One of the deepest thinkers, I think, living
today, says that religion, and by that he
means religion, man's response to God.
Not Christianity, but religion.
This man says that religion has a meaning
for men only if it can find
in history a certain point to which it
can absolutely surrender.
Christianity, then, or a Christian, is real, and
his face is authentic, and his relationship is
what God requires if and only if he
finds someone one to whom he can totally
surrender himself.
I will repeat, a man's bragging about I'm
saved is no good unless by that he
expresses the fact that he's met somebody to
whom he may totally, we can answer
rightly God's call in elective grace.
In Christ Jesus, only by that choice, he
revolts of a commitment, and that commitment is
the commitment of oneself utterly, with utter
abandonment to another.
Christ Jesus didn't come and die on a
cross to do anything short of possessing us.
Whether you are saved or dead, you belong
to Jesus Christ.
He bought you, and if he sends you
to hell, he will send you to hell
because you belong to him by purchase price.
Every church in America, some
more than others, and every preacher and every
individual Christian need desperately to reexamine what's involved
in answering God's call.
What's involved in saving faith, which is response
to the revelation of God in Christ and
his call through the Spirit in the gospel?
What's God calling men to, and how can
Ralph Barnett or anybody else properly and savingly
respond to God's elective call?
I don't know of anything more important than
that.
And under God, if God Almighty could be
pleased to use somebody in this congregation to
come up with some good answers as to
how we can start all over again, nearly,
and rescue the word faith, make it meaningful
again.
How we could stop this traffic in the
souls of men going through the motion of
profession and church membership and so forth without
any change that keeps on change in the
lives of men and women?
How can we reexamine our message and our
message to the air that we could do
a better job of being true, true to
men and women, telling them the truth, telling
them in love, but telling them the truth,
not trying to get people converted by hiding
the truth from them.
Not what we've called evangelism of the last
sixty years that is built on the proposition
that the less truth, the more results.
This is a serious proposition.
I do not know about you.
My father and mother are both gone.
Last Lord's Day was my mother's birthday, the
ninety-two as she is living.
Yesterday was my father's birthday, the ninety-five
if he's living.
I have, I'm one of six remaining children,
brothers and sisters.
My older brother is gone.
I have five brothers and sisters, one of
them in California, one's in Montana, two are
in Alabama, one's in Georgia.
They are products of what's called Christianity today.
They're all devout, faithful, hardworking church people, and
only one of them gives us tiniest little
bit of evidence.
We can't judge what it is.
Oh, we look for just a little bit
of evidence.
If there you look, my
soul, how people are being butchered today.
The fact that for the last hundred years
we've been whittling down on what saving faith
is, what God demands of men and women
as a response to His dying on a
cross in Jesus Christ.
My loved ones are as honest as you
are.
They're as sincere as you are.
They're as kind-hearted, humane, good neighbors, all
of that you are.
But they're the product of what passes for
salvation, the gospel and Christianity in cross-section
of America.
My soul, I wish something could take place
where churches all over the country are making
Christians, men and women, who are faced up
to the fact that the last word that
God Almighty says to a man is not,
I save.
The last word He says to an individual
is, I claim.
You're mine.
You belong to me.
For the chief sign of salvation's not a
sense of freedom, but it's an experience of
being mastered by somebody.
And I look you in the face and
tell you now that you're not fixin' to
become a Christian unless you are willing to
be mastered by and ruled by the Lord
Jesus Christ.
Nobody's tryin' to wish anything off on anybody.
Nobody's tryin' to get you to accept anybody.
And if you're determined to split hell wide
open in spite of everything, nobody can keep
you from it.
But I'm tellin' ya, if you wanna be
saved, utterly mastered, utterly conquered, utterly
possessed by the Lord Jesus, I
wish we'd quit tryin' to talk people into
accepting Jesus.
I don't know what good that'll do anyhow,
for men don't need to accept Him.
They need to surrender to Him, for that's
exactly what He demands.
How can men savingly respond to
the holy God who in Christ Jesus bought
you lock, stock, and barrel with His own
precious blood?
How?
The Scripture's divided up by thinking we could
say three things quickly first.
Saving faith, savingly to respond to God's claim
upon you in Jesus Christ, dying on a
cross in your behalf.
Saving faith, that faith that'll do to ride
the river where since ever I've got faith.
That faith that is man's act and God's
gift, that faith that is the method through
which God works salvation in a human being,
that faith requires very simply a response of
not of my soul, but of me, of
me.
He didn't come down here to save your
soul, honey.
He came down here to possess you, you.
And if we'll cut out that silly stuff
that all of us talk about, every last
one of us, He saved my soul.
Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul.
He didn't know such a thing.
He saved people, people.
He bought you.
He owns you.
He's possessing you.
He's after men and women.
And the only way that Rothbard can respond
to God's claim and demand upon him in
his call from a cross is to do
exactly toward him that he did toward us.
He didn't give us some advice.
That's God.
He gave us himself.
You will not give yourself to him.
If you want a nice little salvation, you
can put up and refer to it now
and then, talking about you saved my soul.
Praise the Lord.
But no, if you want him to have
your lock, stock, and barrel, you, you, you,
not part of it, but you, not some
of your time, but you, not this damn
good stuff about you all to give your
talents to the Lord.
You ain't got nothing to start with.
He, as a fellow of my goodness of
life, isn't that silly?
But he wants you.
And he's not going to trade for anything
beside you.
He's not going to accept anything short of
you.
Here I am, Lord.
I surrender.
He gave.
He gave himself for you.
You will not give yourself to him.
That, blessed God, is a part of saving
faith.
Away with this foolishness about accepting
something, or believing something, or trusting something.
Salvation isn't in reference to a something.
Salvation's in reference to a someone.
Saving faith is the response of me, all
the rest of me.
That's reading, blessed God, Scripture don't know nothing
about one act of faith saving anybody.
Hell going to be full of Baptists talking
about what God did thirty years ago.
Every reference to faith, belief, saving belief in
the New Testament, this is the God's truth,
is in the present tense.
He that believeth, just keeps on.
We are kept by the power of God's
power.
How?
Through faith.
Somebody says, will I lose my faith?
Will I go to heaven?
No, sir.
That's a silly question.
But the only way God keeps you is
how?
Through faith.
My soul, anybody on earth that's willing to
trust yesterday is silly.
It's got to be today.
If salvation were a transaction that I could
settle, Brother Paul, and lock it up in
the safe and refer to it now, and
then be a white horse of different color.
But salvation is a bringing into a relationship
of two persons.
And every decision and every involvement between persons
must be renewed and renewed and renewed and
renewed.
That's right.
Oh, you're a day late if you're talking
about what happened yesterday in your relationship with
Jesus Christ.
I don't understand why Ralph Barnes has to
repent every day.
I have to put my faith again in
Jesus Christ every day.
Bless God, I need Him today just as
badly and much terribly and absolutely as ever
I will or ever I dare.
I can't make it today without appropriating the
blood and the body of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Oh, my soul, don't tell me about your
beliefs.
Tell me about your daily feeding upon and
appropriating all the living Christ.
That's faith.
That's faith that produces life, not Phariseeism that
stalks us.
The devil can't get us one way, he'll
do it another, you know.
We're never safe from his attacks if we're
headed in the right direction.
Oh, my soul, every day must be a
renewing of relationship with the living Lord.
It's only this kind of response, a daily
response that the New Testament talks about.
Authentic or saving faith is that response that's
required which one surrenders himself utterly to the
sovereignty of God in Christ.
You can put it down that unless God's
claims, sovereign claims are bowed to, you'll never
know peace.
You'll never know peace.
You can put it down that you can't
keep your shotgun pointed in the direction of
the heart of God and have his peace.
I'm telling you the truth, that the very
heart of saving faith is a crisis and
then a daily dealing with the claims of
an all-sovereign God.
That means he's simply God, very God.
I'm saying to you that saving faith has
one thing that it's got to face and
it has to face it every day, for
every day, for as thy days, so shall
thy strength be, and that is we are
bound to the will of God.
That's what it means, that we
are unto another.
We are not alone.
We're bought with a price.
Unless you're willing to have the one thing
foremost in every day's experience, the will of
God, you haven't faced the demands of God
on a cross for a proper response.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you're talking about doing
the will of God yesterday, you're a day
late.
This thing's got to be faced every day,
every day, every day.
This is the biggest thing between the eternities.
If there isn't anything else, Mounts to Hill
obeisance.
Whose will is to be done today?
I tell you right now, you can't depend
on past experience here.
This thing is vital.
It's concerned with the relationship.
Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but
who will?
Try to get your doctrine to throw this
out.
It's in the Bible, too, and it don't
contradict anything else, but it just simply says
the guy that will is the fellow that
doeth.
That's continuous what?
The will of God, brother.
That won't fix you, make you roll up
your sleeves, spit on your hands, and get
out of your nice little comfortable religious pew.
Brother, this thing's a day-by-day proposition.
Oh, that's Lord there going to give a
testimony and brag to all the Lord, but
that ain't worth a hill of beans.
Not everyone that says unto me, Lord, Lord,
that's orthodoxy, but he that doeth the will
of God.
God, help us, this thing's serious.
As long as we keep preaching to men
and women that they ought to be saved
so that what happens when they die, they
can just float along and they get baptized
and that's all of it.
God's going to save them by faith, plus
nothing, minus nothing, that's all of it.
But no, bless God of salvation, that doesn't
rightly relate yourself to the doing of the
will of God.
It is not God's salvation.
Saving faith involves giving the surrender of
oneself to be a part of God's program
of redemption, to be a part of God's
program of redemption.
Yes, something that if Satan had a heart
that was as soft as a bunch of
steel, it'd break his heart even.
Men and women who've been led to believe
they're rightly related to God and Jesus Christ,
who are not committed utterly to God's
redemptive program through them.
What are you talking about, Brother Barnum?
I've mentioned it before, I'll mention it again
before I leave you.
The tragedy of what we call Christendom in
America that's causing Christendom to die in America
to rot is the fact that we've divorced
salvation from accepting the great commission of the
Lord Jesus Christ to be his instrument in
his program of redemption.
And many of you believed that you were
included when the Lord breathed on them, said,
Receive ye the Holy Ghost, John chapter 20.
And then he said what?
As my Father has sent me, even so
send I you.
You in on that?
Who's that talking to?
I tell you, you know that's pretty embarrassing.
Let's adopt this.
I've read this.
It's pretty popular.
That's just for the apostles.
That all right?
Can't take that?
No?
Well, who on earth is he talking about?
You in on it?
Huh?
God help me, I've got no business claiming
to be a Christian unless I've gladly received
this commission to represent Jesus Christ.
That's what he said.
I hope the Lord won't take the eyes
off of a little weak me.
But I want to leave this with you.
There going on over there, that blessed, white
-haired, greatly used man of God who literally
burned himself out in the cause of Jesus
Christ.
That's a good way to burn yourself out.
He said to me, Brother Roth, he said,
I hear one mighty bad thing about you.
And the brethren have told it on you.
And I began to tremble.
I thought he found out I robbed a
bank or something.
He let that soak in a little while.
He said, the brethren say you'll be dead
by the time you're 30.
That you won't be able to last very
long.
The case you set for yourself said you'll
burn yourself out by the time you're 30.
And I was a pretty much stemwinder then.
Therefore my old body got to where I
couldn't do it anymore.
I really burned him up.
I was right in there, but I did.
And I said to him the truth.
I said, well, Dr. Scarborough, I realize you're
telling the truth, and I'm trying to correct
myself of it, but I'm utterly unable to
do it.
The way I know it.
And when I got through with my apology,
he said, thank God.
And then he said something that may be
in good theology, but it's pretty good theology.
You'll think it through.
God bless you.
He said, young man, I want you to
learn.
Listen to me now.
That it takes the blood of Jesus Christ
and the blood of God's people to carry
out the redemptive program of Almighty God.
He knew what he was talking about.
Better stand.
Without him singing tonight, if I may be
permitted, I'm going to ask you to go
home.
Is that all right, brother pastor?
God help us.
I preach to God's people.
How can we do a better job than
we've been doing?
Facing men with what it actually means to
savingly respond to the call of God.
Our Father in bloodstained Jesus' name.
And we think if we know our hearts,
we pray in for his glory.
We think we do it these desperate hours
when so little of spiritual power, so little
of faith.
Oh, God, come to the rescue of your
people.
Anoint us.
Garrison us.
Equip us.
The spirit of the age is too much
for us in our own strength.
Oh, God.
Helplessly but hopefully we see as little children
we come.
And so, God, come to our rescue that
we may come to the defense of the
gospel in our day.
We beg in Christ's name that you will
speak as you see fit to people here
tonight.
Demand of them nothing short of total serenity.
In his name we pray.