.
I look to God, every church in the
country did that, had a whole night of
prayer, half the boys wouldn't get in.
The condition of being a deacon isn't that
you own a big business, and this, that,
and the other, like most places.
It's because they're full of faith and of
the Holy Ghost, which is an awesome challenge.
But after he had spent a night in
prayer, I think I asked you once before,
years ago maybe, if you could only relive
one day in the life of Jesus, what
would you relive?
Nearly everybody says the day he went and
raised Lazarus from the dead, that would be
exciting.
Or when he walked on the ocean, the
sea, that would be tremendous.
If I could choose one day, I would
choose this day.
I may be wrong.
I've been wrong once or twice, so what?
I've travelled far, I've been preached in the
biggest churches in the world, many of them,
met some of the great preachers.
I never judge a man by his preaching.
Let me pray with him, I'll tell you
what kind of a man he is.
A man may be a good preacher because
he has a good memory, a good personality,
he's loquacious or eloquent, whatever you want to
say.
I remember Dr. Tolstoy who gave me so
much counsel when we were just together, the
two of us, he said, Len, remember one
day that we preachers are not descendants of
the Greek orators or of the Roman orators.
If we're really God's men, what are we
doing?
We're in line, if we're really where God
wants us, we're descendants of the Hebrew prophets.
It's not, this is my opinion or this
is the latest textbook idea, it's thus saith
the Lord.
To use the word again, it must have
been awesome to see Jesus standing there lifting
up his eyes to heaven.
We usually close ours, I don't know why,
unless it's to save us from being distracted,
but he closed his eyes and said what?
Father, the hour has come.
Again, lots of people say he was entering
the final days, which he was in his
life, and there was a gloom over him,
not in your life, not on your life.
Why are you so sure?
Well, look at the last verse in the
16th chapter.
What does he say?
It doesn't sound like a man that's overcast
and heavy.
In the world ye shall have tribulation, but
be of good cheer, I have overcome the
world.
It was already settled in his heart.
Now, will you understand this?
It sounds like heresy.
If I say Jesus did not die on
the cross, he died in Gethsemane.
If he hadn't died to his own will
and embraced the total will of the Father,
the manifestation of his death was on the
cross, for sure.
What a wonderful moment it must have been.
He says Father, the hour has come.
Do you know what that meant?
It meant you could kind of break that
little word Father up for billions of people.
The only reason you and I tonight can
say our Father, and remember that's the first
thing he taught them in brain.
Our Father, what was the second thing?
Thy kingdom, thy will be done.
He that doeth the will of God, isn't
it, John says, he that doeth the will
of God abideth forever.
I remind you Abraham never called God Father.
Neither did Moses, neither did Joshua, neither did
Obadiah or any of the major or minor
prophets.
He revealed God in a new relationship.
Read through the chapter, he calls him Father,
he calls him Holy Father, he calls him
Righteous Father.
It is not true either that the prayer
is only for this disciple.
We say he was praying here for his
disciples.
No, verses 1 to 5 he prays for
himself.
Verses 6 to 19 he prays for the
disciples.
Verses 20 to 26 he prays for the
world.
People say, oh he wasn't praying for the
world.
That's exactly what he was praying for.
Wasn't the climax of his prayer the 17th
verse of this 17th chapter sanctify them through
thy truth?
Come on, why does God sanctify us?
To make us ornaments?
No, to make us instruments.
Unless we're pure, we're not pure, we contaminate
the message we give with our blurred thinking,
with our selfishness, with our stupid little opinions.
I'm realizing more and more and more that
few preachers preach the word of God.
They preach about it, they don't preach it.
The word of God is quick and powerful
and sharper than any two-edged sword.
Again, the symbol of the church of Jesus,
this is way out on the limb for
some people, because you may have one round
your neck or you may have one on
your daddy's tombstone.
The symbol of the church of Jesus Christ
is not a cross.
The cross is Roman.
The cross is cruel.
The symbol of the church of Jesus was
a tongue of fire on the head of
those men in the upper room.
Again, why wasn't it a dove that sat
on them?
I think they would have been more convinced
they would have said well that's what we
saw on the head of Jesus there in
the Jordan.
There's the little dove fluttering from head to
head to head.
I remember we had a night of prayer
in a place called Giringa.
Many of you have read that book what's
it called now?
God Smuggler.
In it he mentions a little man there.
I forgot the name of the man.
He used to come to a prayer meeting
that we had in that little town.
It was an old, old Methodist church.
I remember that.
Uncle something.
Uncle Hoppy there, thank you.
Uncle Hoppy.
He had the most disgusting automobile you ever
saw in his life.
And he was wealthy.
He was a builder.
He built huge buildings.
One day he had all the pay packets
all worked out in his office and a
missionary came in.
And the missionary said Uncle Hoppy said, are
you in need?
He said, yeah.
Yes sir, I am.
I believe God sent you to me.
He said, well God I felt lost.
I said, go see Uncle Hoppy.
He said, how much do you need?
He said, about $40,000.
Oh he said, wait a minute, I'll get
it.
And he opened his safe and he gave
all the wages of his workmen away to
the missionary.
So when it came to pay time they
said, we're waiting for that.
He said, I'm sorry, no money.
What do you mean?
My wife has to pay rent, buy groceries.
What are we going to do?
Oh, the Lord will provide.
He didn't know any more about the Lord
than he knew about Mexican measure.
I'll pay it on Monday morning.
And he paid it Monday morning.
It happened a second time and so because
he got away with it once he tried
it a second time and he misfired.
Gabriel forgot to bring the pay packet.
You see, we can presume very often on
God.
Because it works once doesn't mean God wants
me to do it every time.
But by the same token that man was
a precious man of prayer.
I remember that night particularly.
We prayed from about nine till about two
o'clock or later that next morning.
An old lady sitting in a wheelchair at
the back of the church.
She said, wasn't that wonderful, Brother Rayne?
I said, yes.
I thought such a release.
You know, there were two men there that
really had an anointing every time they prayed.
And I was so sanctified and selfish that
I always got between them.
You know, because every time they prayed there
was something spilling out of them.
So I got wedged between them because I
knew I'd get blessed.
And boy, could they pray.
But she said, at half past one wasn't
it wonderful?
I said, I don't know.
I wasn't looking.
I was sitting here.
She said, I was watching those men wrestling
in prayer.
They had their coats off and they were
going at it.
And then it happened.
I said, what happened?
A tongue of fire came at the far
end and went on every one of them.
Didn't you feel it on your head?
I said, not particularly.
I felt a sense of blessing.
But she said, that tongue of fire went
from one head to the other.
All through the whole, well there were about
eight of us.
It was a very blessed experience.
Why do you think those people winced?
Bless your heart.
Those Jews and priests on the day of
Pentecost they got armour plated on their hearts.
And all that happened was that Peter that
ran away from a little girl's finger was
so endued with the power of God it
was like we were, I was praying with
my dear son the other day, wonderful guy.
We were praying about anointing.
And Paul said, God we need these days
a tongue like an acetylene torch that will
burn right straight through an iron girder.
It's not very big.
It's not this width.
Maybe it's as wide as my finger.
But that guy puts it down that girder
like putting a knife through butter.
I like this figure of speech.
I'll use it sometime.
I won't say where I got it but
I'll use it.
I thought what a picture.
Here are these men that crucify.
Imagine Peter that ran away saying you crucify
the Lord of glory.
And it says they were pricked.
They were stabbed.
They were burned in their hearts.
Why do you think a little guy standing
by a river that has no financial backing
and no crowd behind him.
He stands there and the soldiers have armour
plated on.
Armour plating plumes.
They come from a foreign country.
Didn't know a thing about God.
They listened to this little man John the
Baptist and they cried out.
Again you don't make altar calls in revivals.
Altar calls are made when we sense the
Holy Ghost isn't there so we help him
out.
When the Holy Ghost is there I've seen
people crawl down the aisle before we finish
preaching.
That's going to come back too.
Paul was talking about revival that they had.
I think it was in Argentina a few
years ago where a man laboured for eight
years and preached only to his wife and
I think six children.
People say he's crazy.
He has a little denomination of his own
a wife, six children.
And he has eight of them.
One day the Holy Ghost came upon them.
He marched down the street with his wife
and children and everybody came out of houses
and went with him without sounding trumpets or
anything.
The Lord just moved over them.
Oh how artificial we are.
How we've got everything measured out.
Somebody leads the singing so long and somebody
does something else.
There's not much room for the Spirit.
Let's jump for a moment over here to
the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews.
Hebrews.
Verse thirteen.
Or verse twelve.
Wherefore also Jesus that he might sanctify the
people with his own blood.
Now look at verse eleven.
For the bodies of those beasts whose blood
is brought into the sanctuary.
The high priest brought what?
The blood of the beast.
What did Jesus give?
His own blood.
Verse eleven.
The bodies of those beasts whose blood is
brought into the sanctuary by the high priest
for sin.
The bodies are burned without the count.
Jesus also that he might sanctify the people
with his own blood suffered without the gate
or outside the gate.
If you read Exodus 29 you'll find there
that the beast when it had been killed
its body was taken out to burn.
It was a sin offering.
The blood was taken into the Holy of
Holies by the priest.
But Jesus shed his own blood presented his
own blood.
Again, outside of the gate.
Do some homework on that.
See what it's like.
What does it mean to go outside of
the gate?
Do you remember when in Exodus when the
children of Israel offended God Moses had the
tabernacle, the holy part removed outside of the
camp because he said God has forsaken you?
God has rejected you?
Well Jesus goes outside the gate.
Why?
Because God has forsaken Israel.
They thought they were going to cut Jesus
off.
He beat them to it.
Pardon the phrase, but he did.
What does it say?
Pilate said I'll take your life.
Jesus said you can't.
I'll lay it down when I want and
I'll take it up when I want.
But Jesus that he might sanctify the people
suffered outside of the gate.
I have never in my life I've heard
preaching I was going to say 75 years
I'm sure I've heard preachers for 72 years
anyhow.
All over the world.
All kinds, all denominations.
What have you got?
I've never heard one person talk about the
agony Jesus had in going into that rotten
place there outside the gate.
There was a hymn in England written by
Mrs. Alexander.
She married Alexander who was at that time
the Billy Graham of America.
She wrote a lovely children's hymn there is
a green hill far away without a city
wall.
Which means outside the city wall where our
dear Lord was crucified who died to save
us all.
Outside the pale, why?
What does it say in the 50th chapter
of Isaiah?
In the 53rd it says he made his
grave with what the rich and the wicked
in his debt.
He says in the 51st chapter he gave
his back to the smiters.
I wish we'd change this horrible habit I
think it is, I'm going to ask about
it anyhow.
Of having a communion service at the end
of a preaching service.
I believe we ought to meditate on the
finished work of Jesus Christ for an hour
before we partake of communion.
We don't esteem it as we should.
What did you sing tonight?
You sang bearing shame and scoffing rude in
my place.
I mentioned before Barabbas must have looked at
the cross where Jesus was and said I
should be on that cross.
I know those two thieves I've murdered and
stole with them and raped and done every
wicked damnable thing.
And that holy man never did anything wrong.
As the hymn writer says those kind hands
that did such good they nailed them to
a cross of wood.
And here he is going into the most
horrible experience ever.
I think there were two.
One was Gethsemane where the whole of that
22nd Psalm became real in his life.
A young man wrote to me from Canada
this past week.
He said there's a popular doctrine up here
that Jesus went to hell on our behalf
and suffered.
The hell that Jesus suffered as far as
I'm concerned is separation from God.
That's hell.
I'm not bothered about temperatures.
Not bothered how big it is.
Not bothered where it starts.
Hell is separation from God.
When you call and there's no answer.
When you're frantic and frenzied.
But all they sing over and over and
over for millenniums is the harvest is past
the summer is ended.
I believe every damned person there will feel
the tract in his hand that he once
took and threw on one side.
I believe he'll hear his mother's prayers thundering
in his ears for millennia.
I believe every time they grieve the Holy
Spirit that torment will come to them in
perdition.
God is a just, he's a holy God.
But let's see Jesus going down there into
that horrible pit.
What did he do outside the gate?
Well that's where the lepers were allowed to
go.
They weren't allowed anywhere else.
I remember doing some missionary work there in
Thailand, North Thailand.
We took a train.
And a couple asked me with Worldwide Evangelization
Crusade at headquarters now.
They asked me would I like to go
to a leper colony.
I said sure.
I guess we were almost half a mile
away.
It was a downhill, you know.
The wind was coming down on us.
The stench was indescribably rough.
Corruption.
When we got there there were people with
half an arm.
People with no fingers.
People whose whole cheek was eaten away in
a little thread holding their eyeball in.
A blind man on the shoulder of a
man about half a leg and he was
hopping along on just a branch of a
tree with some leaves under.
His arms must have been raw.
There was every form of degradation.
This was the finality for Jesus in humiliation.
Every sin that lashed the human heart lashed
him there I believe.
He saw corruption in its ultimate.
Here is the most undefiled man the world
has ever known seeing the greatest defilement the
world has ever known.
He's of holy rise and to behold iniquity
and yet he sees that terrible mass of
corruption.
And he doesn't back off.
Bearing shame and scoffing rude.
There'll never be a computer that can compute
the horror of that situation.
I don't understand how Jesus the heaven of
heavens couldn't contain him suddenly is compressed into
the womb of his mother.
How did the ancient of days become the
infant of time?
It's amazing that God could become man.
It's more breathless to think he not only
became man, he became sin for us.
He took the torment of our damnation.
He took the agony of our separation from
the father.
And I see somebody advertising Christian comedians.
Makes me sick.
They've never seen the finished work of Christ
when they do that.
Or they haven't seen Christ in the other
aspect when he's lifted up in Isaiah 6.
But here he is bearing shame and scoffing
rude.
And it's told in the word, by one
man's disobedience sin entered into the world and
because of sin death came.
But by one man's righteousness the last Adam
not the second Adam as Newman says.
He has a lovely hymn praise to the
holiest in the height and in it he
says O loving wisdom of our God when
all was sin and shame a second Adam,
no no no no.
If you have a second Adam you can
have a third.
Adam in the garden was the first Adam.
Adam in the garden of Gethsemane is the
last Adam.
He's going to undo all that the first
Adam has done.
Doesn't matter how many billions of transgressions there
are.
God is going to accept one sacrifice.
Jesus is going to take all our human
corruption which was worse than all the filth
and impurity.
You see the place where he went outside
the city wall was the place where all
the drainage, all the corruption came.
All the human filth.
Bodies were thrown there.
Carcasses were thrown there.
There was a gallery all round it.
It was a gallery of bodies of men
who had been crucified maybe for days and
the birds had just about picked their bodies
clean and there they were these hideous skeletons
all round.
And here is the holy son of God
who'd been surrounded by angels in eternity.
I don't believe anybody else could have taken
that.
I believe that was the kind of stuff
we were going to see for all eternity
except he had redeemed us.
In my place condemned he stood and he
sealed my path with his blood.
Well that's the first half of the text
isn't it?
Wherefore, verse 12 Wherefore Jesus also, in the
13th of Hebrews, wherefore Jesus also that he
might sanctify the people with his own blood
and suffer without the gate.
Now what about the other half?
Are you ready for it?
Let them, no let us go forth therefore
unto him without the camp bearing his reproach.
Do you remember in the 11th chapter of
this amazing book of Hebrews it says about
a man that lived 2,000 years before
Jesus?
God alone could explain this, I can't.
A man called Moses.
He was trained.
He was going to sit on the throne
of Pharaoh.
He was a son of Pharaoh's daughter.
He was going to rule the richest, most
powerful empire in the world.
And suddenly somewhere, somehow he had a vision
of Jesus.
It says that when Moses What did he
do?
He said he sold Christ to Pharaoh, doesn't
he say?
What's the verse?
Oh I've got it here now.
Chapter 11, verse 26 Verse 24 By faith
Moses when he came to you refused.
Here he is a mature man refusing.
When you go home read his life story
in the 7th chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles.
He was mighty in word.
He wasn't an orator, he stammered.
He was mighty in word.
He was a lawmaker before ever he got
the Ten Commandments.
He was mighty in deed.
He ordered that government around.
He ordered the armies around.
He was mighty in word and deed.
He refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter.
That must have been something.
I'd like to have seen him turning his
back on Pharaoh's daughter.
Nobody ever told me that Moses was a
hero.
If you escape from death like he did
because that's what they were trying to do
kill him, would you run back straight in
front of the Pharaoh standing there on his
throne?
That's one of the most amazing deeds of
moral majesty in the whole of the word
of God.
He's walking into a death trap.
There's a price on your head.
There's a contract on you.
But he goes fearlessly into the presence of
the king.
He refused to be called the son of
Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with
the people of God rather than enjoy the
pleasure of sin for a season esteeming the
reproach of Christ.
Come on!
Where did this man get his thinking?
Where did he get his revelation?
Look at the empire you're leading.
That's the throne you're going to sit on.
Look at those people with marvelous poles made
of gold and ostrich feathers to find you
to sleep at night.
Look at the meals you're going to have.
You're going to the back of the desert
with stinking, smelly sheep.
Only God could calculate what reward this amazing
man is going to have.
He esteemed the reproach of Christ.
Let's go back to the 13th chapter, verse
13 again.
Let us therefore go unto him without the
count, bearing his reproach.
I like the translation of Phillips there, not
because it's English, but I think it's a
good translation.
It says, bearing his disgrace.
Come on, bearing his disgrace.
Let's go outside the camp.
Bless you, he'd been outside the camp from
his birth.
Do you remember in the temple one day,
the wise man there said, we know who
he is.
In other words, he wasn't born of a
virgin.
He's illegitimate.
We know who he is.
He was put out of the family.
He was put out of the synagogue.
He was put out of the city.
Yeah, it was nice.
It was easy singing that lovely hymn tonight,
wasn't it?
Our sacred head once wounded.
I'll give myself, I'll give my life, but
what when you start getting shunned?
What when your family don't want to own
you?
Where's your son?
Has he gone to university?
No, he's at YWAM.
What's YWAM?
A farming community?
I heard somebody say it's called Latter Days.
No, you've got the wrong place.
They're Mormons.
They're over the hill.
Last days are somebody different.
I mean, but it's not a very high
-brow college, is it?
No, it isn't.
Maybe it's not much.
College I went to, I had 35 students.
I'm one of the best men they turned
out.
They turned me out as soon as they
could.
I thank God for that little school.
How far are we prepared to go?
I'm getting letters from all over the country,
and Dave Wilkinson tells me he's getting the
same.
Not the same letters, same thing.
I've been in this church so long, but
it's so dry.
I have to leave.
I'm going to perish.
I'm going to die.
I saw where a man said a while
ago, a preacher, if you've been in your
church five years, it's time you move.
I don't think you move because you get
tired of seeing the same altar cloth or
the same stained glass window.
You move when you get fed bread instead
of stones and scorpions instead of fish.
Well, some of us have left our church,
and do you know what they call us?
Well, I can guess.
Dissenters.
Oh, schismatics.
Lovely words, aren't they?
But that's all he got.
I don't believe there's a rabbi in town
who would talk to Jesus.
He did a wonderful thing.
He split the whole nation in two.
Half of them were jealous of him and
the other were joyous.
The joyous ones were those he redeemed.
The jealous ones were those who were paralyzed
and couldn't do a thing, and so they
were envious and scorned.
Let us go unto him outside the camp
bearing his disgrace.
People don't like me.
Why?
Well, I used to go to their house
and of course the first thing they did
was bring a glass of sherry, and then
a little while after they played card, a
little while after something else, something...
I've lost all my appetite for those things.
I don't do it.
I remember society girls in England that came
to our church.
Their parents went crazy, came to see me.
What's happened to my daughter?
She doesn't smoke.
She doesn't want to go to dance.
Some of them danced at Buckingham Palace and
elsewhere.
She doesn't want to drink sherry.
Oh, she's changed her lifestyle.
I said, maybe she hasn't.
Oh, but she has.
Not she...
Mother thought I changed it.
I scuffed her head.
No, I said she met somebody.
Who did she meet?
I said, I can take you to the
place where your very beautiful daughter studied music
in a conservatory in Belgium and studied music
in Italy.
I can take you to the very spot
where she knelt in the sawdust.
And I had the privilege of leading her
to Christ, that priest on Psalm 51.
That beautiful girl that never had to do
anything for herself ended up foot-slugging in
one of the hardest places in the world.
Not really a hospital, it was a makeshift
hospital in Afghanistan.
Climbing those mountains.
I've often wondered how those dainty feet and
expensive shoes she had then, of course again
she got something more sensible, how she struggled
through.
But she came back radiant.
She came back more enriched.
She came back as though she'd been to
a wedding with Jesus, which she had.
She swore her allegiance to him.
What we sing so easily, love so amazing,
so divine, demands my soul, my life, my
all.
My richest gain I count but loss.
Something Paul said just the other day before
he left, he said Daddy, when you think
of it, there's nothing round here or anywhere
else that has any value.
Hundreds of Christians will find they've been living
for sawdust when they get to the judgment
seat.
They missed it by a million miles.
I didn't look at the scripture but I
thought just before I came in, of the
word of the apostle.
This man again, to me my hero after
Jesus, the man with a colossal intellect, the
best missionary traveler the world ever saw, at
home with the intellectuals, at home in the
gutters.
What did he say?
What things were gain to me?
You don't sacrifice rubbish.
So he says I don't believe God counts
what you give to him.
He counts what you have left.
That'll be tough on a lot of people,
won't it?
I pay my tithes.
That's God's income tax.
You don't give him a dime if all
you do is pay your tithe.
It's tithes and offerings.
A young man told me the other day
from up north, oh I'm troubled in my
church they're making such an emphasis about tithing.
Is there any tithing in the New Testament?
I said not that I know.
But what did they do?
It says they gave out of their abundance.
They gave far beyond the minimum.
They gave the maximum.
I know one church when it everybody gives
30% of their income.
I know some people give 50%.
Not because they want a big reward but
they do it out of the abundance.
They do it out of joy.
They do it out of gratitude.
You know at one moment in heaven we'll
all wish we'd been more sacrificial.
We'll all wish we'd been more prayerful.
We'll all say Lord would I trip up
over that?
Did that thing get me trapped for so
many years?
Was I so blind?
Was I so childish?
Did I let those vain things that charmed
me most and helped me least clutter my
life up?
You know I guess I've got a wild
imagination at times.
I think every demon in hell was watching
this man struggle.
It wasn't the weight of the cross that
was getting him down.
It was the weight of human sin that
it represented that was killing him.
I think Jesus was strong and healthy.
I think he'd be about 6 feet 2
or 3.
I think he was like the first Adam.
He was a perfect creature.
I think the last Adam was.
But Jesus there no demon can measure it.
That's why demons fought every inch of the
way from his birth.
They tried to get him to cut short.
Or they tried to kill him.
They tried to push him over the precipice.
He invaded them all.
But triumphantly he takes the sin, the sum
total of human sin that no demon could
measure.
And no computer could measure.
And there he is staggering and he falls
under it.
I guess every demon thought well he's not
going to make it.
And every angel was looking on.
I'm going to ask those disciples because they
ask me a lot of questions too.
Why did they escort him to that horrible
wretched Gethsemane and then to the sink of
human depravity?
Why didn't they stand at the side of
the road and cheer him on and sing
some songs?
They'd all run away.
Who was standing there?
People shooting out the lip, knocking, scoffing, ridiculing.
Ripping his shirt off, giving his back to
the smiter.
Bearing shame and scoffing rude.
Oh we paint nice pictures of Jesus crucified.
I don't believe Jesus had a stitch on
him when he was crucified.
It was part of his humiliation to be
naked.
I believe his back was bloody like a
ploughed field after they'd riced and riced and
riced him.
And some idiot said why don't you come
down from the cross and save yourself?
He could have proved it better that.
He could have turned them into stone while
they were standing there.
If all they wanted was a miracle.
What does the apostle say?
It's given to us to suffer for his
name's sake.
The question is what is my breaking point?
Not how rich I am, not how happy
I am, not how popular I am.
That's got nothing to do with it.
All our values even in the church are
so false, so ridiculous.
I pray that God will draw me as
we sang tonight nearer blessed Lord.
I want him to whisper in my ear.
I want him to tell me something he
can't tell anybody else.
I want to be able to bear something
he said I've been waiting so many years
for somebody to take that load up.
They won't.
I don't know where this young man is.
I don't know where we were Martha when
we heard of this young man called Bo.
A young American, 21 years of age.
He'd been up the Amazon.
He went up the Amazon, got on one
of the boats that go up, then after
that paid a fellow to row him up
the Amazon, after that bought a little canoe
himself, and disappeared for about two or three
years.
Then came back one day just to pick
his mail up into Miami.
And off he went.
He hasn't been seen since.
People ask me if I like to travel.
Sure.
I travel every day of my life.
I don't think there's a day of my
life I don't go up the Amazon in
prayer.
The river Amazon is so big if you
take the map of Europe put it on
the wall and put the map of the
river Amazon here.
All the tributaries are so big they cover
the whole of Europe, Russia included.
You go up the Amazon and you go
up the Orinoco River.
You get off the Orinoco River, go up
another place.
Nobody knows.
It's a guess.
The nearest information we have maybe is from
what's correct from time.
Anyhow, National Geographic they keep discovering tribes that
nobody has seen before.
Two thousand years after Jesus came.
And some guys want to go to a
good Christian school because of a good basketball
team.
If you have a basketball team don't go
within a hundred miles of the place.
And no rewards for basketball.
No rewards for all this tomfoolery that goes
on in Bible schools.
Look if you're married to Jesus, you're married
to him and you renounce the world, the
flesh, the devil, this dirty old harlot that's
called the world.
World systems.
You take up your cross and bloody you'll
find it pretty heavy.
Despising the shame.
Oh there's a lot of shame attached to
it.
I'll tell you what, when we get to
the other side and see the glory.
I don't think we'll ever get horse in
heaven, at least I hope we won't.
I can't imagine how much I'm going to
shout when the apostle Paul goes up for
his reward.
Brother if you hear one shout that sounds
like an earthquake it will be me.
After all I've been stirring it up now
for 60 years to cheer him and rejoice
and magnify him.
Think of the glory of Jesus when he
puts his nail printed hand, fierce hand on
the head of that little man as he
was in the flesh.
Couldn't in tradition five foot one, that was
the height of Wesley too.
But he did the work of a hundred
men.
In weirdness, in fastings, in painfulness, in tribulation,
in distress, in famine, in peril, in nakedness.
So what things were gained?
His pedigree, his Hebrew pedigree, he counted it
but dung, that's pretty offensive.
That's all it's worth, a pile of dung.
That I may win Christ and be found
in him.
And as I've said before I don't understand
his reckoning.
When a man has been lashed 195 times
when he's hung on a piece of wood
in the Mediterranean for a night and a
day would be what 30 hours maybe?
And all the hardships thrice I suffered shipwreck,
once I was stoned.
Four times I received 40 stripes save one.
And then he the bottom line, mercy gets
worse or better, which?
What's the bottom line?
I glory in tribulations.
They should have been shared out but nobody
wanted them.
All the praise, Lord help me to get
through today and Lord bless me today and
take care of me and don't let the
dog get run over or something.
He glories in tribulations, in necessities, in reproaches,
scorn.
Let's go forth with him says the apostle
bearing his disgrace, sharing his disgrace.
No, no, no.
People ought to be honoured, even in the
church.
You know they have honours now for preachers.
I'll never get one, I'm sure of that.
I don't want one.
I'd be insulted if they offered me one
and I'd backslip.
If I have to be like that bunch
to get an honour, well brother I'd rather
die.
You know there's not much time for us
to labour for him.
It's going to be over before too long.
And I say again with all the reproaching
ourselves then.
The victorious life in Christ is simple.
Listen to him and obey him.
That's all there is to it.
Don't believe everything you hear, not even from
me.
Check it with the Word of God.
But the secret again is trust and obey,
there's no other way.
And sometimes you think this is a roadblock.
Millions have thought that but they've got through
it, they've got over them.
And he promised to give us strength for
the day.
Let us go forth with him bearing his
reproach.
Think of that when your relatives say you
know you've missed it.
When somebody in your household scorns you, that's
where it's hard isn't it?
When it begins at Jerusalem.
When your church begins to ridicule you because
you believe you've found a better way.
Here's the question.
Don't leave the church with an excuse.
Ask yourself when you've been away from it
three months, am I richer, am I deeper
in my spirit, am I nearer to Christ,
is Christ more precious in my prayer life
or has he gotten the door and said
we can have all that he has?
I'll give you power he said.
Remember Dave Wilkerson who's going to Colan in
May.
I want you to remember him.
I want you to remember him tonight.
He's down at Jimmy Swaggart's.
Mr Swaggart has a satellite up tonight.
They're linking up a thousand churches through the
nation so let's pray Dave and say something
powerful.
And let the speakers who are speaking on
that program.
Let's remember Paul again as they go back
to that stronghold that sure is a stronghold.
And we say I'm here on Lucas tonight.
One little word will surely sell him.
I wish I knew that word.
Isn't it easy to be poetic?
Remember Gary Wilkerson.
Gary's working in a hell hole right in
the middle of Detroit.
Detroit.
Mostly amongst black Muslims.
Young 16, 18 year olds.
Reckless, wild.
Now they're getting a fellowship together.
They've got a building there.
A $300,000 building for $60,000 a
giveaway.
They're getting the people in.
People have never seen anything like this or
heard anything like this.
It's a stronghold.
As much a stronghold of the Muslim faith
as some of those countries in Europe are.
In the Middle East there.
And they've got a little utility by just
saying boo.
We've got that authority, power, endowment.
We need to pray for this.
Some of you fellows probably only once remember
this.
One time when you're out and about together
at the Amazon.
Becoming the pastor of a fancy church in
town.
So why didn't you go?
Right after I was getting married we sent
out notices don't bring any gifts, don't bring
any presents.
Because at that time I thought we were
going into the Antwerp forest.
A forest which is as big as England
in Africa to the pygmies.
The mob just shut the door.
And I became sure that the judgment, at
least I offered, that God wouldn't take my
Isaac.
Then my sons had gone.
David did a great job there in New
Guinea.
Lots of white people in New Zealand now.
A tough place.
And right now they're praying about jumping, I
use that word, jumping down into the jungle.
Wild, fierce, drunken, wicked, fighting men.
And they're going to establish an outreach there.
Let's pray for these and pray for these
ministries around here that they'll have anointing.
Pray God will send some cyber creatures.
Mercy on us.