Now, for the time left, I am to
talk about the book of Hebrews and to
bring my long series of sermons on that
to a close.
Look at the 13th chapter of the book
of Hebrews, beginning with verse 8.
The old man of God that I still
think is Paul, although I admit and I
defer to scholarship that it might not have
been Paul, it doesn't make any difference who
wrote it, but it's the Holy Spirit who
inspired it.
He says in verse 8, that Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday and today and forever.
We want you to understand that and know
it.
The Missionary Society of which you are a
member, we are members here at this Church,
literally had this as one of its great
pillars in the early days, that Jesus Christ
was the same yesterday, today and forever.
The whole Church, not only the little groups
that formed the alliance, but the whole Church
was startled to hear this again and hear
it emphasized and it blessed the Church all
over the continent.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and
forever.
Then in verse 9, he says, that we
are not to be carried about with divers
and strange doctrines.
I don't like to see people carried about
by the exuberance of some preacher that's in
for the time.
The Russians say, Have you heard so-and
-so?
I don't like people that are converted too
often.
I grant a man to be converted from
sin to the Lord, or to religion, and
then if he finds that he hasn't found
the truth quite, then I allow him to
be converted once more to the truth.
But after that, I'm afraid of men who
get converted too often.
I find people who are swung about with
every wind of doctrine.
All somebody has to do is preach a
sermon on the radio, and they write in
a letter immediately all trembling because they've heard
something.
Well, don't worry, my brother.
The Word of God stands here, and verse
9 says, that we are not to be
carried about with divers and strange doctrines.
For it's a good thing that the heart
be established with grace and not with meekness,
which have not profited them that have been
occupied therein.
I think I told you about a man
who wrote in and said, I see in
the alliance witness that you spoke about Adam.
He said, Which Adam?
There are three Adams.
I wrote him back and told him that
Paul didn't know that, and I quoted Paul.
He wrote back and said, I'm not responsible
for Paul's ignorance.
Well, he knew there were three Adams.
I could have been all startled and upset
by that, but I didn't lose any sleep,
because I've got the Word of God here,
too, and I didn't need him, really.
Then there was verse 10.
It says, We have an author that they
have no right to eat of, who served
the tabernacle.
He says that the bodies of the beasts
were taken outside and burned outside the camp,
and to fulfill this, Jesus also, that he
might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered outside the gate.
He taught us, therefore, separation and says in
verse 13, Let us go forth unto him
without the camp bearing his reproach.
In verse 14, notice how filled it is
here.
It would take weeks yet if I preached
and treated every verse as a text.
He says, We have no continuing city here,
no permanent city, but we are seeking one
to come.
Always remember that you are a pilgrim.
You are not a settler.
You are a pilgrim.
You are not settled down here, you are
traveling, you are hunting something.
You are seeking a city that is to
come.
But he says, and has proved it all
through his book, even though there are no
sacrifices made any more, Jesus Christ, the Lamb
of God, ended all blood sacrifice.
Yet, he says, we do have an offering
to make to God, and it's a threefold
offering.
It's a sacrifice of praise to God continually.
He that glorified God offers praise, glorified God.
So we offer praise to God as a
sacrifice and give thanks to his name, and
then we do good, and that's a sacrifice,
and we give of our money, that's a
sacrifice.
So we give these three sacrifices, but we
don't offer lambs any more.
That's all been taken care of.
Then in verse 17, he says, and here
is a hint that church authority, Obey them
that have the rule over you, and submit
yourselves, for they watch for your souls as
they that must give account.
He asks that we might pray, that they
might pray.
Translating this into modern terms, we are to
pray.
We should pray more than we give, and
we should give all we can.
We should pray more than we do good
works, and we should do good works all
we can.
But money that isn't supported by prayer will
not support the work of God, really.
And good works that are not done out
of prayer will not really do the Kingdom
of God very much good.
Then for the close, we come to this
wonderful passage of scripture, used so often as
a benediction.
Verses 20 and 21.
I know few verses in the entire Bible
that affect me so deeply as this passage.
It has about it what they call a
numinous quality, that is, a mysterious divine unction
is on this passage.
And when I repeat it over to myself
as a traveler, when I wake up at
night, when I hear it repeated as a
benediction in the church, it warms my heart
and does something to it.
Here it is.
Now, the God of peace, that brought again
from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great
Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of
the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every
good work to do his will, working in
you that which is well-pleasing in his
sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory
forever and ever.
Amen.
Now there is the text, and I want
to break it down a little here, just
briefly as I close.
Notice that the God of peace here, this
God of peace, he is a God of
several kinds of peace.
I believe that he is a God of
the peace among nations, and I believe the
day will be when there will be peace
among nations.
It will not be the peace of an
uneasy compromise or the peace of a balance
of terror.
It will be the peace of a reigning
King.
When Jesus Christ reigns from the river to
the ends of the earth and Israel is
back in the land and the Church has
been glorified, and the nations of the earth
come and bring their honor and their glory
into her.
He is that kind of a God of
peace.
But you know what we are trying to
do in the world is to get peace
among nations before we have had peace in
the heart.
You can't have peace among nations until you
have peace in the heart.
But this God of ours, this is the
God we adore.
He is the God of eternal goodwill, and
he has goodwill in his heart.
Do you know how to turn hell into
heaven?
If I had the power to do it,
I have the knowledge how to do it.
I don't have the power to do it,
but I have the knowledge.
And I could turn the hell where Judas
is and Hitler and all the rest, and
everyone who denies the Lord and refuses to
obey him, I could turn that hell into
heaven overnight if I had the power because
I have the knowledge.
And here is how we do it.
We fill hell with goodwill and love and
pity and peace.
And there is no hell that would be
hell long if we filled it full of
goodwill.
For it is the lack of goodwill between
nations that brings trouble, and it is the
lack of goodwill in any place, the lack
of love and pity and peace and charity,
it's the lack of this that makes hells,
if you are able to do it.
I know marriage counselors have their place, and
they are probably better than nothing, but they
do very little after all.
Rarely they help, but sometimes.
But when they come to you, a married
couple who are having trouble, come to a
man for help.
They sit down and each tells his story,
and you sit and try to be neutral
and listen and try to unscramble their poor,
tangled lives.
But there is something gone from that home
that you can't restore.
It's goodwill, it's love, it's gone and you
can't restore it.
If there is love and goodwill, you can
put up with every kind of twisted circumstance.
But if there is no love or goodwill,
you can't put up with anything.
So that if we could take any home
that's about on the rocks and suddenly fill
it with goodwill, it would all be over.
And if we could fill all the homes
on this continent with goodwill, all the divorce
lawyers would be out of business and they'd
have to go to work at something else,
preferably, I say, driving trucks.
But they ought to do something, because they
would have no job if we could put
goodwill in the home.
And I say that if you can get
goodwill in your heart, everything is all right.
I sat down in a plane, I always
travel what they call economy in the TCA,
for tourists down in the States, and because
others pay my bills, I go as cheaply
as I can.
So I always travel tourist or economy, and
you know, the seats aren't very wide.
I don't know how some people would ever
make it, but I managed to squeeze in.
And I was so tired, I've been so
desperately tired recently, I've got a week now
in which I hope to rest a little
bit.
But I sat down tired and I wanted
to write, I had to keep up my
writing as I went along, so I got
out my book and a great big fellow
came around and looked me over, and then
he sat down beside me, and he was
just exactly twice as big as I was,
just twice as big.
Great big head, big neck, great shoulders and
chest, and probably 27 years old, 26.
And then he not only sat down and
bowed over on me, but in order to
see, he leaned over on me.
Well, I didn't feel good about it at
all, and I kind of pushed back, but
it didn't do much good because he had
me two to one, and I admit that
I was feeling just a little bit sorry
for myself.
And then goodwill entered, and I thought to
myself, well, God bless the big fellow, he
doesn't notice what he's doing, and I turned
and talked about the snow down there.
We got into a conversation.
By the time we arrived here at Malton,
I felt good all over.
We were friends, and he was telling me
all about himself.
He said he wasn't a football player, he
was an engineer.
But if he ever wants to change, I
know that the Rams or one of the
other teams, the Argonauts were taking, and he
was laying that over on me.
Well, the question of goodwill, you know.
If you have goodwill, you can put up
with anything.
He could have laughed all over me after
we'd gotten into conversation, because I liked him.
He was a nice fellow, gracious and kindly
and friendly, and he was an engineer, and
he explained a few things that I didn't
know about on the plane, and we soon
were friends.
Now, there's a difference of goodwill.
I could have talked all the way up,
if I hadn't had goodwill.
But goodwill came along, and I decided to
forgive him, and it wasn't very long until
we were friends.
Now, that's a simply a little silly illustration,
but it's true and it's practical and it's
down where we live.
If you feel good toward people, almost anything
is all right, and if you don't, almost
nothing is.
So if you want to turn heaven into
hell, fill it with goodwill and love.
And if you want to turn hell into
heaven, reverse it.
If you want to turn hell into heaven,
fill it with goodwill, and if you want
to turn heaven into hell, let evil men
go there.
That's why I believe that heaven must be
a heaven, and there's no hell in heaven
and can't be.
And that's the reason I believe there are
some people you couldn't take there.
They couldn't go to heaven without a terrible
change, a wonderful change, because if they went
to heaven, they would soon be infecting everybody
in heaven with their vile and evil hard
feelings and strife and ill will and antagonisms.
One man said, Oh, that I had the
wings of a dove and I'd fly away
and be at rest.
I'd remain in the wilderness from the stormy
wind and tempest.
Even the wild wilderness is a good place
if you can be by yourself and can
be quiet and you love everybody and everybody
loves you reasonably well and you're not mad
at anybody and your heart feels good.
Any place, a wilderness, is a nice place
to be.
But I tell you, you know what the
scripture says, as a steady dropping on a
day of rain, so is a house where
there is a contentious woman.
You read about that, Sister?
As a steady dropping on a day of
rain.
And the same thing with two men.
It isn't a question of the sex of
either one.
Steady dropping.
They talk about the Chinese torture, dropping a
drop of water on top of your head
and let it go on for days and
days and days, and pretty soon you go
completely off your rocker and lose your mind.
It isn't hard, it isn't heavy, it isn't
painful, but the steady dropping.
The old man said, he must have had
a wife like that.
He said, a contentious woman just like a
steady dropping.
And a man, the same, no difference.
I've been around homes where my wife and
I stayed in a home one time, and
the woman was a Christian and the man
wasn't.
He was a grouchy old tramp.
And we sat at his table and ate,
we had to, because I was preaching there,
and that's where I was entertained.
But he never smiled much.
You couldn't get him to smile.
Then when we'd be eating, you know, we
were young in those days, believe it or
not, and we ate lots, I did anyhow.
And the wife would say to him, would
you have some more beans, Jake?
He'd say, no, I know when I get
enough.
Then we had to sit there.
And of course, when he had enough, I
had to have enough, because it didn't look
right, it looked as if I didn't know
when I had enough.
When he was that kind of fellow, and
how she lived with him, I don't know,
but she did.
So that kind of man.
Good will, good peace, the God of peace.
God wants home to be peaceful and he
wants the church to be peaceful.
I've never had the experience in all my
long ministry of ever being in a church
where there was a lot of contention.
I don't know what I'd do.
I think probably I wouldn't be able to
take it.
It would break me if there was a
lot of contention.
There is no contention here.
Oh, you know, somebody gets a grouch occasionally,
but they get over it in 24 hours
and nothing comes of it.
It's like a pimple on your arm.
You look at it and say, am I
getting leprosy?
The next day it's gone.
And the same with the church.
If the church is basically a Bible church
filled with good will, you know, little things
come up.
Somebody calls you on the phone, wants to
know what you meant or what you said.
You laugh it off and in two weeks
nobody remembers.
That's good will.
Well, the God of peace, our God.
He brought again from the dead our Lord
Jesus.
Here is the great final act of God
in time by which he sealed his good
will to men when he brought Jesus Christ
from the dead.
That's the rock of our Christian hope, and
I don't wait till Easter to preach on
the resurrection of Jesus, and I don't want
you to wait till Easter to sing about
it.
The resurrection of Jesus, the total resurrection of
the man Jesus, not the poetic resurrection, not
the spiritualized resurrection of Jesus, not the silver
spirited Jesus slipping out of the grave like
a ghost, no, no.
The total resurrection of the whole man Jesus
Christ from the dead.
He is now at the right hand of
the Father, God's representative man at God's right
hand.
He raised him from the dead, he brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus.
I don't know why somebody didn't set this
to music, maybe they didn't, I've missed it,
but how beautiful it is.
The God of peace that brought again from
the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd
of the sheep.
He was that shepherd who died for his
sheep.
Jesus didn't hazard his life.
Paul wrote of one man who hazarded his
life for the gospel.
That's not enough.
Jesus didn't hazard his life for his people,
he gave his life for his people.
That's quite another thing.
Every time a man goes out to work
in the morning, he's hazarding his life for
his family.
Every time you go out on 401, you're
not only hazarding it, you're saying, Come and
get me out on 401.
So every time a man drives off and
waves good-bye to you, sister, he's hazarding
his life for you.
But that's one thing, but it's another thing
to give it.
Jesus didn't stop with hazarding, he gave it.
Christ is the great shepherd of the sheep.
The shepherd supplies all the lack for his
weak and helpless and dull sheep.
It's through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
through the blood of the everlasting covenant, this
was the cost to the shepherd.
He didn't hazard his life only, but he
shed his blood that there might be an
everlasting covenant made.
The covenant of Jesus was not written on
parchment.
The covenant Jesus made with his people and
with his Father was not written even on
stone, it was written on his heart by
blood.
That covenant seals the sheep to the shepherd
forever and ever and ever.
That covenant outlasts nations and outlasts kingdoms and
outlasts stars and suns and time itself.
And you're his by a covenant.
You can remember that.
Some of you have been taught or mistaught
until you feel that you are saved by
keeping your nose above water by dog-paddling.
You're not learning how you stay afloat, so
you just dog-paddle.
And you get up and pray and pray
and pray and think that you'll keep saved
by praying.
No, you don't keep saved by praying, though
if you keep saved you will be praying.
But you keep saved by trusting in this
everlasting covenant that's outlasting all the nations of
the world and all the stars in the
sky above.
And oh, the holy time itself is outlasted
by this glorious, blessed covenant.
When we have seen the heavens burn themselves
out, and all that deserve hell have gone
there, and all that have gotten heaven through
the grace of God have gone there, and
the nations of the earth have been purified,
and this terrestrial sphere has been made clean
and pure again.
It's floating around the world as a legitimate
planet around the sun, not hardware thrown up
by ambitious men, but a legitimate planet around
the sun, inhabited by a redeemed race.
That covenant will still hold as it holds
now.
So that, he says, may that God of
peace make you perfect.
Some react from this.
They wince under the word perfect.
They don't like to hear it.
They've been brainwashed, and they've been taught that
there's no such thing as perfection in all
the world.
Well, there's some kinds of perfection I don't
go along with, but how can we be
Christians and not seek for perfection?
How can you be a child of God
and not want to be pure?
How can any girl prepare herself for the
wedding hour?
How can she be careless about her person
if the young lady she should be married
that evening, and she's grooming herself with a
half a dozen relatives and friends helping her,
so that she will be the very best,
and that dress, that expensive dress that she'll
only wear once, that beautiful thing that somebody
spent a lot of time making, that she
shopped and found and loved, she wants that
perfectly clean.
She doesn't throw that into a corner and
drag that out a half hour before the
wedding.
She doesn't do the dishes in it for
three or four days before, maybe stay in
the garden with it on.
She wants her garment to be spotless.
And she herself wants to be groomed spotlessly.
So when she comes down the aisle to
the old familiar tomb and her starry-eyed
bridegroom stands over here looking at her, he
won't see a frump, but he'll see a
bride worthy of the occasion and worthy of
him.
And how can we, if we believe we're
the bride of Jesus Christ, ever believe in
anything but perfection?
That is, we won't be totally perfect in
this life, but anybody who fights against perfection
is like the girl who fights to wear
blue jeans to her own wedding.
Why should we be satisfied to live spotted
lives?
Why should we be satisfied to live wrinkled
lives?
Wrinkled and spotted or any such thing, said
the Holy Ghost.
The Church is not to have wrinkles or
spots, and so I say that even though
we may not become angelic in the life
that we now live, our hearts yearn to
be pure and right and good and as
near perfect as it's possible to be in
this life.
And if you don't yearn to be holy
and pure and clean and good, I'm afraid
you've not met the bridegroom yet.
One invariable mark of the true Christian is
that he feels he wants to be free
from the flesh and the world.
Oh, the bitter disappointment and woe and sorrow!
Some of us are getting older and not
getting better.
Some of us are nearing the end of
the road and were not any purer than
we were 15 years ago.
We've settled for something less than perfect.
We've settled by turning or twisting some scripture
or by accepting the situation.
We have learned to live with chronic impurities
and chronic imperfections.
God help us, the scripture says, make you
perfect.
Now, I know what the Greek students will
say, it means mature.
But what kind of maturity?
Moral maturity, of course.
And moral maturity can be nothing else but
purity of holiness.
Then he says, lastly, working in you, working
in you, if ye will work along with
him, he will work in you.
Some weak and semi-backslidden and low-spirited
Christians could know a sunburst of new life
if they would realize that God is working
in them.
Somebody says, How would God act if he
were down here in my place?
Well, read the Gospels and you will know
how God acted when he was down here
in your place.
And God always acts like himself.
Therefore, whether God is in heaven or in
a manger or on a cross, or in
your heart, he always acts like God.
And therefore, if he works in you, he
works like himself.
And if he works in me to will
and to do of his own good pleasure,
he works in moral conformity with his own
nature, and it will be Christ in us,
the hope of glory, and God will be
working in and through us to do his
own good pleasure.
And then he ends by saying, Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory forever and ever.
Amen.
And all of these peoples answered and said,
Amen, Lord, Amen.