If you will look at the book of
Hebrews, the 9th chapter, 9th chapter of Hebrews,
verses 13 and 14, the particular emphasis on
the truth found in verse 14.
For if the blood of bulls and of
goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling
the unclean, sanctifyeth to the purifying of the
flesh, how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God?
Now in verse 14, without changing the meaning
at all, but selecting what I want to
notice, from what is there you will find
these words.
Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without
spot to God.
That's there in verse 14.
Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without
spot to God.
And of course around it is woven the
reasons for it.
That he might purge the human conscience from
dead religious works and enable it to serve
the living God.
Now let's take this step by step because
it is very important.
Now this is what Christianity teaches on this
subject.
This is what Christianity teaches.
It is not true because Christianity teaches it.
Christianity teaches it because it is true.
If I were to stand up and say,
two times two equals four, it would not
be true because I had stated it, but
I would state it because it is true.
Christianity, as it gives its witness, witnesses to
the truth.
And Christianity equals truth.
Now it is very important that we get
a hold of words and that we know
exactly what those words mean.
You know there has been a big effort
in recent times to colloquialize Christianity.
By that I mean to get rid of
all the old standard words that we have
used, all ever since English was spoken, and
to put in their places more familiar words.
Well, I'll tell you what happens when that
happens.
We lose the meaning when we lose the
word that contains the meaning.
Scientists know that, and doctors know that.
A scientist will use the same word.
Ornithologists will use a certain Latin word to
designate a certain bird.
I don't know the Latin word that designates
the bird we call Flicker.
But pretty soon, it won't be long now,
this keeps up, you will find out in
the yard a rather good-looking but oddly
shaped bird, three or four times the size
of a robin, making a strange noise.
And it will have a red dot on
its breast and a long type of woodpecker.
That thing is known by a great many
names.
My father always knew it as a Flicker
or a Wet Hen, because when it began
to say, wet, wet, wet, wet, wet, wet,
it was going to rain, they called it
a Wet Hen.
And that meant the wet weather was coming.
Then there are some who call it a
Golden-winged Woodpecker.
And others call it a High Hole, because
they go way up in the tree and
dig a hole in the tree and put
their nest in there.
So between the Flicker and the Wet Hen
and the High Hole and the Golden Woodpecker,
you will know what to believe.
But the ornithologists designate that by one Latin
term, which has never changed.
And the result is, every time any scientist
or any student hears that term, he knows
exactly.
Even I've only given you four names the
Flicker is known by.
It could be known by a dozen or
two dozen, and probably is over the North
American continent, for it's everywhere.
But when you want to think accurately, you
think in terms of that Latin name.
Now, theology is like that.
If I talk about God as the All
-Father or as the One Upstairs, or I
get some strange name or some name or
some private name, it may mean anything to
anybody.
But if I say He is God the
Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and
of all things visible and invisible, and stick
to that, then I know exactly what I
mean.
And regardless of how many weird occult religionists
try to designate God by their various names,
if I give Him the name that He
gives Himself, I always mean the same thing
that He means.
If I say Jehovah, I mean Jehovah.
And if I say God the Father Almighty,
I mean God the Father Almighty.
It never changes.
You see, words are little pictures, and each
one of them is labeled.
And it's the business of the devil and
people to pour the meaning out of each
little picture and then pour some other meaning
in.
If you could imagine what would happen at
your house for breakfast if a little picture
saying, somebody emptied the cream out and, say,
put vinegar in.
And you poured your husband a cup of
steaming coffee, and he reached over to the
little old familiar picture that he'd seen there
for years and poured vinegar in his coffee.
It would ruin the coffee, of course.
So when we find a little theological word
so familiar to the Church down the centuries
and it means a certain thing, then some
bright young fellow, usually out of some seminary,
pours that meaning out, rinses it and puts
another meaning in.
Then you don't know where you are.
You're all confused and all mixed up.
So let's stay not only by the truth,
but let's stay by the words that convey
the truth.
We have a lot of writers now, and
I won't join their ranks.
We have a lot of writers now who
are busy writing down to the people, making
morons out of all of us.
If you haven't got enough gumption and intellectual
verve to learn the simple language of the
Bible, when the word says repent, it means
a certain thing.
And when it says justified, it means a
certain thing.
When it says born again, it means a
certain thing.
Find out what it means.
It wouldn't take you a minute and a
half, and then from there on until you
die, you'll know exactly what you mean when
you use that language.
You won't have to have some silly person
writing down to you.
I don't want to be written down to,
nor talked down to.
When I turn on the radio, the only
place I ever hear preachers much, I turn
on the radio and I hear some fellow
obviously talking down to me, snap him off.
I don't want to be talked down to.
Well, now let's take this step by step.
And notice what it says here.
It says that Jesus Christ, through the eternal
Spirit, offered himself without spot to God.
Now, that presupposes certain truths, and one of
those truths is that the fall of man
is a fact.
Now, this is one self-demonstrating doctrine.
Not all truths are self-demonstrating.
A noisy, dirty little boy is a self
-demonstrating male.
If you were visiting a friend, and you
hadn't seen that friend for ten years, and
you'd heard that they had a child in
the home, but you didn't remember whether it
was a boy or a girl, if you
looked up and saw something about three years
old, so dirty that you couldn't get him
cleaned up, and yelling for something to eat,
slugging his way through a clean kitchen, you
wouldn't say, Is that a girl?
You'd know better.
That's a self-demonstrating male.
He's demonstrating by his conduct that he's a
boy.
And the worst thing in the world for
that fellow would be to call him a
girl.
And now there are truths that are self
-demonstrating.
They demonstrate themselves.
God says man sinned and fell.
If you don't believe it, buy the Globe
and Mail tonight, as soon as it's on
sale.
And read the first page.
That'll tell you.
Self-demonstrating, man did fall.
We have sinned.
We are sinning.
Hate is in the world, and greed and
avarice and arrogance, they're in the world.
Sin is here.
Scripture says so, and it demonstrates itself.
Christianity says more, however.
Merely that man has sinned, it says that
man's moral revolt alienated him from God and
banished him from the presence of God forever.
That's what it says, and that's what the
Bible teaches.
Now, the fall of man.
Three words or four, if you want to
use the article.
Four words, little words at that, all single
syllables.
There you have it.
The fall of man.
Now, you don't have to have that taught
down to you.
You don't have to have anybody write you
a pretty little story trying to incorporate that
to stir the unstirable atoms within you.
My brother, anybody ought to know this and
believe it and stand for it.
Man is a fallen creature.
We're not what we should be and not
what we were.
Sin is here, and hate and insanity and
impermanence and criminality and war.
They're all here in the world.
That's one fact.
Now, it presupposes, this takes another fact, that
redemption of man is an accomplished act, and
this was done by the Godhead.
Only the Godhead could visit this fallen man
and redeem him and restore him.
It's without human collaboration.
Dr. R.
R.
Brown tells about the old brother who got
on his knees to pray, and he said,
Oh, Lord, use me.
Use me any way you can.
But if it's all right with you, I
would like to be used in an advisory
capacity.
But there's nobody that God is using as
an advisor.
God doesn't accept advisors, and God doesn't accept
little helpers.
It's a pleasant thing to see a little
girl helping her mother bake pies.
You've seen that.
No doubt your little girl has helped you,
or you've helped somebody bake pies.
Well, the little girl gets a little dirty
mess over here on a little table while
the mother is baking the pies right.
The little girl is messing up the kitchen
generally.
And when her father comes home, she dashes,
now that she's all cleaned up again and
has a pretty little fluffy dress on, she
dashes to meet her dad.
Says, You know what, Daddy, I helped Mother
bake pies.
He smiles and hugs her and says, That's
wonderful.
He knows.
But she's just been helping her mother, which
meant adding 33 and 1 3rd percent labor
to what her mother was doing.
I heard of a man who wrote a
book once, and he dedicated it to his
little girl.
It said, To Shirley, my daughter, without whose
help this book would have been written one
half time sooner.
And that's it.
We help.
We like to help, you see.
We want to help God.
We say, Oh, Lord, I'd like to help
you.
But you can no more help redeem yourself
than you can help convert yourself or help
create yourself.
God does his work alone, without any human
collaboration.
We cannot contribute one atom to the work
of God.
Now, redemption was a work of the Trinity.
Here's what it says here, and I'd like
to bear down hard on this.
If we get no further, we'll get that
far.
That redemption was a work wrought by the
Trinity.
The fall was a work wrought by man
alone.
But the redemption was a work wrought by
God alone.
The text says that Christ, that is, the
Son, through the eternal Spirit, that is, the
Spirit, offered himself unto God, that is, the
Father.
So we have in the act of redemption
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost united.
The persons of the Godhead cannot work separately.
Keep that in mind always.
We can think them apart, but they never
can be apart.
The early Church Fathers recognized that right away
and said, We are not to divide the
substance, though we are to recognize the three
persons.
The Father and the Son and the Holy
Ghost are co-substantial, consubstantial.
They are one substance and cannot be separated.
So it is impossible to think of the
Father over here doing a work and the
Son out there doing a work and the
Spirit across there doing a work.
The Spirit and the Son and the Father
always work together in whatever is done.
If you will read your Bible, you will
find that it teaches that the Father created
the heaven and the earth, and then turns
around and teaches that the Son created the
heaven and the earth, and then says the
Spirit created the heaven and the earth.
And it's not contradicting itself because the Father
and the Son and the Holy Spirit work
together in creation, and they work together in
redemption, too.
You will notice how the Trinity worked together
when Christ was incarnated.
At the Annunciation, the angel came and said
that the power of the highest shall overshadow
thee, and the Spirit shall come upon thee,
the Holy Ghost, and that holy thing that
is born of thee shall become the Son
of God.
There were the three Persons in the Incarnation.
Then at the Baptism, if anybody comes to
you as they do and says that they
don't believe in the Trinity, ask them about
this.
Tell them that the Father spoke out of
heaven, the Son stood on the bank of
the river, and the Spirit came as a
dove from the Father to light upon the
Son.
And the Father said, This is my beloved
Son, and put the Spirit upon him.
So you have the three Persons at the
Baptism of Jesus.
You will find also here three Persons at
the death of Jesus.
And at the resurrection of Jesus there were
three Persons.
Jesus said, If you destroy this temple, I
will raise it up.
There was declaration that the Son would raise
himself up.
Then he said, The Father will raise him
up.
And it's always taught the Father raised the
Son.
But in Romans 1 and 4, it teaches
us that the Holy Spirit raised the Son.
So there again we have at the resurrection
all Persons of the Trinity working in perfect
harmony to do the work of God.
So in the redemption.
Now there are some errors held, and I'd
like to have you get the errors out
of your mind.
But you say, Why waste your time on
errors?
Why not preach the truth?
Well, you might as well say to a
farmer, Why waste your time on weeds?
Why don't you just plant corn?
If he plants corn and doesn't deal with
the weeds, he won't have any corn very
long.
I've always wondered why.
Of course, I know why.
It's because the world's upside down and sin
is in here, in this world of ours.
One fellow wanted to know what you could
do to make the world a better world
in which to live.
Well, he said, I could think of one
way I could make good health contagious.
But good health isn't contagious, sickness is contagious.
You just wait around to catch good health.
You won't catch it, you'll get measles.
So it's not good health that's contagious, it's
disease.
So it is in the world.
I've often wondered why a garden wouldn't produce
tomatoes and yellow corn and all the rest
without a lot of care, but it'll produce
weeds and green berries without anybody's help at
all.
Because the God said to Adam, Thorns and
thistles shall it bring forth unto thee, and
in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt
learn your bread.
Sweat of your face.
So man's face has to sweat in order
to keep the weeds out.
So if you're going to know truth, you're
going to have to pull the weeds out
in order that truth can grow.
All right, let's look at some of the
weeds.
Then after we've cleared the weeds away, we'll
see where true corn grows.
That Christ the Son differs from the Father.
Now that is one of the weeds that
I'd like to have you pull out of
your mind and never allow it to grow
there.
The conception is that Christ is for us
and God is against us.
There never was any truth in that at
all.
Christ being God is for us, and the
Father being God is for us, and God
the Holy Ghost being God is for us,
and the Trinity is for us.
And it was because the Father was for
us that the Son came to die for
us.
And that's why the reason that God is
for us is why he is at the
right hand of God now, the Son pleading
for us.
The Holy Spirit is in our heart, he
is the Advocate within, Christ is the Advocate
above.
And all agree.
So there is no disagreement between the Father
and the Son over man.
They say that Christ was a loving and
kind and God was stern and just.
It took me quite a little while to
escape the feeling that the New Testament is
a book of love and the Old Testament
a book of judgment.
But I have gone through the Old and
New Testament, carefully counted the words, and I
find there's three times as much about mercy
in the New Testament as there is in
the Old.
Or three times as much in the Old
as there is in the New.
And equally as much about grace in the
Old as there is in the New.
Way back in the days of Noah, Noah
found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
And we read this morning, the Lord is
gracious, merciful and gracious, slow to anger.
Grace is an Old Testament quality, and judgment
is a New Testament quality.
Read your 23 Matthew, read your book of
Revelation, read Jude, read 2 Peter, and see
what they tell us of the terrible judgments
of God that are coming upon the world,
New Testament judgments.
So God is a God of judgment and
a God of grace.
Judgment is in the New Testament, and grace
is in the New Testament.
Judgment and grace are in the Old Testament.
God is always the same without change, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost.
And then they teach that Christ won God
over to our side by dying for us.
Some people imagine that.
Now, I don't say that anybody actually writes
a book teaching this, but the idea is
you get it, you know.
It sort of seeps in by osmosis into
the Church.
That Christ won God over to our side.
I've heard evangelists, you know, I might have
done it myself, telling about the unangry God
with his shillelagh raised to destroy a sinning
man, and Jesus rushing in, and the shillelagh
fell on the head of Jesus, and he
died and the sinner lived.
Well, now that's good drama, but it's mighty
poor theology, for there's not a word of
truth in it.
The Father so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son, and it was
the love of the Father that sent the
Son to die for mankind.
So the Father and the Son were in
perfect harmonious agreement that the Son should die
for the sins of the world.
And I don't think I'm far wrong if
I should say that while the maiden's son
alone, Mary's son alone, Jesus, actually died on
a cross, I believe that the heart of
God ached and was as deeply pained as
the heart of the Holy Son.
If your boy, you had a son, and
that son were to be executed by hanging
tomorrow morning, I ask you, who would suffer
the greater pain?
The boy who died with a rope around
his neck, or you?
I believe your pain would be greater than
his, for his pain would be brief and
over, and yours would never be over.
So when the Holy Father turned his back
by the necessity of justice on his son
who was dying on a cross, I believe
the pain in the heart of God was
as great as the pain in the heart
of the Son.
And when they drove the spear into the
side of Jesus, I believe it was felt
in heaven at the right hand of God.
Though only the Son died, yet the Father
suffered because he was one with the Son.
Then, of course, they teach or wrongly get
the idea that only one person had part
in redemption.
The truth is, as I have said, that
all three persons have part in redemption, that
the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all had
part.
The Father received the offering at the hands
of the Holy Ghost, and what offering was
it?
It was the Son who was offered as
a lamb without spot and without blemish.
So all three persons of the Godhead had
part in redemption, though the redemptive price was
paid by the Son to the Father through
the Spirit.
Oh, the depths and the heights and the
light and the darkness and the cataracts of
love that flow down from the heart of
God through his Son to mankind by the
Spirit.
Now, salvation is redemption appropriated.
You see, redemption is an objective thing.
It's outside of you.
Redemption is something that took place on a
cross, but salvation is something that takes place
inside of you.
So when I have appropriated redemption and made
it subjective, I've taken that which is external
to me, redemption, and made it internal within
me, that's salvation.
So salvation is redemption appropriated.
And the three persons call the lost to
salvation.
The Son said, Come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden.
And in John it says, No man can
come unto me except the Father draw him.
And in the book of Revelation it says,
The Spirit and the bride say, Come.
So the redemption that was wrought for us
by the three persons becomes salvation when we
heed the call of the three persons, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, and we come.
Now I'll close with this.
Once Jesus sat down with some sinners to
eat bread.
He knew why he was there.
He was there for the same reason the
Salvation Army girl goes into a saloon in
the United States.
They don't have them around here, I guess.
But they go in and give away or
sell or get rid of somehow war crimes
and come back out again.
You see a Salvation Army girl going into
a saloon.
She's not going in there to get a
drink.
She's going in there to give the water
of life.
Now that's the way Jesus ate with sinners.
He sat down with them everywhere, not that
he enjoyed their wickedness, but that he wanted
to help them.
So they saw him with the sinners, and
they said, How is it that he eats
with sinners?
He told them three little stories, and they're
all one story.
Why, he said, one time there was a
shepherd, and he had a flock of sheep,
and he got 99 of them safe in
the fold.
But he looked around, and he said, There's
one missing.
And he left the 99 safe and went
and looked everywhere until he found the sheep.
He said, That's not enough.
One time there was a woman, and she
had a beautiful piece of jewelry composed of
ten pieces of silver.
Now, not coins to buy milk with, but
ten pieces of silver.
They were jewelry, not coins.
She said, You know how a woman will
do.
Her beads will break.
Oh, she'll go out with the beads, and
she'll have her husband and kids down on
the floor searching everywhere.
Finally they come up with them, each with
a little handful, but there's not enough.
Well, that's what happened to this woman.
Something broke, and down went her jewelry all
over the floor.
She picked it all up, but she said,
There's one piece missing.
So she got her candle, and she went
searching everywhere, and finally down here, she found
it.
Ah, she said.
Yelled out, I found it!
And the woman across the fence said, Good,
good.
We're glad you found it.
Everybody was glad she found that.
Then he said, That isn't all.
There was a man one time who had
two sons, and one of them was a
young delinquent, we call him now.
And he said, Father, give me my share.
I don't want to wait until you die.
You may not die yet for years.
Give me my share.
I never could quite understand why the father
did it, but he gave him the share.
I'd have given him a boot.
But he gave him his share.
And he took it and went away and
spent it.
Later on, he got lying around there dirty
and ragged and smelling of the pig pen.
And he said, What a fool I've been.
Boy, have I had it.
He said, Aye, aye.
Back home, he said, My very servants are
well-dressed, clean, and well-fed, and here
I am lying in a hog pen.
He said, I know what I'll do.
I'll go back home.
He said, Aye, aye.
And as he went, he made his little
speech.
He picked it all up.
He said, I'll tell my father I am
not worthy to be called thy son.
I have sinned in my sight.
Therefore, make me one of thy hired servants.
He said, When they got back there and
the father saw him, he ran and greeted
him and gave him new garments and killed
the fatted calf and had a feast.
I heard those three stories from the time
I can recall when I was 17 years
old when I was converted.
I read those.
But I never knew what was meant here
until years later when I had a session
with God in earnest prayer.
Oh, God, what does this mean?
And I ignored what all the commentators said
it meant, which is usually a good thing
to do.
And I sought God alone to find out
what it meant.
And it came to my heart a revelation
just as beautiful as when in flying you
break through the clouds and see the sun
-bathed landscape below you.
I saw it all, and I see it
now.
And that was years ago and I've had
no reason to change my mind.
There were the three persons of the Trinity.
That lost boy was the lost world.
That lost coin was the lost world.
That lost sheep was the lost world.
And there was the father looking for his
lost boy.
And there was the son, the shepherd, looking
for his lost sheep.
And there was the Holy Ghost, the woman
with the light, looking for her lost coin.
And they all added up to being the
redeemed human race.
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were all looking
for the lost.
The father was waiting for his boy to
come home.
The son was looking for his sheep.
And this woman, the spirit, was looking for
her silver piece, the jewelry that she was
to wear around her neck.
And so God said to me, this is
what it means.
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are all busy
searching for his lost treasures.
Now, Jesus said, that's why I talk to
sinners.
I am the son looking for the sheep.
My father is looking for his boy.
And the Holy Spirit within me is looking
for the silver coin.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are united in
this.
Now, that's to me wonderful.
This is not great preaching, but it's preaching
about something pretty great.
And I hope you realize it.
And I hope you see that you have
the answer to all the heretics and all
the picture emptiers and all the people who
want to moronize you and write silly stuff.
I hope you have the answer to it
all.
I know what I believe, sir.
I believe that man fell and God redeemed
him and he redeemed him.
All three persons of the Trinity were engaged
in the holy act of redemption.
The Father received the sacrifice, the Son, David,
and the Holy Ghost conveyed it.
So Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the divine
Trinity, is engaged in saving mankind.
I pray that we may be wise enough
to know it and turn our eyes to
Him while it is called today for the
night coming when no man can work.