...on what I consider to be the most
neglected priority of all.
Confession.
Humiliation.
Repentance.
Brokenness.
Most of us can live and die in
our local fellowships without ever attending a meeting
when God's people gather together in confession and
humiliation before him.
True or false?
Absolutely true.
Please turn in your Bibles to 2 Chronicles,
chapter 7, and I think you'll realize that
the two verses that I'm going to read
have a very special application to the time
in which we're living.
2 Chronicles, chapter 7, verses 13 and 14.
If I shut up heaven that there be
no rain, or if I command the locusts
to devour the land, or if I send
pestilence among my people, if my people, which
are called by my name, shall humble themselves
and pray and seek my face and turn
from their wicked ways, then will I hear
from heaven and will forgive their sin and
will heal their land.
Those verses should have rather a familiar sound
to us today.
California is going through the most severe drought
that it has known in over 70 years.
Livestock losses in Alameda County and losses of
crops amount to the hundreds of millions of
dollars.
I come to Colorado and I hear you've
had the lightest snowfall in many years.
Who is behind the weather?
Well, it says in these two verses of
Scripture that God controls the weather.
If I shut up heaven that there be
no rain.
But God doesn't leave us without a remedy.
And there's a promise in verse 14 that
God himself can never fail to keep.
If we abide by the conditions, God will
come in and heal.
He'll hear from heaven and forgive our sin
and heal our land.
And I'd like to think with you this
afternoon about this subject.
National drought.
Drought in our country.
Assembly drought.
Family drought.
And drought in our personal lives.
Drought, its cause and cure.
National drought.
Think of our country today and think of
the divine institutions and principles that are under
attack.
Almost everything that is of God that we
find in the word of God is being
attacked in our country today.
Isn't it?
Absolutely shocking every time you pick up a
paper or hear the news.
Same thing.
Think of the institution of marriage and how
it's being dragged in the gutter.
How premarital sex is being popularized and legalized.
A country of people living together without being
married.
Think of the rise of adultery and divorce
and now the legalization of prostitution.
And do Christians read all about this?
They hear about this?
And they think what can we do?
Should we become involved socially in the affairs
of the country?
What can we do?
I think of capital punishment.
How God instituted capital punishment after the flood.
He said, Whoso shedeth man's blood, by man
shall his blood be shed.
There's no more capital punishment in the United
States.
I know there are still men on the
death row.
But capital punishment as such has fallen into
disuse and it's doubtful if anybody will ever
die by capital punishment in this country again.
Yet it wasn't man who devised it.
It was God who instituted it.
And now because God did, it's under attack.
I think of the distinction between the sexes
and how God set up this distinction.
And so what do we have today?
Break it down.
The unisex movement.
And every effort being made by men and
women to obliterate these moral distinctions that God
has set up.
I think of the headship of men and
the subjection of women that is so clearly
taught in the word of God.
Is this popular today?
You think of the women's liberation movement and
all of the undercurrents that are flowing seeking
to undermine the word of God.
Submission of children to their parents taught in
the word of God.
Ephesians chapter 6 verse 1.
Now we have the children's rights amendment being
discussed and pretty soon parents will be hauled
into court, no doubt, if they dare to
discipline their children.
I think in the word of God of
the prohibition of sexual perversion and how much
God has to say about it in the
word.
And now the attitude is, let's legalize it
as long as it's done between consenting adults.
Can you think of one divine institution that
God has established that isn't really under attack
today?
I think of how many times in the
word of God I read prohibitions against nudity.
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of it.
It's a refrain that goes over and over
in the Pentateuch.
So what do we have today?
Beaches set aside for nudity.
I think of the sacredness of life as
it's inculcated all through the word of God
and now the great drive with regard to
abortion and violence of every kind.
I think of the prohibitions against drunkenness and
now I turn on the radio and hear
that drunkenness is a sickness and must be
treated as such.
What does it all mean?
Did it ever occur to us that God
expects us as Christians to fall on our
faces and confess the sins of the nation
as our own sins?
I believe this is what the word of
God teaches.
Think of a man like Moses leading his
people out of Egypt and through the wilderness
and how he stood in the gap before
God and confessed the sins of the people
as his own sin and pled for his
people.
It changed the course of history, didn't it?
God could do it again.
I think of a man like Ezra who
also stood in the breach.
Came before God and led the people in
a great time of confession and prayer.
Made things right.
I think of Elijah, the time when God's
people had wandered away from him.
He cried to God and God shut up
the heavens so there was no rain.
Then the people moved toward God and he
prayed again and the rain came in abundance.
You say, I know it happened all in
the Old Testament.
It never happens today.
Well, I don't believe that's true.
I believe the reason it doesn't happen today
is because nobody's doing it.
When our country was in the depths of
the terrible Watergate scandal, Senator Mark Hatfield and
some others called for a national day of
confession and humiliation.
Some of you remember that.
I've tried to track down the date of
it, but I have never been able to
do it yet.
But I remember that we ourselves set ourselves
to pray for this nation and to confess
the sins.
Did God work?
It wasn't very long after that that some
of those most explosive Watergate tapes came to
light and the abscess was punctured and the
pus began to flow.
So God is still doing it today.
Still doing it today.
And then last night I told you of
that time when a little group of people
got together in confession and prayer in San
Leandro and later prayed for the Chad Republic
and got over through the government there before
the weekend was over.
So I'd like to suggest to you first
of all that as far as our beloved
country is concerned, we can do more on
our knees in confession and humiliation and prayer
than we can do in all the social
activism that might come into our minds.
Learn to move men through God by prayer.
There's a man in England years ago named
Rhys Howell and there's a book about him
called Rhys Howell Intercessor and it's really interesting
to plot, to chart his prayers of confession
and humiliation and the changes that took place
in the history of the nation and of
Europe at that time because a man prayed.
But I believe that God is calling us
to this ministry today.
Traditionally we shy away from it.
From confession.
Why is that?
Is it because we know we're perfect?
No.
We know that we have enough sin and
frailty and infirmity to sink a battleship.
But I think that probably it's a reaction
against excesses when people gather together to confess
and all kinds of lurid things surface.
We don't want that.
But the principle is here just the same.
If my people who are called by my
name will humble themselves and pray and seek
my face and turn from their wicked ways
then will I hear from heaven and will
forgive their sin and will heal their land.
You know, in addition to drought in our
nation, we can have drought in the assembly
too, can't we?
And I really believe that God is looking
for men and women today who will stand
before him and take the sins of the
church and confess them as our own.
And when I say that, I don't mean
any particular portion of the church.
I mean the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ as it exists on earth today.
Sometimes we hear of some dreadful thing that
happened in some segment of the church and
we kind of preen our feathers and say,
thank God it didn't happen to us.
But really, if we're going to take a
scriptural view we'll have to see those things
as affecting the body of Christ of which
we are a part.
You might turn in that connection to Daniel
chapter 9.
I think this is one of the most
vivid illustrations of it in the word of
God, Daniel.
Daniel is one of the few men in
the Bible, as far as I know, about
whom no failure is recorded, no adverse comments.
It seems he wore throughout the white flower
of a blameless life.
We know he wasn't sinless, but no failure
is recorded of him.
And yet, we read in Daniel chapter 9,
verse 3.
What I'd like you to notice in these
verses that I'm going to read, how Daniel
took the sins of his people, and they
weren't really his sins, you couldn't say Daniel
was guilty of them, but he took the
sins of his people and he made them
his own.
He made them his own.
This is known as eating the sin offering.
It's very foreign to all of us, but
it's scriptural just the same.
I set my faith unto the Lord God
to seek by prayer and supplications with fasting
and sackcloth and ashes.
And I prayed unto the Lord my God
and made my confession and said, O Lord,
the great and dreadful God, keeping the covenant
and mercy to them that love him, to
them that keep his commandments, we have sinned.
And you know, I really believe with all
my heart that God is waiting for people
to confess that today.
We have sinned.
Confession, the road to revival.
We have sinned and committed iniquity and have
done wickedly and have rebelled even by departing
from thy precepts and from thy judgments.
Neither have we hearkened unto thy servants, the
prophets which spake in thy name to our
kings, our princes and our fathers and to
all the people of the land.
O Lord, righteousness belongs to thee, but unto
us confusion of faces, as at this day
to the men of Judah and to the
inhabitants of Jerusalem and to all Israel that
are near and that are far off through
all the countries where thou hast driven them
because of their trespass that they have trespassed
against thee.
O Lord, to us belongeth confusion of face.
To our kings, to our princes and to
our fathers because we have sinned against thee.
To the Lord our God belong mercies and
forgivenesses though we have rebelled against him.
Neither have we obeyed the voice of the
Lord our God to walk in his laws
which he set before us by his servants
the prophets.
And so he goes on in this most
eloquent prayer of humiliation and brokenness before God.
Anything happen?
Yeah.
God brought the people back from captivity.
He always does.
He always does when men will stand in
the breach and intercede before him and confess
and humiliate themselves.
God brings his people back from captivity.
Think of the situation in the church today.
Think of the scandalous cases of immorality.
Think of Christian leaders who have been corpses,
have become corpses along the highway of Christian
service.
When we hear this, what do we feel?
They should really bow us in contrition before
the Lord.
Think of the divorces, the separations, the broken
homes today.
What an advantage the enemy has gained.
I never hear it in our prayer meeting.
Think of the children who have become rebels
and even apostates from the Christian faith of
the drugs and the liquor and the free
love.
And think of the terrible tension that exists
in so many homes between the children and
the parents.
Is this something that we just want to
sweep under the carpet and feel that if
we say nothing about it, it will go
away?
Well, that's not God's way.
God's way is to drag it out of
the open and confess it before him and
humble ourselves before the Lord.
Think of the desecration of the Lord's Day.
I don't know how you feel about the
Lord's Day.
I'm afraid that to many Christians it's just
another day of the week.
But I don't believe that.
I really believe it's a divine principle.
I know that we're not under the law
and I know that we're not Sabbath observers,
but I believe it's a divine principle there.
And I really believe that the Lord's Day
is a day in which, set apart from
our secular affairs, we can dedicate it to
him in a special way if we can't
the other days of the week.
And so what goes through my mind is,
not is it wrong for me to do
such a thing on the Lord's Day, but
how can I give this day to him
in a very special way?
I really believe if we love the Lord,
we'll love his day as well.
But largely today the Lord's Day has become
a day of recreation and most people wouldn't
allow the local meetings of the assembly to
interfere with a trip to the mountains, would
they?
Or am I being too frank?
I don't like to step on toes very
much.
Prayerlessness.
Think of the prayerlessness in the church today.
The terrible blight that is over our churches
and over our assemblies.
We're occupied with everything else and prayer is
the last resort as it really comes to
this.
I'd like to suggest to you that in
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ today
we have a great deal of ministry without
function.
Do you know what I mean?
We go through our meetings and the meeting
is over and we gather around, we joke,
we talk about the baseball scores and really
we don't go home smitten before the Lord,
do we?
I'm sorry to say that in all too
many cases it's just a rehash of the
obvious and the meetings are ho-hum meetings.
I feel this is something we have to
come before the Lord.
I really believe today that we're suffering a
famine of the Word of God and I
think the famine of the Word of God
is worse than the drought that the nation
is experiencing today.
A famine of the Word of God.
Where will God find men?
Where will He find assemblies who will bow
before Him and confess?
I think of some of the dull worship
meetings.
You know, I think there's nothing more wonderful
than New Testament principles when they're carried out
in New Testament power but God help us
when we have the forms without the power.
There's nothing worse than that.
Sometimes I feel that some of the meetings
need nothing more than closing down.
Really?
When we're so taken up with TV which
incidentally is very poor preparation for a worship
meeting.
Very poor preparation for a worship meeting.
And we come there and we're dumb priests.
We have nothing to say.
No basket offering to bring to the Lord.
The fumes that are being saved in the
day in which we live.
And you know it's wonderful how we can
become so accustomed to it.
We don't think anything of it.
We just accept it as being, well you
know, we're living in the last days.
The day of small things.
Don't despise the day of small things.
But really it is a tragedy when you
think of how we can be accustomed to
seeing souls going down to hell and not
really care.
I think that we should get before the
Lord and confess as far as our assemblies
are concerned the sin of Sodom.
You say, what's the sin of Sodom?
Well it says in Ezekiel 16 verses 49
and 50 that the sin of Sodom was
pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease.
Isn't that where we are today?
Pride, fullness of bread, and prosperous ease.
Well it's easy to get discouraged and think
there isn't any hope.
But there is hope.
And wherever God gets a man or a
woman or men and women will really lay
hold of him and come before him in
confession of these sins, taking the sins of
the church and making them our own.
God works.
Some years ago on an island off the
northwest coast of Scotland there were two elderly
women.
You say, what can two elderly women do?
Well I tell you, these women could pray.
And they were really appalled by the conditions
on that island.
In some ways it's the island of Lewis.
It's rather an unusual island.
The children learn the word of God in
the school.
Somebody said they know more about Ezekiel than
they know about mathematics.
So it gives you an idea, under the
background anyway, of the people.
I don't think you could find many people
on that island that didn't know the gospel.
But these women were really consumed with an
awe of the sin of the people.
And they started to pray.
They prayed that God would visit this island
with his mighty power.
And after some time God gave them a
promise that he was going to do that.
That he was going to sweep that island
with his reviving power.
It was that subjective knowledge that came to
them that God had answered their prayer and
God was going to work.
And so they wrote to a man on
the mainland named Duncan Campbell.
He's connected with a faith mission there on
the mainland.
And they told him that they had prayed.
They confessed to God and vowed in humiliation
before him.
And God had given them assurance that he
was going to work.
And they said they felt that he was
God's man to come over at that time
and minister to the people.
Duncan Campbell was having a crusade there on
the mainland.
And he wrote back and told them, So
sorry, you know, having a great crusade here
on the mainland and I can't come.
Well they dipped their pens in acid and
wrote a tart letter back to him and
said whether he came or not God was
going to work and if he didn't come
he'd miss the blessing.
And when their second letter reached Duncan Campbell
his crusade had evaporated.
There was nothing left.
And he got on the next ship and
crossed that little body of water between.
And when he got there God was already
working.
The people were in the church until four
o'clock in the morning praying.
People were getting saved right and left.
Here's a drunkard and he's walking home and
nobody talking to him.
He bows by the side of the road.
He's saved before he ever reaches home.
Out there on the moors the men often,
they have little huts out there.
They call them bohuns.
And they go out there and drink.
They have their great drinking parties out there.
They were going to go out while this
revival was going on.
Some of them were going to go out
to one of these bohuns and have one
of their drinking boats.
And so they said to one of the
fellows, now it's your turn to buy the
liquor.
You buy the liquor.
He said, how much do you want me
to buy?
And they told him.
And he said, I think you better buy
more than that.
He said, I have a feeling this is
the last time I'll ever be coming.
And it was.
And before the next time he was swept
into the kingdom of God.
And I had a cousin named Norman Morrison.
He had come back from the war and
he had a plate in his head.
He had shrapnel.
He had lost the sight of one eye,
shrapnel in the other eye.
And he had a plate in his head.
If he leaned over he lost consciousness.
Couldn't get a job.
And he started to drink.
And he became a drunkard.
And his mother used to see the fellows
come by and take him off at night.
And she knew that he'd come back tanked.
But this revival came along.
And he didn't want to go to those
meetings.
But he went.
Pow, the spirit of God came upon him.
And he went to the meetings.
And he was gloriously converted.
And afterwards when he'd be walking down the
street of the village, the people would pull
aside the curtain and look.
And they'd say, where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound.
And literally hundreds of people were saved and
swept into the kingdom of God.
At that time.
And very few of those who were saved
at that time have ever gone back into
the world.
There was a real moving of the spirit
of God.
Even girls from that island that were working
down in Glasgow and in London when the
revival was going up in the northwest of
Scotland.
And they're working down there.
And the spirit of God would come upon
them and say, you better go back to
Lewis.
And they'd go back to Lewis and they'd
get saved.
How do you account for that?
Well, I'll tell you how I account for
it.
Two old women got before God in confession
of sin.
They confessed the sins of that island and
of the church as their own.
They cried to God.
And God heard from heaven.
And he healed the land.
And he saved souls.
It's real, isn't it?
And it could happen here in the United
States, too.
But I believe when we take God at
his word, we'll see these things happen.
Personal drought.
Personal drought comes right down to our own
lives.
And it's so easy for me just to
think, well, here I am and I'm going
along and everything is well and nothing to
be worried about.
But really I think if we look at
ourselves today, we'll realize that we're a pleasure
-loving people.
Is it true?
A pleasure-loving people.
Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.
And whenever the cross moves up in the
pathway ahead of us, we can find all
kinds of retreats, all kinds of escape routes
to avoid the sharpness and pain of the
cross.
The Lord deliver us.
How many living double lives today?
You think of the coldness and the bitterness
and the cynicism that's so easy to come
in among us as people of God.
Don Norby mentioned in his prayer, think of
the gossip and the backbiting that goes on.
Actually tears local churches apart.
Local fellowships.
What's the answer to this?
Well, the answer is given to us in
the verses we read tonight.
We have become a people who are TV
worshipers, really.
I don't know how you feel about it,
but I really feel that TV has detrimental
value upon spiritual life today that few of
us really realize.
I don't say there aren't things on TV
that are interesting and educational and all the
rest, but I'm thinking taking it as a
whole is a mass of filth and certainly
not edifying.
In the days of the early church, devotedness
to Christ was seen in people willing to
die for Christ.
I think today devotedness is seen in people
willing to get up out of an easy
chair and go off and shut off the
TV.
I think it takes the same kind of
spine and the same kind of backbone.
May the Lord deliver us and may the
Lord deliver our children from the terrible brainwash.
Every magazine, secular magazine I pick up today
tells about the detrimental effects of TV.
Really, the secular magazine.
The issue of redesigning is why Johnny can't
write, I think.
And TV is very prominent in why Johnny
can't write.
Why do we have a nation of crime
and violence?
Well, because we learn it on TV.
And every magazine you pick up has something
like that.
And yet on we go.
We're really largely a worldly people.
What does it mean to be worldly?
I think a worldly man is a man
who has a love for passing things.
A love for passing things.
And this is a blight on the church
today.
I think of the personal feuds and animosities
that come in among the people of God.
And what's the solution?
Oh, the solution is brokenness.
Being willing to go to one another and
confess and say those words that are so
hard to come by.
I was wrong.
I am sorry.
Forgive me.
I think of the materialism that has come
in among us as the people of God
today.
And I really believe that God is waiting
to hear us say what Daniel said.
In Daniel chapter 9, we have sinned.
I don't know any incident in the whole
word of God that is more relevant and
timely and true to life than the story
of the prodigal son.
It comes back to me all the time.
I can identify with him like I can
identify with a few people in the Bible.
It goes off.
Everything looks so attractive there in the world.
And he goes off in the world.
Comes to the end of himself.
Fain would have filled his belly with the
hops that the swine did eat.
He thinks of the servants in his father's
house faring better than he's faring.
And he says, I know what I'll do.
I'll arise and go to my father and
say, Father, I have sinned against thee and
against heaven.
In thy sight am no more worthy to
be called thy son.
Make me, I pray thee, as one of
thy hired servants.
And off he went.
Off he went.
And the father goes out to meet him.
And pretty soon he knows the father's kiss.
The arms flung around his shoulders.
The best robe.
The ring on his finger.
The shoes on his feet.
But that had cast the joy that began
and never ended.
And that's what God is waiting for us
to say.
I really believe that if my people, who
are called by my name, if we'll just
humble ourselves before the Lord, take that low
place, confess our sins, the sins of the
church, and claim the promise of the word
of God.
There was a promise in the word that
was especially meaningful at the time of the
Lewis revival.
And I'd just like to share it with
you this afternoon.
And maybe some of us will take this
promise from God's word and lay hold of
it, make it real in our lives, and
see God answer it.
Isaiah chapter 44 and verse 3.
A verse that is precious to me.
Isaiah 44 and verse 3.
It says, For I will pour water upon
him that is thirsty, and floods upon the
dry ground.
I will pour my spirit upon thy seed,
and my blessing upon thine offspring.
On what kind of ground does God promise
to pour the water?
On thirsty ground.
Floods upon the dry ground.
I wonder, are our hearts thirsty today for
better things?
Are we willing really to humble ourselves before
the Lord and cry out to him to
come in and revive the work in the
midst of the years?
Shall we just look to the Lord in
confession and in prayer?
O Lord, we can honestly say with Daniel,
we have sinned and committed iniquity and have
done wickedly and have rebelled even by departing
from thy precepts and from thy judgments.
And Lord, we would come before you this
afternoon and we would confess to you the
sin of our nation.
We know the terrible scandal and disgrace of
Watergate and all the reproach it has brought
upon this people and the weakening of the
nation in international affairs.
We confess it, Lord, as sin in thy
sight.
We think of the bribery on every hand.
We think of the corruption, Lord, as a
way of life.
And we think of how all of our
government seems to be built on the big
lie.
We think today, Lord, of the absence of
that righteousness that exalts the nation.
And Father, in this 200th year of this
nation, we pray, O God, have mercy upon
our land.
We pray that the gospel might go out
with renewed power.
As it has not before.
We think, Lord, of our business lives.
Lord, we think of how often our lips
are sealed by our lives, by our conduct.
We think of how often we use the
wisdom of this world instead of the wisdom
that comes from above.
How brainwashed we often are.
We think, Lord, of how we give priority
to the dollars rather than to spiritual values.
We pray, Lord, that you will anoint our
eyes with divine eye salve.
That we might see things the way you
see them.
That we might be radicals for the Lord
Jesus, adhering human strictly to the line of
the word.
We think, Lord, of our assembly life today.
Lord, we would confess to you our self
-satisfaction.
O God, forgive us for our comfort and
ease in Zion.
Forgive us, Lord, that we're so blissfully unaware
of the low state of spirituality in our
midst today.
Forgive us, Lord, that we have a greater
interest in the sound of music than in
the sound of praise, than in the meetings
of the assembly.
Lord, send a revival, we pray, into our
assemblies and let it begin with us.
We pray, Lord, concerning our family lives.
We think of the unequal yokes on every
hand.
We think of the separations and divorces.
We think of wayward children today and the
abandonment of the family altar.
Lord, we think back to a day when
in many Christian homes that motto was on
the wall.
We pray that it might become a reality
again, that Christ is the head of this
house.
The unseen guest at every meal, the silent
listener to every conversation.
May our homes, Lord, be like that house
of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha in Bethany where
the Lord Jesus loved to be.
And then, Lord, we think of our personal
lives.
We think of our materialism, our gross materialism,
and our covetousness.
Lord, we pray that we'll lay hold of
these words, that godliness with contentment is great
gain.
We confess to you that we are a
pleasure-seeking people occupied with a world of
trivia and passing things.
And, Lord, we think in our personal lives
how we have neglected the word of God.
I think once again of the gossip and
the backbiting and the prayerlessness and all the
rest.
And, oh, God, we pray that we as
men might go forth from this retreat a
different way than the way we came.
We pray that your spirit will come upon
us in power.
And we pray that men will take knowledge
of us that may have been with Jesus.
And so we would come this afternoon, Lord,
and we would really eat the sin offering
in your presence.
And we would pray concerning the physical drought
that's in our land, too.
Lord, send the rain, but even more than
the physical, material rain, we pray that you'll
send the showers of reviving blessing into our
midst.
We ask it in the Savior's name, and
for his sake.
Amen.
Okay, we'll try to get through these questions
rather quickly so that we'll cover them all.
The first question is, do you see a
promise for the giver in 2 Corinthians 9,
verse 10?
2 Corinthians 9, verse 10 says, Now ye
that ministereth seed to the sower, both minister
bread for your food, and multiply your seed
sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness.
Yes, well, of course, it is a prayer,
and it says that the same God who
provides the seed for the farmer to plant
his crops is able to provide bread for
you and give you seed for sowing that
you might have an abundant harvest.
And so it definitely is a promise for
the giver.
I think a similar promise is found in
the 8th verse.
Don't miss the 8th verse.
It says, God is able to make all
grace abound toward you, that you, always having
all sufficiency in all things, may abound to
every good work.
And if I can just paraphrase that in
simple language, it says that God is able
to give you the ability to be an
investor for him if you really want to
be.
That's what it says.
If a man really has the desire to
give to the work of the Lord, the
Lord will fulfill that desire.
I really believe that's true, too.
God is able to make all grace abound
to you, that you, always having all sufficiency
in all things, may abound to every good
work.
So let's claim these promises from the Word.
Question 2.
How do you feel about investments provided the
income goes totally toward the Lord's work?
Well, what do you think about that?
In the light of Matthew 6, verse 19,
I have to ask you, are those investments
laying up treasures on earth?
If they are, the answer is put them
to work for God, not the interest on
them.
I know these are hard sayings, but what
else can I say in the light of
verses like Matthew 6, verse 19?
It says, Lay not up for yourselves treasures
on earth, or moth and rust of corruption,
where thieves break through and steal.
Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
So send those lovely investments on before you.
Do your giving while you're living, then you're
knowing where it's going.
Amen.
...say that accepting Christ as one's Savior and
making Him Lord of my life are necessary
conditions of salvation.
This has caused me a great deal of
confusion, since I have always thought salvation is
by grace alone.
Could you explain how salvation is contingent on
making Him Lord of my life?
Well, of course, there are...
quite a debate goes on in this subject.
There are those that say that you're saved
by grace through faith plus nothing, and others
say that really in the act of salvation
you must crown Him Lord of all.
If He's not Lord of all, then He's
not Lord at all.
Well, I take great comfort in the fact
that God is sovereign, and He's greater than
all our little debates down here.
And there are problems here.
For instance, if you say that in order
to be saved you have to crown Jesus
Lord, the question comes up, how much?
How much do you have to crown Him
Lord?
Remembering that nobody crowns Him Lord completely.
You know?
After we've done our very best, we're still
unprofitable servants.
And so if you make the Lordship of
Christ a condition of salvation, you do run
into problems.
On the other hand, if you say that
you can trust Christ as Savior with a
mental reservation that you're not going to make
Him Lord, you're running into problems there too.
Aren't you?
You're running into problems there too.
So I take real comfort in this fact
that whenever God sees that spark of faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, He saves the
soul.
And He's bigger than I am and He
can sort out all these things.
He really can.
Certainly the Lord Jesus should be Lord of
our lives.
And that begins with a process, with a
crisis and should go on to a process.
Please make suggestions as to how a Christian
family should handle TV viewing by both parents
and children.
Well, if you really want my honest answer,
I think the best way to...
I imagine you do.
I really think the best way to handle
it is to get rid of it.
Now, that sounds harsh.
Oh, McDonald's, you know, way out of it.
But seriously, I know non-Christian families who
have got rid of TV and extoll the
practice.
I think it's the greatest thing that's happened
to their families.
Non-Christians, they got rid of it and
they extoll the practice.
They recommend the practice to others.
Does that answer?
Okay.
I know what Mandela does.
And their
motto is brings the world into your home.
And he said, if that's what it does,
I don't want it.
He sent it back.
That's the simplest answer to the problem.
If you do have TV, it certainly should
be controlled with the children.
And sometimes it's difficult to do that.
Matured.
This is one that really, I feel a
little bit beyond my depth and some of
you might be able to help.
What is your thought in light of, in
other words, you haul the wheat off the
market for a better price?
Well, the question that comes to my mind
is, and I don't know the answer to
this, is that a form of speculation and
some of you wheat farmers can perhaps tell
me.
Is it definite that the price is going
to be better in a few months or
is there a risk involved?
Can anybody speak to that?
It's usually better.
Pardon?
I see.
A very definite risk.
It can go up or it can go
down.
It can go up or it can go
down.
Well, you see, that affects the answer, doesn't
it?
It all comes into prayer.
Comes into prayer.
I'm a farmer and I still have most
of my wheat from last harvest.
I see.
Well, don't God give us wisdom to then
tell us?
Okay, that's why I said I'm beyond my
depth with this question.
I want to hear what you have to
say.
Uh-huh.
Say anything on that.
As far as the price is concerned.
Poetry, I guess.
Anybody else?
Differing viewpoints on it.
This himself and that we shouldn't.
If there is a person investing
for the Lord, what is the balance between
wife, 16,
33, is it?
So likewise, whosoever he be of you that
forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot
be my disciple.
That's the kind of a verse that each
one of us has to go before the
Lord on and say, Lord, what is this
verse going to mean in my life?
Now, it doesn't mean the same in everybody's
life.
There are differences.
Some people have a family, some don't.
And so, the thing to do is to
have that exercise of soul that goes before
the Lord and seeks his will.
And when you do, God begins working in
your life.
And God begins speaking to you about things.
Maybe things in your life that never bothered
you before.
And yet you've opened the door for him
to do it and he begins speaking to
you about it.
I don't think it's right for me to
go around and tell anybody else what it's
going to mean in his life, what it
means to forsake all.
I don't know.
I know what it means in my life
and that I'm responsible to do it.
It's so easy to forget or slip back
into the old way of thought.
How can we avoid this?
Well, my answer is put yourself in a
position where you have to trust God.
Where you're really cast upon the Lord.
And you'll grow in the life of faith.
I like to tell a story and I
might have told it to some of you
before, but some years ago a fellow came
back from overseas and he came to my
apartment and discussed a problem that had arisen
on the mission field.
And he was going from my place to
another city there in the Midwest.
And when he got to, I said to
him, you know there's an elder in an
assembly in the next city you're going to
that should know what you've told me today.
And I'd like to suggest that in the
few hours you're in that city you go
to that elder and you share with him.
And before this fellow left I said to
him, I said, I'd like to ask you
a question.
What makes you tick anyway?
I just wanted to see how he would
react to this.
I said, here you are.
You've got a wonderful education in the United
States.
You could, you know, get any kind of
a job you wanted.
And I said, here you go overseas and
you throw your life away with a bunch
of nobodies there on the mission field.
I said, what's it all about anyway?
And he said this to me.
He said, Mr. MacDonald, I see that it's
very hard to live a life of faith
in the United States.
He said, you have to put yourself in
a position where you have to trust God.
Where if God fails you, you're sunk.
And when you do that there'll be a
power in your life and when you touch
other lives something will happen for God.
Now just keep that in the back of
your mind because that's not the end of
the story.
I'm going to say it again.
He said, it's very hard to live a
life of faith in the United States.
You have to put yourself in a position
where you have to trust God.
Where if God fails you, you're sunk.
And if you do that there'll be a
power in your life and when you touch
other lives something will happen for God.
Well, he went up to this city and
after he left he wrote me a letter
from Los Angeles and he said, brother, I
went there and I had appointments and I
had meetings and the time went.
He said, I never did get to see
that elder.
And he said, the Lord knew I was
willing.
The Lord knew I wanted to do it
but he said it was completely impossible for
me to do it.
So he went out to California and had
two weeks of meetings in Riverside and at
the end of the two weeks he boarded
a Greyhound bus to go back to the
East Coast and when he got on the
bus it was fairly empty.
And then they drove on to Riverside and
when they got to Riverside it started to
fill up.
And he watched the bus fill up and
strangely enough it filled up until there was
only one seat left on the bus and
that was the seat next to him.
And the door still hadn't closed.
So he bowed his head and prayed.
Lord, send on some young person that I
can witness to for you.
And he waited.
And an older man got on.
The older man walked down the aisle and
sat in the seat next to Greg and
Greg said, he said, young or old I
have my responsibility to the Lord.
So he started to witness to this man.
And the man said, well that's a funny
thing you should speak to me about the
Lord Jesus.
He said, I happen to be a born
again believer.
And Greg said, you are?
He said, my name is Greg Livingston.
And the man said, my name is.
And he gave the name of that elder
from that Midwest assembly.
So they got a drive away car.
The man dropped his wife off with him.
Go back to...
When you think of all the Greyhound buses
wasn't it a coincidence that that elder sat
next to Greg Faint in the United States.
You have to put yourself in a position
where you have to trust God.
Where if God fails you, you're sunk.
And if you do that, there will be
a power in your life.
And when you touch other lives, something will
happen for God.
Three months later that elder met me and
he said, Bill, nothing in my life has
ever spoken to me as loudly as that,
that God would bring two people together.
To this question, to put yourself in a
position where you have to trust God.
Where do we draw the line concerning working
in preparation for raising a family?
The word seems to indicate a married man
has to please his wife or meet her
needs.
Also what kind of standards by what kind
of standards do we judge richness?
A recent survey said a couple with children
and an income of $10,000 is just
getting by.
Also, I don't know the accuracy of this
statement but I've been told the average house
in America is $40,000.
Thus a nice house to one might be
nothing to someone else.
But once again, we've answered part of this
in our discussion.
Once again, it's something that each one of
us has to be before the Lord about.
And comparing America with other countries, we're all
millionaires.
Let's face it, really.
We're all millionaires.
So things really are relative.
But what I must do as a believer
in the Lord Jesus is to live sacrificially
really for the cause of Christ.
Pray before the Lord and ask Him how
I can best do this.
I don't know if you've ever had this
experience, but I did.
I really wanted this life of sacrifice and
renunciation and so I turned over my life
to the Lord and the Lord really started
to barbecue me about certain things in my
life.
Really did.
And I'd lie in bed at night and
I had all the theological arguments there and
they didn't mean a thing.
I mean, the Word of God was still
there and I was fighting against it and
I never got rest for my soul until
I did the things that the Lord was
telling me to do.
And then when I did them I had
a great peace.
Great peace of those that love thy Lord.
And so, if you want to put yourself
in the position, do so.
And I think don't take yourself out of
it.
If you don't plan for future needs then
you have to borrow at high interest rates.
I think I answered that, didn't I?
High interest rates.
Is that using the message?
Please speak to the question of borrowing finances
for business progress.
Well, of course, in any business you have
to have fixed capital and you have to
have working capital and God knows that and
as far as I'm concerned some of these
things are current needs and it seems to
me that in the course of running many
businesses today that it is necessary to borrow
funds for the current needs and for the
long-term needs of the business.
The Lord knows about that and I think
our attitude of heart is what really counts
in a case like that.
Well, it seems to me when a man
goes in
things are made upon him that were not
part and continued in that employee
condition.
I want to initiate a program to alleviate
spiritual drought within the family setting without being
superficial and rigid.
Daily discipline in this regard seems to detract
from any possible spiritual blessings received.
Well, I think that the answer to the
problem is to get before the Lord as
we had in our message this afternoon and
to confess all known sin and put it
away.
And to really get down to business being
business for the Lord be yielded to him
and you'll see the spiritual temperature rising very
rapidly.
Could you give your testimony on how you
got saved?
Well, I could and I think there might...
No, the time is up, is it?
Well, a very strange thing happened to me
early in life.
You know, it speaks about Timothy and prophecies
that went before on him.
When I was five years of age my
parents had taken me to Scotland and we
lived there for a year and I developed
diphtheria in the throat and I was so
sick that the mucous membrane across your throat
had strangled you to death.
And I was gasping for breath and a
knock came on the door.
It was my father's brother.
He had been sitting by the fire in
the adjoining village and he'd been reading the
word of God and God made a promise
to him.
He came through the night and knocked on
the door.
Just as my mother had turned her back
and he said, I just came to tell
you he's not going to die.
He's going to live and God's going to
save his soul someday.
He had been reading in Psalm 91 because
he has set his love upon me I
will set him on high with long life
will I set destined to long life which
as far as I'm concerned the Lord has
already fulfilled.
He can take me anytime and to salvation
as well.
Thousands of years when that uncle used to
write to me he'd always put at the
bottom of the letter God as he went
before on you.
Well, I grew up in a Christian home.
I can't remember a time in my life
when I didn't know the gospel.
I used to witness to the kids in
the neighborhood and I wasn't saved myself.
We lived a very sheltered life.
My mother was a very stern Scottish Presbyterian.
She brought us up with a Bible in
one hand and a strap in the other.
His mother's knee and over his father's knee.
In Pittsburgh, Massachusetts he used to carry my
brother and myself on his shoulders through snow
drifts to get us to the meetings when
we were kids.
We had no car of course in those
days.
We'd go to the theater.
I didn't say I was a very bad
sinner.
I resented it when people asked me if
I would say some of the preachers would
and I'd lie to get them off my
back.
When I became a high school student God
began to work in my life in conviction.
He showed me something very important.
He showed me that what I was was
a lot worse than anything I had ever
done.
That was a great revelation.
Apparently stripped me of all my pride worse
than anything I'd ever done.
And then the Lord began to convict me
of sin.
Convict me of sin.
I could take you to a meeting place
in Cambridge, Massachusetts and show up in the
balcony where the family was there one night
and I couldn't stand it anymore.
I got up and walked out.
I was just afraid the place was going
to cave in on me.
The conviction of sin was so great.
Then sometime during that period I don't know
when I laid down my arms.
I had really been fighting against the Lord.
C.S. Lewis said that when the Lord
brought him in he brought him in fighting.
Well, that's the way I was too.
And I finally yielded.
I said in effect Nay, but I yield,
I yield.
I can hold out no more.
I sink by dying love compelled no more.
The idea that when you trusted Christ would
go on and the electrical impulses would go
through your nervous system.
I just knew from the testimonies I had
heard that salvation was a tremendous emotional experience.
And it wasn't for me.
It was just the quiet acceptance of a
simple offer.
So then I went through months of doubt
and agony and darkness.
And I trust you now.
I wait.
I believe in certainty and enjoyment.
And it was just what I needed.
I read it and the clouds drifted away.
Cutting shows that it's the blood that makes
you safe.
It's the word that makes you sure.
And when I saw that assurance came through
the word of God and not through feelings.
That was just what I needed, you know.
Just what I needed.
And then after that I heard Ironside.
And he said, I don't know I'm saved
because I feel happy but I feel happy
because I know I'm saved.
And that helped me too.
In the system of a believer.
As if there's a God in heaven for
feelings come and feelings go and feelings are
deceiving.
My warrant is the word of God.
Nothing else is worth believing.
And I can honestly say that when I
got assurance of salvation I've never really doubted
since.
Because the assurance is based not on something
that is changeable of my feelings but on
the infallible word of God.
That was the beginning really of a wonderful
life.
I have only praised for the Lord for
the wonderful way he has led.
And my only regret is how I have
failed him.
See?
A joke.
Were there any other questions or comments from
the floor?
If you can suit
the word of God to the individual needs
of those who are present we can't do
it.
We don't know Lord.
You can even take verses out of context
and use them for eternal blessing.
And so we pray that you'll be doing
that with what we've had before us today.
And we pray that you'll send us forth
with hearts to love and serve and obey
you in all our ways.
We ask it in Jesus' name and for
his sake.
Amen.