There's something wrong with you.
What else is wrong with me for trying
to put something on top of what you've
already heard anyhow?
I think it's true of us and all
other people that what we really need is
not more light but more obedience.
Most of us have enough light to condemn
us anyhow.
What we need is a baptism of obedience.
When the brother was talking about the offering
I heard a story about a young man
who left a small town and went out
to become a millionaire and came back and
they decided to let him tell his success
story in the town hall.
Then afterwards in the church he testified that
the reason he became a millionaire was that
he was sitting in church one night they
were making a missionary offering and he had
a dollar in one pocket and a dime
in the other.
And he argued with himself and said I
can't afford to give the dollar anyhow I'll
give the dime.
And then he said the Lord said the
dime's no good giving me the dollar.
And he was going to give the dollar
then he said the dime's no good to
me so I'll give the dollar and the
dime.
He said I put it all there.
He said that night I gave the Lord
everything I had and that's why I'm a
millionaire today.
And the little old lady on the front
row said in a stage whisper I dare
you to do it again.
Just a very simple word tonight.
I heard the news and a particular brand
of news I heard tonight said that the
50th state, I think Hawaii is the 50th
state, today passed a new law to legalize
abortion.
And it may be now that this will
become the, Hawaii is the 50th state, today
passed a new law to legalize abortion.
And it may be now that this will
become the one state which becomes an abortion
mill for the whole of America.
We are progressing in our deterioration very rapidly.
England has passed a similar law.
And I've often reminded other people and myself
that Sodom had no Bibles, no Bible schools,
no preachers, no prayer meetings, no broadcasts, and
yet despite all that spiritual ignorance they perished.
I remember a phrase dear brother Comrade Morell
said last time we were talking there in
in Dallas.
He said let's take care that we're not
trying to preserve what God has already condemned.
There's a great deal of truth in that
very simple statement.
The year 1912 was distinctive for three things
in my memory.
Because in that year the great ship the
Titanic was lost in mid-Atlantic and more
than a thousand people perished.
Not only did the great ship sink but
the great leader of the Salvation Army William
Booth died.
And I think the great philosopher H.G.
Wells lost his reason the same year though
he would never admit that.
He was a member of that very distinguished
and brilliant school of Fabian Socialism in England.
The big boy in the class is now
the Prime Minister of England Harold Wilson.
In 1912 H.G. Wells, cocky, confident, declaring
he wasn't an atheist but I think at
least admitting he was something of a, well
a very serious doubter about the things of
God anyhow.
He began to tell us that we could
have a new world order without the Bible,
without the church, and without Jesus Christ.
He said it was possible to have a
man-made millennium.
And if the power was given into the
hands of the socialists he said we'll pull
down the hills of wealth and we'll fill
in the valleys of poverty and we'll make
the crooked places straight.
He was a materialist not an evangelist and
therefore he did not talk about repentance or
forgiveness or sin.
He talked about the adequacy of materialism.
He talked about the of man.
He talked about the inevitability of progress.
And with a wave of the hand and
no intelligent man does this he dismissed the
church, he dismissed Jesus Christ, and he dismissed
the Bible.
Two years before the bloodiest war in history.
By the time of the Versailles Treaty which
I think was signed in 1918 or the
beginning of 19, H.G. Wells wasn't quite
so sure of his philosophy.
It had at least a serious crack in
it.
And then there was the five-par conference
at Geneva.
And between 1919 and 1939, the time of
the Second World War, the Church of Jesus
had I think the most wonderful opportunity since
the day of Pentecost to declare the whole
counsel of God.
But instead of that we started telling the
people how much we did not believe in
the Bible and in the supernatural.
Just as two years before World War I
H.G. Wells stood up.
And again I said with great confidence assured
us we could have a new race of
men by intellectual and biological processes he said.
Two years before the Second World War one
of the most famous women preachers in the
world at that time stood up in America
and said we shall not have another war
for at least 100 years.
She said that in 1937.
She was only 98 years out and that's
not bad for a woman.
Just 98 years out of the target.
For two years after she made the statement
we were ushered into again the bloodiest and
most terrible war in history.
And then we came to 1945.
And if I remember right it was the
6th of August 1945.
At sixteen minutes to eight we were in
a normal world and at 15 minutes to
eight we were in the atomic age.
Like my dear predecessor who gave that wonderful
message I hate war I hate bombs.
And Russia has pointed a finger at us
very maliciously since then and said well remember
it was a Christian country that first roasted
another nation.
Wasn't communists it was Christians that dropped the
first atom bomb.
We dropped that bomb on Hiroshima at 60
minutes to eight and liquidated a hundred thousand
people roughly.
And you can get a report now from
the government office of printing every year on
how many people still died last year in
1969 from that bomb that was dropped in
1945.
The bible talks about a day when horses
will stand in the field and flesh will
drop off them and they'll still be alive.
But that happened on human beings.
They found some men standing by a wall
and you could take a pencil and push
it between their lips.
Their faces had shrunk.
Their eyeballs were melted just like candle wax
down their faces.
And you still got a bunch of idiots
there in Japan as a result of that
bombing.
And then we dropped another bomb on Nagasaki
you remember.
Before he died H.G. Wells was not
at all sure about his philosophy.
He wasn't sure that you could put Humpty
Dumpty together again.
He wasn't as confident that by mere intellectual
and biological processes that somehow we can erase
human depravity.
For remember after all now here we are
in this strange dilemma that Mr. Nixon's trying
to salvage.
Because you see at the end of World
War II America had the big stick whether
she walked softly or something else and she
was going to make the world sit up.
And if ever we had another outbreak of
war she said we're going to drop an
atom bomb the first week and get it
over the first week and not trail the
thing out for years and years.
But what have we done with our multi
-billion dollar program of atomic bombs?
They're rusting in the ground.
We didn't use them for the simple reason
that Russia might retaliate.
And today's another day of history because today
Japan put its first satellite in orbit after
trying for four years.
We don't even need war planes as far
as I'm concerned.
You can put an intercontinental ballistic missile in
a warhead and shoot it four thousand miles
and be only a hundred yards off target.
And I think sometimes that the atom bomb
disturbed everybody except the Church of the Living
God.
Other people were up in arms.
We folded our arms.
Other people were wringing their hands about the
situation.
We just rang the church bells and went
back to sleep.
And now we live in this strange situation.
It was frightening what our good brother shared
with us tonight about what the Russians have.
And I guess there's a lot more than
that if we really knew.
But remember this friend that we're living in
a day now when there isn't a city
in the world whether you take the capital
of Russia or you take Gaipuri or you
London or you take Moscow or you take
a beautiful city that I've flown over many
times and admired, the great city of, um,
in Australia, the great city of Sydney or
Auckland.
There isn't a city in the world, be
it New York or its skyscrapers pointed to
heights, there isn't a city in the world
you can't blast into shapeless rubble in less
than fifty seconds.
You can abolish a thousand years of history
and all the choice architecture and all the
priceless paintings and all the other culture.
As soon as you could sneeze you can
blast it into vapor.
And if you happen to be a hundred
feet or a hundred yards below the ground
and you crawl out of that hole you've
been in, all you would have to do
is claw your way through rubble and twisted
remains of skyscrapers.
And when you did you'd breathe in strontium
-90 that have fallen out of the sky.
And if you reproduce your kids would be
as distorted as frogs and you'd wish to
God you'd never have them anyhow.
And you expect me to bow down and
worship science?
It may be true that science has increased
the mortality rate for infants and hardly anybody
dies anymore of polio or some of the
childish, but it's sharpened the fangs of war
as well.
And I'm not interested that men deny the
hell of the Bible, they've made a hell
on earth as bad as the hell of
the Bible anyhow.
So where did it bring us?
It brings us to a realization that with
all the achievements of science, and 25 years
ago the president of the University of Minnesota
said, if you give us 25 million dollars
and a little on top of that, we
will guarantee that in the next 25 years
we'll produce in America a race of culture
and gentlemen who will never even think of
defiling a woman.
There'll be no stealing, there'll be no war,
we're going to bring utopia in.
He said that 25 years ago, but just
a few months ago he apologized and said
something went wrong.
We've got the most reckless, lawless, lusting age
that this world has ever seen.
And I don't pull any punches tonight that
I was bitterly disappointed to hear Billy Graham
speaking there at a rock festival down in
the other state just a few weeks ago
when he spoke in Florida to a bunch
of lusting, dirty, filthy rebels against God and
man, sex perverts, drunks, dopey kids, smoking, drinking
beer, and he finished up by saying they're
a great bunch of guys.
They're a bunch of rebels against God and
man.
And while we tell them they're great guys,
they're not going to get any idea they
need to repent and seek God.
The day has come, I'm sure, when we
need again.
I'm convinced with all my heart that in
this shabby, slick, sick evangelism of the hour,
that one of the greatest things you could
do as a pastor would be to give
your whole church a series of messages on
biblical regeneration.
Because most of our people don't know what
justification, and pardon, and adoption, and forgiveness, and
assurance, and regeneration really are.
They got a package deal, and it seems
to me that Protestants are about the most
theologically and biblically ignorant people in the whole
wide world.
I like the emphasis my dear brother made
tonight on the fact that a man can
be born again, and if he is, if
he is born again, he must receive the
witness of the Spirit, and he must, to
my degree, receive the anointing of the Spirit
too.
And yet by the same token, the same
Christ who breathed on them and said, receive
the Holy Ghost, going to all the world,
before he finished the sentence says, carry till
ye be endued with power from on high.
So I want to talk very simply about
this very, very old story that everybody knows.
The man who came to Jesus by night,
and Jesus says to him, Nicodemus, ye must
be born again.
Now I have often wondered why this man
came to Jesus.
I'm quite sure he wasn't a drunkard.
He belonged to the most holy club on
earth, the most seclusive club on earth.
They kept a ceaseless watch that nobody ever
defiled the purples of that liberal group of
people that he belonged to.
He was a Pharisee, and they were the
holiest people on earth.
We ridicule them sometimes.
We scorn their righteousness.
Jesus never scorned their righteousness.
He said, accept your righteousness, exceed the righteousness
of the scribes and the Pharisees.
You can't make right wrong, whatever you do
with it.
Here is a man who has impeccable morality.
But Christianity is not morality on stilts.
Christianity is not a higher standard, merely, than
the other fellow has in the world.
It's more than that.
It will include that.
But I'm quite persuaded because, again, this man
was a rabbi, and he was a ruler
of the Jews.
And I don't think he was scared, maybe,
of dying.
I don't think he was a drunkard.
I'm sure he wasn't a drug addict.
I don't think he was a criminal.
But I do think that H.G. Wilde
was right in one area.
Because he said, inside of every human personality
there is a God-shaped blank that only
deity is able to fill.
You can satisfy your body with food.
You can satisfy your intellect with learning.
You can satisfy your emotions with love.
And still there is an area inside human
personality that God alone is able to fill.
And I want to emphasize this very really
tonight.
Christianity is not a comparative religion.
It's a superlative religion.
It isn't like any other religion.
It's unlike every other religion.
It is the only religion in the world
where a man gets assurance his sins are
forgiven.
And it is the only religion in the
world where a man's God comes and lives
inside of him.
You see, sometimes we shoot over people's heads
when we preach.
Because they get the idea that the preacher
is insuring that secretly you're an adulterer, or
a drunkard, or a liar, or cheating on
your income tax.
And the fellow says, I'm not doing anything
of that, and so this is not for
me.
You see, the way we present the gospel
is, you're bad and you need to be
good.
Now Jesus Christ never, never, never came in
the world to make bad men good.
He did not come into the world to
make bad men good.
He came into the world to make dead
men live.
And every man outside of the kingdom is
not a bad man.
I know a man, I know a number
of men, who would rather die than lie.
I know some princely men who are unfaithful.
In fact, I prefer their morality and their
standard of living to some people who profess
to be saved and sanctified and of all
the trimmings.
I think this man came to Jesus because
so often he had heard the scriptures read.
He had heard about the one who should
come, the Christ of God.
And maybe there's a clue at the end
of the previous chapter.
It says in Jerusalem at the Passover, on
the feast day, many believed on his name
when they saw the miracles which he did.
And maybe, I like to think it was
so anyhow, I can't prove it, but I
like to think that maybe this wonderful man
Nicodemus sat on the edge of the crowd
when Jesus delivered the greatest sermon that ever
was delivered.
A sermon that was in the realm of
religion what the atom bomb was in the
realm of physics.
It was shattering.
I've heard some of these bearded rebels and
stinking prostitutes that I've reasoned with in New
York and elsewhere say sometimes, well how is
it the world's gone on for two thousand
years and we're in this mess?
Has nobody got a pun of fear?
Isn't there a remedy for it?
Sure there's been a remedy two thousand years,
the sermon on the mount.
It's the greatest thing to ever fell from
human lips.
I like to think that maybe Nicodemus was
on the edge of the crowd and he's
swallowing every word and enjoying it like the
good brother.
I can't say like he did.
I'll have to rehearse that a bit but
I enjoy the way he said it for
I knew he was enjoying his religion and
most people don't enjoy it, they just endure
it.
But anyhow he enjoyed it.
I think Nicodemus sat on the edge of
the crowd and the response of his heart
was yes that's right, blessed are the poor
in spirit.
Oh that's a marvelous, marvelous sermon.
I gave brother Jim, my good friend Dr.
Martin Lloyd Jones a dress and maybe someday
he'll come along and I hope he takes
this series on the sermon on the mount.
They're certainly fantastic.
In any case you could get his two
books on the sermon on the mount before
he gets here and really read them.
It's a majestic thing.
And I like to think that this man
Nicodemus was here because he says I know
that thou art a teacher.
Now you get lots of people today who
accept Jesus as a teacher but they won't
accept him as a savior.
But if he's a teacher then accept his
teaching and the first point of his teaching
is this he must be born again.
Now don't deny it.
Accept him as the teacher, take his word
and Jesus says, Nicodemus, he must be born
again.
Now notice he didn't say it's reasonable or
advisable or commendable or possible or acceptable.
He said it's inevitable if you're going to
enter the kingdom.
It's not optional.
My word these days we even preach an
optional discipleship don't we?
I love to read the wonderful record of
Wesley.
I don't know about dear brother as he
preached.
He was about the size of Wesley I
guess.
Wesley was only about five foot.
I don't know what our good brother is,
maybe a bit more.
But Wesley was a small but man alive.
What an experience he had with God.
And you know what he says over and
over and over again in his diary?
He says, today I fathomed my mare.
And I preached before breakfast.
He preached five times a day when he
was healthy.
When he was sick he cut it down
to three.
But uh he says, I went and I
preached.
I preached at Wednesbury and then I moved
on to Sault.
And today I have addressed five groups of
people and I offered them.
What did he offer them?
Peace with God?
Forget it.
A mention on Main Street?
No sir.
Forgiveness of sins?
Never.
He says, I preached and I offered men
what?
An escape from hell?
Oh no, no, no, no.
That's not salvation.
That's a benefit of salvation.
He says, I went here, I went there.
And I offered men Christ.
We don't offer Christ.
We said, you want to go to heaven?
Well you're an idiot if you want to
go to hell I'll tell you that.
Do you want to be forgiven?
Well you'll have a breakdown if you carry
all your sins anyhow and maybe end up
committing suicide.
I was very, very disgusted and disappointed and
distressed listening to the news this morning where
they interviewed the Miss America Indian or Miss
Indian uh Miss Indian you know of the
tribes anyhow the American Indian tribes and this
was a very lovely girl from one of
the universities and uh no it was someone
else who was interviewed uh talking about the
Indians.
A fellow right after that.
And he said, the suicide rate amongst the
young people in the tribes of American Indians
is three times the suicide rate of other
teenagers and 21 year olders here in America.
Now that's something to think about.
You know it's a strange thing but some
fundamental churches will pay you if you preach
to the Indians in South America but they
won't support folk who preach to the Indians
to the tribes in North America.
They're not missionary.
You see you've got to get on a
boat to be a missionary.
My brother your front street's a mission station
now I'll tell you something for nothing.
And the tragedy is that most of us
have more concern for folk at the other
side of the world than people at the
other side of the street but they're going
to the same hell if they don't repent.
And we can be very effective in the
uttermost part if we're not effective right here
at home.
Now I say Jesus said to this man,
you must be born again.
Oh I like that lovely hymn of course
I'm a rather pro-Methodist being raised a
Methodist I guess but I don't think anybody
put it better than Charles Wesley when he
wrote that lovely hymn heart the herald angels
sing.
Glory to the newborn king.
Mild he laid his glory by.
Born that man no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth.
Born to give them second birth.
My that's something isn't it?
Somebody asked a distinguished Chinese scholar a while
ago, a man who had read the Quran
and the Vedas and all the all the
at least many of the ancient religions and
read them in their language.
And they said did you ever read the
New Testament?
He said sir I've just read it through
for the fourth time.
How does it compare with other books of
religion?
It doesn't compare it contrasts.
What do you think is the most profound
thing?
What is the deepest point of the New
Testament?
And they thought he'd say oh I was
blinded I was numb when I thought of
the mystery of the incarnation or the or
the majesty of the resurrection or that Jesus
reversed the law.
He reversed every law.
Jesus reversed the law of birth didn't he?
Because he had no father.
He reversed another law when he walked on
the water.
He reversed another law when he rose from
the dead.
He reversed the law of gravity when he
ascended.
He's going to reverse another law when he
comes down.
But when I think of the Holy Spirit
of God brooding over the matrix of the
Virgin Mary and conceiving Jesus Christ said I
come back to the thought of atonement.
Because he said the most dazzling thing that
has ever been put in human language.
The thing that rocked my intellect and made
me stand in awe was that you people
say in the Christian religion in the end
of the second chapter uh the second chapter
of the Ephesians that you are the habitation
of God.
You mean that God Almighty lives in your
personality?
And you know from that day I read
it about three years ago I never ask
anybody if they're saved anymore.
I never ask anybody if they're a Christian
anymore.
I say does Christ live in you?
Well uh well uh I've been baptized.
Oh that only means you went in a
dry sinner and came out a wet one
if you weren't born again.
I I I I've found a decision.
I once went up to the front and
somebody no no no no that's not it.
I don't care how you came up sanctification
and an endowment with powerful and high.
In my judgment the greatest thing that the
Apostle Paul ever uttered in all the vastness
and comprehension he had of deity and the
finished work of Christ and the profundity of
the human depravity I think the most amazing
thing that he ever said was this Christ
liveth in me.
Is there anything higher than that?
Come on does Christ live in you?
Christ in you the hope of glory that
the rapture of anything else won't make any
difference whether you're cut down with an automobile
you'll be absent from the body presence with
the Lord and then we're going to have
a body like unto his glorious body but
even now Christ liveth in me.
I love like Christ, I live like Christ,
I pray like Christ, I suffer like Christ,
I seek the glory of the Father as
Christ thought it.
Oh do you wonder that another little man
who always reminds me of this Nicodemus fellow
he was the same kind of man.
A man of impeccable morality.
A man who in my judgment might have
died a multi-millionaire because he had the
brain of a genius.
A man who might have ended up as
being the greatest archbishop of Canterbury that England
ever knew.
A man who might have been sat in
dazzling splendor as the Prime Minister of a
very illustrious British empire that was just blossoming.
A little man by the name of John
Wesley but he said about on the 24th
of May 1738 about a quarter to nine
I went very reluctantly to Aldersgate street and
I heard a man reading the preface of
the epistles of the Romans as Mr. Luther
had written it and suddenly I felt my
heart strangely warm.
You know the world has been warmer ever
since that moment.
When John Wesley was born again England was
born again.
Yes sir I take courage tonight because I
know this that the moral condition of England
was as rotten then as it is tonight.
There isn't one degree of corruption in England
now that wasn't abroad in the day as
I told you I think yesterday.
They committed sexual immorality in the street as
a sport and many times in the street.
One man says I can't go across London
with my hand on my purse unless I
have a man before me who is armed
like a man going to battle.
He needs a shield and a club otherwise
I'll be destroyed before I get through the
city carrying my purse.
In other words mugging was as real then
as it is now.
Out of two thousand houses in the City
of London twelve hundred of them were gin
shops.
The rate of prostitution and the rate of
illegitimacy was as high as it is now
per capita and I'll take a crutch from
under the arm of my enemy and hit
him on the head with it right here.
Because Leckie who is a secular historian not
a church historian he says remember the bloody
revolution swept over France.
They gathered the monarchy up and threw it
all in the garbage can.
They set up that tricolour of liberty, fraternity
and equality.
They took a woman and stripped her naked
and put her on the high altar of
Notre Dame Cathedral just to disregard the laws
of God and men.
And not many days after they took a
pig there, a swine, and they cut its
throat and let its blood desecrate that altar
in sheer mockery.
And from that day to this in my
judgment France has never recovered.
But Leckie says when it looked as though
that deluge of impurity, when it looked as
though that vileness would swamp little England, God
raised up a man.
That's all he found.
And I'm willing to stick my neck out
tonight and tell you that God is still
looking for some men he can find if
he can find them.
Oh he uses angels and archangels sometimes but
normally in the program he uses men.
He found little John Wesley that night and
John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed and he
was born of the spirit and he preached
on the witness of the spirit more than
any other subject he ever preached on in
his own life because he said the witness
of the spirit to me is the Holy
Spirit of God mysteriously communicating with my spirit
that my sins, even mine, have been done
away, that I have passed from death unto
life, that my name is written under the
bank of Lamb's book of life, and that
even now I'm a child of God.
And so you can sing with assurance, blessed
assurance, Jesus is mine.
Oh that's a very wonderful thing.
You see Jesus didn't say to Nicodemus you
need reformation, possibly he didn't need it anyhow.
And in any case reformation is something I
do.
Repentance is something I do.
Remorse is something I have.
That I can have remorse, I can have
repentance, I can have reformation and not be
born again.
On the divine side God's masterpiece is the
incarnation.
God contracted to us that.
How do you make the ancient of days
the infant of time?
How does the one who flung the stars
into space have to nestle at his mother's
breast or he'll perish?
How do you get a little baby with
a dimple in his hand and his mother
washing it, and wondering, I wonder if she
did, that one day he's going to stand
with the seven stars in his right hand?
How does the ancient of days become the
infant?
How do you press God into the matrix
of a woman, do you know?
Nobody ever knew it.
It is mystery all, immense and sheer, but
oh my God it found out me.
And when that miracle does take place a
man again like Bunyan's pilgrim can take three
leaps for joy, and he says the burden
loosened off my back and it went into
an empty sepulcher and I beheld it no
more forever.
You know gossip can be good sometimes, not
often but sometimes.
And I remember going in the streets of
Bedford in England and going to the moothall
there, and then going to the parish church
and sitting down in the chair where John
Bunyan used to sit.
Never made me able to write like him
but I enjoyed sitting in his chair.
I once sat in Adam Clarke's chair too
but that didn't make me a theologian.
But I remembered as I sat in that
chair that going down the street one day
a drunken, dumb, dissolute man was going down
the street.
In those days women used to make their
own bread and put it by the fireplace
to rise.
My mother used to do that I can
remember.
And the woman came to the door and
she began to witness to her neighbor.
She said you know I had a great
experience.
I go to a Baptist church and well
I've been born again.
And the woman, you've been what?
I've been born again.
You look very much the same kind of,
oh well this happens on the inside.
You see my sins have all been taken
away and I've been made a partaker of
the divine nature.
You see that's why he had to take
human nature that we might be made partakers
of the divine nature.
The drunken man was going past and he
heard the woman say I've been born again,
my sins are all forgiven, I'm a new
creation.
And he slipped back a little bit and
leaned near the wall and listened to the
whole conversation.
And that's where God started his work of
grace.
These young preachers don't know too much about
this but you know the old preachers used
to preach a lot about prevenient grace.
The working of the Spirit of God before
you get anywhere within a hundred yards of
being born again.
God begins to do some manipulating in their
life.
Oh brother this was prevenient grace all right.
And one day this man really got a
vital relationship with God.
You know Mick Colston talked in 15 years
in jail.
But in those 15 years he wrote the
most wonderful book outside of the Bible, Bunyan's
Pilgrim's Progress.
And then his holy war.
But it all happened because a woman gossiped
the gospel and told how she passed from
death unto life and from the power of
Satan unto God.
I say John Wesley used to say that
the greatest thing that a man can know
is that he has assurance.
And you remember how the apostle mentions that
in the 8th chapter of Romans.
The Spirit dareth witness with our spirit.
And brother there isn't a man on God's
earth, there isn't a demon from hell if
you ever get the witness of the Spirit.
And now with an experience he's never at
the mercy of a man with an argument.
And if you heard the voice of God,
the voice of man, the voice of reason,
the voice of logic, the voice of philosophy,
nobody will ever shift you from that fact
if you've really been born again of the
Spirit of God.
You can stand on both feet and say
I know in whom I have believed and
I'm persuaded because Christianity is a no soul
religion.
We have received the spirit of adoption whereby
we cry Abba Father.
You know that's a new word I believe
that was given to us by the Lord
himself.
It didn't exist before Jesus.
It's a different connotation.
It really means I believe in the Aramaic
it means the dependence of a child upon
his father for sustenance and power and resources.
I like this phrase because it says again
that if you and I are really truly
converted to swing to another word we are
born again of the Spirit of God.
Now that covers a big range of stuff
doesn't it being born.
I'm always thrilled when I dedicate babies.
I never baptize them.
I'm scared they get flu if I put
too much water on them.
So I always dedicate babies but when I
look at the little thing I say to
myself now what's hidden in this personality?
I don't know.
I haven't the slightest idea.
I remember a crusade was held in England
about 70 years ago.
It took two weeks to get through and
at the end of it they'd got nothing
but a 14 year old boy was converted
and the elders in the church were very
disturbed about it.
We gave the evangelists so much, we burned
so much fuel, we burned so much for
lights, we burned this for expenses, we have
this for advertising and the only result is
a boy 14 converted and he's not very
bright.
It reminds me I was 14 when I
got converted and I think when I left
the altar they said the same thing he's
not very bright but anyhow.
That boy went on to walk with God
and became a great and marvelous preacher, became
the president of the Methodist Church in Britain,
became the president of Cliff College, England.
I was privileged to go there, Blinko and
a few other guys went around that same
college.
But you wouldn't have guessed when that little
boy got up that night that he was
going to be one of the outstanding preachers
of the age.
You wouldn't think that little boy there with
a creased face and an impish look would
one day walk through the saloon of one
of the greatest liners in the world when
he was on his way to South Africa
to preach and immediately he walked through the
saloon then snuffed out their cigars and hid
their pipes and took their cards and fit
them in their pockets and sat like this.
And when he'd gone through somebody said uh
what do we do that for?
What do you snuff your pipe out for?
What do you put the cards away for?
Why did you pick up the money?
Oh he said I felt uncomfortable in the
in the presence of a man with a
face as holy as that.
My it must have been shining through.
But you know one of the wonderful things
about a newborn babe, and thank God they're
all new ones, everyone is a new personality
and one of the wonders about a newborn
babe to me is it has no past.
And I say glory to God when a
man who's really born again he has no
past.
No past!
He may have a record of crime as
long as his arm, he may have been
in lust and incest and impurity and hellishness.
He may have been the worst of the
worst but the moment he passes from death
unto life God erases all his records.
He's like a newborn baby has no past.
Now there's some things I don't like about
babies too.
You know you go see a little newborn
baby there and little thing's shouting at the
top of its head and it's got no
teeth and no hair and no sense and
then they say isn't it like its father.
I think that's a bit disgusting.
Say it's like its grandfather wouldn't be so
bad but say it's like its father.
But you know somewhere along the line that
little one is going to bear a likeness
of its parents isn't it?
And thank God this is exactly what we
should do and we could do and we
must do.
We must bear the image of the heavenly
as we born the image of the earthly.
A man is born again of the Spirit
of God the miracle of regeneration.
It's a theological word it isn't in the
scriptures except by implication.
That the same Holy Ghost who conceived the
Christ in the Virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ
in the heart of the individual and he
passes from death unto life and from the
power of Satan unto God.
I've often wondered when I've seen crowds singing
blessed assurance how many of them really had
assurance.
People get awfully uneasy if you put a
bit of pressure on and said you really
know that you're well now.
I've never kind of felt really you know
short or very confident about this.
Say if you were going up a hill
and you had a sack of potatoes on
your back and your knees were getting more
buckled as you got up and you thought
you wouldn't make it and I came up
behind and took the burden off your back
do you think you'd know?
If you were in a room and in
that room you were manacled to a big
chain and the chain to the wall and
there was a man there about seven feet
high and even if you snatched your hand
away from the wall and made for the
door he was going to clobber you like
that and I came along and I beat
him down and I released you from the
wall and I took you out of darkness
into light do you think I'd need to
write it down on a piece of paper
that you got out of prison?
Don't you think you'd really know you'd gotten
away from the fetter that was binding you
and the monster that was going to beat
you up?
Can a man really be born again in
the spirit lose his burden of sin get
out of bondage of Satan and not know
he's born again?
If he doesn't know it brother he just
ends and that's all there is to it.
That English were good theology.
He knows that he's passed from death unto
life.
Now how do we know that we pass
from death unto life?
Well you have to go down to the
great exposition because in my judgment the first
epistle of John is merely an exposition of
of the new birth and you know what
it says?
You know there are some sermons pardon me
there are some texts that I think preachers
avoid like the plague.
You know why?
Not because they're not true.
Sure they're true.
Oh well what does it say?
Well do you know what Peter says?
Let me read it to you.
He says this is thankworthy for man for
conscience toward God and your grief suffering wrongfully
for what glory is it if when ye
are buffeted for your faults ye take it
patiently but if when ye do well and
suffer for it ye take it patiently this
is acceptable with God.
Now here's the tight spot for even on
here unto what ye call because Christ also
suffered for us leaving us an example that
we should follow in his steps.
Now what are the steps?
Well here they are and I didn't write
it.
Number one he did no sin and you're
to walk in his steps and do no
sin.
Number two now there was any guile found
in his mouth so you have to have
no duplicity.
Number three he was revived and he revived
not again.
Number four he suffered but he threatened not.
Number five he committed himself unto him that
judges righteously.
Now I think that one of the serious
breakdowns in modern evangelism is this it offers
us too much for too little.
What we do mostly is offer people forgiveness
but a man needs more than forgiveness.
A man isn't saved because he repents even.
There are men who are repenting in prison
tonight.
They're eaten with remorse.
They're killing themselves in grief over what they've
done but it doesn't mean that they truly
repent toward God or that they're born again
of the spirit of God.
Here's little Mary coming down the street and
mother says come in it's time for you
to have a bath I'm going to change
your clothes and we're going off to see
your Aunt Mary.
So she comes in gets a bath gets
beautifully dressed up and mother says now you
stand at the doorstep you don't move.
You see those little pools of water you
might slip and get all dirty.
Now mother's going upstairs to get dressed and
you won't move and she says I won't
move.
And then the little kitten runs out and
she runs after the kitten and she topples
over and she goes down in the pool
and she's all muddy and dirty and she
starts crying and mother says now what have
you done?
He says I fell in the pool and
I'm all dirty.
Mother says oh the best dress and I
ironed it and oh what a mess.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Mummy forgive me.
Will you forgive me?
Mother says yes I forgive you.
And she puts her little face up.
Mother kisses her and pats her head and
says you're forgiven.
Sure the dress is still dirty what have
you done for She needs more than forgiveness
she needs clemency.
Again we preach an optional discipleship.
There is no true conversion unless a man
takes up his cross as our good brother
Fang tonight.
There's a little word there our brother would
tell you because he knows far more Greek
than I do I'm no mill.
But there's a little word there in the
in the New Testament.
A little word that's called kurios k-u
-r-i-o-s which is meted out
745 times in the New Testament.
And you know that really scripturally you have
no right to ask anybody if they'll take
Jesus Christ as saviour.
It's not scriptural.
The only thing you can ask is will
you take him as lord and saviour?
Oh that's another matter.
You see Jesus isn't one of your lousy
sins.
What good will they do him or anybody
else?
It isn't your sins you want it's you
you want.
He wants.
Why did Adam get kicked out of the
garden of Eden?
Did he get drunk as far as I
know he didn't.
Did he beat up his wife?
The record doesn't say so.
Why did he get thrown out of the
garden?
Because he decided to run his life his
way and not God's way.
Why was Satan be thrown in heaven?
Did they find him stealing a slab of
gold off Main Street?
I don't think so.
You'll find some Christians up there doing it
the way they go after gold down here.
There'll be gold diggers up there.
No I don't know that Satan was found
stealing a slab of gold.
And he wasn't beating Michael up.
And he wasn't creating a disturbance.
He decided he was going to run his
life the way he wanted to run it
and not the way God wanted to run
it.
And therefore because of that he got pitched
out.
And by the same token the boy, the
fellow got thrown out of the garden of
Eden because he wouldn't run his life God's
way.
And when the prodigal got to the end
of the journey he came back and he
said, Father I have sinned against Adam and
in thy sight make me of thy hired
servant.
Why?
Why didn't he come swaggering in and say
I'm a son and I'll always be a
son and I'm coming back and I'm going
to live here anyhow and I don't care
what you say.
In other words he said this, Father I've
tried living my life