Well, good morning.
Morning.
You ever get tired of sitting?
Yeah.
You know, I preached for some years in
bush camps.
You never got a chance to sit, you
know, and you never knew where you were
going to preach, and you never had a
pulpit.
It was really different.
And I remember one case, just one big
room, not as, well, maybe as big as
this room, and over in the far corner
is a heater, and then there's a wire
strung from the ceiling, and guys' clothes hanging
on the wire, you know.
And then they had a shelf right across
the sand.
That's where they all slept.
That's where I slept, too, on this shelf.
They just moved over a little bit, let's
me get in, you know.
Anyway, I stood over here preaching, and guys
were sitting there, had cigarettes, cigars sometimes.
It's their turf.
I couldn't tell them what to do.
You know, I got to pull out a
bottle of whiskey and take a shot halfway
through the sermon, you know.
They just ignored all that stuff.
And so I'm preaching.
It was really different.
But it was a great time, the same
time.
I'd gone into a camp one time.
Actually, this was the first time I ever
preached in a bush camp.
I'd worked in bush camps before, so I
knew what the life was like.
And I was a little bit nervous about
going into this bunkhouse and inviting these guys
to the meeting that night.
I got in the bunkhouse.
There was three radios going.
There was two or three poker games going.
Some guy drinking all the booze and all.
I couldn't get anybody's attention.
I felt like a fool.
I was all in there.
Nobody listened.
Then a guy came up to me and
said, Oh, I said, I have an announcement.
Oh, see, Tom got all the radios off
there.
And everybody came and cried.
What's the news, you know?
Well, I was dressed like a bushwhacker, you
see.
And that's why I said I'm a preacher.
And they roared with laughter.
That was a big joke, you see.
I finally persuaded them.
And then they began to do a little
cheering and catcalling and whatnot.
A good natured league.
Then one said, Well, we're all beer drinkers.
And if you have some beer at the
meeting over in the cookhouse, we'll sure come.
What do you think?
I said, yeah.
It all comes with beer.
I said, do you guys know what the
Bible says about beer?
Total silence, you know.
What does it say?
Well, it says that when the children of
Israel came to a place called Beer, the
Lord gave them water to drink.
And I said, you know, it's a barrel
of water in the kitchen you guys can
help yourself.
You know, I had to check that out
after to see if I...
It just came to my mind, you know.
It's in Exodus.
It actually says that, you know.
The Lord just bailed me out, you know.
So, they all came to the meeting that
night.
You know?
So, that's how the world got me going.
And we sure had some experience sometimes.
I remember one time I had a full
house and all the guys were there.
And one of the guys was drunk.
And he got up and started telling a
story.
Well, I knew I had to get rid
of him or I'd lose all the guys,
you know.
So, I went down and took him by
the elbow and let him out.
Boy, you'll see, man.
He said, you can't do that bubbles race
in front of the gang.
I said, well, you deserve it, man.
You know?
I said, you wouldn't do this in church,
right?
Well, I sure wouldn't.
Well, he was drunk.
You know, drunk enough to say almost anything.
And I knew I had to get rid
of him.
And he was arguing with me.
And all of a sudden, the guy started
singing.
Back in the meeting, you know.
They were singing.
I had little song sheets I'd given out
to them.
And they were singing away, you know.
And it turned out that the cook of
the camp, a male, was a born-again
believer.
And he knew I was in trouble, so
he took the meeting over.
But he was leaving the song.
So, the Lord bailed me out there, too,
you know.
Another time, I got to a Jehovah's Witness
camp.
And I knew I was going to have
trouble there.
I found that there was eight guys who
weren't Jehovah's Witnesses and they stayed in a
little shack by themselves.
And the rest were all J.W.'s, their
wives and their kids and everything, you know.
So, I talked to the powers that be
and they said, well, no.
There's no place for me.
I said, what's wrong with the cook house?
Well, they're watching the floor plan.
Well, I said, you've got two cook houses.
What about the second cook house?
No, no, they're painting the floor there.
Oh.
I said, what about the bunk house?
Ask the guys.
And the guys said, okay, it's okay.
So, the bunk house.
Yeah, you can come and preach all you
want, but you've got to give us a
chance to ask questions afterwards.
Good deal.
That's right, I'll do that.
What they didn't know was the night before
I'd been in a manor camp and they
had a beautiful quartet there, a male quartet,
and I'd invited them to come to this
J.W. camp the next night just in
case I had a meeting and sing, see.
And I told them, I said, now, if
you guys come and I have a meeting,
come about 8 o'clock and I'll listen
for you coming up.
We'll get together.
If you don't come, it's okay.
Anyway, I told the quartet, I said, listen,
they don't believe in being saved, so sing
that song, Be Saved Tonight, you know.
And they don't believe in the reality of
heaven, so sing How Beautiful Heaven Must Be,
you know.
And these guys, when they walked in, the
whole, psychologically, had a tremendous impact on the
meeting, you know.
These guys looking, wondering, what's going on?
These four big guys, you know, and how
they sang without accompaniment, you know.
And then I preached.
And there was a guy in a bunk
right here, I could have tapped him on
the head, he was just on his hands
and listening carefully, you know.
Anyway, I preached.
And I asked for questions, you know how
many I got?
I never got one.
They were just sitting with their heads down,
you know.
Nobody knew what to say, so we made
the gospel course as clear as we could,
and I said, you know, Paul knew he
was saved, he wrote to people and they
were saved, and I know I'm saved, how
come you guys don't, you know.
And nobody said a word, you know.
The next morning, just as I was leaving
the camp, I stayed with the eight guys
who were in J.W.'s, and the next
morning, as I was walking past the mill,
it broke down.
So the other pilots had nothing to do,
they were standing around in a group talking,
so I went over and talked to them.
One of them said to me, hey man,
that was great last night.
I said, really?
What did you learn?
He said, I found out for the first
time you can know you're saved.
And, I got saved last night, he said.
Praise the Lord, you know.
The next year when I came back to
the same camp, they had a different strategy
for me.
So they said we're going to have a
certain building, so I went to the building,
and they had three chairs set up, and
one for me, I was in the center,
and there was a guy on each side
firing questions at me, and the rest of
the gang were standing all around me.
I like that kind of situation.
I like getting into a jam, you know,
because by my God, I've run through a
troop, by my God, I've leaped over a
wall.
I had a great time there that night.
They start off by saying, now you believe
that Jesus Christ is equal to God?
Yes, I do.
We don't believe that because it says that
Jesus was subject to his Father in Heaven,
and so he couldn't be subject to them
if he was equal to God, you know.
He couldn't be subject to them if he
was equal to them.
And, you know, I showed up that morning,
the answer came down like lightning.
I said, well, was Jesus Christ greater than
Mary and Joseph?
Oh, yes, of course, yeah.
Well, as soon as I got there, I
looked and he came down to me and
was subject unto them.
If he could be subject to his earthly
parents, couldn't he be subject to his heavenly
Father?
And it went like that for an hour
and a half.
He said, oh, it was really neat.
Yeah, well, of course it is.
And finally, we're all standing around, and one
guy says, well, if there's anything for sure,
we can't know your Savior.
Boy, that was just a, you know, springboard.
And I just said, listen, guys, if I
was to say I wasn't saved, it would
be the biggest lie in this world because
I told them how Jesus Christ is Savior
years before.
You know, if it wasn't sound, you know.
Don't be afraid of Jehovah's Witnesses.
They don't know their Bibles well.
They have some proof texts they know well.
You get them away from that?
I was witnessing the door while I was
going to Transformer.
This guy, he came to the door, a
great big guy, and he was a G
.W. We had quite a bit of logic
and discussion, you know.
And so I said, you know what, it
says in Isaiah, Jehovah said, I am the
first man on the land, right?
That's right.
Could anybody else say that?
Oh, no, he said, no, because he's dead.
I said, how come Jesus said that in
Revelation chapter 1?
Long silence, you know.
Well, he says, you know, the Bible gets
flaky sometimes.
Anyway, so much for that.
Do you sometimes read something in the Bible
and you don't understand?
How do you handle it?
I learned how to handle it as a
young Christian by reading something in a Broadway
movie set.
He said, I read the Bible the way
I eat fish.
If I come across a bone, I don't
quit eating fish, I just lay the bone
on the side of the plate and go
on eating fish.
He said, I do the same if I
come across something I don't understand, I don't
quit reading the Bible, I just lay it
aside.
And so I did the same, you know,
and something you don't understand, well, God knows
what it means, so you ask God to
help you understand it.
And somewhere down the road, sooner or later,
you get the answer.
Turn to Ephesians chapter 3, verse
14.
Now Paul is praying for something to happen
to the Christians at Ephesus.
Okay?
For this cause I bow my knees unto
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of
whom the whole family in heaven and earth
is named, that he would grant you, according
to the riches of his glory, to be
strengthened with power by his Spirit in the
inner man, that Christ may dwell in your
hearts by faith.
I got that far as a young Christian.
I said, what now?
What's he praying for?
I mean, how come he's praying for these
Christians at Ephesus that the Holy Spirit, or
that Christ will give Christ a new heart?
I've read through it about 16 times now.
That Christ may dwell in your hearts by
faith.
Some translation, that Christ may abide in your
hearts by faith.
I just couldn't get it.
What's he talking about?
Aren't they all Christians?
They all already have Christ living in their
heart?
Why is Paul praying this way?
Doesn't make any sense, you know.
So what was the problem in the first
place?
Well, they live inside of a plane, and
that's not taken care of.
And not long after, there's a Greek scholar
called Kenneth Reese, W-U-E-S-T,
and he did his own copy of the
New Testament, and I happened to get a
copy, and I'm reading it in Ephesians chapter
3, and here's what his verse said.
That he would grant you, then verse 17,
that Christ, here's what he had, that Christ
may settle down and feel at home in
your heart by faith.
Christ doesn't always feel at home in our
hearts, you know.
If there's things in our hearts that shouldn't
be there, Christ really doesn't feel at home.
That doesn't mean he leaves, but he is
disquieted, and he needs our joy, he needs
our peace.
We've hundreds of times heard people say, well,
I just don't have any peace, you know,
I don't have any joy.
What's wrong, you know?
The problem's never with God, it's always with
us.
Our heart is supposed to be his home.
Okay?
We are his temple.
He lives there.
I remember being in a hotel one time
in Grandview, Minnesota, many years ago, I was
preaching at bush camps up in the back
mountain, and I stayed overnight in this hotel.
I just happened to get a room over
the beer parlor, and sat in there, you
can imagine, the hollering and the shouting and
the bombing, and I think a couple of
fights went on, and all kinds of stuff.
Do you think I felt at home?
It was this strange hotel, I was sitting
there, and the door opened, the guy walked
in, looked under the bed, looked in the
closet, and walked out again, didn't say anything,
you know.
It was that kind of a place, you
know.
I mean, I put a chair under the
doorknob that night.
But, I did something that wasn't too charitable,
I prayed that God would burn this hornet's
nest down, you know.
I made sure, I said, now make sure
nobody gets hurt, you know.
And you know what?
I burned about a week later, you know.
I didn't feel I had to let the
insurance company know that I didn't get into
it, you know.
Yeah.
But I didn't feel at home, I'll tell
you.
Now being in a different place over the
years, especially in that kind of ministry, where
you just didn't feel at home, you know.
And you couldn't do anything about it.
And people, there are times when Christ doesn't
feel at home, in my heart, in your
heart, you know.
But He doesn't feel at home, yes?
I decided not to say it.
That's exactly, on the way to Winnipeg, me
and Frank and John were reading through the
whole book of Ephesians, and when we were
done, that's the exact portion that we re
-read again.
Frank re-read it and later testified on
it.
Now that you're preaching on it, I just
have to tell you.
Okay.
When you have a heart that's full of
envy, are you envious of what other people
have?
Wish you had a better wife, a better
husband, a better home, a better job, a
better car, better kids.
Are you envious?
The Bible makes it very clear.
We're not to be envious of anybody, you
know.
You should be totally satisfied with your situation
in life, whatever it is.
You need more money?
Well, that's fine.
God knows you need it, you'll get it
in due course of time.
But we're not to be envious at the
wicked, especially at the wicked, it says.
You know, they do things, bad things, and
earn money and get lots of money, and
then they zoom ahead and you don't get
anywhere and then you live an unrighteous life
and you wonder how come this is, you
know.
But we're told very clearly in Psalm 37
that we're not to be envious at the
workers of iniquity because they'll soon be cut
down and they'll wither away, you know.
Okay.
Or a heart full of covetousness, which is
much the same, Luke 12, 15, Christ said,
Take heed.
You know, Christ had been talking about the
unpardonable sin in the context, and there was
a guy in the crowd who wasn't listening
and when he got a chance and Christ
stopped him and he said, Master, speak to
my brother.
Will you divide the inheritance with me?
And Christ said, Who made me a judge
or a divider over you?
And then he said, that's what he said
to the guy, then he said to them,
says to the crowd, Take heed and beware
of covetousness because a man's life does not
consist in the abundance of the things which
he possesses.
Our houses are so full of things, your
feet stick out the windows.
We still don't have any more time for
God anymore.
It's like that, isn't it?
Covetousness.
Remember in the Old Testament, there were eight
things that the Israelites were told that were
never to covet?
Your neighbor's wife, husband, ex, ox, ox's ass,
or servant, manservant, maidservant, or anything you have.
You're not to covet anything your neighbor had.
That's a hard one.
Sometimes we don't even realize it's going on,
but we're coveting certain things that other people
have, and we're envious at them, and Christ
is disquieted within us because we're supposed to
be satisfied in Him.
It's like God said to Abraham, Fear not,
Abraham, I am your shield and your exceeding
great reward.
If you've got God, you've got everything.
You've got everything.
I say it again, if you've got God.
So don't ever be covetous.
He grieves Jesus Christ.
Sometimes it's unbelief.
You ever go to a meeting and just
say to yourself, Ah, nothing's going to happen
here.
It's going to be dead, you know.
And it is dead to you.
It may be quite a lot to somebody
else.
I never could understand as a pastor, when
people are following by shaking your hand at
the Sunday morning service, and somebody says, You
know, pastor, I didn't get it or anything.
I actually fell asleep.
God just wasn't here.
Somebody else comes around and grabs your hand
and you're weeping and say, Oh, pastor, God
spoke to my heart this morning.
He blessed me so greatly.
I mean, in the same meeting, you know.
How do you figure it out?
Well, you have to figure it out somehow.
Anyway, Hebrews 3.12 says, So
be careful, brethren, you don't have an evil
heart of unbelief.
I had a friend in the States and
he had to travel and he was flying
all the time in his business.
And so one morning he told me he
had a fight with his wife and he
didn't make it up and he took off
and that was that.
So he made up his mind, I'm not
going to witness to anybody today.
He was the kind of guy, he and
most of his wife, they're always witnessing to
people, but he made up his mind.
No, he had a bad attitude.
He was really upset and angry with his
wife and he's flying, you know.
I'm sure not going to witness to anybody,
you know.
Well, he opened his briefcase and the New
Testament fell on the floor from his briefcase
and the girl sitting next to him says,
Oh, is that a Bible?
And she picks it up, you know.
Well, yeah, it's a Bible, you know.
Oh, do you read the Bible, you know?
And he said, That rascal is a lord
of the mind.
He made me witness.
And he led this girl to Christ, you
know, see.
But he had this evil heart of unbelief.
Well, you go that way.
But, you know, did you go pray before
you came today?
I'm not going to ask you to raise
your hand or anything, but I ask this
question quite often in churches.
And I call it an embarrassing question because
the response is usually, almost always, is very
slow, very low.
Very few people come to church service and
pray in the first, you know, expecting a
blessing and praying for God to bless them.
You know, about two years ago, my friend
rang a long-distance call from Phoenix, Arizona.
And so I gave him his name and
he said, I was in some of your
meetings years ago and I was really blessed
by them.
And he said, I found out where you
lived.
He said, I just want to pray for
you.
So he started to pray.
And people, it went on for ten minutes.
And he went most of the time.
A lot of the time I was just
getting showered to death there.
And he, it wasn't put on.
It was just a mighty thing, you know.
He's known me several times since.
He always wants to pray, you know.
He doesn't want to talk much, but he
wants to pray for me.
And that's beautiful, you know.
At one time when I was in Crusades,
I had 18 people who prayed for me
every day.
Some of these people fasted and prayed one
day a month or maybe one day a
week even, you know.
And they were part of my team.
So you have to never worry about them.
They didn't know about them, but I knew
about them.
They were the ones I was under God,
I was looking to.
Anyway, a heart full of worry and unbelief,
you should take heed, brethren, lest there be
in any of you an evil heart and
unbelief.
You sit there in a meeting with unbelief
in your heart, nothing's going to happen, you
just hope it's not a long sermon, this
kind of garbage, you know.
And the Christ who lives within you will
be grieved, you know.
You lose your joy and peace, and sometimes
it's hard to get it back, unless they
come on God's terms.
What about pride?
I've often heard people, sometimes preachers say the
biggest problem they have is simply pride.
You know, you preach a great sermon and
people tell you what a great sermon it
was, and then you're on cloud nine for
a while, and then maybe your wife will
bring you down.
Something may happen somewhere, and she will come
down.
Pride grows before destruction and a haughty spirit
before a fall.
You can be sure of that.
God has angels who know how to put
a cane between your legs and trip you
up, you know.
And so pride God hates because it's Satan's
sin.
His sin.
He corrupted his wisdom, does anybody know the
rest of that?
In Ezekiel.
He corrupted his wisdom by reason of his
brightness.
That is, he got looking at himself instead
of looking to God.
And he saw how much more beautiful than
the average angel he was.
And he was a goner.
Pride.
I don't know, when I look at myself
and know my own heart, there really isn't
any room for pride, you know.
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 most save
in the death of Christ my God all
the things that charm me most.
I sacrifice them to his blood.
If you've got a pride problem, take a
trip to the cross.
Ask God to speak to you about the
cross.
You know, one chapter in the Bible I
read again and again and again is Isaiah
53.
There's things in that chapter that you don't
get at one reading.
Maybe even after six readings.
All we late sheep have gone astray, and
the Lord has laid on him the iniquity
of us all.
I think the Martha reading there in the
KJ says, and the Lord has made the
sin of us all to meet on him.
Our sin, your sin, my sin.
Pride goes before destruction.
Do you have a judgmental spirit?
Many people who try to justify having a
judgment, well, you have to pass judgment.
Well, there may be some kids in your
own kitchen.
Oh, yes.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 it says, Judge
nothing before the time until the Lord come.
Who both will bring to light the hidden
things of darkness, and will make manifest the
counsels of the heart.
And then, listen, then shall every man have
praise of God.
The weakest Christian, God will be able to
praise in that coming day.
Who are you that judges another man's servant
whose own mastery stands or falls?
Yes, you shall be held up for God
is able to make him stand.
It's not your business to be, you know,
criticizing, judging some other guy's hired servant.
That's what the Bibles say.
I gave you in one of the other
meetings the God's recipe for revival in James
chapter 4, and after one came up, the
next verse says, Speak not evil one of
another, brethren.
This has been called, this gentleman, this has
been called the favorite indoor sport of these
angelicals.
It is.
I was flying in Austria one time, and
got talking to the guy next to me,
and he's a born-again believer.
He said, I was raised Orthodox Catholic, and
then he said, some Pentecostal got ahold of
me, and I could see it, you know.
Oh, I said, it was nice.
And where do you go to church?
Oh, he said, I've gone back to the
Orthodox Church.
Oh, really?
He said, why did you do that?
He said, you know those Pentecostals?
He said, this is not true of all
Pentecostals, by any means, but it was the
one he outlived me in.
It could have been a Baptist church.
He said, in the church I went to,
they were always, constantly criticizing one another.
I never ever heard that in a Greek
Orthodox church, you know, and so I went
back to the church, you know.
You and I have no business.
Now if somebody is sending a Christian mother
or sister, you have a right to go
with them and talk to them about it.
Not from up here, down there, but on
the same level, you know.
You have a right to do that, and
sometimes a duty to do that, but not
to gossip about them to somebody else.
That's not your business.
So it says, judge what?
Judge nothing.
That's what it says.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 4.
Judgment of spirit.
May be an odd fellow of us.
You know, pornography is a great problem, even
among evangelicals.
I'm going to give you a couple of
illustrations here.
I had meetings in the New Orleans in
Edmonton, and a pastor who was attending a
meeting, not from that church, came for counseling
one night, and he told me, he said,
I'm hooked on pornography.
I think I've got demons or something.
He said, it's just totally overwhelming.
He said, I'm going to have to leave
the ministry because I just can't stop it.
We checked him out.
It wasn't a demon problem, but I reminded
him the Bible says that no man say,
when he's tempted, I'm tempted of God, for
God can't be tempted with evil, nor does
He tempt any man.
But every man's tempted when he's drawn away
of his own lust and enticed.
I said, brother, it's you.
And you've got to repent.
I had a psalmist with me, and he
started to pray.
Oh, that's one of those cases where I
think he forgot we were in the room.
I mean, he was alone with God, and
he was praying, his body was snapping back
and forth.
He was crying to God to tell Him,
God, you're a wicked, rotten, hell-deserving sinner,
He loves you.
He told me, repent of you.
And he prayed on, and we just prayed
silently, and suddenly, you know what happened?
He laughed.
And you could hear the chains hit the
floor, you know.
He was free.
I mean, he knew it.
Oh, man, what a time of shelter we
had afterwards.
He said, I want to do my testimony
tomorrow night.
Well, I said, listen, you did your testimony,
don't talk about the porno problem, you know,
just say that you had a great problem
that Jesus delivered you from.
Okay.
So the next night, we had a guy
take him to one of the meetings, and
so I went to the guy, and I
said, now, I'd like you to take everything
tonight, not just my sermon.
He'd just been doing my sermon.
And I take everything.
He said, okay, sure, no problem.
Talk yourself to that.
I mean, he's sitting right there, and I'm
talking to him.
So this guy gave his testimony, but he
said, you know, God led me to sing
a song, and he wasn't the singer.
Oh, happy day that fixed my choice, I'll
be my Savior, and my God.
And people listened.
As he began to sing, God came on
the scene.
If you shut your eyes, you'll have shown
that God had lowered an angel on a
golden chord, and an angel was singing.
The whole congregation was weeping.
I was weeping.
I mean, God was so clear.
It was incredible.
The pastor with me, Bill Alliance, the head
pastor, he said, I'm 63 years old.
I've been in ministry long enough.
I've never seen anything like that in my
life.
Well, I said, I've heard it before in
revival meetings.
I said, it's God the Holy Ghost.
I thought to myself, I've got all this
on tape, and this is going to be
great.
Man, pray it to other Christians, you know.
So I went to see the guy, and
you taped everything tonight, no?
He said, I just taped your sermon.
I said, what?
Well, did you want more blood?
I said, don't you remember for the service,
you sat there, I stood here, and asked
you to tape everything tonight?
I don't remember that, I said.
I said, you don't remember that?
I thought, like, sir, are you a goon
or something?
I said, forget it.
I walked away wondering to myself, oh, a
stupid character, a man alive.
How stupid could they forget?
The Lord said, get on your knees.
I mean, it's crucial.
So I got on my knees and the
Lord said, now stay there until you can
praise me that it wasn't taped.
I didn't want it taped.
I was just meant for this crowd to
know.
So it took me about five minutes to
get over it.
And I was able to praise the Lord
for it.
And it's never been a problem since then.
Judge Member Spirit O'Connell read one other
case in the center boy, Saskatchewan.
And a guy came up to me before
a meeting and he said, my wife and
I were in a missionary meeting recently and
we went forward and dedicated our lives to
full-time missionary service, but he laughed, we
can't, we can't go into any kind of
ministry.
I said, why not?
He said, well, we're hooked on porno.
He told me, he said, I started off,
I got my wife into it and now
we're looking for dirty stuff all the time,
he said, and we're doing some of this
stuff and I said, do you want to
be out of it?
Well, as a matter of fact, we don't.
He said, I enjoy it too much.
And he started to walk away and I
stopped him and I said, just a minute,
before you go, are you a born-again
believer?
Well, he said, I've accepted Christ into my
heart.
I said, okay, then listen to this before
you go.
Every time you watch that rotten filth, you're
forcing the Christ who lives within you to
watch it with you.
And you know what happened?
I'm not exactly, he fell on his face
on that carpet throwing this and wept and
wept and wept.
And he kept crying, God, I didn't realize.
I didn't realize, God, can you forgive me?
And he just wept his way back to
God, you know.
They went to Bible college after that and
they're in ministry now, I don't know where,
but this is how it was, you know.
But that's what's happening.
People don't think of that.
You watch some salacious thing, you know, well,
God, I'm not going to do it often,
I might do it once or twice, but
Christ says to watch it with you.
And that's what we're up against, you know.
That's why he's praying that Christ would settle
down and feel at home.
As new believers sometimes we do a lot
of things we shouldn't do because we're not
taught, you know.
But sometimes after 15 years a Christian is
still doing some of the things we have
been taught, you know, that we shouldn't be
doing.
And then sometimes it's just an unforgiving spirit,
Ephesians 4, 32 says, be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, even as God for Christ's sake
is forgiving you.
Is there anybody you can't forgive?
And people sometimes say, oh, if you knew
what I've gone through, you know why I
can't forgive.
I feel like saying, oh, come on, drop
that, what are you talking about?
You think I haven't learned anything?
I've been around a long while now, you
see.
No.
I tell people, you can't tell me anything
that would shock me, I've heard it all,
you know.
So people, you know, have this attitude, crazy,
can't forgive.
Why can't you forgive?
Well, it was so rotten, you know.
Okay, what did Christ pray on the cross?
Father, forgive them for they know not what
they do.
He forgave the world for crucifying on the
cross.
Now, you see, when he asked us to
forgive us, he does it on the basis,
even as Christ has forgiven you.
Sometimes I repeat myself, illustrations of everyone have
to forgive me for that, Spurgeon did the
same, I discovered.
I had a case, you know, where a
fellow phoned me one night, talked two o
'clock in the morning, he just confessed to
his wife, that he had committed adultery on
one occasion, and she wouldn't forgive him, and
she ordered him out of the house, and
so I went over that middle of the
night, and so she's mad as I had
her, you know, and he's sitting there crying.
And I finally got her attention, she wouldn't
even listen to me, and finally I got
her attention, and I reminded her about this
parable Jesus told, and I said I'm just
going to put it into Canadian dollars so
you can understand.
Here's a guy, he owes $50,000, and
he's going to be thrown into a debtor's
jail, he begs the creditor to have mercy
on him, and the creditor does, and he
says okay, let's forget about it, you don't
owe me anything.
And this guy goes out in the street,
and he sees a guy who owes him
$5, grabs him by the throat, shakes him
to his teeth, so I asked him pay
me what you owe, I'm going to throw
you into a debtor's jail.
Now wait a minute, he was forgiven $50
,000, couldn't forgive $5,000, so I told
him about this story, and I said now,
the $50,000 represents your sins or my
sins or your husband's sins against God, that's
the sum total of our sins.
Because James chapter 2 verse 10 says if
you keep the whole law of God and
offend God in one point, you're guilty of
the whole business, you've broken every law that
God has given you.
Have you ever heard someone say that?
If you keep the whole law of God
and then offend God in one point only,
you have broken every commandment that God has
given you, the reason being the law of
God is indivisible for humans, it's not 10
commandments, it's the commandment of God.
That's what I said.
So I said to her, so the $50
,000 is your sins against God, the $5
,000 thing, that's your husband's sin against you.
And I said, what did Jesus say to
that servant that wouldn't forgive the five?
She didn't know.
And I pointed right at her and I
said, you wicked servant.
And I stared her down, you know, and
she found her head dropped.
She looked at her husband and smiled.
He came running over, fell on his knees
and she ran her hands through his hair
and it was all over.
I saw him 10 years later walking with
God, loving each other.
She couldn't forgive you, you better forgive.
You'll be in trouble.
You'll be in trouble if you don't.
It doesn't hurt the other people, your attitude,
but it hurts the one who lives within
you.
He can't send him down and feel at
home because of this unforgiving spirit we have.
In the light of Calvary, and I can't
forgive.
Then sometimes it's just that we're lazy.
I've met people who told me they were
lazy.
They just love to sleep all the time,
eat and sleep like the dogs over there
in Isaiah.
They like to eat, they like to sleep,
sleeping, lying down, loving the sun where it
says they can't bark.
They're barkless, but they should be doing their
thing, which is barking, but they can't.
And the Christians sing to talk about Jesus,
and we often won't do that.
Maybe we're just too lazy.
Some people are like that, just plain lazy.
The Bible talks about the slothful over there
in Proverbs and other places a number of
times.
It doesn't speak in complimentary terms of a
slothful person either.
But there's other thoughts as well.
1 Corinthians 15, 58.
Where we have in the Bible the word
therefore or wherefore it takes you back in
the context.
He's coming to a conclusion from what he's
been saying.
So 1 Corinthians 15 is a great chapter
on the resurrection of Christ and our resurrection
when he returns.
And then comes this word wherefore, my beloved
brethren, be you steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in
the work of the Lord, for as much
as you know that your labor is not
in vain in the Lord.
Charles Winston preached 60,000 times before he
died.
Winfield only preached 15,000 times because he
died very young.
He sometimes preached 6 times in a day.
Both those guys did.
Spurgeon sometimes preached 18 times in a week.
I once preached 28 times in one week.
I wouldn't do it again.
Four times in a day.
It was good but it was too much.
Anyway, lazy, too lazy to think about God.
Be steadfast, always abounding in the work of
the Lord.
Because you know that your labor is never
in vain in the Lord.
Years ago, Melford, Saskatchewan, I visited a guy
in the hospital.
He was a sinner.
He was interested in being saved.
And I gave him a Bible.
Never saw him again.
Years rolled by.
I was down in the state somewhere and
a guy came up and he said, do
you remember giving a Bible to a guy
in Melford, Saskatchewan many years ago?
And I said, yeah, what about him?
Well, he said, that guy got saved.
He read the Bible, got saved.
And he told me that if I ever
made a use of it, it would happen.
So, you don't see it now.
You'll see it someday.
You may not see it in this life
at all, but you'll see it in eternity.
What you've done, tracts you've passed off that
people got saved to and you never heard
about, or a word you gave.
Like, I was at home one time and,
well, the guy, he and his wife didn't
get along at all.
I saw that.
They were Christians, but they didn't get along.
That's sometimes true of Christians too.
And so I determined to get to talk
to this guy somehow, so we ate meals
together, but he disappeared as soon as the
last crumb was in his mouth.
And so this day, I just said to
him, um, how
was your day?
And he said, I don't know.
said, I don't know.
He said, I don't know.
And so
he
said, I don't don't eat our One lady,
though she was honest and she didn't mean
to steal, but she was in a store
and she was trying purses on her arm
and walked out of the store with a
brand new purse on her arm.
She was halfway home before she realized she'd
stolen his purse.
So she said, if I go back, they'll
call me shoplifter and I might wind up
in jail.
So she never went back.
But in our meetings God spoke to her
and so she went back.
She told us she was going to go
back the following day and so we prayed
for her and she gave her testimony that
night.
She was just running over.
She told the manager, she asked the manager
of the store, she told him what had
happened and he said to the lady, you've
just made my day.
He said, I've been here for 30 years.
We've never had any shoplifter come back.
And you're not even a shoplifter, but you
came back.
And he said, man, it's just made my
day, you know.
And she said, you're so happy.
Yeah, but sometimes Christians do shoplift.
When they come for counseling, they want you
to pat them on the head.
They want you to be kicked in the
rear, you know.
It's stealing no matter how you look at
it.
It's stealing, you know.
You jumped off the shelf, you know, you
put your hand up, you know.
People try to justify it with cruel things,
you know, stupid things.
It's just, you wonder sometimes.
Anyway, let him this soul steal more and
more.
But rather than labor work in the sense
of things which is good, that he may
have to give to him that needs.
Do you ever think of it that way?
It doesn't say that you may have to
shop away in the bank, you know.
That you may have to give to him
that needs.
We need to think that too, you know,
because as Christians we don't normally think that
way.
You've got several hundred dollars in your pocket,
maybe.
Maybe there's somebody you're going to meet you
need to give some of that money to,
you know.
God may lay a missionary on your heart
and you should send him a check, maybe,
you know.
We should be open then.
Okay, tithe, that's fine.
We should tithe and give often.
But there should be times also when we
go beyond that.
And maybe sometimes even until it hurts a
little.
But you cannot get God.
Remember that verse to Ephesians.
Whatsoever good thing any man does, the same
shall he receive of the law.
Do you believe it?
You'll get it.
Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and run
over, shall then give into your bosom.
For it is the same measure that you'll
meet with God, and shall be measured to
you again.
Maybe it's what the Bible is saying.
I'm not preaching a prosperity doctrine.
Don't misunderstand me.
Because Paul said he went to this prison.
Oh, we both hungered and thirsted and naked
and bustling and had no certain dwelling place.
So he was not a millionaire.
Some of these guys are telling you people,
you know.
Anyway, the Son of Man has not where
his head.
All that I haven't stolen, steal no more.
Maybe I'm a hard heart.
And we often hear people say, you know,
I hardened my heart years ago and it's
still hard today.
The Bible says in the book of Job,
who has hardened himself against God and has
prospered?
Nobody has.
In the Gospels, there are, I think, four
places where it talks about people having hardened
hearts.
In three cases it were believers.
And sometimes we just harden our heart.
The preacher gets up, announces text, and right
away we freeze.
No, no, we don't want them to monkey
around that text, you know, because it bugs
them.
So they just harden their heart, shut off
their ears, and maybe sit with a smile
on their face.
Yeah.
George Bell, a good friend of mine, he,
great soul man, man.
He moved to Toronto from Brandon, Manitoba, and
met 400 people of Christ the first years
in Toronto.
He learned the Italian language, because he was
having such a ministry among Italian people, he
just learned the Italian language, you know.
And he told a story one time, a
fellow in his congregation was falling asleep all
the time.
And he tried everything, and talked with the
guy, and the guy says, Pastor, I don't
know what it is, I meant to get
up to speak, I'm gone.
So he heard a story, so he talked
to this guy's wife, and he said, now,
he said, get some Limburger cheese, you know,
and the next time he falls asleep, stick
it under his nose, you know.
So she did.
And he called and said, Mabel, take your
feet off the pillow.
I mean, just one of those things, you
know.
Anyway, the guy never slept again.
All right.
Sometimes Christians lie.
You know, in Ephesians chapter 4, where for
putting away lying, speak every man truth, he's
talking to Christians.
You know, lying is this thing that almost
everybody gets into sometimes, you know.
It's easier to tell a lie in some
situations than to tell the truth.
Down in St. John, Michigan, they gave me
an old heap, and I was living 10
miles out of the city, and one trip
in and out, and I had to put
another quart of oil in it, you know.
And smoke poured out from behind all the
time, and they didn't have any insurance on
the heap, you know.
Anyway, St. John, Michigan.
And my wife was flying in with one
of my daughters one night, and so at
the last minute, fortunately, the preacher said, take
my new car for your wife.
Now that old heap you have, take my
new car.
Okay, so I took his new car, drove
about three blocks from the church, and ran
a red light, and slammed into another car
with this brand new heap, you know.
Woo!
Hey, Lord, where you up to?
Woo!
So I sit there, and the policeman comes,
and he said, now what's the story?
I said, the story is I ran a
red light.
I didn't see, it was up here, up
and down here, I didn't see it, and
I'm terribly sorry.
He looked at me and he says, well,
he said, you know, I've been a cop
for 25 years.
I think that's the first time I've ever
heard the truth.
Well, he said, you know, the court is
sitting this afternoon, and I can take you
down there and get it all settled, send
you down to the court.
They only charged me $25.
It wasn't a bad deal, you know.
And the preacher's car had insurance on it,
so it wasn't a bad deal.
But if I had done that with another
heap, no insurance, you know, I'd still be
paying probably, you know.
But the Lord had a reason, all that,
because in going to the court session, I
had a chance to witness to the cop,
and he was wide open.
He didn't accept Christ, but he was wide
open.
And a lot of these people are so
open down the road, they get saved, you
know.
A lot of them do.
So, keep that.
But speak truth always, no matter how costly
it is.
Tell them the truth.
I got picked up one time by a
Monty.
I was driving a 72 Ford Club Wagon,
and he said I was speeding.
I was watching him pretty carefully.
I didn't think I was speeding.
I didn't argue.
And so we talked a while, and then
I had a chance to witness to him.
He said, you know, I'm an alcoholic.
He said, if I don't get a victory
over this alcohol, I won't be a cop
very long, you know.
They know I'm fighting for it.
He said, and I sure need a lot
of help.
So I told him about Jesus, how Jesus
could take care of this problem for him,
you know.
And he didn't accept the Lord at the
moment, but he was listening carefully, and I'm
sure down the road he did.
And then it dawned on me, this was
the reason why the Lord had him, you
know, pull me in.
God wanted me to talk to this guy.
So I really wasn't speeding, but God made
him see it differently.
I mean, God works with machines too, you
know.
He's got a lot of ways of working.
It should never make you uneasy.
It should only make you uneasy if you're
living in sin.
Then you're up against the mastermind of the
universe.
And remember in one of the sessions, I
think I said, if you're trapped with the
speed of light, which works out to some
millions of miles an hour, it'll take you
120,000 years to cross the Milky Way
constellation, of which we're a small part, you
know.
And that's the mind you're up against.
So, you better not try arguing with God.
He's got the last word, always.
Full of anger, anger arrests an abusement of
fools, it says in Ecclesiastes, you know.
Anger arrests an abusement of fools.
If you do lose your temper, ask the
person or person's forgiveness.
Down in Chile, I was speaking at a
Bible camp on a lake in the mountains.
In the Andes mountains.
It was a beautiful place.
About 50 or 60 people, and we had
a session one day, and we were just
sitting in chairs in a big circle in
this big room, and a fellow got up
and he said, Hey people, he said, do
you realize something?
They didn't know what he was getting at.
He said, one year ago, we were at
the same camp, and every one of us
that were at the camp a year ago
are here today.
There isn't one missing.
And he got a look around, yeah!
That was really strange, you know.
They were all there.
And he said, if you remember, last year,
at that session, I lost my temper, and
I said some very evil, hard things.
And God brought us together today so I
could make it right, you know.
And he made it right with the group.
And I thought to myself, God could even
do stuff like that, you know.
Get all these people together?
Well, look, Christ said, go into the village
over in D.C. and find the coals
there, you know, that have been tied, and
you just pick it up, and if they
ask any questions, you just say, the Lord
has a need of them, and I'll answer
them, and they find exactly as Christ said.
He told them again, another occasion, when you
go into this village, you'll meet a man
bearing a pitcher of water.
Follow him, and go into the house where
he lives, and that's where we're going to
have the Passover feast.
I mean, God orders all this stuff, you
know.
He knows how to do it.
I had to meet a man in Portage
O'Prairie one time, near Chicago.
I lived there one time.
I lived in Winnipeg at the time this
happened, though.
But I had to meet this guy, and
all I had was his first name, you
know.
I don't have a great memory, you know,
except for the Bible, maybe.
But anyway, I said, Lord, I have to
meet this guy, so you're going to have
to put us together.
So I drive an hour and a half
to get to Portage O'Prairie.
I'm going down the main drive, and then
I saw this post office sign, and I
just had a few, I didn't even buy
some stamps, so I turn around like this,
and the guy walked by in front of
the car, you know.
The guy I'm looking for, so.
Yeah, he can do all those things, and
we trust him.
He can't do anything that we don't trust
him, you know.
You've got to believe him to see his
power and his wisdom.
Okay, anger.
That's Ecclesiastes 7 and 9.
Rest in the bosom of fools.
Heart full of carnality, Paul said to Christians,
who ask this among you, all these envies
and strife and divisions, are you not carnal
and lawless men?
And sometimes we're doing things in a carnal,
that is, in a fleshly way, the way
the world would do it, thinking as the
world thinks and acting the way they act.
And as Christians, we're not supposed to be
that kind of person.
To be spiritually minded is what?
Life and peace, it says in Romans 8.
To be spiritually minded.
So, we should be attempting always to do
things in a spiritual way.
James spoke about envying and strife and divisions
and all that.
He said, this wisdom doesn't come from God.
Historically, it's sensual, it's carnal, and it's demonic.
It comes from demons.
And sometimes we listen to demons, you know.
And repeating things the demons are putting into
our minds and hearts.
And it grieves us that the Christ who
lives within.
Heart full of idolatry.
I read a while ago about an outstanding
businessman in Toronto, Canada.
He's one of the wealthiest men in Canada.
And every morning, he spends 15 or 20
minutes on his knees before a wooden idol.
He's an idol worshiper.
Even in Canada, you know.
And people are doing that.
We saw it from India.
You'd see temples shaped like a pyramid on
the outside of the temple with the carved
figures.
And sometimes with the carved figures of homosexuals
engaged in homosexual acts on the outside of
the temples.
This kind of thing, you know.
But idolatry in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3,
it says the covetous man is an idolater.
And covetousness is idolatry.
Don't ever let money get a hold of
your heart.
That's not where it's at.
I had a preacher friend, and anytime he
was asked to candidate in a church, the
first thing he would say to him was
this, I don't want to talk about money
at any time until we've discovered, you've discovered,
and I've discovered it's the will of me
to come or not to come.
I don't want any money to enter into
the problem at all.
And he said, you know, sometimes I accepted
a call from a church who was getting
considerably less than I was getting in the
church I was in.
That didn't mean anything to him.
But I know a fellow in Alberta, and
he was called to a certain church in
another city in Saskatchewan, and he let me
know at the very ultimate level, I'm earning
$42,000 a year where I am, and
I can't accept anything less than $42,000
a year if I come here.
Now this was about, oh, 15 years ago.
They couldn't afford that, but they wanted him
to come because he had a good reputation
and all of that.
So they did call him.
Then they struggled for several years trying to
meet the payments, the bills.
They had a hard time.
By contrast, in India, I met a young
guy about 25, and he was called to
be a pastor, so he was so excited,
he said, it's six months down the road
before I'm to become a pastor in this
little group.
So, you know, he asked a question like
you might ask a pastor here in Canada,
where do you live?
Have you got a house?
Oh, no, he said, no.
No, we never talked about that, he said,
and if they don't have a place, he
said, I can sleep under a platform.
I've done that before, he said, you know.
Oh, really?
I know you wouldn't have a car, so
I said, well, do you have a donkey
or a bike or something?
No, he said, I'll just walk.
I said, and what will they pay you?
Oh, he laughed.
He said, they're very poor, and they won't
pay me probably anything.
So then I said, and what kind of
a library do you have?
And he held it up, a little tattered
Bible, four by six inches falling apart, that
was his library, you know.
And he could hardly wait to go.
And then later this other guy, the 42
,000 thing, how does that figure this out,
you know?
So my wife and I, we bought him
some books, and we got him a bike,
and he thought the money would come, you
know.
He couldn't believe it.
But you know, there are people like that.
They'll serve God no matter what.
And he would see God would provide for
him, you know.
He didn't have a state of sound or
a place to play the vanity game.
He always paused, you know.
So.
Okay, idolatry.
A covetous man is an idolater.
And sometimes you just have an unclean heart,
but keep thinking evil, you know.
2 Corinthians 7 says this.
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, and remember,
there are 7,487 promises in the Bible.
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us
cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the fleshly
spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.
If you've got an unclean heart, you'd better
get it cleaned up, you know.
Draw near to God, and he'll draw near
to you.
What's the next verse say?
Cleanse your hands, you sinners.
Purify your hearts, you devil minded.
Be afflicted in morn and weep, that your
laughter be turned to mourning and your joy
to heaviness.
Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,
and He will lift you up.
Unclean heart.
You know, it says, and this is something
North America needs to remember.
In the days of Noah, all flesh had
corrupted its way.
I mean, they were morally corrupt.
Everybody was corrupt.
It was that bad.
Except for Noah and his family.
And then, they were violent.
There was violence in society everywhere.
We've got the same problem today.
Violence in society, moral corruptness everywhere.
And if God doesn't do something with this
generation of North America, you're going to have
to apologize to Noah's generation.
It goes together.
Corrupt minds, no love, violence.
One of the universities in the Eastern United
States, they were recently given a gift of
$80 million to put some of their top
brains to try and find out what is
causing violence in America.
I mean, how stupid can they get?
Don't they know what's causing it?
I mean, you see violence on TV everywhere.
Women with pistols, people shooting and stabbing.
And they say, oh no, that doesn't affect
anybody.
Then why do people spend billions of dollars
every year advertising their products if advertising doesn't
affect anybody?
You know.
And then people, they're drunkards, and they don't
like that word.
So they say, well, they're alcoholics and they
have a disease.
If it's a disease, how come the government
licenses places where they can catch it?
Right?
Does that make any sense to you?
It doesn't make any sense to me.
But that's how it is.
Uncleanness.
Witchcraft.
I've been amazed.
You know, the first time I ever preached
or lectured on this problem was in Minneapolis.
And about 400 people stayed behind from their
first meeting to listen to this lecture.
At the end, they gave an invitation.
I was just shocked.
About 40 people came forward, all of them
born-again believers, involved in some form of
witchcraft.
All the way from one or two things
to 30 things, perhaps.
And over the years, we've often had to
counsel people into witchcraft.
And quite often, I would say that mostly
it was done sort of innocently in that
they didn't even know what they were doing
was witchcraft, you know.
Then, in Cincinnati, Canada, which is a lot
smaller than the Twin Cities in Minneapolis, I
lectured on it there, and about 30 people
came forward involved in witchcraft, you know.
So it's a problem.
And so it says in Ephesians 4, don't
give any place to the devil.
If you give him an inch, he'll take
a foot, you know.
And you can't just shake it off.
You get involved in witchcraft, you can't just
shake it off.
I don't see a place in the Bible
where anybody could do it on their own.
They needed outside help.
I mean, seen that and done that many
times over the years.
Don't get into that.
And things like the Ouija board.
I don't know how many people we've dealt
with.
A friend of mine, a preacher, was in
the home, and they had a Ouija board
sitting on the coffee table.
And the coffee table was made of glass,
sitting on a thing that had rubber.
There's no suction cups on it, just sitting
on rubber.
And they had this Ouija board sitting there,
and he knew what that was.
So he said, they were using it, and
he said, can I ask it a question?
Sure, go ahead, you know.
So he said, you know, it had little
heart shapes in it with three legs on
it.
It moves around ladders and spells out words.
So he said, Ouija, tell me, who is
Jesus Christ?
He said, the devil, that thing, threw up
in the air and turned over and swam
to the floor and broke into a thousand
pieces.
And the people of the house said, what
in the world?
He hadn't touched it, you know.
Then he explained to them what it really
was, you know.
And so, it's not just a harmless game.
Do you want a definition of witchcraft?
Listen carefully.
Any attempt to get information or help or
entertainment by an appeal to hidden sources of
spiritual power, other than the God of the
Bible, that's witchcraft.
Any attempt to get information, help or entertainment
from any source other than the God of
the Bible, that's witchcraft.
They can do all kinds of things.
A Christian teacher in Campus Case in Ontario,
they had a new principal in the school
and he invited all the teachers in the
fall to come to his place for a
party and they all went and he was
doing witchcraft.
And he had a big candle on the
table and he lit this candle and walked,
kneeled around the table with her hands on
the table and she didn't want to do
that because of peer pressure, you know.
So she had her hands on the table.
And he lit this thing and I said,
watch the candle.
And he watched the candle and the flame
was about this high and it blew up
like this and it was about this high.
Now he said, watch it again and it
turned down like this and just like a
blowtorch was blowing out here, you know.
And she said, well it's time I got
out of here.
So she got out of there, you know.
But she said, you know what, all the
way home walking there was something walking inside
of me.
She said, you could just sort of see
the outline of it.
And that night in bed she had a
hard time.
There was something in her room, you know.
And so, anyway, it says, don't give any
place, any room, to the devil.
Don't do that.
It grieves Christ, of course, greatly.
We mentioned before something about gossip, bitter endings,
strife, and all of that.
James 3, 14 to 18, you might want
that reference there.
Let him restore us to humor.
We talked about that.
Not self-willed, it says in Titus 1,
7.
I guess this is really, I don't guess,
I know, this is the basis of all
our problems in the area of sin, you
know, that we're self-willed.
We want to do what we want to
do whether God wants it or not, you
know.
And sometimes we say, well God, I'll do
it this once and I'll never do it
again.
Why do we do this once, you know?
That's not right either, you know.
So, it grieves God's Spirit.
That list he gives over there in Ephesians,
you know, Ephesians 4.
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby
you are sealed unto the day of redemption.
Then in 1st Thessalonians 5, it says, quench
not the Spirit.
The word quench has the idea of throwing
water on a fire.
And if we quench the Spirit, when he
leaves us to do something, we'll put water
on the fire.
And that quenches, it puts the Spirit down.
It grieves him.
Um, I think one thing that most of
us have sometime entertained is just fear.
The fear of man brings a snare.
We're told that in many examples in the
Bible, including Abraham.
He arrived on two different occasions.
Then his son Isaac arrived too far on
his dad's bad example.
And for the same reason.
Because telling the truth was too unpleasant.
They were among unconverted people and they might
have been killed.
They figured then they forgot that God was
a God of the universe, not just a
tribal deity.
Sometimes we forget that too, you know.
God is everywhere.
If you're among people and somebody blasphemes God
or Christ, do you ever say anything?
Do you?
Most of us don't.
I mean, it hurts us.
We don't like to hear that and we
walk away.
Listen, that's an open door for a witness,
you know.
I found that out years ago.
Just say something.
Say something, you know.
I was walking with a brother-in-law
of mine who at that time was not
a Christian.
He and his wife and I, we were
walking down the street.
I guess it was the Olympic.
And a couple of guys passed us and
they were blaspheming God.
And my unsaved brother-in-law turned, went
back, stopped these guys and balled them up
for cursing.
He wasn't even a Christian.
He had some moral standards.
There was an opportunity, you know.
I'm going past a drugstore and there's probably
15 or 20 kids standing in a big
circle there having a great time.
And one of these kids, he started shooting
up this big mouth, you know, about Christ.
And they were laughing, giggling and so I
broke through the group and walked up to
him and I said, you were talking about
my best friend Jesus Christ and I don't
like the way you're talking about him.
And you know, he never said a word.
He just stared at me with his mouth
open.
He couldn't talk, you know.
And I waited.
Nobody in the group said a word.
So I turned and walked out of the
group when I went down the street.
We don't ever forget that, you know, see.
But we have opportunities like that.
And even if it's a rough crowd, you
say something, you know what you'll find?
Mostly they'll quiet.
I've never had a bad reaction in a
case like that.
You'd expect it in some cases and you
don't really see that because God is with
you in that.
I sometimes tell people, you know, I remember
a long time, this guy, I didn't know
he was the bull of the woods back
in the Shantyman days and he had a
terrible reputation.
I found out a little later on.
He was blackmailing all the time.
We'd have to meet in the woods, you
know, in the bush.
And so, he got cursing and he said,
you know, it's life in the bush, he
said, it's terrible, he said, trucks break down
and he gets to be 40 below at
night and nothing works anymore and he blasphemes
some more and I said, I'm surprised it
isn't even worse.
He said, why did you say that?
Well, I said, I hear you guys all
the time asking God to damn this truck
and damn this and damn that and damn
something else and you don't know what answers
pop up.
Oh, well, he said, well, now, wait a
minute, he said, we don't mean it.
I said, why don't you tell God that
so he'll understand.
We don't mean it.
After I found out who he was, I
met him and he was really taking a
bull by the horns.
I didn't realize he had this awful reputation
of being this big blasphemer, you know, but
he just backed off, you know.
People never get challenged, you know, and they
need to be challenged and we can do
it.
Do it in a nice way, you know.
Just let them know you're there and Christ
is alive.
There is no fear in love, but perfect
love casts out fear because fear has torment,
1 John 4, you know.
He that fears is not made perfect in
love and God's love is the only love
that is perfect.
Remember faith works by love?
Remember that?
Galatians 5, verse 8, I think.
Perfect love casts out fear.
Perfect love casts out One time within a
week, one week period, two different gals, not
the same, in the same meeting, I think,
they came for counseling and they were both
filled with fear after listening to some rock
music, you know, and they said, we can't
get this stuff out of our mind, you
know.
I know today they're using a lot of
Christian rock.
Do you know where the word, the term
rock and roll came from?
That describes sex on the streets in Harlem
in New York.
That's where it started.
And so they're talking about Christian rock?
That bugs me, you know, that's not right,
I don't think, you know.
I wonder sometimes what we're thinking about in
some of these areas in our churches, you
know.
Doesn't it say be still and know that
I am God?
Doesn't it say the Lord is in His
holy temple and all the earth keeps silent
before Him?
But you get into some meetings in New
York and you're proposing yours, you know.
Someone said, Spurgeon said, nonsense is not improved
by being bellowed.
Do you believe that?
Am I tromping on some toes today?
Nonsense is not improved by being bellowed.
No, that's, that's true.
We need to have time to where it's
quiet and you can think.
People walking around carrying the radio with them,
listening to music all day long, you know.
That is not healthy, I don't think.
It's not good, you know.
God can't even talk to them because they
don't have any time for Him.
Okay, we're talking about feeling the double-mindedness
last of all, James 4, 8.
Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your
hearts and double-mind you.
So, double-mindedness is due to impurity of
heart.
James 1, 8 talks about that.
A double-minded man is unstable in all
ways.
And the tribe of Reuben, God said, Reuben,
unstable as water, thou shalt not excel.
And sometimes we belong to the tribe of
Reuben and we're very unstable, like water is
moved by wind very easily and we're like
that sometimes as Christians.
We don't have to stay in a position.
It depends on the people we're with at
the time.
We stand here if they're Christians, we stand
somewhere else if they're backsliding, we stand somewhere
else again if they're sinners.
You think that pleases God?
No, be steadfast, remember, unmovable.
That's what He said for you and for
me.
And remember, Christ lives in your heart.
And Paul was praying we might settle down
and feel at home, really at home in
our hearts.
Husbands, love your wives and be not bitter
against them.
Sometimes there's a lot of bitterness even in
Christian homes.
And sometimes we need to, you know, Gordon
Bailey so mightily used as God.
I asked him one time, I said, don't
you ever have any trouble getting sermons?
Because he wasn't a student.
But when I did, I gave him the
New Testament on tapes.
And since he was a carol inspector at
the time, he was traveling all the time
from here to there.
And finally got to the place where he
really knew the New Testament.
He said, I don't have any trouble getting
sermons.
But he said, I have trouble in another
area.
So what is it?
And I said, he said, well, have an
argument with my wife,
and I said, have any And
he trouble sermons.
And he said, well, I have with my
wife, and
I trouble life would be crippled.
You can guarantee it.
You're absolutely right.
They don't go by facts, they go by
feelings more and by influences and stuff and
ideas and they like to talk and the
men like to sit and think, right?
At least they tell me that's how it
is.
You have to know they're giving honor to
the ones on whom you can best them.
I was in a home one time with
a client in Manitoba and he was 85
and she was 65 and they were in
love like a couple of teenagers.
I knew some of the young.
He'd walk by and pinch her and she'd
look at him and glare at him and
then she'd smile and then she'd go and
pinch him, you know.
Every time they wanted to best each other
they had to touch each other with their
arm or something and then they'd roar with
laughter, you know.
This was going on all day long.
I was in the home, you know.
Now one day he got up to do
something.
I didn't know he was putting storm windows
on for the winter anymore.
At his age, on a ladder?
So I'm helping him with the dishes in
the kitchen and all of a sudden the
ladder goes back past the window and he's
hanging on for dear life.
And we were tearing outside and I caught
him and there he's hanging on a ladder,
you know.
He looks at his wife and he starts
to laugh.
She starts to laugh, you know.
And we were all going to laugh for
all of us.
And finally some neighbor's came and got him
down over there, you know.
And I was in Klamath after an anniversary
service not long after she passed away.
And I said, Brother Gil, I said, how
was it with you?
And he said, I miss my girl.
I miss her terribly.
I'm sure you did.
Well he said, I'm sure when he got
them it must have been a shoving time,
you know.
I don't think they have reruns, but if
they have, I'd like to see some of
these.
It was such a great thing to see
though.
At that age.
And she had physical deformity and yet he
loved her with all his heart.
We don't see a lot of it today.
Double mindless purifying of hearts, okay.
Did you know the Bible teaches clearly both
in the Old Testament and the New Testament
that Jesus Christ has circumcised our heart?
Now the Bible speaks about circumcision in the
flesh for the Israelites, the Jewish people.
I was talking to a Jew one time
and he said, do you understand that the
Old Testament speaks about circumcision of the heart?
And I looked at him and said, yes
I know that.
He knew that.
He didn't know what it meant, you know.
In Romans chapter 2 we're told that he
is not a Jew who is one outwardly.
Neither is that circumcision that which is outward
in the heart.
But he's a Jew who is one inwardly
and circumcision is that of the heart.
In the spirit and not in the letter,
whose praise is not a amendment of God.
And so there is such a thing as
circumcision of the heart.
And if you turn to Colossians chapter 2,
there's a verse there we maybe should look
at as we close.
Colossians chapter 2, verse
11.
In whom, he's talking about Christ.
In whom also you are circumcised with the
circumcision made without hands, it's not a human
thing, and putting off the body of the
sins of the flesh by the circumcision of
Christ.
If there's anything in your life that needs
to go, ask Christ to do it.
To circumcise that, take it out of your
life, he'll do that for you.
That Christ may settle down and feel at
home in your hearts by faith.
And so if there's a problem there in
your life, maybe something I talked about, something
I haven't even mentioned, people take care of
it.
Try and say, you know the Bible says
walk in love.
Walk in love.
Let all your things be done with love.
Walk in love.
Live in love.
And have a loving attitude to everybody that
you meet.
I had a man in one of my
churches and he, I guess he was probably
the most faithful witness next to Bill Rempel,
or maybe he was saying he was Bill
Rempel, but it didn't look like I ever
met, you know.
He just loved to witness.
But you know what he told me?
He said, for many years I wanted to
be a Christian and I didn't know how.
And he had some close relatives who lived
near his place who never once heard the
gospel of him.
So he never found out how to be
a Christian.
He's in his fifties.
He says, I heard people talking about God
and religion.
Got as close as I could and listened
to everything I heard, you know, hoping to
get some light on it.
He didn't read the Bible.
He didn't know about that.
But this went on and on, you know.
Then one day a young Christian who was
a druggist whose wife was a doctor, they
were going as a team to Africa as
missionaries and didn't know.
And he said to this man, Elmer, Jesus
Christ means everything in the world to me.
What does he mean to you?
And he said, boy, I was getting mad.
That young whippersnapper talking to me that way.
Man, he was mad, you know.
But within 24 hours he was saved, you
know.
And he had such a sweet way.
If you introduced him to somebody, within three
seconds he'd be talking to them about Jesus,
you know.
He had such a sweet way.
Nobody could get mad at him, you know.
And sometimes he told me, he said, Pastor,
I've been duck hunting and I've wounded a
couple of ducks and I can't get them
in the boat.
Could you come and help me?
Well, I knew what he meant.
He'd been talking to some sinners and he
got them so far he couldn't get them
all the way.
He wanted me to come and help him
get them in the boat, you know.
Oh, he was a great person.
Look at the Lord now.
Actually, when he was 80 years of age,
he contracted incurable cancer.
He asked somebody to pray for him and
he was healed.
And he lived for some years after that.
Now he's in heaven.
And someday he will be there.
Take heed how you build on Christ the
foundation.
Remember we were told that?
Take heed how you build thereupon.
For other foundations can no man lay than
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Build with gold and silver and precious stones,
not with wood and stone, we were told.
Remember?
So, let's pray.