Amen.
Well, now let's turn to John's Gospel, Chapter
1.
John's Gospel, Chapter 1.
I find John's first chapter, one of the
most beautiful chapters.
In fact, if I had to, I could
well give a series, two series, three series,
on this just beautiful first chapter.
Stanley, have a go down there at Walton.
Revel.
I'm sure you've probably already done it many
times.
In all the wonderful things, there's so many
varied things in this first chapter of John.
Indeed, it's got 51 verses and not one
verse too many.
But now, we're going to read the last
few this evening, this morning.
We're going to read from verse 45.
And Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him,
We have found him, of whom Moses in
the law and the prophets did write, Jesus
of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any
good thing come out of Nazareth?
The meaning of that is simply that he
was a thoughtful man, a reader of the
scriptures, and as he read the Old Testament,
he saw that Messiah, of whom Moses spake,
was going to come out of Bethlehem.
And there was no reference, it seemed to
him, to Nazareth.
And here is Philip saying, Come, see the
one of whom Moses spake, Jesus of Nazareth.
He said, Well, can any good thing come
out of Nazareth?
I haven't heard of Messiah coming from him.
He had intellectual difficulties.
And Philip, wisely, didn't discuss the point with
him.
He simply said, Come and see.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith
unto him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no guile.
Nathanael saith unto him, Whence comest thou me?
Jesus answered and said unto him, Before the
Philip called thee, when thou wast under the
fig tree, I saw thee.
Nathanael answered and said unto him, Rabbi, thou
art the Son of God, thou art the
King of Israel.
That was a quick one.
From scepticism to faith in one split second.
It happens that way sometimes.
It did with Nathanael, and we shall see
the reasons in a moment.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I
said unto thee, I saw thee under the
fig tree, believest thou?
Thou shalt see greater things than these.
He saith unto him, Verily I say unto
you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and
the angels of God ascending and descending upon
the Son of Man.
Well, we've looked at the man behind the
tree, we've looked at the man up the
tree, and then we've looked at that blessed
one on the tree, and this morning we
want to look at the man under the
tree.
Before the Philip called thee, when thou wast
under the fig tree, I saw thee.
The man under the tree.
And to summarize the whole incident, it's a
story of the complete foreknowledge of Jesus with
regard to Nathanael, even before, in an earthly
sense, he had met Nathanael.
And as he came, he revealed his foreknowledge
of this man, and gave an estimate of
his true character, which surprised Nathanael.
How in the world do you know that
about me?
We've never met.
And then the Lord Jesus went on to
reveal certain other things he knew about Nathanael.
And this foreknowledge of himself by Jesus was
so extraordinary to Nathanael that it utterly convinced
him.
That the one who could say that of
him was none else than the Son of
God, the King of Israel.
And all his intellectual problems went out of
the window.
And then having made that instantaneous and glorious
confession of faith, Jesus says, Believest thou?
Because I said unto thee, When thou wast
under the fig tree, I saw thee, thou
shalt see greater things.
And then he began, proceeded to give a
marvellous picture of himself, culled from the old
story of the ladder that Jacob saw with
the angels of God ascending and descending upon
it.
It's a marvellous little passage.
It doesn't waste any words.
It's all compressed.
You've got to imply, you've got to look
into it, and you can see what's implied,
and what a sweet message is implied.
And so it was that in spite of
his intellectual problems, he was prepared to do
what Philip suggested he did, come and see.
And that's always to be our way of
approaching those that have honest doubts.
Now, most doubts aren't honest.
They're not really interested as to who was
Cain's wife.
They want something, an excuse for evading the
issue.
But there are some honest doubters, honest hearts
that just frankly cannot see and understand.
And instead of trying to explain it all,
we would be well to say, come and
see.
But how do they come and see?
Well, come and meet some of the people
who are seeing.
And as you see these people are seeing,
you'll begin to see what they see.
And then you won't worry about doubts again.
You'll know.
And you'll fall as Nathaniel did, and make
the confession of faith in Jesus that he
made.
And as Nathaniel was coming, Jesus said of
him, and he did it in Nathaniel's hearing,
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no
guile.
He didn't say, an Israelite indeed, in whom
is no sin.
I think Nathaniel, if I read his character
rightly, would, had he been challenged, so that's
far from the truth.
No sin?
I'm full of it.
I'm a muddled, mixed up man.
But what Jesus said, not that an Israelite
indeed, in whom is no sin, but in
whom is no hiding of sin.
That's being without guile.
A man who's honest with himself, and honest
with God.
And we're needed to be honest with anybody
else.
An Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile,
no hiding of sin.
And in answer to that assessment of himself,
you see, it wasn't altogether unfavourable.
Don't get the idea that God's assessment of
you is always negative.
He may say things about you that you
didn't realise.
And it may be a very generous assessment
of you.
But the fact that he knows you so
well, is extraordinary.
And you might well want to say, with
Nathaniel, whence knowest thou me?
And then Jesus said this, before Philip called
thee.
When thou wast under the fig tree, I
saw you.
I saw you through and through.
And it would seem that apparently something happened
alone under that fig tree, which enabled Jesus
to say of him, an Israelite indeed, in
whom is no guile.
Well, what do you think did happen under
that fig tree?
I believe there was a literal fig tree,
perhaps, in his garden.
I believe it was a favourite place to
which Nathaniel loved to resort.
He was a bit of a, well, shall
we say, a little bit of a depressive.
He wasn't an ectrovert so much as an
introvert.
And when he wanted to think, when he
wanted to sort out his problems, and when
he wanted perhaps to try and pray, he
didn't get very far with his because he
didn't as yet know the Lord.
It was to that fig tree that he
went, I imagine.
And you know the other day he'd been
there.
It really was for Nathaniel rather a special
day.
What do you think happened under that fig
tree, which enabled Jesus to say of him,
an Israelite in whom is no guile?
I believe under that fig tree it was
a moment of truth.
For Nathaniel, a moment of stark honesty with
the God whom he hardly knew about himself.
He said, oh God, I'm all mixed up.
I go to the synagogue, I even read
the scriptures sometimes up there.
And I don't know what it is about.
One thing I do know, I'm all the
time falling short.
I'm not the father that I should be.
I'm certainly not the husband I ought to
be.
And I'm not as impeccable as the other
people see.
Indeed, Lord, you know the whole list of
them.
And I can only believe that under that
fig tree, he spent the time going into
the witness box against himself.
Most of us go into the witness box
on our own behalf, in our own defence.
It's a new thing, and it was for
Nathaniel to go into the witness box against
himself.
And Jesus saw it.
Though he wasn't actually corporeally present, he knew
it.
Nothing attracts the attention of divinity so much
as seeing a man under the fig tree
doing that sort of thing, and saying those
sort of things.
And because of that, judging of himself, their
honesty, their confession of his confusion, of his
misery, and his sighs, maybe.
Jesus could say of him whatever else you
can say about him.
You can tell me his faults, but I'll
tell you one thing, he knows them.
He's told God more things about himself than
his critic could ever say.
There is an Israelite, indeed, in whom is
no guile.
Now, this is the one thing, the basic
thing, that God requires of us.
That we should be man without guile.
Not that we should be sinless.
Perhaps not always victorious, but we're honest about
it all.
We don't hide it.
We know ourselves.
And when we pray, we pray along that
line.
And when we share a little bit of
what we know of the Lord, that's always
part of our sharing.
And the thing that impresses the Lord, and
impresses others, is this lack of guile, this
lack of hiding, this simple honesty before God,
and where appropriate, before our brothers.
It's a beautiful characteristic.
And it's linked with the forgiveness of sins.
David, in that great Psalm 32, in which
he celebrates his emancipation from the bondage and
accusation of hidden sin, says, blessed is the
man whose sin is covered, whose sin is
forgiven.
Now, I'd better get this straight, because it's
quoted in Romans 4, and the order of
the words are a little different.
Let's have it from Psalm 32.
You know, Paul makes much of this verse,
and uses it to enforce his teaching.
Psalm 32, blessed is he whose transgression is
forgiven, whose sin is covered.
Blessed is the man to whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity, whom the Lord doesn't blame.
Not only forgiven and covered, but you're not
even blamed by God.
And in whose spirit there is no guile.
Now, the one thing that marked David, with
regard to that sin of his, was guile.
It wasn't only the committing of adultery that
was so wrong.
It was a horrid deed.
But it was the hiding of it that
was worse.
And in order to hide it, he sacrificed
another man's life, so that he could quickly
marry Bethsheba, not because he loved her so
much.
But in order that when the baby came,
it might be seen that it had been
conceived in wedlock, and his reputation saved.
It's about the dirtiest deed on the page
of history.
The callousness of it.
The depths to which even a believer can
go.
Not only in committing the sin, but in
covering it.
And we add sin to sin in that
way.
And if there was one thing that marked
David, it was guile.
And he goes on to say how the
guile was perpetuated when I kept silence.
He didn't have to tell a lie, he
just had to say nothing.
And everybody assumed that the child had been
conceived in wedlock.
He arranged in such a way the death
of her husband that it seemed quite natural,
as a consequence of battle, that it was
very carefully planned.
Well, there came the time when God sent
that prophet to him.
And you know, I believe the coming of
Nathan to David was welcomed.
He'd had a hard time keeping silence.
When he kept, when I kept silence, my
bones waxed old through my groaning all the
day long.
His whole health was impaired while he kept
silence.
And when he had that story told to
him and Nathan said, Thou art the man,
I believe David said, Thank God, he's giving
me an opportunity, a God-sent opportunity.
And sometimes you've got to wait for that
to make certain confession.
A God-sent opportunity to at last lose
his burden.
And he didn't argue, he didn't excuse himself,
he didn't find any hiding.
He said, I have sinned before the Lord.
And there was his first step out of
duplicity into that place of being a man
without guile and to complete the process.
When he was released and set free and
restored to God, he was so happy that
he wrote out his testimony in Psalm 51,
in beautiful poetry, and he called for the
choir march.
He said, Set that to music and sing
it in the church on the next Sabbath,
that the whole nation shall know the mercy
of God to a sinner like me.
He was a man without guile, he says
so.
Blessed is the man whose sin is forgiven,
whose transgression is covered, to whom the Lord
imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there
is no guile.
Now I'm not quite sure whether this being
without guile is a condition of forgiveness or
its consequence.
Perhaps it's both.
Quite obviously God can't forgive what isn't confessed.
And yet on the other hand there's nothing
that makes a man more ready to give
his testimony to know he is forgiven.
That's the great incentive.
It isn't that you want to grind out
some awful confession, you want to give praise
to God for what he's done for a
sinner like you.
Someone has said the man who's justified by
faith doesn't mind what people think of him.
The only one that matters has declared him
to be right, who has confessed himself to
be wrong.
If you know that's the case, who is
he that condemns?
Indeed it's very difficult to condemn a man
who rarely takes a sinner's place and gives
a sinner's testimony.
You know God's covered it, and you cannot
but accept him on the same ground.
As Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.
And I want to say this is something
very basic, this isn't an incidental thing, there's
something very basic.
It's built into the very nature of God.
God is light and in him there's no
darkness at all, and he cannot be one
with any decree of duplicity in us.
And really this is, rightly understood, the way
that makes us, as I've said, candidates for
grace.
I'm thinking of those verses in John 3.
Everyone that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither
cometh to the light.
Let's turn to it.
John 3, verse 20.
Everyone that doeth evil, hateth the light, neither
cometh to the light, lest his deed should
be beproved.
But he that doeth truth cometh to the
light, that his deeds may be made manifest
that they're wrought in God.
That is, he that doeth evil hates the
light, understandably so.
Now you would have thought the contrast would
have been, but he that doeth good comes
to the light.
It doesn't say that.
The opposite to doing evil is not firstly
doing good, it's doing truth.
Everyone that doeth truth.
You can be fussing away trying to make
up by being very good and nice where
you've been wrong.
That's no, that will never get us right.
What God wants is doing truth.
Before you ever start doing good, do truth.
Get under that fig tree and judge it.
Be truthful with God, with yourself.
He that doeth truth.
Don't make promises about doing good, do truth
that the good will follow out of an
emancipated heart.
Doing truth.
And when a man starts doing truth, now
there's a man in whom is no guile.
It's so restful.
How much good have you got to do
to get your relationship restored?
And will you manage to do it?
And if you do it one day, will
you be able to keep it up the
next day?
Oh no, it's a hopeless treadmill.
But doing truth.
And this is one of the great words
in John's writings, truth.
And it doesn't mean doctrinal truth, it means
plain response to God's light saying, yes Lord,
you're right and I'm wrong.
Doing truth.
And when a man comes from such an
interview, from his fig tree, Jesus says, there's
a Christian in whom is no guile.
There's a lot about guile.
In old and new testament, not speaking guile.
You know, we can say one thing and
mean another.
We could profess to be standing up for
a good cause, but there's another motive.
Because the other course would have meant that
you aren't going to figure in it.
The one you're espousing means you are.
And I believe, as those that seek to
walk with the Lord, they've got to be
open to any degree of guile, of double
meanings.
And in our confessing, in our repenting and
putting things right with us, we might have
said, brother, I want to tell you there's
another motive for what I said.
It wasn't quite as I said.
And this is part of our redemption.
Now as I say, I'm not quite sure
whether that's the condition of being forgiven, or
the consequence, perhaps more likely the consequence.
I don't know, all mixed up.
And there are many things in scripture which,
like this, are they cause or consequence?
I don't always know.
They're part of our spiritual life, probably a
bit of both.
But nothing is going to make a man
so sweet, so honest, so loving, and lovable,
as knowing that God has forgiven his sin,
covered it all, and imputes no longer any
blame to him.
And he can afford to be without guile.
And the very grace of God.
I remember my dear friend Victor Monagorum, who
was here the other year.
He's the leader of Youth for Christ in
Asia.
And he told me of a fellow who
came for counselling.
He said, now Victor, I want to tell
you something.
He had to go through a room where
others were, into the inner sanctum where Victor's
study was.
He said, will you promise you won't tell
anybody?
He said, I'll promise.
And so he shared some deep problem.
And he came to Jesus with it.
And he was so released, and set free,
and forgiven, and emancipated, that he himself went
out and told all the others of the
new thing God had given him to do.
And he was not only clad in the
righteousness of Christ, but he had this sweet
characteristic that goes with it.
A man in whom is no guile.
Well, we all have this tendency to run
for hiding.
But isn't the small thing so lovely?
A fellowship of people in whom is no
guile.
And you know their yea is yea, and
their nay is nay.
And if they're tripped up in any way,
and who cannot but be, would quickly put
it right and tell you so.
And Israelite indeed in whom is no guile.
So you see that with regard to Nathaniel,
it wasn't a tree behind which he was
hiding, nor a tree up which he was
climbing, but a tree under which he was
judging himself.
And Jesus knew that fact.
And the thing that absolutely astonished Nathaniel was
the Lord's foreknowledge of him.
It was before Philip called him, when he
was under the fig tree, that Jesus saw
him.
And there's nothing quite so convincing as an
awareness of the Lord's foreknowledge of you, and
the estimate he makes of you.
And I want to tell you, it isn't
always negative.
It can be very generous, more than you've
ever dared to believe.
And when that comes home to you, it
sort of does something for you.
And when Jesus said that to Nathaniel, you
saw me before Philip called me when I
was under the fig tree.
You apparently knew and know what happened under
that fig tree.
Yes.
But listen, there was nobody else there.
There were only two people who knew what
took place under the fig tree.
It was me and God.
And you knew.
That's how the woman at the well reasoned.
What she had to say to her compatriots
was, come, see a man that told me
all things that ever I did is not
this the Christ.
No other evidence.
She had all sorts of theological ideas she
brought forward.
They were brushed away.
It was that fact.
And I want to tell you, that is
the word of God which reveals your heart
to yourself.
You may have all sorts of ideas, another
sort of emphasis, but has God's word revealed
you to yourself?
Has there stood here one man who's told
you all things that ever you did?
That's the Christ.
That's how that woman at the well reasoned.
That's how Nathaniel reasoned.
And that's how it was in one split
second.
He went from skepticism to faith because he
met one who knew him and loved him,
apparently, ere he knew him.
It's the great thing by which God testifies
to the authenticity of any word he gives.
And how often it happens.
The hearts of all men are revealed.
Yours is.
This is the real thing.
Please turn the cassette over now.
Do not fast wind it in either direction.
And dear one, he loved and knew you
the more you ever knew him.
And he makes an estimate of you on
the basis of that.
And as I say, it isn't always negative.
It wasn't in Nathaniel's case.
Man under that fig tree, he's seen your
struggles and mine.
He's heard your sighs over your condition.
You have sighed over your condition as a
Christian, and over your problems, and your inability
to meet them.
And he's heard your admissions of failure.
And he reveals that fact before you ever
got that brochure to come to Southwark, before
anybody said anything to you, simply because you
were under that sort of fig tree and
there was some element of sighs and sadness
over yourself.
He saw you.
He knew you beforehand.
Indeed, his foreknowledge of you goes back even
further, long before time began.
You, knowing what you were going to be,
what I was going to be, were part
of his plan.
You were known, you were loved.
It was so with Jeremiah, before I formed
thee in the berry.
I knew you, and added more, I appointed
you a prophet to the nation.
This is a beautiful thing.
I've been known, I've been loved, I've been
planned for, I've been died.
But when I was so far away, when
I knew not him, he knew me.
And that's enough to bring us to his
feet.
What do we want to run away when
such a God is revealed in Jesus Christ?
As I say, it's nothing so convincing.
That hymn we were singing yesterday of Wesley,
it is mercy all, immense and free, for,
oh my God, it found out me.
And when it found it out, it was
still mercy for me.
And he knew what it was, he knows
it all.
And he's got a plan for you better
than you could ever think.
He's made an estimate of you, and he's
seen just the element of that honesty.
And though you don't think you're without God,
you could be, he says, that's it, that's
it.
And that was enough, as I say, to
convince Nathaniel of Jesus.
And Jesus said, that's very slight evidence for
you to believe, I don't need any more,
I know who you are.
He said, do you believe nearly because I
said I saw you under the fig tree?
You're going to see greater things of me.
And then he said, you're going to see,
Nathaniel, you old doubter, you one with intellectual
difficulties, they're all gone, and you're going to
do more than have a simple, bare faith
in me, you're going to see, Nathaniel, heaven
opened, not closed against sinners, but open for
them.
And the angels of God ascending and descending
on the Son of Man.
And here Jesus was quite obviously referring to
the dream that Jacob had when he was
fleeing from his brother Esau, and when he
had to spend that first night in the
open air, and when he had to use
a stone for a pillow.
Very unhappy young man, homesick, with a guilty
conscience.
If he's in this situation, he's really got
nobody to blame but himself.
He's mortally offended, Esau, by his duplicity.
And he said, as he laid down, he
said, if any place is a God-forsaken
place, this is it.
He found it wasn't forsaken by God at
all.
He found his sin had done nothing to
turn God away, and he had the most
beautiful dream which expressed the grace of God
to him that he ever could have conceived.
He saw in his dream a ladder.
I think the word is more literally a
staircase, set up on the earth, right in
the place where he was lying and sleeping.
And this ladder went up, up, up, and
the top of it reached to heaven.
And above the head of that staircase was
Jehovah, speaking words of incredible good to him.
It was a wonderful thing for Jacob to
see heaven open.
That's marvellous.
But how do I get there?
Oh, thank God, there's a ladder!
Hallelujah!
Then I can not only see heaven open,
but I can get there.
There's a ladder up which I can climb
to glory.
But Esau didn't have to climb.
He saw the angels of God ascending and
descending on that ladder.
And Jesus, when he picks up this story
and tells us that he is the ladder,
he's the spiritual counterpart of Jacob's ladder, he
emphasizes not only the ladder, but especially the
traffic on the ladder.
You're going to see the angels of God
ascending and descending on the Son of Man.
He's the ladder.
He's the link between the sinner and God
all the time.
And there's no God-forsaken place in which
you may find yourself, no unhappy situation, but
there's a ladder.
We were in Switzerland some time ago, and
the daughter of the house where we were
staying, she had to leave early for work
on the day we were leaving, and we
were getting up at a little more leisurely
hour.
And she wanted to give us a little
note to say goodbye and thank you.
She slipped it under our door, and she
said, after expressing her appreciation of one another,
because she'd been helped, she said, and if
ever your pillow seems to be like stone,
there is a ladder leading up to heaven.
And the angels of God ascending and descending
on that ladder.
A ladder is very helpful, presumably, which has
got to be climbed.
And friend, you could be in a state
of mind, you haven't got the strength to
climb.
They tell us about the steps you've got
to take, three steps to victory, five, six,
or seven, according to the writer.
You know, I think when it comes to
the teaching about the victorious Christian life, we
all have a tendency, we preachers, to make
up our theology as we go along.
It's extraordinary.
Well, some make it three steps, some make
it seven steps.
They don't seem to understand we're too weak
to take the first step.
Lord knows, though.
They say, there's no need, Jacob, don't start
climbing.
The angels on this ladder, taking up your
sorrows, your needs, to God.
And the other angel, bringing down his grace,
his mercy to you.
And all you've got to do, Jacob, is
not to try and climb it, but stay
at the foot of the ladder, stay at
the foot of the cross.
And in that, Jesus, our needs have been
already brought up to God, and all grace
for sinners has already, in him, been brought
right down to us at street level.
I don't think that old dream was meant
to teach us much about angels.
I believe in the ministry of angels.
I don't know how much good I've received
from them, perhaps quite a lot on the
motorways.
Thank God for them.
Billy Graham's written a book on angels.
No, but I don't think this particular passage
has much to tell us about angels.
It's all speaking of Jesus, and every bit
of that old story is needed to give
us an adequate portrait of Jesus.
In Jesus, all my needs have already gone
up to heaven, and his grace for sinners
and weak Christians has already come down to
me.
In him, I see the Godhead shine.
It's all down there.
And he needs the whole of that picture,
to see Jesus, and this wonderful traffic on
the ladder.
And Jesus said to Nathaniel, you're going to
see that.
And you know, it's wonderful to know there
is a ladder.
As we quoted the other day, as to
the holy patriarch, the wondrous dream was given,
so seems my savior's cross to me, a
ladder up to heaven.
And you may think you've got to climb
that ladder.
And deep down you know, you're defeated before
you ever begin.
I doubt if you're going to make it.
There's one step, then the other.
The children's chorus says, we are climbing Jacob's
ladder.
Well, it familiarizes them with the story, but
it's not the real truth in the gospel.
We can't climb, but we can get to
the foot of that ladder.
And you get to the foot of that
ladder by taking the same course that Nathaniel
did.
Judging yourself, being open.
And you know, I find that much of
my prayer time, I'm not tremendously good on
intercession.
Oh, Pam and I, we do pray for
our friend.
But a lot of our time is spent
on getting to the foot of the cross.
A lot of my own personal time.
When I have time to prepare a message,
an awful lot of it is, Lord, I'm
coming, I'm not thinking very spiritual today.
Lord, I don't think I've got much peace
in my heart today.
I think it could be inalienable to stand
before the people.
That's right, just come along, anything else.
All you've got to do, my dear, he
says, is to get to the foot of
that ladder, to the foot of that cross.
For there, Jesus Christ is made to me,
all I need.
And this is a blessed reward for those
that have the experience of failure, under some
victory, that go into the witness box against
themselves, but as plain honest, that's their current
position.
Not trying to climb and improve it, admitting
it.
And then the Holy Spirit begins to give
you a new vision of Jesus, a new
vision of the cross, a new vision of
this grace.
I've had it again and again, and I
haven't been telling God where I am for
very long, before a strange peace comes over
my heart.
There's a place at Calvary where I sit,
and where all I need is available to
me.
And this was the blessed thing that was
promised to the man under the tree.
Well, you haven't always literally got to have
a special place to which you go for
such deep interviews with the Lord, but there
ought to be the under-the-fig-tree
experience.
If there's somebody struggling and striving, man, stop
it, get under that fig tree.
Don't turn over new leaves, turn back the
path.
Just come as you are, and then it
won't be very long before the wondrous vision
is given to you, and you're through, through
into victory, through into joy again.
In him, at Calvary, dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead body.
A last illustration, and it's this.
Some years ago, Pam and I were in
South Africa, and we moved up into Tanzania,
and Festo and some of the Africans, a
great team of them, about 14 of them,
were having a great campaign in the city
of Dar es Salaam.
That comes with being 73, occasionally.
Dar es Salaam.
And this was a simultaneous campaign.
All the churches were cooperating, and in every
church at the same time we had two
meetings each evening, one at five and one
at eight.
I say all the churches were cooperating, yes,
even the Roman Catholics.
The only one stranger that didn't cooperate was
the Anglican Cathedral.
I think those in charge knew a little
bit about the challenge of the message of
the Bible.
I don't know why in the world they
didn't, but the Catholics did.
And in all the other churches, the meetings
were conducted in Swahili.
I, of course, and in New English.
The only church that had their services in
English was the Roman Catholic Cathedral.
So I found myself night after night preaching
in the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and giving this
message of grace to those eager, hungry-looking
nuns who'd struggled so long under the law.
And it was a responsive time.
At the end of one meeting, an African
came to me dressed in lounge suit, and
he said, do you mean to say all
I've got to do to be saved is
admit I'm wrong, and then I'll be accounted
right?
I said, you're dead right.
All I've got to do?
Just tell God what you're not.
Just open up.
You haven't even got to ask to be
saved, just tell him you're not.
I said, why don't we do it now?
And you know, we knelt down at the
back of that cathedral, and he, so to
speak, was under the victory.
And he just told God what he wasn't,
what he hadn't got.
He didn't know whether he was a Christian
or not.
He didn't make big petitions for anything else,
he just told him what he hadn't.
That qualified him for Jesus, and he accepted
Jesus.
Jesus came in, reached him, and he rose.
I said, tell me, who are you?
What's your name?
He said, I'm the Dean of the Anglican
Cathedral.
And a few days later, a Sunday intervened,
he said to Fester Cavenger, he told him
what had happened, he said, last Sunday, in
the Anglican Cathedral, I gave a sermon they've
never heard before.
He passed so quickly, as quickly as Nathaniel
did, from doubts into liberty.
And it was just because he took the
same stance that Nathaniel did, the man under
the tree, and he saw the cross on
which the Prince of Glory died, and the
finished work, and was through into life, peace,
and liberty.
Well, if that's the way for him, it's
the way for you.
Get under that fig tree, stop pretending, just
as you are, and admit how you are,
without a plea.
You come, and he comes.
And though you've been a struggling dear child
of God, I want to tell you, there'll
be a new day.
And then, when something goes wrong, the next
time, you know what to do.
You know where to go.
You know there's power in the blood, and
you needn't stay in darkness for any longer
than it takes you to get to the
foot of that cross, to the foot of
that ladder, and you're through again.
And the devil said, how in the world
do you know that?
I expected that failure to knock him out
for about a week.
It hasn't knocked him out for any longer
than it took him to get to Jesus
again.
Amen.
Let us pray.
And we'll never forget at what price this
beautiful liberty has been made open to us.
And so we'll sing again our favorite chorus,
just the one verse.
He, he, he laid aside.
As you may be.
Let us
say the grace together.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit, be with us all, evermore.
Amen.