If I were to ask you tonight, you're
saved.
Do you say, yes, I'm saved.
When?
Oh, so-and-so preached, I got baptized.
Are you safe?
What are you safe from?
Hell?
Are you safe from bitterness?
Are you safe from lust?
Are you safe from cheating?
Are you safe from lying?
Are you safe from bad manners?
Are you safe from rebelling against your parents?
Come on, what are you safe from?
The Lord Jesus Christ is first, and for
him I surrender everything.
To him I give all.
To Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior,
he can command me.
He's ahead of my wife, he's ahead of
my children, he's ahead of my ambitions.
He is first, and everything else is last.
Anything else is not New Testament Christianity, brother
and sister.
Anything else is a compromise, and it leaves
people half-saved, confused, frustrated, bewildered, and in
the dark.
Jesus Christ is your exclusive Savior, and all
other relationships are determined and conditioned by this
one overwhelming all.
And we think all the great men of
prayer lived 100 years ago.
There's a man that's 50 miles away from
where I live, he's 32 years of age,
he prays 10 hours a day, here in
America right now.
Come on you fellas, come by and show
your strength.
How much stamina do you have to pray?
How much vision?
How much passion?
How much burden?
There's a man outside Waco, 60 years of
age, who prays six hours a day.
Brethren, what we need is the power of
God, and let the public think what they
will.
And if we have the power of God
on us and live like Christians, regardless of
what the world says, I don't care what
the world thinks.
Any man, anywhere, at any time, if he'd
be in Christ, he's a new creation.
He isn't patched up, he's made a new
creation.
He gets a new heart, a new spirit,
new desires, new hopes, new longings, that cannot
be satisfied at the broken systems of the
world.
He preached the greatest sermon the world has
ever had, he's got the answer for our
day.
Christianity has not been weighed in the balances
and found wanting, Christianity has been tried, founded,
because and rejected.
Christianity is not only too difficult for the
world, it's too difficult for the church.
God's problem in the world is not communism,
Romanism, Moonism, or any other ism.
God's problem in America is dead fundamentalism.
We know all the cliches, we know all
the words, for me to accept Christ means
that I am to accept him in every
part of my being, and that I am
to form an attachment to him, an emotional,
an intellectual, a volitional attachment, which is complete,
leaving no part of the life unaffected.
If he cannot save, cannot control you, he
cannot save you.
And if he cannot control all of you,
he cannot control any of you.
And then it's to be an attachment that
is exclusive.
I mean that Christ is not to be
one of several interests.
My goal is God himself, not joy, not
peace, not even blessing, but himself my God.
It is his to lead me there, not
mine, but his, at any cost, dear Lord,
by any road.
So faith bounds forward to its goal in
God, and love can trust her Lord to
lead her there.
Upheld by him, my soul will follow hard,
till God has last fulfilled my deepest prayer.
No matter if the way be sometimes dark,
no matter if it cost be often great,
he knows how I best shall reach the
mark, the way that leads to him must
need be straight.
One thing I know, I cannot say him
nay.
One thing I do, I pray to all
my God.
The secret of the life of the apostle
was this, it's this one thing I do.
He never got insights at, he never got
into business like so many preachers do.
This one thing I do, it will be
hell to get there.
I forgot one of the old Puritan preachers
said in the 1600s, you have to go
through hell to get to heaven.
You have to lose everything in order to
become the part of the bride of Jesus
Christ.
One thing I know, I cannot say him
nay.
One thing I do, I press toward my
Lord.
My God, my glory here from day to
day and in the glory there, my great
reward.
Christianity hasn't been tried and found one thing.
It's been tried and found difficult and rejected.
And my dear friend, the only thing which
can turn and shatter the colossus of communistic
power and bring every false god upon its
face.
The only thing that can resist the tremendous
powers of evil abroad in the world today
is the Holy Spirit.
Evil can only be overcome, but
they are mighty true God to the pulling
down of stronger.
The church today is helpless without the Holy
Spirit.
He says, consider yourself dead to all the
worldly contacts.
Love them, hate them.
Hate what?
Well, have nothing to do with sexual immorality.
Have nothing to do with dirty mindedness.
Have nothing to do with evil desire.
Have nothing to do with uncontrolled passion.
Don't lust after other people's goods.
You see, and it's hard to say again.
If Christ has been born in me, he
wants to live in me.
He wants to talk in me.
He wants to walk in me.
He wants to walk through me.
It's not a struggle that I'm trying to
be a Christian.
Life, life, life.
He says, I'm come that you might have
life and that you might have life more
abundant.
I'm sure I don't have to tell you
just to know that your sins forgiven doesn't
constitute your salvation.
The fact that you happen to be on
the way to hell and don't now happen
on the way to heaven and you don't
now happen to be on the way to
hell, that doesn't constitute your salvation.
Your salvation, of course, derives from the fact
that as a redeemed sinner, no longer on
the way to hell, but already on the
way to heaven, Jesus Christ as God creator
has come to invade your humanity, to play
that role in you for which you were
created.
To give him the right 24 hours a
day in your business, in your home, in
your school, on your college campus, whether you're
on recreation, in vacation, in business, no matter
at any time, under any circumstance, 24 hours
in every day, seven days in every week,
you give Jesus Christ as God the right
to be God in you without reserve.
Then you're beginning to get saved.
That's what it means to become a Christian.
We've conveniently reduced salvation to a moment in
time when we raise a hand, walk down
the front, or get baptized, or have our
name put upon a church roll, and we
call that salvation.
Nothing, of course, is farther from the truth.
That's totally divorced from the revelation given to
us in the word of God, which is
our sole guide in every matter of faith.
Salvation involves the reoccupation by God of a
guilty sinner in such a way that Jesus
Christ has the unchallenged, absolute, perpetual right to
dictate the terms whereby that individual henceforth will
run his life.
For instance, where he's going to buy his
new home, what vocation he's going to study
for as a student, where he's going to
go next year on vacation, how he's actually
going to spend his money, who's really going
to run the church that he goes to.
All this is embraced in his salvation, and
nothing less than that, of course, will do.
Anything less than that short-changes Jesus Christ
and cheats him of that for which his
blood was shed.
God is looking for men and women who
will be totally, totally, totally sold out to
him.
You'll get stoned by your critics, you'll be
lonely.
I think the last time I went into
my office, my dear Paul was there, and
he was in the chair there, and he
said, Daddy, I've realized this.
If we're going to walk in holiness, we're
going to be lonely people.
I don't believe that any man is greater
than his prayer life.
I don't believe that any church is stronger
than his prayer life.
There was a day when men sang, holy,
holy, holy, and oh worship the king, and
they talked objectively about the greatness of God.
Then we backslid into that gutter where we
still are, where everything's about us.
I'm so happy, I'm so blessed, I'm so
nice, I'm so good, I'm I, I always
I.
For the difference between heaven and hell is
the difference between God and I.
Keep that in mind always.
And our churches, I am confident from across
this land of ours, are filled with people
that are going to miss salvation, miss heaven
by 18 inches, because they have their salvation
up here in an intellectual comprehension rather than
down here in a spiritual experience and the
presence of the son of God.
My dear friend, listen, the forces of evil
are crowding on full pressure today, and there's
a spiritual warfare which will never cease until
time runs out.
And the church of Jesus Christ has got
all the equipment, all the buildings, all the
power, all the method, all the theory, and
all the technique, but no power to move
men to God.
I say that to my own heart.
Never been so well equipped, but so lacking
in endowment.
Now for this, each one of us is
personally responsible.
The result is they die all around us,
and we say they backslid.
They never backslid because they never were regenerated
to start with.
To accept him is to accept him with
a revolutionary acceptance.
It's to accept him completely, all of him
to all of me.
It's to accept him exclusively and not any
other hope but him.
He alone is my hope.
It's to accept his friends as my friends,
his enemies as my enemies, his ways as
my ways, his rejection as my rejection, the
cross as my cross, his life as my
life, and his glorious future as my glorious
future.
That's what it means to be a Christian.
And my dear friends, it's worth everything.
And if we all had to believe on
Christ tonight and die tomorrow, we'd spend one
eternity thanking God with tender affection that he
allowed it to happen.
So a cross is something you take up
deliberately.
It is obedience to Christ.
It is doing what the Lord commands you
to do and then taking the consequences.
And if the consequences mean a cross, then
take the cross.
And Paul says that's what the world is
to me.
It's a system of corruption and rottenness and
vileness.
It's anti-Christ from the world go.
Is the world crucified to you tonight or
does it fascinate you?
The Lord Jesus did not shed his blood
so that you could have a release from
a guilt complex, so that you might escape
the punitive consequence of your sin.
The Lord Jesus died upon the cross not
just to get you out of hell and
into heaven, he died upon the cross to
get God out of heaven into you.
And the measure in which you are saved
is the measure in which God out of
heaven in you is in function, actually calling
the shots, actually controlling where you go with
your feet, actually controlling what you say with
your lips, actually controlling what you think with
your mind, actually controlling the decisions that you
make.
That is the measure in which you're saved.
So don't kid yourself that because 10 years
or 15 years ago you walked down the
aisle or raised your hand to the towel,
don't fancy that of men and women who
truth to truth, they're unsaved believers.
They're conforming to denominational patterns that have become
a substitute for personal spiritual relationship to Jesus
Christ and they know nothing, nothing really.
And there are going to be some tragic
surprises in the day the dust has settled.
The first group that I am mentioning is
not because of of its size or its
priority but simply because of the habit of
my thinking and therefore I give it to
you first.
The first group are those people that have
met the forgiving Christ.
They discovered their sin through some means or
another.
They realized they'd been caught and they didn't
know what to do about it.
They were told that they were a hell
of a hell, they weren't so sure, but
they figured they'd better be on the safe
side.
So someone said accept Jesus.
Their primary reason for accepting him was to
be inured and immunized against hell.
They wanted to have an insurance policy.
And so their primary concern in Christ is
that he fulfill what they've accepted him for.
They are, they were so grateful when they
learned that Jesus Christ had died for them
that they wouldn't have to die.
As, well put it in more colloquial terms,
they were so happy when they learned that
Jesus had taken the wrath for them, if
I may express it that way.
They were so happy that he died.
They have mistaken their pleasure at the fact
he suffered for them as being the witness
of the spirit.
But their whole concern about Christ is that
they should be protected from suffering and from
punishment.
They've only met the forgiving Christ and they've
never gone beyond that.
When they want to see someone saved, actually
what they want is to see someone else
come to the place that if they die,
they won't be go to hell.
When they speak of revival, what they mean
is to have their heart feel the same
joy that they felt when they first came.
There's an upper limit to their interest in
the church and in Christianity and it all
relates to them.
They have met the forgiving Christ.
There's a second group.
These are the people that have met the
utilitarian Christ.
They were in great need and they prayed
and when they prayed, God answered prayer.
Perhaps someone else prayed and answered prayer.
And they were impressed with the fact that
God was tremendously useful and handy to know
because they were in a dilemma.
They didn't have any answer to it.
Prayer brought the answer.
They were sick and God healed them or
they were otherwise in trouble and God brought
them out.
And so today they are extremely grateful, so
grateful that they've joined the church, admitted to
baptism, learned doctrines and tithes.
But the whole of their interest in Christianity
and religion is that they should be where
God can take care of them if they're
in trouble or in problem.
They've met the utilitarian Christ.
Today we have very popular occult of the
utilitarian Christ.
We find that it has nothing to do
whatever with this person as the sovereign God.
It's just that faith in Jesus brings answers
and you will find people whose lives are
seemingly just indescribably wicked that have learned faith
and then they write articles and say, I'm
so glad I wanted to be the queen
of Hollywood and so I asked Jesus and
this utilitarian Christ made me a success.
And this, I say, is a cult that
it lacks every biblical evidence of being a
movement in the stream of Christianity.
The utilitarian Christ, it has varying degrees.
The forgiving Christ, the utilitarian Christ.
Then there's a third group of people that
have met the status-giving Christ.
They were born in such a way that
they didn't have the privilege of belonging to
the country club.
They weren't very accepted in society.
They felt they had gregarious impulse and need
and so they were taken into the church.
They found warmth and welcome and so because
they wanted fellowship, this was what they accepted.
They were willing to submit to the doctrine.
They were willing to pray.
They were willing to be baptized.
They're willing to tithe or do anything that
was required of them.
But when they testify, their testimony is, I
am delighted to be a Christian because there's
such wonderful people in the church.
I'm so happy because there's such bland people
in the church.
It's such a joy to be with such
wonderful people and think we'll be together forever
in heaven.
They've equated status with the whole purpose of
God.
Their status, satisfying their needs for social expression.
And then out of this group is another
group that become to some degree psychopathic and
equate their own status in the group with
the glory of God.
And anything that pushes them up is to
God's glory and anything that would bypass them
or diminish their influence is just the opposite.
And this is the, these are the ones
of whom we spoke about a year ago
when I gave you a quotation from Christianity
Today's article of November 1960 entitled, Crucifying the
Pastor.
This is the group that you'll find all
over America.
Just this past week, I've been with a
group of 50 pastors down at Summit Grove
and they've talked to me of some of
the experiences they've had where people who have
felt that somehow they were bypassed and their
status wasn't recognized have used every nefarious wicked
means it was possible to discover in order
to bring grief and heartache into the, would
rather ruin the church than to let for
one little moment their own personal status be
affected.
Well, now this is why this third group,
the status-giving Christ.
So we have three, forgiving Christ, utilitarian Christ,
and the status-giving Christ.
Then there is a fourth group.
This is the group of people that have
met the emotion-satisfying Christ.
Oh, they love to go to church because
they enjoy the syncopation and the rhythm and
the emotional appeal.
And if they can weep or laugh or
do both at the same time or in
subsequent, then they go away saying, my, what
a wonderful meeting.
That the whole purpose of Christianity and religion
is to satisfy their emotional needs primarily.
And so we have people, they have all
the same doctrine, they've all been baptized, they're
all in the same religious organization.
And when they speak of the Bible, the
forgiving, those who know the forgiving Christ say,
well, I want to have others come to
know forgiveness.
And those that have met the utilitarian Christ
said, well, I want to see others help.
And those that have met the status-giving
Christ said, well, I want to see others
come into this wonderful fellowship.
And those that have met the emotion-satisfying
Christ said, well, I want to feel the
way I felt back there in July 6th
in 1903, back at that camp meeting.
Oh, then we'll have revival.
But it's all below the level.
Then we have another group called number five.
These are the people that have met the
holy God and the sovereign Christ.
These are the ones that have seen God
in His majesty, have seen God in His
sovereignty, have seen God in His holiness, have
seen Christ in His glory.
These are the ones whose eyes have been
opened to God, that in the revelation of
God, they've seen their immense unworthiness and their
terrifying sinfulness.
Obviously, they've known forgiveness.
For in that brokenness of heart, because they
sinned against such a holy God, they cast
themselves on the nail-pierced hands of Christ.
They were forgiven.
God has obviously answered prayer.
And they have certainly found status as a
child of the King, and their hearts have
been satisfied with joy and peace.
But thus which from which we find in
this fifth group are these who've had a
revelation of the glory of Christ and are
living only for His praise.
They're broken.
They've committed themselves to Him.
They've submitted to His sovereignty.
The cross has pierced them through, and the
one end of their being is that He
be glorified.
Now, this is His church.
This is His church.
The religious organization can include other groups.
But His church is here.
His church is on this level.
He is saying, if any man hate not
his father and his mother and his husband
and his wife and his brother and his
sisters, yea, in his own life also, he
can't be my disciple.
The lordship of Christ transcends all human relationships.
And His one purpose is the glory of
God.
That is, I heard Christ say, if anyone
doesn't take up his cross and come follow
me, he can't be my disciple.
And he's gladly gone with Christ out to
the cross.
And there he's brought his ego and his
ambition and his vanity and his pride and
all the things that once motivated and controlled
him to the cross.
And he has no plan, no purpose but
the glory of Christ.
This is the one that's heard Christ say,
if any man does not forsake all that
he has, he cannot be my disciple.
He doesn't give a seventh of his time
and a tenth of his money.
He holds that everything is Christ.
All is Christ.
This is His church.
That if any man come after me, let
him deny himself and take up his cross
and come follow me.
And Paul says, that's what the world is
to me.
It's a system of corruption and rottenness and
vileness.
It's anti-Christ from the world go.
Is the world crucified to you tonight?
Or does it fascinate you?