In the book of John, the first chapter,
verse 6, the following, there was a man
sent from God whose name was John.
The same came forth a witness, to bear
witness of the light, that all men through
him might believe.
He was not that light, but was sent
to bear witness of that light.
Now that is all I'm going to read.
And verse 6 will take the emphasis tonight.
There was a man sent from God whose
name was John.
So I wish to speak about the witness
of John the Baptist.
And I think that I would not run
into any serious opposition if I were to
say that John was the greatest of all
the prophets.
Our Lord Jesus did not say that in
so many words, but he said a broader
thing which included that.
He said, Verily I say to you, that
among those born of women there is not
a greater than John the Baptist.
I think that could be easily allowed to
mean that John was at the top among
the very greatest humans ever born.
And certainly that would put him where at
least we might venture the opinion that he
was the greatest of the prophets.
Now the greatness of the man John did
not lie in himself.
The greatness of the man John lay in
his office and in his privilege.
His office was bigger than John.
Elijah was bigger than his office, I think.
He hadn't any office.
And it wouldn't be difficult to be bigger
than an office you didn't have.
But Elijah, I mean John the Baptist, had
an office.
But he was himself not as big as
that office.
I think that this will appear as I
go on, though it's in a state of
blessed confusion at the moment.
Now Abraham saw our Lord's day and was
glad.
But John the Baptist lived in that day,
and that made him greater than Abraham.
David played his harp and sang of the
coming of one who should be wounded and
pierced, but should rise and sing among his
brethren.
But John the Baptist was there and saw
him and felt him.
Isaiah sang of one who should come born
of the virgin and should eat butter and
honey and should grow up as a root
out of a dry ground.
But John the Baptist touched him and baptized
him.
His privilege was greater.
Malachi said he should suddenly come to his
temple and should sit as a purifier of
silver.
But John the Baptist actually walked in that
temple.
And though that particular passage probably refers to
the second coming of Christ, yet that same
purifier of silver was there at his first
coming, and John the Baptist was present and
saw this.
And John saw him and touched him and
heard him and actually baptized him and gave
him, so to speak, his star, so that
the privilege of John was greater than that
of any of the rest.
There was a man sent from God.
Now, Matthew and Mark also tell about him.
But this man, John, seems to penetrate farther
in than these others.
Matthew and Mark give us no pedigree.
Luke gives us his family history, tells us
who his parents were and the wonder of
his birth.
But John rises higher, as John always seemed
to do, than either Mark or Matthew or
Luke, and penetrated through to the essential greatness
of the man and said he was a
man sent from God.
Now, it might have been said of John
the Baptist that he was the greatest, but
John doesn't say that.
It might have been said that he was
the strongest.
I don't know whether he was.
It might have been said that he was
the wisest or the most gifted or the
most eloquent.
But it said that he was sent, for
John penetrated.
I, for my part, ladies and gentlemen, maybe
I'll say more about this later on, am
weary of hearing blind men preach.
I mean by that, not men simply deprived
of their physical sight.
That doesn't take away any of the sharpness
from the heart.
That doesn't take away any of the brilliance
from the mind.
There's one listening to me now who has
not seen since she was a girl.
Yet I am sure that if you visited
her home and heard her play the great
album of classical records and discussed things with
her, you'd see she was just as sharp
as if she had seen as you and
I see.
Now, I pay that respect to one who
has come down with her husband fifty-four
hundred north in this city to sit in
this congregation tonight, and both of them blind.
But there is a blindness that is upon
us, a pure blindness, a dimness that is
upon us.
And I'm weary of hearing dim-minded people
preach and dim-minded people write hymns and
songs and dim-minded people take leadership in
the Church of Christ.
It might have been said that he was
the most eloquent, I say, or that he
was the wisest or the strongest.
But it says that he was a man
sent, and that was John's penetration.
John saw that.
I'm talking of two Johns now.
I'm talking about the John who wrote of
the other John, and the John who penetrated
and saw with keen vision that the main
and most significant thing about John the Baptist
was that he was sent of God.
Now, he saw, I say, this real mark
of excellence, and it was a higher honor
for John than anything else to say that
he was sent of God was a high
honor.
It was not only for John an unspeakably
high honor, but it was a treasure for
the world.
Have you ever stopped to do this?
I think it is better for you than
working out crossword puzzles.
Sometimes I'm on trains and I see people
with, oh, they look as if they were
bright.
If I didn't know, they weren't from what
they're doing.
They're sitting there working out crossword puzzles.
And have you ever thought that you could
do a great deal more for yourself by
doing something else?
Now, don't get mad at me.
If you like to do crossword puzzles, it's
all right.
I don't mind.
You can suck your thumb or work crossword
puzzles or do anything like that.
It's all right.
But I think there's something that is better
than that.
And I recommend one mental exercise.
It won't get you anyplace, but at least
it will be better than crossword puzzles.
And it will be try to think what
the world would be like if John the
Baptist hadn't come.
And then go on and try to think
what the world would be like if Jesus
hadn't come.
Think out of the world, John the Baptist.
Think out of the world, our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Think out of the world, the Church of
the Firstborn.
Think out of the world, the man and
his great celestial city from which we took
Jerusalem the golden tonight.
Think out of the world, the Lutherans and
Augustines and Wesleys and Christians and the rest
of them.
Think them out of the world and try
to piece the world together without them.
It will be an exercise in history and
in spiritual values that will infinitely exceed any
puzzles you ever might hope to work.
I say that the coming of this man,
sent of God, was an inestimable blessing, an
unspeakable treasure to the world.
This stern, simple, strong man that came sent
of God, I say it was a great
honor to him.
But greater than the honor that could be
done to one man was the treasure that
that honor meant to the world.
And not only so, but an example and
a lesson for all men.
Now, God sends forth his men.
I believe this.
I've always believed it.
I still believe it.
I do not believe in too much democracy.
Now, some of you with a strong Baptist
background will curl up like a leaf in
the fall, and like the maple leaf in
autumn, you will probably burn and burn.
But it's all right.
I'm half Baptist myself.
But I don't believe in too much democracy
in the church of Christ.
God has never run his church on democracy.
He's run his church on spiritual leadership of
men anointed of the Holy Ghost.
And even those who in their church quality
believe in democracy never get beyond first base
unless they have leaders in their denomination who
are anointed men.
Now, there was a man sent from God
whose name was Noah.
And Noah, a just man, built himself an
ark and saved himself and his wife and
the eighth person and saved the human race
from extinction.
And there was a man sent of God
whose name was Abraham.
And Abraham came from earth, the Chaldees, following
nothing but the light in his own heart
and the dimly seen vision of the God
of his father.
The God of Adam, I mean, and the
God of the race, and became the founder
of the Jewish nation.
And there was a man sent of God
named Moses who took that nation when it
was lost in Egyptian darkness and bondage and
led that nation across the Red Sea and
into the wilderness and guided and cherished and
nursed and cared for that nation for forty
years.
And when he died, there was a man
sent of God whose name was Joshua.
And he gathered that nation as a hen
gathers her chicks.
And he took that nation across the river
and established them in the land that God
had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And there was a man sent of God
whose name was David.
And he reached into his own heart and
tore out the sounding string and set those
strings in the windows of the synagogues for
a thousand years.
And the winds of persecution blew across them
and made song for the Jewish worshippers.
And when the veil of the temple was
rent and the Holy Ghost had come, those
same heart strings taken from the heart of
David were strung in the windows of the
churches and today and tonight in this church.
You can't sing without having David sing.
There was a man sent of God whose
name was David.
And he taught the world to sing.
And the world has been singing David's songs
ever since.
And there was a man sent of God
whose name was Peter.
And a man sent of God whose name
was Paul.
And when many centuries later the church had
been buried under the debris and settlings of
the dust of Romanism, there was a man
sent of God whose name was Luther, who
feared nobody.
And he brought back the Bible again translated
into sonorous and musical German.
There was a man sent of God whose
name was Pagan who went to the New
Hebrides.
And when he went, there wasn't a Christian.
And when he left, there wasn't a heathen.
And a man sent of God whose name
was Simpson.
And a man sent of God whose name
was Roseberry.
And you can go down the line and
take any list you happen to be fond
of and wherever men have done things, there
were men sent of God.
There were men who could work with people,
but there were men who always worked above
people, who always were up there because they
were sent of God.
Now I say no higher honor can ever
come to any man than this.
And here's where we draw our lesson and
example from this man, John.
No higher honor can come to any man
as a reward for faithfulness and service and
perhaps saving the Western world from extinction.
They have conferred upon Winston Churchill the title
Sir.
He is now Sir Winston Churchill.
And certainly none of us could possibly begrudge
the man his well-earned, I don't know
what you call it, what is a sirship?
We'll have to look that up.
But whatever you are when you're a sir,
he's now Sir Winston Churchill.
And I'm glad.
But how much, how infinitely much better it
would have been if it could be said
there was a man sent from God whose
name was Winston.
But it was not so said.
A man sent from Elizabeth.
A man sent from George.
A man sent from Edward.
Kings and queens sent him out.
But apparently God never did.
Somebody said to the great Englishman, do you
support the Church?
He said, yes, I support the Church like
a flying buttress from the outside.
And I do not want to detract one
iota from the greatness that is Churchill.
Common sense.
And candor compelled me to say it would
have been a greater man if it could
have been said God sent Churchill.
There was a man sent from God whose
name was Winston.
And there was another Englishman about whom it
can be said there was a man sent
from God whose name was John Wesley.
And when it's all in, and the records
are all written, and the angel of God
has okayed them and graded the papers of
all historians of the world, I think that
when it is said there was a man
sent from God whose name was John Wesley
and the man sent whose name was Winston
Churchill, Wesley will take his place high above
the great states.
Now young people, I want you to consider
this.
You being what you are as a creation
of God, and God being what and who
He is, to be owned of God and
commissioned of God and empowered and sent of
God is the highest honor that can fall
upon you.
If President Roosevelt were to call you to
Washington and make you an ambassador extraordinary with
full plenipotentiary powers and send you anywhere, you
would be proud and your people proud of
you and no one would blame you.
It would mean you weren't picked at random.
It would be an honor indeed.
But how much greater to be owned and
commissioned and empowered and sent of God so
that it can be said there was a
man sent of God whose name was Bob.
There was a man sent of God whose
name was Warren.
There was a man sent of God whose
name was Charles.
I say that you never can be better
more highly honored than this for it's an
honor equal to the angels.
No king can bestow it and no nation
can bestow it.
When men come home sometimes as General Dean
did and was given the Congressional Medal of
Honor, I think it was, he said, I
didn't know I'd earned it.
I didn't even know that I'd earned it,
said Dean.
Simplicity and humility characterized that plain soldier.
General, if he was, I didn't know I'd
earned it.
But when that Medal of Honor has tarnished
and the man who earned it has long
been dust, it will be said there was
a man sent of God whose name was
John.
When God sends a man, he gives him
a Medal of Honor high above that which
any nation can possibly bestow.
And I can't say anything to you young
people listening to me, maybe for some of
the old folk it's too late.
You've played your time away and lusted your
time away and worked your time away and
fooled your time away until God can't send
you anywhere.
If you get skinned through to heaven by
the grace of God, you ought to be
thankful.
But there are young people, and I recommend
that you make to be sent of God
your blazing ambition.
I recommend that you get your values right
and that you get your ambitions right and
that you get your models right.
There are poor, empty-headed fellows in America
today that would give the right hand if
they could be another Julius LaRose.
And there are women in Chicago tonight that
would sell their soul and their family and
desert their husbands and give up their children
if they thought they could get a big
part in Hollywood.
All this makes any godly man angry.
Angry not with the carnal, sinful anger, but
indignant with the high indignation of God that
we should so prostitute our talents and degrade
our ambitions that we who were provided with
jet propulsion and aimed at the stars should
burn out like a dud and come down
with a thud only a little way all
over in the rice paddy.
God Almighty has meant us to sail high
and far, and we settle for these lesser
things.
Young fellow, young girl, I say to you
that if it can be said of you
that God sent you, it will be an
honor that outshines any honor that anyone could
ever bestow upon you regardless of who he
might be.
Now let's look at this man, John.
And I don't know why I suppose this
is the way my mind works, but I
like to know why did God do something.
And instead of multiplying verses of Scripture all
saying the same thing like some of my
brethren who call it exposition, it isn't exposition,
it's multiplication.
But instead of simply multiplying texts, which you
don't have to do, if one text says
it, you don't have to quote fifteen.
Instead of multiplying texts, I like to get
at the text of God, find out why.
So I want to give you five reasons
why God could honor John the way he
did.
You want to take them down?
All right.
If you don't remember them, anyway.
First of all, we've got a word here
called solitude.
And he was in the desert until the
time of his showing forth unto Israel.
Here was a man, John the Baptist.
And he was in the desert until the
time of his showing forth unto Israel.
He had been born to an old couple
by kind of a half miracle.
And now, here he was, put into the
desert.
Badly adjusted, this man was.
And if he were living today, he would
have a half a dozen goofy scientists following
him around, telling him, now you ought to
get adjusted, John, because you need adjustment badly.
I hate that word adjusted.
I don't mind telling you so.
Whenever a doctor says, you need to get
adjusted, I grab my hat and leave.
I don't want anybody trying to adjust me.
I'm not a machine.
That word adjusted never came into the language
used about human beings until we forgot we
had a soul and began to think of
ourselves only in materialistic terms.
And when John B.
Watson began to say we not only had
no soul, we had no mind, and fucked
with our gut muscles, then we began to
want to adjust men.
And we have some weird guy with a
screwdriver screwing this one tighter and loosening this
one a little and tapping that one to
get people adjusted.
We don't need adjustment, ladies and gentlemen.
We need God in the day in which
we live.
And John the Baptist would never have fit
in our day, never his suit wasn't pressed,
and the language he spoke was not beautiful.
He couldn't quote from the poets.
I'm sure he couldn't.
But he had been in the desert alone
with his God in solitude.
And he came out of his solitude to
break the silence like a drumbeat on the
trumpet sound.
And all gathered to hear this man who
had been with God.
They had ground him through the schools and
leveled him off and made him another cookie
stamped out of the same cookie cutter.
He'd have gone out and been one more
preacher holding down a little church somewhere, taking
orders from the board and helping cut cake
for the ladies' egg.
But this man went into the silence and
went to school to God and the stars
and the howling winds and the sand.
The trouble with us in our day is
we can't get quiet long enough to do
anything.
Can't get quiet long enough to wait on
God.
We have the idea that if you're not
talking, something's wrong.
Somebody has to be talking.
Somebody has to be making a noise.
Somebody has to be making a rattle of
some sort.
When they invented diesel whistles, they raised the
devil.
And they filled insane asylum hatches.
And when they invented all these noisemakers.
Do you ever think of how Daniel Boone
must have lived?
Here, old Daniel Boone.
I killed a bar here.
Well, Daniel didn't hear a sound except the
sweet euphonious sounds of singing birds and perhaps
a wolf howling somewhere in the distance.
It sounded like an old black-mouthed dog
baying to the moon.
And John just lived in the silences.
I mean Daniel.
He must have really lived.
Some of those old boys didn't move so
fast, but they lived a lot deeper than
we do.
We move too fast to be deep.
But John the Baptist, God could use him
because he could get hold of him.
He could get him stopped.
He could slow him down enough to get
on board.
A lot of people never find themselves.
They're not meditative.
They're not serious-minded.
They say that's dull.
That's dull.
They won't study anything that is dull.
And they won't read anything that is dull.
And the result is, of course, that they
have to have company around them all the
time.
Old Arthur Schopenhauer said that the more you
have inside of you, the less you need
people around about you.
That if you've got anything in your soul,
you can live by yourself quite happily.
But if you don't have anything inside, you
have to compensate for your inner vacuity by
surrounding yourself with a lot of social noise
makers.
And most people live like that.
They can't afford to live by themselves.
They can't.
They can't get off anywhere and be still.
But I solemnly warn you, even though I
sound like an anachronist, I sound like the
voice of somebody that lived and died two
hundred, three hundred years ago.
I tell you that if you don't practice
the art of holy solitude, you won't be
worth shooting in the kingdom of God.
For there's got to be this silence.
And he was in the desert until the
time of his showing forth unto Israel.
He might not have been adjusted to all
of the world's ways.
And if he came into a room, I'm
sure he didn't know how to come into
a room.
And I'm certain that if you had set
him down at a table, he wouldn't know
which one of the various tools to pick
up first, or utensils, or whatever you call
those things, he doubted.
He would not have fitted in, but he
had met God in the silence.
Have you ever tried it?
Have you ever gone along, taking time off
and time out, and dedicated that time to
just being still and listening to God?
It is said in the book of Job
there was silence, and I heard a voice.
Out of the silence came the voice.
Before the beginning was the silence, they said.
And in the beginning was the Word.
But always out of the silence God speaks.
So I recommend take some time and get
alone with God.
I believe that the abrasive action of society
has taken the character out of many a
man, and has reduced him to be one
more shiny dime among the dimes of the
world, shiny from much use and many contacts,
lost all his milling and all his characteristics,
lost it all, because there are too many,
he had to be too many places, see
too many people, and do what we call
making contact.
I love that.
So you've got to get out and make
some contacts for Jesus.
Brother, if you get alone and let your
two knees make contacts with the ground and
stay there a while, it will do you
more good than all of these nervous contacts
we make with one another.
Thank God, brother, I never had any of
these fellows making contacts with me.
I never stay long enough to have them
do it.
I know they're coming.
But these contact boys.
Now remember that you can be that kind
of preacher, you can be that kind of
Christian, but if you do, you sell your
soul to the Halloween noises and colored lights
and 3-D.
Now the second is simplicity.
John had his raiment of camel's hair and
his food was locusts and wild honey.
And a lot of people have leaped to
John's defense and they've tried to prove that
John never ate grasshoppers.
But John ate grasshoppers.
For the locusts that John ate were not
the locust tree.
They were bugs, hoppers, insects, green things.
And you know they were permitted in the
Bible.
They were permitted to eat grasshoppers if they
hopped.
And locusts.
That was permissible.
They tell me that in France, I haven't
been there, but they tell me they have
salted grasshoppers in vendors.
And if you can put in a, whatever
you'd put in there, a nickel, oh it
wouldn't cost a whole franc for a handful
of grasshoppers I shouldn't think.
But anyhow, whatever you'd put in, you put
it in, you get yourself some grasshoppers and
go away muttering in French and eating a
handful of salted grasshoppers.
And that's perfectly all right.
They eat snails over there, they tell me.
Don't look so wise.
In Texas they eat rattlesnakes.
You can buy canned rattlesnakes if you know
where to look for them.
John the Baptist just lived on plain honey,
which he got by fighting the bees and
slipping up when they were busy and getting
a bit of honey.
And then he got locusts and ate locusts.
And he was dressed simply, as simply as
could be.
In our day, they'd have swarmed all over
him, not the bees, but the doctors.
And they'd have said, you're not getting your
right vitamins.
Locusts and wild honey won't do.
You're not getting a full round of diet
in its season.
You need to eat carrots in order that
you can see in the dark.
You need lamb and beans for their protein.
You need to keep off the berber.
John didn't know that, thank God, so he
just subsisted on the lamb and lived on
what he had.
And after a breakfast of locusts and wild
honey, he got on his knees and looked
upward and waited all day long on God
in the desert while the wind and the
dust blew about him.
Simple-hearted man.
When he came, he came all simply dressed.
Now there's something to be said for simplicity,
my listening people.
Very much to be said for simplicity.
I know the Quakers went too far, and
I never have been a Quaker, though I
have admired them in some ways.
I admire their simplicity.
If we could just be simple again, just
simple again.
I saw a little boy seven months old
on Thanksgiving Day.
They brought him in, plumped him down on
a couch, and he sat there so stiff
with clothing, he could hardly move, and regaled
us for quite a while.
He was just simple, that's all.
There wasn't anything.
He wasn't trying to be anybody.
He hadn't anything to hide.
He didn't care who knew everything about him.
He wasn't trying to show off.
He was just himself.
He was only seven months.
It won't take him very long to begin
to pose and pretend and become like us.
But instead of that, he just sat there
playing, and when he felt like it, he'd
lower his jaw, let the saliva drool down,
while he looked around and examined to wonder,
he'd wonder, what that fellow, that old fellow
with the bald head, who's he now?
Let me see, he'd say.
Now dribble down here.
Just simple, that's all.
Just simple, just simple.
And Jesus said, if you come, you'll be
like little children.
Now he certainly meant simplicity, and John the
Baptist had it, that that simplicity came dressed
plainly.
He wasn't trying to impress anybody.
A friend was telling me about being in
a meeting of religious men, and one man
got up and said, what this denomination needs
to do, we need to get out and
brag about ourselves.
Well, brag about ourselves indeed.
And as soon as we begin to brag
about ourselves, God washes his hands off of
the whole mess and says, that bunch of
braggers all have nothing to do with it.
John the Baptist never bragged.
He just walked around simply doing the will
of God.
So there we have simplicity as the second,
and we have vision as the third.
I said I would say more about vision.
Now the Holy Spirit came like a dove
and fell on Jesus.
A dove.
He descended like a dove and put down
his pink feet and disappeared into the heart
of the Son of God.
Holy Ghost had come.
I wonder who saw that Holy Ghost come.
I don't think anybody did, only John.
John said, I know him not, but he
that sent me said to the one upon
whom a dove shall descend and remain, he
is the one.
And he had the vision to see it.
Oh, for an opening of the eyes.
For an opening of the eyes, ladies and
gentlemen.
A man with the open eye can see
what the man of dim vision can never
see.
Go out into the country with a naturalist,
a man whose eye has been trained to
see.
Go out with a hunter and he'll see
things where the common fellow with the dim
vision never sees.
Go out with a man of the plains
and the wilderness that makes his living trapping
and shooting, and he sees.
But a city man sees nothing at all
except red and green lights.
And they've got to knock him in the
eye to make him see, but the keen
sights of the woodland sees.
Go into the art gallery with somebody who's
spent his lifetime following baseball averages, wondering who'll
come out in the first in the Big
Ten.
Who knows nothing more complicated than the engine
in his old jalopy.
Take him down here on Michigan Avenue between
the two lines and take him upstairs.
Show him the accumulated masterpieces of the centuries
into which the finest spirits that the world
ever knew, naturally, have poured their best blood.
He'll be bored to extinction.
Get out of there just as soon as
he can.
It's all a blob of this and that
to him.
He sees nothing.
But the aesthete in the trained eye sees
wonders there.
So come into the Church of Christ, into
the kingdom of God.
It takes vision, ladies and gentlemen.
And the most woeful thing about vision is
it always puts you out of gear with
your time.
If you can see in the middle of
a blind world, they're all going to be
on your back, beating your ears and saying
he thinks he can see.
Look at him.
Think of the infinite conceit of the man
who pretends to say he sees.
Nobody sees.
This dust, this dimness of vision, this myopia,
that's natural.
Now don't anybody think otherwise.
But along comes a little Isaiah or a
David or a John and sees and then
they condemn him.
Usually the man that sees is not particularly
enjoyed by his own people.
The prophet is not without honor in his
own country and among his own people.
Even our Lord Jesus Christ who saw as
never a man saw, was not appreciated by
his own family.
His own mother worried about him and his
own brethren thought he'd lost his mind.
And the people around about him thought he
was in cahoots with the devil.
But he was a seer in the midst
of men who couldn't see.
He was a man of vision in the
midst of men who had no vision.
John the Baptist had vision.
He knew where he was in his times.
He wasn't going to be carried around, carried
away by the drift of the hour.
All you have to do is take a
few magazines, listen to a few programs on
the radio and you will know that religion
has its direction.
It has its vogue.
The wind of religion begins to set in
one direction.
And every little old preacher like a willow
tree bows his little old reverend head in
one direction, all afraid to look the other
way because the path is to be that
the wind of religion which is vogue in
that hour is roaring out of that direction.
And so everybody turns in that direction.
The magazines take it up, the programs take
it up, the preachers take it up, the
laymen take it up and money gets behind
it and songs get behind it because the
wind is blowing from that direction.
Some little old guy, partly bald, sees the
mistake of it all and turns his face
and the wind's in his face.
And every man that ever has any vision
is looking into the wind and says, no,
don't give up to the trend of the
times.
Stand for God, the New Testament Christianity in
the hour when everybody's blowing in the same
direction.
And that figure of the wind isn't so
bad after all.
Job said he'd fill up his belly with
the east wind and there's a lot of
stuff I ever heard just east wind blowing.
But it's popular.
It's the vogue.
Publishers make their money at it and we
get crowds and away we go.
We need to have a few men.
If I could get 100 men, if I
could settle for 50 men who would dare
to stand up and face out this Sirocco,
isn't that what you call it in India?
I mean that hot wind that blows.
If we dared face that out, we might
set the drift in another direction altogether.
Right now it's all running in one direction.
And everybody's afraid to get up and do
anything about it.
Oh, for a few Irishmen.
Huh?
For a few non-conformists, for a few
that would oppose.
Would say, no, wait a minute, we've got
to have New Testament religion.
We've got to have God and Christ in
this thing.
Simplicity and solitude and meditation and individuality.
We're not all going to run the same
way, cut our hair the same way, wear
the same kind of this and that and
be like everybody else.
If we're going to be like Christ and
stand in the middle of an adulterous and
sinful generation whether the world likes it or
not, John had that kind of vision.
He would be what he would be in
that hour.
And that leads us then to courage.
John had courage.
Stood up there and said, you generation of
vipers, no poetry there, brother.
No poetry there.
Remember when I was a young preacher.
In fact, I wasn't a preacher yet.
One of the greatest shocks I got was
shaking hands with a minister of a certain
church.
I shook hands with him every Sunday.
He was the pastor of the church.
And I was one of the sheep of
his burnt-over pastor field.
And I shaked hands with him.
I was out of the factories.
My hands had calluses right on there to
this day.
And he didn't have any.
I got a tongue there that's crooked from
working in a factory.
And I don't think he'd ever been anywhere
but the seminary.
Probably his mother-in-law had paid his
way through because I know that he'd never
done anything.
And to stand at the door and reach
out my rather horny hand and shake that
soft feminine paw that had been bathed in
Italian balm, brother, it was a little too
much for me.
I reacted from it.
And I've never liked soft-handed pastors from
that hour to this.
Never liked them because they always kind of
frightened me.
There was a fellow who had no courage.
I remember once he preached on a harp
of a thousand strings.
He had a man present with a big
harp and the fellow played the harp.
That was pretty nice.
And then when he threw a prayer in
the harp, one of those big things you
know that you just stroke.
And after he threw his prayer, he preached
on the harp of a thousand strings.
And he said, And so I conclude that
the soul of man is a harp of
a thousand strings.
Yes.
But I know that fellow.
And I know he didn't have courage enough.
He didn't have courage enough to meet a
good life mouth-head on.
He'd have dodged the other way if he'd
met it.
Now, many of us will never be sent
of God because we haven't the courage to
be sent of God.
We just don't have it.
Just haven't got the courage.
We're afraid of being different creatures.
They're afraid of losing something.
Afraid they'll lose their pool.
Afraid they'll lose their job.
Afraid they'll lose public esteem and be criticized.
Christians are afraid of losing friends.
Afraid of losing reputation.
Afraid of losing income.
They say, No, I believe in religion all
right now.
Don't get me wrong.
But I believe in that text, Be not
righteous over much.
You know, that's a wonderful text.
Be not righteous over much.
And as soon as you tell them they
ought to get up on their hind legs
and make a noise like a man, they
say, Be not righteous over much.
And they settle you back down with that
text which they don't understand.
And excuse themselves, hypocrites, hiding behind that text.
But the reason they don't do it, they're
afraid of losing something.
Afraid of losing their income.
Afraid some boss won't like them.
Afraid their wife will smile at them and
go this way when there's company.
Afraid, always afraid, afraid.
God Almighty called his sheep, but he didn't
call his mice.
And the figure of sheep doesn't hold when
it comes to prophets and soldiers and warriors
in a day of declension and sin.
God sometimes straps a buckler on his sheep
and stands him up on his two hind
legs and turns him out and by some
miracle changes him from being a sheep into
being a roaring lion.
Sends him out to be a Lutheran or
a Finn.
He said, Oh, you generation of vipers.
I could give John a book that would
have settled his ash.
Prove that you don't dare talk that way
to people.
That if you do, they won't come back.
And furthermore, you don't dare offend people like
that and or insult them.
You can't talk that way to people.
That's so.
John did.
And they came back.
Then my fifth point, through his humility, yet
his love of solitude, simplicity, his vision, his
courage, and his humility.
He allowed Christ to displace him completely.
And it's very important you get this.
He allowed Christ to displace him in everything.
He said, I am not the Christ.
I am not Elijah.
I am a voice sounding in the wilderness.
There lived a generation ago, not far from
here, a great man.
He was a great man, gifted man, great
man.
And he was greatly used in prayer.
He used to pray for the sick and
they'd get well.
And he gathered around him a colony and
became a great religious leader.
So far, so good.
But slowly that began to eat into him.
And he began to feel he was somebody.
And pretty soon he said, I am Elijah,
come back.
And he got a robe and put on
him, tried to be like Elijah, and moved
around saying, I am Elijah, return.
John the Baptist said, I'm not Elijah.
I'm not Christ.
I'm not one of the old prophets.
I'm just a voice sent, crying in the
wilderness.
And I'm not even talking about myself.
I'm talking about another one who is to
come after me.
And when he comes, he'll be seen to
be so great by comparison that I'll be
happy to get down and I won't even
feel worthy to loose his shoes.
That was John.
And so when his ministry was over, Jesus
came and John said, Behold, the Lamb of
God directed all the eyes away from himself
to Jesus and then faded out of the
picture and said, I must decrease while he
increases.
Well, brother, there's something.
How about you Sunday school teachers?
You think you'd be up to it spiritually
to let somebody else take over the class
you've worked so hard for?
The minister that can do a great work
and then quietly fade out of the picture
and let somebody else take over?
He's a rare one among men.
John the Baptist was that kind of man.
He didn't want anything for himself.
He said, for it was said of him,
Just to be present and hear the bridegroom's
voice is all I want.
I am not the bridegroom.
I'm only one of the best men, one
of the men around the bridegroom.
Just to see the happy face of the
bride and to hear the bridegroom's voice is
all the joy I want.
There was the humility of the man John.
No, my brethren, we do not want people
to start bragging on themselves.
We want people to stop talking about themselves
and begin to talk about the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the
world.
And if that Lamb of God gets all
the glory, they delight in it.
They delight in it.
They ask no glory for themselves, only to
be present and hear the bridegroom's voice.
That was John.
And I say to you that if you
want God to send you and want the
high honor of having it said, there was
a man sent from God whose name was,
or a woman sent from God then.
You must be humble indeed, for only the
humble does God send.
The proud send themselves, and the obedient are
sent of men, but the humble are sent
of God.
I wouldn't want to be engaged in religious
activity if I did not know I was
sent of God in a small, inconsequential fashion
compared with this great man we all would
be, or not.
But unless I knew I was sent of
God, I would not want to be engaged
in the activities of religion.
Can you imagine, ladies and gentlemen, can you
imagine taking orders from some bloated fellow with
a pipe in his mouth, sitting back of
a mahogany desk somewhere, beating out on a
typewriter, or dictating to a secretary what I'm
to preach about next Sunday?
Can you imagine?
Can you imagine my scanning the slick magazines
for a text to know what I'm to
preach on next Sunday, looking at Harper's and
Atlantic and the Yale Review, trying to find
something to talk about?
Can you imagine it?
No, never.
Get a snow shovel and go around from
door to door and say, Lady, would you
like to have your walk with me?
And I'd shovel on this snow with an
honest shovel and go in tired at night,
look in the glass and see a haggard,
tired man, but a man I wasn't ashamed
of, but to run and not be sent.
Or to be sent by somebody else other
than God.
How horrible can it get?
But John was sent of God because he
had the five virtues.
He loved solitude.
He loved simplicity.
He had vision and courage and humility.
The God of John is the God of
this hour.
And nothing has been changed.
His qualifications have not been altered.
God hasn't found out anything new from the
day he made those five qualities to mark
his man.
And what marked his man back there will
mark his man now.
I do not say, and I do not
want to be misunderstood as having anyone think
that I say, that in order to be
like John, we have to go to the
woods and eat locusts and wild honey, forego
all education, and go back like Daniel Boone
to the wilderness.
That would be foolish.
It's the heart that's to be simple.
It's the heart that's to love solitude.
It's the heart that's to be courageous.