Well, good evening.
This evening I'd like to talk about the
humility of Jesus Christ.
And before I get into that, I want
to talk something about the greatness of God,
the greatness of Christ.
Now, oftentimes as Christians we have a very
low concept of who God really is.
In our church one time we had a
young man giving his testimony.
My brother Keith happened to be in the
congregation.
This was before the days of revival.
And he was supposed to give a testimony
because he was asking for church membership.
And he was distinctly asked, just tell us
how you found Christ.
Here's what he said.
The big boy upstairs and I are just
like that.
That's as far as he got.
My brother Keith got up and I forget
what he said, but I remember it was
very powerful.
And this fellow took off.
We never saw him again.
He's not the big boy upstairs.
The way the Bible pictures our God is
sometimes it's just hard to even grasp with
our little minds.
Isaiah 40 would be a good chapter and
many of you are familiar with that, I'm
sure.
You know, God, I've told people sometimes if
God was to walk through the Pacific Ocean,
he wouldn't get wet up to his ankles.
That's not an exaggeration.
The heaven is his throne and the earth
is his footstool.
That helps me to understand.
All the nations of the world, he said,
are like a drop in a bucket.
And then he even goes further than that
and reminds us that we are a mathematical
impossibility.
We are less than nothing.
Less than nothing.
Like a small dust on the balance.
You know, if you have an old fashioned
balance and there's a plate here where you
put things on to weigh them and sometimes
when the sun hits it right, you see
just a little tiny skiff of dust.
And God said that's what we're like, just
a little skiff of dust.
And we have to understand and so much
is said, I mean, all together in the
Bible when it talks about creation, for example,
by the word of the Lord with the
heavens made and all the host of them
by the breath of his mouth.
He spoke and it was done.
He commanded and they stood fast.
God didn't take some days or even some
hours as far as creation is concerned.
And so he's great.
We can understand.
He's greater than the universe he's created.
We know something about the greatness of the
universe.
Or maybe we don't.
I don't know.
We should.
Most of us do, I'm sure.
Why don't we just take a ride on
a rocket for a few moments, traveling at
the speed of light.
Now that will be some millions of miles
an hour.
We leave the earth.
We pass the moon in two seconds.
We pass the sun in eight minutes.
We get out of the local solar system
the same day.
But before we get to the nearest star,
Alpha Centauri, it'll be at least three years.
I mean, that's how vast the universe is
that God has called into existence.
And if we stay on the rocket, you
know, the local solar system is part of
the Milky Way constellation.
And there are billions of stars in this
constellation to cross the speed of light.
It will take you a hundred thousand years
just to cross it.
He's so great.
Did you know that in Psalm 113 we're
told that God is so great he has
to humble himself to behold the things that
are going on in the earth?
Well, I can understand that.
Walking through the bush, here's an ant hill.
You take a piece of stick and you
just knock the top off it.
You watch the ants for a few moments.
You don't stay there for ten minutes.
You just go on your way.
It's not that interesting.
And that gives a little picture of God
in the earth.
He has to really humble himself to even
look at the things going on in the
earth.
But that's not all it says in Psalm
113.
It says God has to humble himself to
behold the things in heaven.
That I don't quite understand.
But he has to humble himself to even
look at things going on in earth and
heaven because he is so great.
His range at one time, of course, was
the universe, is again today.
But when he was incarnated in Mary, that
changed.
And from who he was to become who
he became in her.
You talk about humility.
How could he do this?
The God of the universe being found in
flesh, incarnation, incarnu, in a woman.
And then being born to live as a
man.
But he has to humble himself but that's
part of what he did.
He was born not in some hospital or
even in a house.
He was born in a stable.
Now this is part of his humility.
And in these things that Christ did, he
is laughing at our values and helping us
to see things clearly as we are.
Born in a stable with animals standing around.
The God of the universe.
He was born a Jew.
The Jew was the most despised nation on
earth.
Has always been that way.
And Isaiah described the Jew as being scattered
and peeled and a nation that was terrible
from the beginning.
You know, we see it even today.
The Jew is despised.
Look at what's happening over in Israel.
And it's still going on.
The war they had has kind of re
-come up again.
We don't know where it's going to end.
If it will, there may be a terrible
bloodbath over there.
The best kept secret in Israel is this.
That there are several thousand Jews every month
leaving Israel, emigrating to the United States or
Canada or Great Britain to get away from
the country where as one of them said,
you have to go shopping with a pistol
in your hand or a rifle hanging on
your shoulder.
They want to get away from that.
You see they are not there with the
blessing of God or this would not happen
or couldn't happen because He promised His people
peace if they walked in His ways.
In Zechariah chapter 7, recall, they disobeyed Him.
It says they hardened their heart.
And then those three things happened to them
because of this.
God said, I called and you refused.
Therefore you will call and I will refuse.
In other words, God would not answer their
prayers.
Then He said, I scattered you with a
whirlwind among all the nations of the world.
That's still going on.
There are maybe three and a half million
in Israel.
There are 12 million or more scattered around
the world.
So, and the third thing was as God
said, He would make their land desolate.
And in spite of the fact that some
areas have been reclaimed today, it is certainly
not as it was in the day when
the Jew first came to the land.
It was a land everywhere that flowed with
milk and honey.
It was a marvelous country.
I'm sure the best in the world at
that time because God made it.
It was a land that He said, God
said.
He never took His eyes off it from
one end of the ear to the other.
But that's all changed because they hardened their
hearts against God.
He was born in a stable, but born
a Jew.
He was not born in some big city,
but in tiny Bethlehem, maybe 200 people in
that little village.
That's where He was born.
And then He was raised in Nazareth.
And if you remember, Nazareth was called, well
it had a saying, can any good thing
come out of Nazareth?
So He was born in a stable in
tiny Bethlehem, raised in Nazareth, and all of
this.
His humility, it's as if He was going
down a ladder further and further.
We notice He was subject to His parents.
I remember talking with a bunch of Jehovah's
Witnesses one day, and they said, now you
believe that Jesus was equal with, as I
said, He was equal with God?
No, nonsense they said.
He said, my Father is greater than I.
And they said, you know, how in the
world, if Jesus was subject to God as
Father, He couldn't be equal to God.
And God gave me an answer and it
went like this.
It says in Luke's Gospel that Jesus Christ
came to Nazareth and was subject unto His
parents.
So I ask this question, if Jesus Christ
could be subject to His parents, whom He
was far greater than, could not He be
subject to His Heavenly Father with whom He
was equal?
It was His humility.
He listened to His parents.
I'm sure they weren't always right, but He
was subject to them.
It was part of His humility.
And He worked as a carpenter.
And from some reading I've done in those
days, to be a carpenter, it was considered
to be a very lowly task.
But Christ was humbling Himself as an example
to us.
He made Himself of no reputation, we're told,
in Philippians chapter 2.
He made Himself, He deliberately emptied Himself and
became a man.
And then He went further than this.
He became, it says, obedient unto death, even
the death of a cross.
And He knew that to be crucified on
a cross to a Jew, it meant He
was under the curse of God.
He that is hanged is cursed of God.
And people understood that.
That's why when He hung there, Jewish people
looking on Him would consider He's under the
curse of God.
But it's all part of what He was
doing in this area of just humbling Himself
before the universe.
He quietly suffered every kind of reproach.
They said He was a Samaritan.
He never said anything about it.
They said He had a demon and He
said, I don't have a demon.
But many other things they said.
They said He was insane.
They tried to get Him off the street.
His relatives did.
They thought He was crazy.
And they called Him a blasphemer.
He never said anything about it.
They called Him a glutton.
They said He was a drunkard.
All these things they threw at Him.
And in response He said nothing because Isaiah
chapter 53 had indicated as a lamb was
led to the slaughter, so He opened not
His mouth.
He had nothing to say.
Pilate couldn't understand it.
Herod thought it strange because in those days,
if you had, if you were threatened to
be stuck on a cross, nailed on a
cross to die, you'd be groaning on the
ground, kissing the feet of Pilate or Herod
and begging for mercy.
And He's standing there like a king.
They couldn't understand this.
In 1 Peter chapter 2 it says, were
to follow His steps who did no sin,
neither was guile found in His mouth, who
when He was reviled, reviled not again.
When He suffered, He didn't threaten.
He could have threatened Pilate or Herod.
He could have threatened those soldiers who were
nailing Him on the cross.
He did none of that.
He suffered meekly, quietly.
And we're told to follow His steps.
It says He committed His cause to Him
that judges righteously.
And we're to do the same when we're
under reproach of any kind, such as He
did.
He was rejected by His own nation.
He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not.
His own brothers didn't believe Him.
It says neither did His brethren believe in
Him.
And of course His disciples of the last
were told they all forsook Him and fled
after telling Him so strongly, well as Peter
at least did, that they would never under
any circumstances leave Him.
Peter said, I'm ready to go with you
to death.
He wasn't ready for a Sunday school cookie
party, but he didn't know that.
But Christ quietly suffered all of this.
Then we find, worst of all, you know
that film, maybe you saw it, I didn't
see it, that film that was done a
while ago on the sufferings of Christ.
You know, it missed the whole point of
the sufferings of Christ, because His crucifixion on
the cross, you know, it was bad, and
all that went with it, the scourging and
so on.
But I heard about a woman that was
crucified on the cross, and she lived for
forty hours and was taken down and walked
away.
That was not the suffering that Christ suffered
so much as the fact that His Father
turned His back on Him, as it were.
My God, my God, why have You forsaken
Me?
That was the hard part.
And that film had nothing to say in
that area at all.
They didn't get it.
Two-hour film, two minutes about the resurrection,
certainly far away.
I think somebody pointed out there were around
thirty different things in the film that were
totally unbiblical.
They were trying to do something.
The problem was they didn't know what they
were trying to do.
They jeered at Him.
They mocked Him.
They spit in His face.
The slaves beat Him with their hands.
You see, slaves, I mean they're the lowest
down on the ladder, and there was nothing
they could do.
But now they found somebody lower than they,
and they beat Him.
It says the servants beat Him.
And Christ never murmured, never complained, but He
prayed a prayer that means a lot.
Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.
They don't know what they're doing.
They didn't know.
Some of them found out afterwards when Christ
was raised from the dead and the gospel
was widely preached in the power of the
Holy Spirit.
They found out then and understood.
But all of this, I say, dear people,
is part of His humility.
Did you ever think as to why Christ
was crucified outside the camp?
You find that in Hebrews chapter thirteen, outside
the camp.
And we're to go forth outside the camp,
bearing His reproach.
Why was this?
Well, outside the camp, that's where human dung
was buried.
If you had leprosy in the walls of
your house, and that was possible in those
days, you had to take that material out
of the wall and dump it outside the
city, outside the camp.
And if the house itself could not, it
was so full it couldn't be repaired properly,
you had to destroy the house, take all
the material, dump it outside the camp.
If you were a blasphemer, you were taken
outside the camp and stoned to death.
If you were an adulterer, you were taken
outside the camp and stoned to death.
When Miriam and Aaron questioned Moses' leadership, God
made, gave her leprosy and said, if her
father had spit in her face, she'd have
to stay outside the camp seven days.
Stick her outside the camp.
Many other things, gluttons, drunkards, people that were
rebels against God, breaking the Sabbath, all of
these things, you were put outside the camp,
and in many cases, most cases, you were
stoned to death.
Why was Christ then crucified out there?
When animals were sacrificed, they took the carcass
outside the camp, and they burned it.
And there must have been an awful stink
there, as horns and hoofs and hides and
everything were burning outside the camp.
But you see, Christ was completely, totally identified
with sinners of every kind.
He was not ashamed to be crucified outside
the camp.
It was part of His humility, dying for
you, for me.
Christ died for the ungodly.
I remember a friend of mine, he had
preached in a certain place.
I was talking to a man who had
been in the meetings.
He said, I don't like that guy.
I said, why not?
He said, we were ungodly.
Well, I said, if you don't admit you're
ungodly, you can't go to heaven.
What do you mean?
I explained it to him.
Christ died for the ungodly.
If you're not willing to admit you're ungodly,
then you can't be saved.
Well, he never understood that, of course.
He was numbered, it says, with the transgressors.
I think the immediate reference is to the
thieves crucified on each side, numbered, hanging there
naked on a cross beside two thieves.
This God, so great, he has to humble
himself to behold the things that are in
heaven and the earth.
How could this be?
I imagine angels were there, every one of
them, watching this, wondering what was going on.
I don't know what they understood about Jesus
and the incarnation and then the crucifixion.
Maybe they understood, maybe they didn't.
But I'm sure they were all there, watching,
maybe just waiting for a cry from Christ
to come and take him from the cross
and take him away.
And, of course, this never ever came.
You know, he's saying, when I survey the
wondrous cross on which the Prince of glory
died, my richest gain, I count but loss
and poor contempt on all my pride.
How can I be proud about anything when
I consider Christ?
You know, Satan, in Isaiah 14, there were
five steps he wanted to take up.
And the last step, he wanted to be
equal with God.
Later on in Matthew chapter 4, he took
another step up.
I've made six of them, because he wanted
his creator, Christ, to fall down and worship
him.
He didn't just want to be equal with
God.
He wanted God to fall down and worship
him.
Pride.
He's called the king of pride, and he's
that.
And oftentimes, as Christians, we get proud.
We get proud about our looks, proud about
our education, proud about our kids that do
something great.
Many things, anything, as far as God is
concerned, is an evil thing in the light
of what Jesus Christ did in humiliating himself
in the fashion that he did.
Why all this?
For the joy that was set before him,
he endured the cross, despising the shame.
That's a phrase I spent some time on
just thinking about.
Despising the shame.
I mean, hanging there naked between two thieves.
Despising the shame for you and for me.
In a sense, I remember telling some people
one time when I think about him despising
the shame, he was really spitting in the
face of the devil who wanted to go
up, and Christ wanted to go down.
I see that.
For the joy that was set before him.
So in Revelation 7, 9, and 10, we
find there is a multitude of people who
had washed their robes in the blood of
Christ from every nation under the skies.
This was the joy that was set before
Christ.
I mean, the whole idea, the whole plan
of salvation is so totally foreign to any
way we think, or men anywhere would think.
Obviously it came from God.
It could not have come from any other
source.
It didn't just come from Christ.
The Father sent the Son to be the
Savior of the world.
So it came from God, was God's plan,
God's way.
And there's many things we need to learn,
dear people.
One of the greatest of them is just
to walk in humility.
Those who walk in pride, it says, he
is able to abase.
And God does.
He hates pride because it has been called
the devil's sin.
Less being lifted up with pride, he falls
into the condemnation of the devil.
That's the devil's sin.
And sometimes it's ours.
And sometimes our churches are filled with proud
people.
And sometimes any one of us in this
crowd tonight can fall into that sin.
And to be freed from that, God often
has to lead us through experiences in life
that are hard to understand and hard to
put up with.
We're expecting to abruptly come down.
Remember Psalm 102, it says, you have lifted
me up and cast me down.
That happened to Joseph Cleff, remember?
He was working for Potiphar, the chief of
the executioners.
He was a slave.
That is, Joseph was.
And Potiphar discovered that this slave he bought
had unusual administrative ability.
Everything Joseph did, it says, was done right.
And Potiphar finally gave him the running of
the whole operation.
And Joseph, remember, at age 17 was sold
into slavery.
And now he's in his twenties.
And he was a slave.
And all of a sudden, he's got a
lot of responsibility.
He enjoyed this.
He had administrative gifts.
And it was going along great until he
refused to sin with Potiphar's wife.
And she lied to her husband and told
him how this man had tried to rape
her.
And he was understandably angry and threw him
in jail.
So he'd been lifted up and cast down.
And that's an example of that particular thing
from Psalm 102.
It happens to us.
You may go up and then suddenly you
come down and say, God, why did you
do this to me?
God is trying to teach us humility.
I think it was Dwight L.
Moody that once said that humility was the
greatest grace of all.
And he exhorted people to seek to be
a humble person because our God, our Savior,
was humble more than we can ever understand.
The creator of the universe.
Allowing men to nail him on a wooden
cross.
And remember this, as Paul told us, God
was in Christ.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.
People, you know, when you see what God
had to do, the length to which you
have to go, then you get a much
better idea of what sin is.
This was because we were sinners for no
other reason than to sin.
He didn't do it, I don't think, to
show how humble he was.
He did it in order that we might
be born again, might be saved, and go
to heaven when we die.
Philippians 2, 5 says, let this mind be
in you, which was also in Christ Jesus,
who being or existing eternally in the form
of God, did not think it something to
be tightly held on to, that he was
equal with God, but made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of
a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men.
And being found in fashion as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient unto death.
And I say as I look at this,
you know, how could he?
How could he do this?
Being who he was, how could he allow
a wicked man to mock him and jeer
him?
Well, in Isaiah 50, it's a prophetic statement
about the Messiah.
I gave my back to the smiters, and
my cheeks to those that plucked off the
hair.
I hid not my face from shame and
spitting.
They spit in his face.
They beat him on his back, beat it
all they could.
Not a word from Christ.
He made himself of no reputation, because as
he hung on the cross, in the minds
of those that didn't know any better, he
was just a wicked Jew that had done
something terrible, and hence he's dying this way.
He didn't try to excuse himself to anybody.
Remember, 1 Peter 2, where it says, he
committed his cause to the people to God,
and we have to learn to do the
same to be a true follower of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
There are 50 references in the Bible to
the phrase, the Most High God.
Christ, the Most High God, died on a
cross.
Isaiah 57, there's a wonderful verse, it goes
like this.
Thus saith the High and Lofty One that
inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.
I dwell in the high and holy place.
With Him also there is of a humble
and contrite spirit, to revive the spirit of
the humble, and to revive the heart of
the contrite ones.
In Isaiah he said, I that speak in
righteousness, mighty to save.
And God is mighty to save.
But beyond that, He's mighty to revive.
He dwells in that high and holy place
in order to revive.
It says that distinctly.
All of this, the cross, and all that
went with it, He did on our behalf
for these reasons.
Let us, it says in Hebrews 13, go
forth unto Him outside the camp, bearing His
reproach.
No matter how you look at it, if
you're a Christian, there are people that are
going to reproach and perhaps also lie about
you.
Don't worry about that.
Christ said, Rejoice and be exceedingly glad when
that happens.
There is a reproach connected with the gospel
and with the person of Christ, especially because
of the way in which he died.
Many people, they can't become a Christian because
they know how he died.
They say, this is impossible.
They don't know the plan of God.
They maybe never will.
But we understand for the joy that was
set before Him, He endured the cross, despising
the shame, and is set down at the
right hand of God in heaven today.
Thank God for this.
What do we learn?
Well, let you be reproached, reproached for the
name of Christ.
Happy are you, for the spirit of glory,
glory of God is resting on you.
That's how, you know, we want power, but
we don't want reproach.
We want people to think we're cool, we
got it all put together right, you know,
and we're nice people, and we shine, people
like us, speak well of us.
That's not how it is, or how it
will be if we really want to be
a person used of God, that we're willing
people even to die.
And many, of course, are.
They're telling us that more people have died
as martyrs this last century than in any
of the centuries prior to that.
Well, in Rwanda, the slaughter, genocide there, where
maybe 150,000 people died, it's safe to
say at least half of them were born
again believers.
And so we're living in desperate, very desperate
times.
We do not know what's coming down the
road.
I firmly believe that Almighty God is rattling
our case.
I think we have entered into a judgment
mode with God.
The stuff that's happening in your country is
happening in my country.
Right now in Vancouver, Canada, it's a city
of two and a half million, second largest
city in Canada.
And it's had such heavy rains.
Can you feature 28 inches of rain in
one rain?
It's flooded all the wells in the country.
All the water is contaminated.
Two and a half million people have no
water that is not contaminated.
And then there's great mudslides in the mountains,
and that's all mountain country you know.
And a couple of years back in Ontario,
Canada, we had an ice storm, and for
three weeks there were 100,000 people with
no heat, and 37 people died as a
result.
And then my wife told me just today
in Alberta, Canada, they had winds so high
that it was actually highway transport trucks blown
off the highway.
That means winds of maybe 200 or 300
miles an hour.
And this has been happening, we've had, in
Canada we've had places too much rain, other
places not enough rain.
And in British Columbia, which has, it's a
province, it probably has more merchant-like timber
than any province in Canada.
And some kind of a bug has got
into the trees, and there are hundreds of
square miles now that are totally brown, every
tree is dead.
I've seen pictures from the air, it's incredible.
As far as the eye can see, everything
is brown in a forest that was green
last year.
I think God is knocking at the door
in a very powerful way here in North
America.
He said in Ezekiel 14, 21, that he
had four, what he called, pardon me, what
he called sore judgments.
War, famine, pestilence, and the wild beasts of
the earth.
And he's doing that today, we see it.
Wild beasts of the earth, we've had many
cases in Canada lately, bears attacking humans unprovoked,
cougars in the mountain country doing the same
thing.
There's verses in the Bible that talk, they
say that God would take away the fish
of the earth.
And in Eastern and Western Canada, in the
ocean, they're telling us the fish are all
gone.
But God told us twice in the Bible
he would take the fish of the ocean
away through sin.
This is going on.
To get back to our theme, Satan wanted
up, Christ wanted down.
What a contrast for people.
All that he did, he did for you
and for me.
I wonder if we thank him the way
we should.
We sometimes glibly give him a little pat
on the back for what he did.
Not understanding how far he went in order
to finally die in a crop.
All these other things that happened were leading
him to a death in the crop.
It all led him to that.
And he knew this, of course, not even
his disciples understood why.
We see it clearly today.
How we should rejoice, thank God, and humble
ourselves under his hand so that he may
exalt us in due time.
In Eastern Canada, there was a man, he
was a professor in the Acadia University.
And one time he lived in Saskatoon, Canada.
He was a deacon in my church.
Now, I didn't know he was, at that
time, he was not a professor, he was
a high school teacher.
I didn't know in the classroom, he sometimes
told dirty stories.
You know, I didn't know that.
Had I known that, he would certainly have
not been a deacon in my church.
Then he moved away, became a professor, and
I told a story in a Bible college
in Canada about a high school teacher who
told dirty stories.
You know, the Bible says, let no corrupt
communication proceed out of their mouth.
But that was just good to the use
of edifying.
And I was talking about that, mentioned this
man.
I told the story in such a way,
nobody could ever recognize who I was talking
about.
But, somebody taped my messages and mailed them
to him.
So one day he told me later on,
he was working in the garden, and he
had a strong impression that he should run
in the house and see what his wife
was doing.
And she was listening to one of my
tapes.
And he walked in the door.
I had just started to tell a story
about the high school teacher who told dirty
stories in the classroom.
And because of what had happened there, a
girl who was attending our church, but in
his classroom, she would never come back to
our church again.
And her mother told us about it later
on.
That's after he left the Saskatoon.
He heard this.
He said he and his wife began to
pray.
They prayed for two weeks, asking God to
search their heart.
And he came to see me at Woodstock,
New Brunswick, and we talked together.
He told me what had happened.
He said, when I heard that story, I
didn't know if you were talking about me,
and he didn't ask me, so I didn't
have to tell him.
But he said, when you told that story,
he said, God flung a spear into my
soul.
And my wife and I have been confessing
sin ever since.
But he said, that's not the problem.
He said, you know, self, he said, is
the factory that manufactures the sin.
How do you deal with the self problem?
I said, the cross.
And he didn't know what I meant, so
I explained that.
And he began to pray.
It's one of those things I wish I
had had on a tape recorder or something,
you know.
He forgot I was in the room, I'm
sure.
He began to pray, crying to God to
crucify him on the cross of Christ.
And he cried with such intensity of heart,
he was just almost shouting to God.
And he uses phrases like this, dear God,
kill me dead right now.
Dead, I say, dead.
Everything in me of self.
Kill it dead.
And he kept on, I guess, for maybe
five or six minutes.
And then I heard him say, oh, what
peace.
He was flooded with the Spirit of God.
The following Sunday, he was preaching.
He was not a preacher, but he did
a lot of preaching.
He was preaching in a Baptist church in
the Maritimes.
And halfway through his message, a revival broke.
And people began streaming to the altar.
He couldn't preach any longer.
And although he was a professor in a
university, he started in his spare time going
up, holding revival meetings.
And many people found Christ as their Savior
as a consequence of this.
Greatly used him.
A professor conducting revival meetings, yes.
He had such a meeting with God at
that time.
But people, first of all, dealing with sin,
and then dealing with self.
He didn't ask to be filled with the
Spirit.
He was filled with the Spirit when he
dealt with the self problem.
And that's how it is with us as
well.
He was a proud person before this happened.
He could speak well.
He had a great mind and all of
that.
He could sing very well.
And he was proud of all this.
And God took it all away from him
when he began crying to God to kill
him, kill himself.
He meant to kill this wicked self.
Someone has called it the demon of self.
And it is that.
Because a demon is an angel who is
in rebellion against God.
And sometimes we are the same.
He has then to humble himself, Christ did,
in order to look at things happening in
the world or in heaven.
And then all these other things just coming
down, down.
I think altogether there were 18 steps Christ
took down.
There were six that the devil tried to
take up.
However it was, people remember, don't ever forget,
it was from me.
Love found a way to redeem my soul.
Love found a way to make me whole.
But an awful death he suffered.
Quietly.
No reproach.
No threatening.
Because of the joy that was set before
him.
And he knew it would result in the
salvation of multitudes of people from every nation
in the world.
And so it has been.
And so it will continue to be until
he returns the second time.
When I survey the wondrous cross on which
the Prince of Glory died, my richest gain
I count but loss and poor contempt on
all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast.
Saving the death of Christ my God, all
the vain things that charm me most, I
sacrifice them to his blood.
Let's pray.
Father in heaven, we don't understand how you
could allow this to happen to your son.
But then, Father, we read that God was
in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.
And Father, we see we don't call it
a plan.
Salvation is not a plan.
Salvation is a person, as Simon said in
Luke chapter 2, mine eyes have seen your
salvation is what he said when he held
baby Jesus in his arms.
So salvation then is not a plan.
There are not several steps into it.
It's by faith to receive Jesus Christ.
If you've never done that, dear friend in
this crowd tonight, oh, Father in heaven, bless
us, help us whatever our spiritual need may
happen to be.
Father, whatever it is, help us to see
through the cross of Christ, oh God, help
us to see clearly what happened there.
And we can't, oh God, we can't, we
know, we can't repay you in any sense
of any way.
By grace we are saved through faith in
that not of ourselves, but the gift of
God and how we rejoice, dear God, to
know that it is the gift of God.
But at what cost, Father, at what cost
caught our Savior dying as he did?
Thank you, Father, as we think in these
days of what he did and who he
was and who he is and who he
will be in the returning King.
Thank you, God, and we pray you continue
to guide and bless us in the various
sessions and oh God, break us, break our
pride, empty us that you may fill us
with the spirit of the living God.
We know you're listening, we thank you, thank
you, and thank you again in Christ's name,
amen.