Verses 12 and 13.
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed,
not as in my presence only, but now
much more in my absence, work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling.
For it is God which worketh in you,
both to will and to do of his
good pleasure.
Now, over the last weeks I have been
trying to show, and I have yet some
sermons left, some quiver, arrows left in my
quiver, on how to get out of the
religious rut.
And I have tried to show that most
Christians are in a religious rut.
Now, you heard me when I said that,
and I am not backing out nor modifying
it.
Most Christians, most evangelical Christians, most Christians who
know they have been born again, are nevertheless
in a religious rut.
And because Christians are, therefore, churches which are
made up of Christians, are also in the
religious rut.
Now, that is a premise.
I state that and don't apologize for it,
nor in any wise modify it.
And I have tried to show why we
are in a religious rut, and I have
tried to show that we must get out
of it, and how.
Now, tonight I have read two texts in
your hearing, or really two texts, or therefore
one passage of scripture.
And the Holy Ghost in this scripture says
two things.
God works in you to will, but that
and you are to work with God in
working it out.
Now, there are the two passages.
It is God who worketh in you to
will.
Therefore, work out your salvation with fear and
trembling.
God works in you.
That is, God is always previous.
God is the aggressor.
God saw you in the rut and wanted
you to get out of it, and he
thought of it first, not you.
And the impulse to know God came from
him and not from you.
God worketh first.
And because God works, therefore we are to
work with him.
You are, therefore, to dismiss all doubts and
all morbid humility.
You see, it's entirely possible to be so
humble in a sick kind of way that
you paralyze yourself and get nowhere.
For instance, you say to yourself, Now that
man has been preaching about getting out of
the religious rut.
And while I haven't agreed with everything he's
said, I have been feeling that I am
in a rut and that I ought to
get out.
This circular grave is getting deeper every year
in my life, and I can hardly see
over it.
Give me four or five more years, and
you look right over me and won't know
I'm there.
I need help.
But I am wondering whether God will help
me or not.
And that is morbid humility, you see, because
if we knew the truth, we'd know that
you had gone right on around in that
circular grave until you'd worn your way down
to China and never thought of getting out
of it at all.
The very fact that you want out of
it is proof that God has been working
in you to will to get out.
And if God works in you to want
to get out, then when you ask him
to get out, do you suppose that he
will help you out?
Would God put an impulse in your breast
and then refuse to accept your prayer when
you came in answer to that impulse?
Would a mother bring a hungry baby to
the table and prepare its food, and then
when it let out its happy little yell
and stretched out its hand, pull it away
and say, You're no good, you've never done
anything anyhow, you're no...
Now, if you grant the baby, grant the
baby your intelligence, if it is intelligence, grant
the baby your intelligence, and here's the way
the baby would act or what it would
say to itself.
The baby would say, I am now eight
months old and I haven't helped my mother
at all and I've been bad sometimes.
I've kept her up at night.
Even Daddy had to get out once or
twice.
And I obviously am no good.
I'm not making any contribution to society.
I'm just no place.
Now, why should I think that Mother is
going to feed me?
But Mother in the meantime is begging him
to eat.
And he says there's no use.
Now, that would be morbid humility.
Of course, no baby would have that much
intelligence.
It would just grab for what was in
front of it, which is exactly what God
wants you to do.
If God hadn't put it in your heart
to want his blessing, you wouldn't have wanted
it.
You'd have been down here seeing the Toronto
football team get clobbered today.
You wouldn't even have been here tonight.
You'd have been home resting up in the
excitement.
You wouldn't have even been here.
But the fact that you're here and the
fact that you're ready to listen to this
kind of preaching indicates that God has been
previous in your life.
Therefore, you must work with him in harmonious
cooperation so that God can work in you
and for you and through you.
You know, the word fanatic is the word
that people use whenever you get a little
bit joyful about the Lord.
They say you're a fanatic.
Webster says a fanatic is somebody who is
too enthusiastic about religion as if you could
be too enthusiastic about religion.
John Wesley, while he was not a philologist,
he was a theologian, and he said that
a fanatic is one who seeks desirable ends
but ignores constituted means.
Let me illustrate for you.
There was a farmer boy with his blue
jeans and his torn shirt and his tattered
straw hat.
He wants to get a fish.
His mother says, Why don't you go down
and catch a couple of trout, son?
So he goes down for the beautiful day,
the sun shining, and the cows are standing
deep in the water and in the shade
trees, under the shade trees, and it's just
a lovely day.
And so he pulls off a stalk of
grass and begins to nibble it, as I've
done, I guess, a hundred thousand times when
I was on the farm, and begins to
wonder about those fish.
And he says, Now, I remember the pastor
said, If you want anything, pray for it.
In the meantime, the fish were breaking the
surface, begging to be caught.
There they were.
And he said, I remember that the pastor
said pray for it.
So he turns over, often before he was
lying so easy on the grass, and begins
to pray like a house on fire, Lord,
send me some fish.
Well, he can pray till he dies, and
he'll never have any fish, because the Lord
put intelligence in his head and gave him
what we call the constituted means.
And to the farm boy, and I've done
it many times, you take a stick which
you cut off the tree, you take an
ordinary piece of cord, you can get anywhere,
and you put a bent pin on the
end, if you don't have the nickel to
get the hook, and you throw it in
with a worm on it.
And the fish will take it.
Fish are so dumb in the country, they'll
take it.
Now, here is what I mean.
Would the thing be for the boy to
be very pious and pray for a mess
of fish, or throw in his hook and
pull out a mess of fish?
Why, everybody knows if you go down and
hear a loud voice addressing the Almighty God,
and you get near to him, and he
was a country boy praying for fish, with
fish breaking the surface, begging to be caught,
you'd go away and say something wrong there.
Of course, he's a fanatic.
He is trying to get a desirable end,
but he's ignoring the constituted means.
Now, suppose his father, who also attended a
church, where you have this very fine pastor
who tells them they pray, they'll get what
they prayed for, and he wants potatoes in
springtime.
And he says, I'd like to have a
good field of potatoes this year, I really
need them.
So he gets down on his knees, and
every day he spends praying for potatoes, while
it gets too late to plant potatoes.
The potatoes down in the basement waiting to
be cut and planted are stretching out their
long roots towards the sunlight, and all they're
begging is for him to use the constituted
means, plow the field, get it in shape,
cut his potatoes, and plant them.
Go around occasionally, keep the weeds down, and
come back in the fall and take out
a great crop.
Constituted means, you see.
Or suppose that the lady of the house,
I don't know why I picked on the
country tonight, but suppose the lady of the
house wants some ducks.
She just has a yin for a hat
full of ducklings.
She loves a little yellow fella, she says,
she wants some ducklings.
So down on her knees she gets and
prays for ducks day and night.
She's not using the constituted means.
The way you get ducks is to get
fertile duck eggs and put them under our
hands.
Four weeks they're out.
If they're chickens, they're out in three weeks.
But if they're ducks, they're out in four
weeks.
Duck comes slower.
And so four weeks the ducks are out.
The way to get ducks is to get
duck eggs and set them.
Now I've gone way around Robin Hood's red
barn to illustrate what a fanatic is.
A fanatic is somebody who is seeking desirable
ends but ignoring constituted means.
Seeking to get out of the religious rut
is a desirable end.
It is right and it is in the
will of God.
But trying to do it in a manner
which is not according to God's constituted means
is all wrong and we never get anywhere.
Some try when they want to get blessed,
they try by getting worked up psychologically.
They work it up by psychological means.
And there are some men who are, maybe
they've not studied psychology, but they're master psychologists.
And they know how to manipulate audiences.
And they know just how to lower the
voice and when to raise it and when
to make it sound very sad and all
the rest.
And they can just get people all worked
up.
I sat listening to a fellow one time
and right across catty-corner from me was
a young woman, maybe 22 or 23 years
old.
Nice looking lady.
She sat there.
And the only reason I noticed her tall
was she had on glass shoes.
You ever see them?
Well, maybe they were plastic.
But anyway, I noticed the funny shoes sticking
out in the aisle.
And this fellow went on preaching and he
never, as far as I remember, said anything
about the Lord.
But he told us all about his father
and his mother and his father leaving home
and the whole thing.
And I watched this lady idly as I
would watch him and look at her.
And at first she couldn't have cared less.
But slowly he got a hold of her.
And when he came to the point where
the evangelist said in a tremulous voice that
every time he faced an audience he hoped
that his old father might be there.
Well, the girl broke down into pieces, you
know.
And I saw from that time she was
eating out of his hand.
He knew how to handle her psychologically.
And he got her.
All right.
He'd have done anything for her.
You don't know that evangelist, I'm sure.
It wasn't Billy Graham, God bless you.
So don't get mad and go out and
throw him out and tell him he'll never
come back.
Billy Graham wouldn't spook to that.
But some do.
Now, some try by group dynamics Have you
heard about group dynamics?
We all sit around together and practice togetherness.
And by practicing togetherness we finally work up
some spirituality.
Brother and sister, I remember sitting around a
table when I was a kid, my aunt
Adeline, Abby they called her, Aunt Abby.
She weighed, oh, roughly speaking 200, 210.
And she was a lovely soul and sweet.
But she came with the idea that if
you would put your hands together around a
table that you could tip the table.
And I put my paddies down there around
my mother and some others and my Aunt
Abby.
And bless my heart, it tipped all right.
There's no question about it.
I'm not fooling you, it tipped.
It tipped and then somebody said, sit on
it.
Somebody sat on it and they couldn't move
it.
It tipped.
We were practicing togetherness.
You see.
Togetherness.
You used to have Ouija boards and you
got around togetherness.
Brothers and sisters, sometimes I wonder where they're
going to lead us yet.
We need some old-fashioned, salty horse saints.
And I'm sure that there are 189 youths
in the state of Missouri that are God
-worshipping saints and a lot of these fellows
who are trying to teach how to get
the blessing of God in some other way
than the constituted means.
And when you do get people all broken
up, dabbing at their eyes and shaking, when
you do, what's the result?
Well, it doesn't bring us any closer to
God, it doesn't make us love God any
better, which is the first commandment, and it
doesn't give us any greater love for our
neighbor, which is the second commandment.
It doesn't prepare us to live truthfully on
earth, which is most important, and it doesn't
prepare us to die victoriously, and it doesn't
guarantee that we'll be with our Lord at
the last.
The Lord has constituted means.
Now, it's a little late, but I'm going
to just touch it.
Listen, our Lord said in the 14th chapter
of John, He that has my commandments and
keepeth them, he it is that loveth me.
Now, anybody can understand that, even a teacher
of group dynamics.
And he that loveth me shall be loved
of my Father, and I will love him
and will manifest myself to him.
If a man love me, he will keep
my words, and my Father will love him,
and we will come unto him and make
our boat with him.
He that loveth me not keepeth not my
sayings, and the word which ye hear is
not mine, but the Father which sent me.
Now, what our Lord taught there was this.
Our Lord taught that when we obey the
words of Jesus in faith and in love,
when we obey the words of Jesus, we
prove that we love him, and he shows
himself to us.
There are two subjects acting here, we and
he.
When we obey his words, we prove that
we love him.
And he shows himself to us.
But who is this he that I'm talking
about?
Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The divinely constituted means then are two.
Faith, a right kind of faith, in our
Lord Jesus Christ, and obedience to his words.
Now, faith in our Lord Jesus, we believe
in God, said Jesus, believe also in me.
Now, faith in Jesus Christ, the right kind
of faith, the only kind of faith that
matters, is irrevocable, total commitment to the person
of Jesus Christ himself.
Total commitment, which is irrevocable.
That is, you can't go back on it.
And it is total, and there's nothing that
isn't included.
So faith in Jesus, then, is not gulping
twice and saying, I accept Jesus.
It is getting into a state where you
have totally committed yourself to the Lord Jesus
Christ in faith.
Now, not to your denomination.
I don't mind telling you plainly, I don't
mind telling you, that I wouldn't spend five
minutes trying to persuade you people that the
Christian and Missionary Alliance is the greatest society
in the world.
I wouldn't.
And if I thought that I would make
a denominationalist out of you or a sectarian,
so that you would get the notion that
outside of the Alliance, people are second-class
Christians, I couldn't now.
I wouldn't carry on.
Faith is not commitment to your denomination.
It is irrevocable commitment to the person of
Jesus Christ.
And it is not commitment to your church.
I believe in the local church.
I'm not a tabernacle man.
I believe in the local church.
I believe in the divine assembly.
And I believe that we ought, as a
group, realize that we are, as Christians, a
divine assembly, a cell in the body of
Christ, alive with his life.
But for one second would I not, for
one second would I try to create in
you a faith that would lead you to
commit yourself irrevocably to a local church, nor
to your church leaders?
I complained one time to a great good
man that I couldn't make followers.
I said, I don't know, people won't follow
me.
He said, you ought to thank God that
you're not up there to get people to
follow you.
You're up there to present the Lord Jesus
Christ and ask them to follow him.
So you're not asked to follow your church
leaders.
You're not asked like a little robin on
the nest to open your blessed innocent little
mouth and just take anything I put in.
If what I put in isn't biblical food,
regurgitate.
Don't be afraid to do it.
Call me or come to see me.
Write me an anonymous letter.
If you write me an anonymous letter, you
won't get an answer, remember that.
But do something about it.
Don't by any means swallow what your leaders
give you.
Here's the book.
Here's the Bible.
Go to it.
So faith is faith in Jesus Christ, God's
Son, a total faith in Christ and not
in the denomination or the church, though you
love the church and you respect and love
your leaders and you're glad to work along
with an evangelical denomination.
But your commitment is to Christ.
Now, that's faith.
Then obedience we talked about.
We prove we love him and he shows
himself to us.
But you say there are so many commandments,
so many words, how do I know?
How can I remember and how can I
be sure?
Well, in faith and love you rest and
wait and look.
And then as his teaching touches your life,
you conform to them.
You see, there are some teachings of the
Lord Jesus that you'd never get into while
the world stands because they wouldn't touch you.
It wouldn't impinge upon you in your present
state.
But as soon as it does touch you,
then you just automatically and sweetly and quietly
obey it.
A man was telling about giving a testimony
to being shipwrecked and praying and the Lord
delivered him from shipwreck.
And a dear old man of God, dear
young man of God, then went home and
went on his knees and wept before the
Lord.
Oh, God!
He said, You never saved me from shipwreck.
And the Lord said, Son, have you ever
been at sea?
And he said, No.
Of course, you can't save a man from
shipwreck who's never been off the shore.
And so there are things that don't touch
you.
But the moment they touch you, instantly, of
course, right then.
For instance, there's what to do with your
children.
If you don't have any children, don't worry.
Husbands obey you.
I mean, wives obey your husband.
All right, if you don't have any husband,
why worry about that?
But wherever the words of our Lord Jesus
touch your life, instantly, because you're totally committed,
you gladly and quietly obey and you do
what you're told.
He says that's your part.
His part is to manifest himself to you
and get you out of the rut.
Now I want to give you some examples.
From Luke, and I'll be very brief about
it, because it's already late enough.
But listen.
In the meantime, when they were gathered together,
in a numeral company of people, they came
to Jesus, and Jesus said to them, verse
2, 12, Luke, So there is nothing covered
that shall not be revealed, neither hid that
shall not be known.
Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall
be heard in the light, and whatever is
spoken in the earth shall be proclaimed upon
the house top.
Now what that teaches us is, we are
to be as candid and transparent as can
be.
No secretiveness, no defensiveness, but be completely open
and candid as a Quaker.
Now that's the teaching of Jesus.
And so instead of getting down on your
knees and saying, Oh, Lord, get me these
fish.
Catch some fish, brother.
Obey the Lord.
Do what you're told.
Use the Constituted means.
Be candid.
Put away that carefree, cultivated, North American defensiveness.
Don't be so afraid.
You're not so bad.
And you don't have to be afraid to
let people know who you are and what
you are.
Let down your hair, so to speak.
When I use that expression, of course, I
use it in a modified sense about myself.
But let down your hair and just be
yourself.
The Lord said, Be children.
We've just all become children here.
How beautiful it would be.
You wouldn't walk up on the defense and
shake a man's hand and blink like this,
wondering now.
And though I know Judo well enough to
handle him, he's not going to hurt you.
Christians here aren't going to hurt anybody.
So just be perfectly candid.
Now, there's one passage.
You can practice that no matter who you
are, nor worry.
That touches you right now.
Then look at this one.
I say unto you, Be not afraid of
them that kill the body.
After that I know more they can do.
But I'll forewarn you whom it shall fear.
Fear him that's able to kill the body
and toll in hell.
Now, here's your teaching.
Don't be afraid in your Christian life.
Put away fear and live absolutely without fear.
Then go on to this passage.
Whoever will confess me before men, him shall
the Son of Man also confess before the
angels.
But he that denies me before men shall
be denied before the angels of God.
Here we have a passage that tells us
that we are boldly to testify and witness
to our Lord Jesus.
If some of you would begin quietly to
witness for your work, quietly to witness, you'll
find the change coming over you.
It says to do it here.
He that hath my words and keepeth them,
he loveth me, and I'll show myself to
him.
You'll get out of the rut when the
Lord begins to manifest himself to you.
But you'd rather maybe go off somewhere, get
down on your knees and pray.
Now, pray right.
I've taught and preached and practiced praying since
I was converted at the age of 17.
But the point is, don't try to pray
down something that the Lord's telling you to
do.
Do what you're told and the Lord will
be right with you.
Then instead of begging, you can thank.
Then in verse 15, take heed and beware
of covetousness.
He gives a little story of the man
who was a covetous man and he lost
his soul.
So don't be covetous, be a generous man.
Don't be stingy, be free with your money.
Don't be afraid, thank the Lord and trust
him and put fear away.
And don't be afraid to witness, tell people
you love the Lord and he'll tell the
angels he loves you.
Now, that's found in Luke.
And I just mention that as samples of
what I mean when I say that the
Constituted means our faith and obedience.
Now, we sing this and don't know we're
singing it.
We sing, trust and obey, for there's no
other way to be happy in Jesus but
to trust and obey.
We sing that, but we've sung it so
long that we might as well sing Mother
Goose.
Because we don't know what we're singing.
What we're saying is what I've preached tonight.
Have faith in Jesus Christ and obey his
teachings and he'll take care of the rest.
That's Christianity, brother, that's it.
Now, if you're in the rut, and oh,
brother, how far some of us are in
the spiritual rut, old routine, old routine.
Nothing has any taste to it.
Some churches try to handle that by by
pandering to the taste, bring in every kind
of weird claptrap in order to get some
of the poor half-dead people to get
a little taste again.
Oh, how my mother used to get sick
when I was a kid.
Green apples, you know, green grapes, she'd get
sick, I should have been.
But Mother didn't know that, she loved me,
so she'd stay up with me all night
while I'd groan with a stomachache.
And then when I'd get better, I couldn't
be, no, no, I don't want anything.
That poor woman would tempt me with everything.
She'd open a can of this and she'd
cook that and she'd bring me broth.
I kind of enjoyed, you know, being a
martyr.
Now, I'm not hungry, Mother.
But she did everything to get me to
eat.
I should have, if she'd known what she
should have known, and Mother's love had been,
if Mother's wisdom had been as great as
her love, she'd have said, just lie there
and you're off.
I'd have come around after a while.
But you know, the churches are just like
that.
Here there's an old deacon, you know, and
he's been on the same old circular grave
so long he can't see over.
So in order to get him out, you
know, and get a grin on his face,
he'll bring in anything, anything from everywhere.
I will.
And this church won't as long as I
have anything to say in it.
We have God.
We have Christ.
We have truth.
We have a well-needing health.
We have the saints.
We have the power of prayer.
We have the joy of obedience.
We have the sweet wonder of his presence.
We have the joy of Christian songs.
We have all wisdom.
We don't need God.
We have God God.
And all we have to do is trust
in his Son, Jesus Christ, and begin to
obey the truth.
And the Lord will manifest himself and show
himself through the lamps.
You'll come running to church someday and say,
I'm going to have a testimony with you
tonight.
I'm bursting.
God's been met me today and blessed my
soul that I don't think I can keep
it.
What happens, you fanatic?
No.
You use the constituted means to get a
desirable end.
You obeyed and you cussed it, and whoever
cussed and obeyed says the song, the Lord
will be with you and bless you.
Well, that's everything for me tonight.
Pray for me.
I preach every night at a conference down
in New York City this week.
Then, Lord, help me.
I haven't any sense at all.
I promised a church here.
I'd park back at church on Saturday night.
I'd preach until then.
On Sunday, I'll preach right here.
On Monday, I'll go to another conference and
preach tomorrow.
But I love it.
And when I'm not feeling very well, all
I have to do is preach, and I'll
feel all right.
So you pray for me, won't you?
And we'll trust God together.
In the meantime, our good friend here will
get ahead of things.
I said to somebody, boy, he not only
doesn't need to be pushed, he pushes me.
That's what I'm after.
That's the kind of man my heart goes
out to.
So he'll be on tap.
Pray that they help him.
Pray with him.
Not run your errands, but do any spiritual
thing that you need.
Then we come up to our wonderful convention,
and we're having some of the finest speakers.
It ought to be a great fall.
I'm looking forward to it with all the
cool and delight myself.
Brother McNally, would you lead us in a
closing song?