...the twelfth chapter, Romans 12, 1 and 2.
I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies
of God, that ye present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world, but
be ye transformed by the renewing of your
minds, that ye may prove what is that
good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Now, this will be another talk in the
series, How to Get Out of the Religious
Rust.
There will be one more next Sunday night,
and then off on to something else.
But my fourfold thesis has been, and still
is tonight, that most evangelical Christians, now this
doesn't include the liberals, we leave them to
their guts, that most Christians of our kind,
the evangelical Christians, are in a rust.
They are morally and spiritually asleep.
And that this is very wrong before God,
and tragic for the individual, and highly displeasing
to our Father which art in heaven.
But that there is a way out, and
that God is working in us and for
us to get us out, but that he
is looking for our cooperation.
Now, that's my fourfold thesis, and I want
to continue on it tonight.
Tonight I deal on how to get out,
more specifically.
And in the text it says that we
are to give ourselves holy to God.
I ask you, he said, I beseech you,
that you present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy and acceptable unto God.
I've heard of men who willed their bodies
to science, so that after they were dead,
science could have their bodies.
I've always thought it was a poor shoddy
gift to give anybody, giving yourself after you're
dead.
The scripture says that we are to give
our present living bodies a living sacrifice, holy
and acceptable unto God.
And of course, if you give your body,
you give everything it contains.
Now, that's the thought.
Give yourself holy to God.
Now, this, as I see it, this whole
idea of giving myself holy to God, contains
three laws.
Let me mention them briefly.
One I call the law of surrender.
If you do not surrender, it will be
totally impossible for the Lord to do anything
for you.
The surgeon has to have the surrender of
his patients.
There's that.
I think that's so obvious, it's almost funny.
That if I went to a surgeon and
insisted that I were going to tell him
how to do the job, and not only
that, stay awake and resist him, a surgeon
couldn't work like that.
It's impossible.
You've got to put you where you can't
resist, where you're surrendered.
That's the law of surrender.
But in a still more beautiful and biblical
way, there is the story of the potter
and the clay.
The law of surrender illustrated further.
The potter has this soft yielding clay, and
if the clay does not surrender, the potter
can't do a thing with it.
If there are burnt places, or hard places,
or unsurrendered places in the clay, though the
potter were another Wedgwood, though he were another
genius, and artist at the matter of making
vessels, he still could not make anything beautiful
out of an unyielding blob of clay.
If a vessel is going to be two
things, useful and beautiful, it's possible for a
thing to be useful and not to be
beautiful, say a garbage can.
It's entirely possible to be beautiful and not
be useful, say a lily.
Now a lily has no utilitarian place in
the world.
You don't say to your wife, bring us
up, we're having company, bring a pound and
a half of the essence of lily.
A lily is just to look at and
enjoy.
It isn't to eat, and it isn't to
be useful.
And if all the lilies in the world
were suddenly ceased to be, we would just
be as healthy as we are now, though
we wouldn't have as much pleasure, for we
like to look at them and smell them.
So there's beauty and usefulness.
Now it's possible to have a vessel that
is useful without being beautiful.
The old cream crocks in our old spring
houses on the farm in Pennsylvania, they were
useful all right.
You could pour the milk in them and
wait for that to rise and then skim
it off.
But they weren't beautiful.
There's no, by no stretch of the imagination
could you say that's a beautiful crock there.
But it's useful.
And then everybody has in his house beautiful
little pieces, often Wedgwood or Royal Dalton or
something, whatever you happen to like.
Now it's utterly useless.
That is, it's not there to be used.
It's there to be enjoyed.
It's beautiful.
But God would have his vessels to be
both useful and beautiful.
We have some Wedgwood.
I used to come to Canada back years
ago and would buy Wedgwood vessels for my
wife because you could get them cheaper here.
Because they came from England, I understand duty
was lower.
You see, I was somewhat of a, anyhow,
that's what I did.
And these beautiful vessels, they're useful vessels too.
They're not only beautiful to look at, but
they are useful.
You can make tea in them.
You can have sugar in them and cream
in them.
Now that's what God wants.
He wants us to be both useful in
his universe and beautiful in that we reflect
back the beauty of the Lord our God.
But if he's going to make that kind
of vessel out of us, we're going to
have to yield to the law of surrender.
Give yourself to God a living sacrifice and
let him have you.
Then there's the law of concentration.
That is, every successful person concentrates and must
concentrate.
Take a musician.
Now, most musicians are mediocre musicians because they
don't have time to concentrate.
They might have much greater ability than they're
ever able to bring out because they have
other things to take their time.
But a musician, that is, the great musicians,
have to practice and study anywhere up to
five and six hours a day.
They've got to give themselves to it completely
and consecrate.
Take the athlete.
The average fellow goes on a church picnic
and plays baseball or tosses horseshoes once or
twice a year.
But that's not an athlete.
An athlete is somebody who lives for it
all the time, plays with his team during
the season, and then hunts and fishes and
hustles about and makes long hikes and keeps
himself in shape.
He's always got to remember those arms, those
hands, those biceps.
They tell me that Ted Williams, the great
home run hitter of the Boston Red Sox,
that he had the most powerful pair of
forearms and hands that you ever saw.
And he carried around in each side pocket
a rubber ball.
And he would walk about squeezing this rubber
ball.
He just got so enjoyed it, you know.
He was just taking these exercises.
The result was he had great muscles here.
And when he got up there, when he
hit the ball, it disappeared.
Well, now he concentrated.
He couldn't say, oh, give me two more
helpings of pie with whipped cream on it.
Come on.
And I'm going to sleep a couple of
days.
He couldn't do that.
Got to keep those muscles in shape.
That's the law of concentration.
An athlete has to concentrate on what he's
doing.
If he doesn't, he'll only be a mediocre,
sandlot athlete.
So were the scientists.
The scientists, sometimes people have thought scientists were
a bit touched, a bit off, because they
gave themselves wholly to it.
They said about Edison that he would sleep
four hours a night.
Four hours a night.
I've often wondered if he didn't take some
catnaps somewhere to catch up.
But they said four hours a night because
he was totally given over to it.
He lived for nothing else but that.
That was his life.
As a result, we have so many of
the great things that he managed to produce.
Well, that's the law of concentration.
And this musician, this athlete, this scientist may
do other things, but it's this one thing
to which he is totally committed.
He's given over to that.
Third, there's the law of fascination.
A little harder to understand, but just as
real.
If I had to be fascinated, it's to
be held spellbound by some irresistible charm, says
the dictionary.
So there's the law of fascination.
If we're not fascinated by a thing, we
can take it and leave it.
It's like, oh, exhibitions and various exhibitions.
I can take them or leave them, you
know.
And a lot of other things that some
people think a lot of, I'm not against
them, and I'll go if somebody will take
me.
But I'm not fascinated by them.
That is, I'm not drawn to them by
a charm that I can't break.
But in the kingdom of God, there's the
law of fascination, the law of the irresistible
charm.
And the Christian that doesn't know what it
is will never be anything but a half
-Christian all his life.
He'll be in the rut all his life.
Now, this law of fascination out there in
the world often is personal tragedy, brings tragedy.
Being fascinated by an evil thing or a
base thing or an unworthy thing can be
a great tragedy.
The young girl who is determined she's going
to be a movie star, and she starts
at 13, pluck her eyebrows and paint herself
up and stand in front of the tall
mirror and try to look like Jane Manson.
Well, now, I suppose all girls go through
a phase sometime where they want to be
something they'll never be.
And we won't be too hard on the
kids, but we'll only say this.
If they don't get over it, and if
they begin to want it so bad they
sell themselves for it, and if they concentrate
on it to a point where, and are
so fascinated by it, to a point where
their parents are told off and dismissed as
being old fogeys, and then they leave home,
as many do, and go to the great
city and try to make good, determine that
they will see their name on, out in
front of the theater, that can be a
great curse.
For men who want to be rich, the
average businessman wanting to make enough money to
keep his family comfortably, have a little left
if anything happened to him for a rainy
day, as they say, that man, that man,
we understand him.
The businessman who says, I'd like to make
enough, as Wesley says, make all you can,
in order that you can give away all
you can.
I thought that was beautiful.
He wanted these people to work hard and
make a lot of money, and so you
can use it for the Lord.
Well, now, that I understand, and that's pardonable,
and that is a man who is doing
on the margin of his life.
But there have been men who have become
so enamored of gold that they sold themselves
out on the market, sold their hearts and
souls in order they might be rich.
And I think that one of the most
pitiful creatures in the whole wide world is
a gambler.
The gambler who is so enamored of gambling,
so utterly fascinated by it, utterly fascinated by
it, they'd tell about two fellows who were
washing windows.
One of them was a gambler.
He loved to gamble.
And they were up on a, two fellows
up there somewhere on a platform, and the
thing broke.
And they both started to fall 30 stories
toward the sidewalk.
And one of them, the gambler, yelled, I'll
bet I get there ahead of you.
Well, now, that's supposed to be funny.
But it's this fascination, it's this fascination, this
inability to escape, this terrible charm that evil
things have for people.
Well, now, our Lord turns it around and
says, Come to me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, follow me and take
my cross, and take your cross and follow
after me.
And he says, in effect, Come to me
and be fascinated by me, concentrate upon me,
surrender to me, yield so completely to me
that you can give all to me, and
learn to be drawn by an irresistible charm
to me.
Well, now, who has a right to say
this, I want to ask you?
Who has a right to talk like this?
Who has a right?
Well, those who knew him best, they've tried
to tell us.
And I suppose they've not even succeeded very
well, even though the scriptures are inspired.
I'm quite sure they don't tell us all
that can be known about God.
They only tell us as much as they
can tell us, because the inspired men were
men, and those to whom they wrote were
men, and those inspired men being men, and
we to whom God wrote being men.
There was imperfection and limitation in both, the
inspired ones and those who read the inspired
words, so that God was not able to
say all he could say about himself.
I'm sure the archangels that burned before the
throne of God could tell us more about
God than we know, even though we have
an inspired Bible to tell us.
But those who knew him best tried to
tell us there was Moses, and Moses said
that in the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth, and in the beginning God
made the light and said, let there be
light, and there was light, and that God
divided the light from the darkness and called
the light day, and the darkness he called
night, and the evening and the morning were
the first day, so Moses took us back
to the beginning of all that we see,
that we call the universe, back before the
stars were and before the moon was, and
before space was and before time was, and
says in the beginning God then began to
create, so Moses says that the one that
calls us to him has a right to
do it, because he antedates time and he
transcends space, and he fills his universe, and
he is God and David.
Ah that David, that sheep herder David, what
a man was David, oh Lord my God
wrote David thou art very great, thou art
clothed with honor and majesty, who covers thyself
with light as with a garment, who stretcheth
out the heavens like a curtain, who layeth
the beams of each chamber in the waters,
who maketh the clouds his chariot, who walketh
upon the wings of the wind, who maketh
his angel spirits and his ministers a flaming
fire, who laid the foundations of the earth
that it should not be moved forever, thou
coverest it with the deep as with a
garment, the water stood above the mountains of
thy rebuke, they fled at the voice of
thy thunder, they hasted away, and then he
goes back, then we go back to the
hundred and third and show that this God
is not only a God who makes mountains
and hills and rivers and streams, and rides
upon the wings of the clouds, but he
loves people, bless the Lord oh my soul,
and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth
all thine iniquities and healeth all thy diseases,
and redeemeth thy life from destruction, and crowneth
thee with loving kindness and tender mercies, and
satisfies thy mouth with good things, so that
thy youth is renewed like the eagle.
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to
anger and plenteous in mercy, he does not
always chide neither does he keep his anger
forever, for as the heavens high above the
earth, so great is God's mercy toward them
that fear him, like as a father pities
his children, so the Lord pity them that
fear him.
Now that David trying to tell us, trying
to impart the incommunicable and trying to tell
that which can't be told of the wonder
of God, and then there was Isaiah that
organ voiced, sing to the Lord in Isaiah
40, it says, O Zion that bringeth good
tidings, get thee up into the high mountain.
Behold, the Lord God will come with a
strong hand, he shall feed his flock like
a shepherd, and he shall gather the lambs
with his arms, and carry them in his
bosom, and shall gently lead those that are
with young, who have measured the waters in
the hollow of his hand, and kneaded out
heaven with the span.
Well, I could go on and read on,
because they've given us these wonderful scriptures, come
to the New Testament, and John Christ to
tell us, In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were created by him, and without
him was not anything made that was made.
And he became flesh and dwelt among us,
and we beheld his glory as of the
only begotten of the Father, full of grace
and truth.
Here is John the Mystic trying to tell
us how great is God.
And then over in the book of Colossians,
we read there in the 2nd chapter about
that Son of God.
Our brother in his prayer, I think it
was tonight, talked about the two natures of
Jesus, the wonder of the hypostatic union, all
that is God joined to all that is
man, in the second person of the Trinity,
world without end.
And Paul said about him, For in him
dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,
and ye are complete in him, which is
the head of all principality and power.
He says in the 1st chapter, Who is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn
of every creature?
For by him were all things created that
are in heaven and that are in earth,
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers.
All things are created by him and for
him, and he is before all things, and
by him all things consist, and he is
the head of the body, the church.
Why am I giving you all these passages
of scripture?
Because I want to tell you who it
is and bring before your mind again tonight
who it is that is saying, I present
your bodies unto me, take your cross and
follow me, give yourself wholly to me, surrender
to me, concentrate upon me, and learn to
be fascinated by me.
He is the only one that can do
it.
I confess to you frankly this night, my
friends, that I'm a poor follower, a very
poor follower.
I want no man saying of me, he's
a Wesley man.
I'm not a Wesley man.
I'm an admirer of John Wesley and Charles,
his brother, but I'm not a Wesley man.
I want no man saying he's Calvin's man.
I'd never give my soul to John Calvin.
I want nobody saying he's an A.B.
Simpson man.
I'm nothing of the sort.
I admire that missionary-minded saint, but I
am not a follower of any man.
It will be very difficult for me.
That's why I would never make a good
Nazi or Communist or Democrat, you know, or,
excuse me, I don't know any good American
Democrats here.
You know how I mean it.
But I can't be a blind follower.
He said it.
Hooray!
It must be right.
He's a man and maybe he's wrong.
I remember once in a board meeting years
ago, Dr. L.H. Zimmer, that great saint,
great Bible expositor, showed up in a board
meeting in New York, and somebody said what
A.B. Simpson said.
Dr. Zimmer got up, grabbed the chair in
front of him and said, A.B. Simpson
could be wrong.
I've always admired him for that.
I don't know whether Simpson was wrong or
whether Zimmer was, but I can't follow men.
Therefore, if anybody says to me, surrender to
me and concentrate upon me and become fascinated
by me, I say, now, just who do
you mean?
He's a man.
I say, now, whether he be John Kennedy
or whether he be Castro, the multitude scream
the law of fascination has them held.
And they follow them and say, viva lo
this and viva lo that and follow them
into hell.
But there is a man, my brother, that
we can trust.
A man who was born a woman and
nursed at a mother's breast.
A man who began to grow when he
was born and went up to all the
stages that babies go through, cut his little
teeth, and went from soft food to solid
food and then staggered around on the floor
while his mother was delighted to see him
take his first little steps.
His name was Jesus.
Helped his supposed father in the carpenter's shop.
And when he grew to manhood, went up
to the temple and there amazed the doctors.
They shook their heads and stroked their long,
silky beards and said, who could this be?
And he went back and was in submission
to his parents until the day he was
shown in the wilderness.
John was in the wilderness and revealed Jesus
Christ and said, behold, the Lamb of God.
That was the man Jesus.
Why is he any different from any other
man?
Why do I refuse to follow men and
yet follow this man?
Of no other man can it be said,
in the beginning was the man.
And he was with God and he was
God and he is God.
And we beheld his glory as the only
begotten of the Father, full of grace and
truth.
Of no other man from Adam to this
hour can it be said, his name shall
be called Wonderful Counselor, the Everlasting Father, the
Prince of Peace.
No other man can it be said that
three days after he had gone into the
grave, he rose again alive forevermore and death
has no more dominion over him.
Of no other man can it be said
that while they beheld, lo, a cloud received
him out of their sight, and two men
stood by them in white apparel, which said,
Why gaze ye up into heaven aimlessly?
Don't you know this same Jesus which is
taken from you will so come in like
manner as you have seen him go?
No other man can it be said that
he rode out of heaven astride a white
horse, and on his thigh was the name
written, The Word of God.
This is the King of Glory, this man.
And this is the man that says, Give
yourself to me, surrender to me and concentrate
upon me and be caught in the spell
of the irresistible charm.
Ah, if I had the time and you
had disposition to listen, I might try to
tell you of all they've said about him
in that Old Testament, in that New Testament,
and since Bible times.
I might quote snatches of the great hymns
that have come down the years, these great
hymns.
They used him, they used him as a
theme.
You know, the songwriters have a number of
themes.
They have country for one of their themes,
and it's a legitimate theme.
You sing, O Canada, and we sing, my
country tis of thee, and other countries sing
as the songs of their own beloved land,
and that's a beautiful thing.
Then there are the songs of love.
Drink to me only with thine eyes.
Some pious fellow stood up and cursed that
song in my hearing.
Bless his poor dumb heart.
Doesn't he know the man that wrote that
said, I'm not going to drink at all,
just look at me and that will satisfy
me?
He wasn't talking about liquor.
Well, apart from that, all you know is
they sing about love beautifully.
Flow gently, sweet afternoon, among thy green braids.
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in
thy praise.
He starts out singing about a river and
ends up singing about Mary, who sleeps in
her white cot beside that river.
Beautiful.
That's the song of love.
The song of patriotism, of country, the song
of love.
Then there's the terrible song of war.
The awful song of war.
But you know, take all the songs that
man has ever written, songs of nature, songs
of country, songs of love, songs of war,
put them all together and their sounding brass
and tinkling cymbal compared with all the hymns
and anthems and songs and spiritual songs that
have been written from the days, the early
days of the Bible down to this hour,
when they hymned Almighty God like an angel
hymning at sunrise.
I could name them a great long list
of hymn writers, divine men they were.
I think of one that ran it like
this.
O God of good, the unfathomable seed, who
would not give his heart to thee, who
would not love thee with his might.
O Jesus, lover of mankind, who would not
his whole soul and mind with all his
strength to thee unite.
High-throned on heaven's eternal hill, in number,
weight, and measure still thou sweetly order'st all
that is.
And yet thou deignest to come to me
and guide my steps that I with thee
enthroned may reign in endless bliss.
Fountain of good, all blessing flows from thee.
No want thy fulness knows, what but thyself
canst thou desire?
Yet self-sufficient as thou art, thou dost
desire my worthless heart.
This, oh, only this dost thou desire.
So wrote Johann Scheffler, the angelus, cynicius of
Germany.
Now, if we feel this, we don't have
to be argued into it.
If we don't feel it, then I don't
know what to say.
Esau and Jacob, somebody wanted to know, you
know, and I tried to answer the question
about Esau and Jacob.
Jacob was such a rascal, and yet God
blessed him, and Esau such a, apparently such
a good fellow, and God didn't bless him.
What was the difference?
Ah, one of them had, he felt the
law of fascination within his heart.
He was, he needed a lot of help,
and he was anything but a good man
to start with.
But something in his heart was leaping up,
and deep was calling unto deep, and deep
was responding unto deep, and the voice of
the little man was responding to the voice
of the great God.
And that's why Jacob became Israel, after that
work of grace that transformed him from his
carnal state into his blessed state of spirituality.
So, if you don't have this fascination, it
could be that we are but another Esau.
What a tragedy to be born of the
red clay, and live and die, and be
buried in the red clay.
When Shakespeare said of Caesar, that though he
be the emperor, yet give nature time, and
nature will reduce him to a bit of
clay that might be used to keep the
wind away.
And the great Persian poet Omar Khayyam said,
when you drink, you're out of that vessel,
drink reverently, it may be your grandfather's dust
out of which it is made.
What a tragedy, my brethren, what a tragedy
to be born up out of the red
clay, and live a secular, earthly life, and
then die and be buried out of sight
in that same red clay.
But if you feel the charm and the
tug and the pull of God, then you
will know what the Holy Ghost meant when
he said, I beseech you, brethren, Paul speaking
in the Spirit, present your bodies a living
sacrifice, wholly unacceptable unto God which is your
reasonable service.
So you feel the fascination and the pull
and the tug and the charm of it.
How do you get out of the rut?
You get out of the rut by giving
God your all, letting God have you completely,
concentrating your whole life on God and his
Son, Jesus Christ, and then seek to know
the sweet fascination of loving God.
You can't stay asleep very long when the
beauty of Jesus is before your eyes.
I woke one morning in the home of
my friend Cliff Erickson, a pastor in Roseland,
California.
You go through the desert, very unpleasant, hot,
dusty, and then suddenly you burst out into
one of the most beautiful valleys you ever
saw, and in there is the little city.
Palm trees and bougainvillea and lilies and poinsettias
higher than man.
Lovely, lovely place.
So he hit me and said, Now you
sleep here.
He put me in the guest room on
the first floor.
And I slept till morning, and in the
morning I was waked.
What do you suppose it was?
It wasn't an alarm clock.
It wasn't one of those abominable radios that
they sell you to wake you up to
music.
It was a mockingbird.
And next to the English nightingale, the mockingbird
is the most beautiful singer in the world.
And I came floating back to consciousness, just
outside my window, mounted on a little tree,
sat a plain-looking little bitty, black and
white, not much to look at, but she
had her beak pointed up toward God, and
she was singing, oh, the beauty of that
song.
I had never heard anything as beautiful before,
nor sing.
You know what?
There are some of you that have been
asleep long enough.
And if you could only wake to the
voice of your beloved, if you could only
wake and be aroused and hear him speak,
it would be sweeter than the voice of
the mockingbird, sweeter than the sound of a
harp, the voice of God's Son.
That would get you out of the rut,
and that would get you out of your
sleep, for Jesus Christ is God's music, God's
poetry, God's art, God's beauty, God's all.
Son of God, immortal love, whom we that
have not seen thy face by faith and
faith alone embrace, believing where we cannot prove,
we believe tonight.
We reject the claims of men, and we
will follow none of them.
But we own thy claim, O man who
is God.
We admit the validity of thy claim.
Teach us, we pray thee, to bring in
our scattered lives and concentrate them upon thee
as Paul did and the other Saints.
Teach us, we pray, to listen for the
sound of thy musical voice until we are
charmed and enthralled and enraptured by it, that
we might not go our sleepy way, being
mediocre, half-awake Christians, while the coming of
the Lord draws nigh.
Grant, we pray, that these friends may take
this home and do something about it.
We ask in Christ's name, amen.