Tonight, I picked for myself a very difficult
section of Scripture.
It was Gypsy Smith, I think, or Sam
Jones, maybe, Sam Jones, the eccentric American evangelist
of a couple of generations ago, that said
that when the average preacher took a text,
it reminded him of an insect trying to
carry a bale of cotton.
And if ever I felt like an insect,
it's tonight, and if ever I felt I
was trying to lift a bale of cotton,
it's tonight.
But let me read the passage here, in
John 5.
Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work.
Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill
him, because he not only had broken the
Sabbath, but had said also that God was
his Father, making himself equal with God.
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The Son can
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth
the Father do.
For what thing soever he doeth, that is,
the Father, these also doeth the Son likewise.
For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth
him all things that himself doeth.
And he will show him greater works than
these that ye may marvel.
For as the Father raiseth up the dead,
and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth
whom he will.
For the Father judgeth no man, but hath
committed all judgment unto the Son.
That all men should honor the Son, even
as they honor the Father.
He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not
the Father which hath sent him.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that
heareth my word, and believeth on him that
sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not
come into condemnation, but is passed from death
unto life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, There always
coming and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God,
and they that hear shall live.
For as the Father hath life in himself,
so hath he given to the Son to
have life in himself.
Now the first part of this section of
scripture I preached on two weeks ago.
My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.
And now in the passage before us, the
opening part of it, our Lord explains how
he works with the Father.
The Son can do nothing of himself, but
what he seeth the Father do.
For what things soever he, the Father, doeth,
these also doeth the Son likewise.
Now I spoke of the unceasing activity of
God the Father.
The unwearied, restless, and yet ever restful, omnipotent,
creative work of the Father.
Working toward a predetermined end.
A purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus
before the world began.
Now here, our Lord tells us that his
working is in line with the Father's working
and altogether dependent upon it.
The Son can do nothing of himself.
I want you to notice, and I think
this is a bit of theology that we
can well take with us into every corridor
and passage of the whole word of God.
That the Son can do nothing of himself,
but the Son can do everything in himself.
I quoted the old Middle Ages, medieval theological
concept that the Son is not God of
himself, but he is God in himself.
Or, correctly wording it, the Son is not
God of himself, but of the Father, but
he is God in himself.
And here we have it, that the Son
works himself, but he does not work of
himself, for he can do nothing of himself.
Now there are four wonderful doctrines that are
taught here.
One of them is the harmony in the
blessed Godhead.
There is a harmony in the blessed Godhead.
I think it would be impossible to overemphasize
this doctrine, that there is a perfect harmony
between the persons of the Godhead, and that
we must never allow ourselves, ever once, to
think there is any conflict, or to think
any conflict into the persons of the Godhead.
The Father planned it, but he planned it
in his Son, and he wrought it out
through his Son by the power of the
Holy Spirit, so that there had never been
anything but harmony in the blessed Godhead.
And whatever the Father does, the Son sees
him do, and works in harmony with what
the Father is doing.
And the Holy Ghost is the perfect bond
between the Father and the Son, energizing the
eternal Son with the energies of the Father,
and so working harmoniously to a preordained end.
This is taught in this passage, and is
also taught throughout the entire Bible.
But also there is taught the subordinate position
of the Son of Man.
This has bothered some people very much, that
the Son is equal to the Father, and
yet is subordinate to the Father.
For our Lord Jesus Christ teaches both.
He says that the Son can do nothing
of himself, and he says the Father is
greater than I, and so he takes a
subordinate position, and prays to his Father.
And naturally, an equal does not pray to
an equal.
An equal prays to one who is above
him, and to whom he can address his
prayers.
And when the Son prays to the Father,
it is a tacit confession of subordination.
He is not equal to the Father, so
he prays to one who is above him.
And yet he can say, My Father and
I are one, and he that has seen
me has seen the Father.
Now what do we mean, and how do
we get this way?
And is there contradiction there?
No, there is no contradiction there, my brethren,
because the old Athanasian creed has it that
as pertaining to his Godhead, he is equal
to the Father.
As pertaining to his manhood, he is less
than the Father.
And in this ancient and holy trinity, there
was nothing before and nothing after, nothing higher
and nothing lower, but all three persons together,
co-eternal and equal, so that Jesus Christ
has the two natures, the nature of man
and the nature of God, harmonized into one
perfect personality.
Let us not imagine Jesus as a schizophreniac,
one with a split personality, having two personalities.
Let us know that he has one personality,
but he has two natures, harmonized into one
personality.
And when he speaks about himself as the
Son of Mary, he says that I can
do nothing of myself.
I see the Father do it and I
do it, and says that the Father is
greater than I.
When he speaks about himself as God, he
says I and my Father are one.
So there is no contradiction here.
There is only an understanding.
When I was a very young preacher, I
got among the Jesus-only people.
Now in case you don't know what the
Jesus-only people are, now sometimes you'll see
a button, somebody will be wearing it on
their lapel, big around as a schoolboy's cap,
and it'll say Jesus-only on it.
Now that isn't what I mean.
They may be just movie students, you know,
or Nyack students, or somebody out trying to
tell the world they belong to the Lord.
I don't mean that.
But there is a group that call themselves
the Jesus-only group.
I don't know that they ever wear lapel
buttons.
But they say that the name of the
Godhead is Jesus.
That scripture says you shall baptize him in
the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Ghost.
But it doesn't give us the name.
But that Jesus is the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost, and they get all mixed up
in their mathematics.
They say how can three be one and
how can one be three?
And they get all mixed up in their
mathematics.
Their arithmetic gets them into confusion.
So they say there is but one person
of the Godhead and that he is named
Jesus and that Jesus is the Father and
he is the Son and he is the
Holy Ghost.
How one can be the father of another
has never been explained to me by these
friends.
And I might add also that these persons
believe that everyone who is truly saved and
ready for the coming of the Lord has
spoken in tongues and they put you in
a tub of water till you do.
They say there's a blessing in the tub,
brother, and they will baptize you till you
do come through to their satisfaction.
I do not mean to reflect upon them.
I think that they are well-intentioned and
many times good people.
But of course you can be good in
your heart and be badly mixed up in
your head.
And they certainly are badly mixed up in
their theology.
For they teach that there is only one
person of the Godhead and he is Father
and Son and Holy Spirit.
I can't see how it could possibly be.
And that the name of these three or
the name of this one is Jesus.
But anyway, it's true of a school of
modern theologians that there is one person of
the Godhead but he has three masks.
That is, he has three faces.
The old god of the ancient Roman days
named Janus or Janus had two faces looking
two directions but they've gone one further and
they've given the Godhead three faces.
And when this one person of the Godhead
wants to be the Father, he puts on
the Father's face and turns that to you.
When he wants to be the Son, he
turns the Son's face.
When he wants to be the Spirit, he
turns the Spirit's face to you.
I find it much easier to believe in
an ancient, incorruptible, uncreated Godhead, a fountain of
ancient Godhead, and then the three persons leaping
up out of that Godhead.
I have thought of God, the Godhead, as
a great sea.
Because you know that the mystic theologians taught
that the Godhead goes back of and beneath
any of the three persons of the Trinity.
That there is the underlying Godhead and then
that the Godhead expressed himself as Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost in three personalities.
That is what I believe.
I believe that the Father is the ancient
Godhead expressing himself as the Father, and the
Son is the ancient Godhead in expression as
the Son, and the Holy Ghost is the
ancient Godhead, all of one substance of one
eternity, one without beginning and without creation.
And so we have the triune God.
And when Jesus says, I am less than
the Father, he's speaking of his manhood.
When he says, I am equal to the
Father, he's speaking of his Godhood.
And when he speaks of his Godhead, he
does not take any low place beneath the
Father.
Neither does the Holy Spirit.
But these three are one.
It's a wonderful mystery, and I don't claim
to be able to understand it.
But I confess I delight to tremble before
the throne and say holy three times repeated.
Holy, holy, holy.
So there is a harmony in the blessed
Godhead, but there is a subordination of the
Son to the Father for the purposes of
creation and redemption.
And the third thing this text teaches is
the unaffected relation between the Father and the
Son in the Incarnation.
I'm saying so many things these days that
I don't hear anybody else say that I
wonder if it is that I just don't
get around or is nobody saying it.
I preached over in Keswick last week, over
the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in New
Jersey.
And a lot of Lance people were there
and people who had been in this church.
People had come here and they'd gone by
as students and so on.
But I had four sermons to preach, so
I preached on four of the attributes of
God.
And you know that the people gave me
to understand that they had never heard any
sermons on the attributes of God in their
life.
I preached on the selfhood of God and
the, well, three other attributes of God, and
they said they'd never heard any sermons on
the attributes of God.
And it isn't that I don't get around
because when I preach I have to listen
to other preachers.
That is, I preach in the morning, say,
and you preach in the afternoon, and I
preach at night and then reverse it and
so as to get a right share.
Each one taking his turn at bat.
And, of course, I have to be courteous
enough to sit back there and write editorials
while the other fellow preaches.
But I never hear this business.
I don't hear anybody preach about the everlasting
Godhead and the eternal creed.
I just hear other things.
And that's not to reflect on any man
who's preaching the truth, but it is only
to say that there certainly is truth that
is being tragically neglected in the day in
which we live.
And there's a whole world of gold and
truth that we can mine out with a
pickaxe of prayer from the Bible that will
be meat and drink and food and wonderful
help to our Christian people.
I mix my metaphors there too, brother.
Mining out gold to eat it for food.
You preachers just overlook that because I feel
the way that the brother, what was his
name, in that great Brooklyn preacher, Beecher, he
said that when a metaphor gets in my
way, God help it, he wasn't concerned very
much with it.
Anyway, there was an unaffected relationship between the
Father and the Son in the Incarnation.
Now, we generally say that Jesus Christ left
his home far above yonder and that he
came down and cut himself off from the
Father and left the delights of the Father's
bosom and the Father's heart and walked in
exile among men.
But that's only partly true.
It is true as we sing.
He left his Father's home above so something
his love emptied himself of all but love.
He did do that, but he never emptied
himself of his deity.
Never.
When it says that he considered not an
equality with God, something to be held on
to, but emptied himself, remember one thing, he
never emptied himself of his deity.
He couldn't do it.
It would be metaphysically impossible even to think
such a thought as that the Eternal Son
should be anything less than God.
But he never emptied himself of one of
the attributes of deity.
But he emptied himself of the accouterments of
deity.
He emptied himself of the evidences of deity
and covered the deity in a cloak of
opaque flesh and walked among us as though
he were a man.
He was God in overalls.
God living on the earth and wearing the
common denim of mankind and covering over his
deity.
But as somebody has pointed out, when occasion
required, he could let his deity shine through.
As once when he prayed to the Heavenly
Father and his face became shining white and
his garments whiter than any fuller on earth
and they shone like the sun as he
knelt there, it was only his deity showing
itself through the previously opaque veil of his
manhood.
But even while he walked on the earth,
he was within unbroken fellowship with the Father.
For it's impossible that the Father and the
Son should ever cease in the ancient sea
of the Godhead to be joined together as
one.
But the man Christ Jesus cried, My God,
my God, why'st thou forsaken me?
And as pertaining to his manhood, he was
forsaken of the Father.
As pertaining to his deity, forsaking would be
impossible.
For we cannot divide the deity or separate
the persons of the Holy Trinity.
So Jesus, when he walked on earth, saw
the Father.
And that gives us our fourth thought, the
perfect clairvoyance of the Son.
Now I use that word clairvoyance without apology,
though it needs an explanation.
What a beautiful word it is, the word
clairvoyance.
I like it.
It means clear sea, clear sight, perfect visibility,
perfect unending ceiling, no clouds between, but the
spooks have taken it, and the wizards and
witches and spiritualists and what have you, they've
taken it, and now we have clairvoyance used
by the spiritists.
They have no more right to it than
I have the right to the title of
being called King of England.
They have no right to it.
For the spiritist doesn't see clearly, and no
one sees clearly but the Son.
And what he seeth the Father do, that
he doeth.
For the Father shows the Son what he
seeth him do, so that the Father and
the Son are working harmoniously within sight of
each other.
Not all the clouds that ever came over
Palestine prevented the clairvoyance of the Son, the
clear sight of Jesus Christ.
And not all the shadows that gathered round
Calvary prevented the Eternal Son from gazing full
into the face of the Eternal Father.
As pertaining to his manhood, he cried in
agony of sacrifice and offering, My God, my
God, and bled and died as God turned
away from the sacrifice.
But the Eternal Godhood was unaffected and undivided,
and the Son looked into the clear face
of the Father without a shadow between.
It had to be like that, my brethren.
It had to be like that.
What a terrible mixed-up and imperfect redemption
it would have been if Jesus Christ had
had to fight his way through.
If he, the Eternal Son, had been rejected
from the presence of the Father, we would
not have had Christianity then.
We would have had Roman mythology.
We were down calling, Mr. McAfee and I,
in the neighborhood of the University of Chicago
this last week, and we dropped into a
little bookstore there at the Red Door, bookstore,
mostly foreign books, it is foreign language, and
classics.
And I picked up the Aeneas of Virgil,
translated into English, and while my friend was
driving along, watching the stoplights, I was reading
about the gods and goddesses of Egypt or
of Rome.
And we saw there, I'd read it, of
course, as he had and you had before,
but it was a new translation, and I
enjoyed reading it as I went along.
And here were the gods and the goddesses,
marrying and giving in marriage, and fighting and
being jealous, and pushing each other around, and
trying to murder each other.
One god would sneak in behind another god's
back and grab a hammer or sneak something
out and disappear into the bushes.
Another god would chase him.
And if we listen to poor, uneducated, I
mean spiritually uneducated, preaching, we will imagine that
there exists in the godhead some kind of
such conflict.
And that the Son of God, like some
demigod of Rome, then slipped in and rescued
mankind, like Prometheus brought down fire from heaven
and was punished for her robbery.
But nothing like that exists.
The perfect clairvoyance, the perfect sight of the
Son, the clear seeing of Jesus as he
walked among men and gazed into the face
of the Father.
For the Father was there and is here.
For he says, The Father loves the Son.
And this love, of course, is not simply
the love of God for a good man.
It is the ancient unity of love among
the Holy Three.
The ancient unity of love.
Oh, that's what it means in the Bible
when it says, God is love, and he
that loveth knoweth God, and he that loveth
not knoweth not God.
Time me to get out.
So these blessed DC-6's and Connie's don't
go overhead.
Do they bother you?
Just when I'm saying something I consider important,
why, there's eight engines roaring up there.
But we'll try to keep sweet.
Someday we'll fly without wings.
Three, The sun quickens them, and even so
the sun quickens whom it will.
Now, if this means anything at all, my
listening friends, it means that the working of
the sun in regeneration is as radical and
miraculous as the working of the father in
raising the dead.
If it means anything, it means that.
That the father raises the dead and quickens
them, and even so the son quickens whom
he will.
And that's in the present tense, and he's
not talking about the resurrection.
He's talking about the present time.
The time now is, he says, the dead
shall hear the voice of the son of
God and those who hearken will live.
So he's not talking about future resurrection.
He's talking about the present time.
And he says here that as the father
has ability to raise the dead and give
them life, so he has given to the
son also power to raise the dead and
give them life.
Only the father raises the dead in the
future resurrection.
The son raises the dead right now.
They hear the voice of the son of
God and those who hearken will, shall live.
Now, the work of the Holy Ghost, then
the work of Christ in making a Christian
is as radical a thing as raising Lazarus
from the dead.
When Lazarus came out of the tomb, a
live man where a dead man had been,
he stood everlastingly as a figure of a
Christian who stands up a live man where
a dead man has been.
Who stands up a clean man where a
filthy man has been.
Over in Keswick they have what they call
the Colony of Mercy.
It's a whole colony, as the name implies,
a lot of buildings given over entirely to
men who have gone down through drink or
dope or both or other vices that have
dragged them down.
And all of my two trips there and
I've talked to these men, last year when
I was there, there was a very brilliant
man running around there who had been a
professor in the university using, I knew he
was because he used long words, and he
could talk books for the hour and he
was nice enough to run around carrying the
little pursuit of God.
Told me how much he thought of it.
And I went back and I said, what's
happened to so-and-so?
They said, you mean the fellow that was
always talking books and running around here?
I said, that's the man I mean.
Well, you know, he had been a university
professor and had gotten into either dope or
drink or both and had gone clear down
to the gutter and had gone over to
Keswick to be rehabilitated.
And over there, they believe in rehabilitation plus
regeneration.
So they not only rehabilitated him by getting
him off of the stuff, but they taught
him the word of God day and night
wherever they could get to him.
Finally, he got converted.
Do you know where he is now?
He's in a Bible school and he's going
to preach the rest of his days.
He's a middle-aged man already in the
happy underside of middle age, but approaching it.
And won't have a long ministry, but he
has quit the university now and he's in
a Bible school in the east and he's
going to preach.
Now that is a deliberate quickening by the
Holy Ghost that is as radical and as
miraculous as the raising of Lazarus from the
dead.
For here was a learned man whose learning
broke down in the crisis and he went
down to the gutter and bounced back again
by the grace of God and is now
a thoroughly converted and blessed man.
Now it says here that all men should
honor the Son as they honor the Father
because there is a harmony in the blessed
Godhead.
Because there is an unaffected relation between the
Father and the Son.
Because of the perfect clairvoyance of the Son
wherein he sees as he has from eternity
the Father at work.
Because the Father loves the Son and because
the Father has given into the hands of
the Son power to raise the dead even
as he raises the dead.
All men should honor the Son even as
they honor the Father.
And he says that if we withhold honor
from the Son we withhold honor from the
Father also.
That's here.
That's the plain teaching of the scriptures.
Now there are those who do not honor
the Son.
They honor him only as a good teacher.
Perhaps the best but only a good preacher
or teacher and preacher of that word.
And the scripture says that all men should
honor the Son as they honor the Father.
So you need have no hesitation in attributing
all of the worship and glory to the
Son that you attribute to the Father.
You need have no fear because the Father
lives for the glory of the Son and
the Son lives for the glory of the
Father.
And the Spirit of God lives for the
glory of the Father and the Son.
So we honor the Son of God.
We have no hesitation whatsoever in praying to
the Son as we pray also to the
Father.
And while it is not usually done we
also have no hesitation in addressing the Holy
Ghost.
Somebody was asking me today what I thought
about praying to the Spirit.
Is it ever the right thing to do?
Should we ever pray to the Spirit?
And my answer is that normally we pray
to the Father in the name of the
Son and in the Spirit.
But also Jesus Christ had no hesitation in
receiving prayers and granting them when he walked
among men.
So obviously there is no formula.
If there had been an unbroken and unbreakable
formula that the only way to pray would
be to pray to the Father in the
name of the Son then why should Jesus
have broken that order and allowed prayer to
be made to himself?
Plainly then, the persons of the Godhead are
equally God.
And the persons of the Godhead are equally
present before our minds when we pray.
And when we sing, Holy Spirit, faithful guide
ever near the Christian side we're praying to
the Spirit.
And when we pray, Holy Ghost with light
divine fall upon this heart of mine we're
praying to the Spirit.
And I think if you'll read your Bible
you will find instances where a man apostrifies
the Holy Ghost.
Come thou north wind and blow thou south
wind and blow upon this garden that the
sweet spices may flow out.
Apostrophe to the Holy Ghost.
And prayers are to be made to the
persons of the Trinity.
Normally to the Father in the name of
the Son.
But also without harm and without any transgression
of the Scriptures to the Son when you
want to pray to the Son.
And if in prayer or song to the
Holy Ghost then also to the Holy Ghost.
Always remember friends that God is never jealous
for a formula.
Religious people are.
They're jealous for a formula.
They put it 1, 2, 3, 4.
And if you say 1, 2, 4, 3
they leap all over you.
And white-faced with anger they prove they
love the truth because they're so mad.
And they love the order of the beautiful
order of the truth.
And if you say 4 before you've said
3 they hate you for your heresy.
They love the truth so much.
Always remember friends one time more let me
say it.
God is easy to get along with.
And if your heart is right he is
not so concerned about the formula.
No, no.
God is kind and good and gracious.
God has to be.
He has to be because there are some
of us that are just too hard to
get along with.
And if God was as hard to get
along with as we are there would be
one perpetual quarrel between our souls and God.
So God has to be easy to live
with and he is.
And if he knows you mean right he'll
let you make all sorts of mistakes and
he won't care.
But just as soon as self gets in
and you mean wrong the holiest thing you
do is unholy.
As soon as you curse your conduct with
self or sin everything you do becomes wrong.
But as long as you love God and
people he'll let you tumble around a lot
and won't mind it a bit.
He'll sit and watch you as a mother
fox will lie in the sunshine with her
chin on her paws with a smile on
her face and watch her little what are
little foxes called?
Well I don't know what a little fox
is called let's call them puppies.
But anyway everybody that's ever hunted foxes knows
how sometimes they'll come upon that beautiful idyllic
picture picture of the old mother watching her
little foxes.
And I have seen mother cats watching their
kittens and I have seen mother mothers watching
their babies the same way.
And God knows that the most mature of
us we still toddle sometimes.
And so he's quick to overlook our ignorance
but he's never quick to overlook our sin.
If sin is in it that's injury that's
disease that's threatening death and so God's quick
to leap on the sin and deal with
it.
But he never rides us because of formulas
that we've broken.
So I don't care what anybody says if
I want to pray to the Spirit I'm
going to pray to the Spirit.
Normally we don't but if we want to
let's do it and smile and say if
I'm making a mistake God understands.
He knows I mean the whole Godhead.
When I say our Father who art in
heaven hallowed be thy name I mean all
the persons of the Trinity.
Now verse 24 we close with that and
how important it is how important in the
pale light of sin and of death and
of judgment how important it is that we
hear these simple words.
Have you noticed friends that when our Lord
Jesus is talking to the believer and attempting
to teach and instruct the believer's heart he
gets so profound sometimes that you have to
keep your chin up to keep from drowning
under the glory of it.
But when he tells us how to get
saved he makes it so simple so very
simple and here it is.
He that heareth my words and believeth on
him that sent me hath everlasting life and
shall not come into judgment but is passed
from death into life.
Now that is so simple so simple.
He that heareth my word now does that
describe you?
Have you heard the words of Jesus?
I believe you have.
I believe every one of you has heard
the word of Jesus.
There isn't one that hasn't heard the words
of Jesus.
If you haven't heard them all you've heard
some of them.
And the words of Jesus usually or any
words of Jesus are like samples of seawater.
They all say about the same thing.
And if you've heard the words of Jesus
then the next thing is believeth on him
that sent me now does that describe you?
He hath everlasting life.
If you can say it does describe you
then he has everlasting life and he shall
not come into condemnation but has already passed
from death to life.
Now that's so simple that nobody will believe
it.
It's as though somebody would find an elixir
of life or a universal panacea for the
cure of all diseases.
You know nobody would believe it at first.
Everybody would say it can't be so.
Jesus Christ our Lord has laid down here
a universal panacea.
He has given us the true elixir.
He has told us where the fountain of
youth is.
And he has said simply it consists of
hearing the words of Jesus and through those
words believing on the Father who sent Jesus
and if we do that then we have
everlasting life and we shall not come into
condemnation but has passed from death has passed
from death unto life.
Somebody says in that case then what happens
to the Christian who breaks down who has
a lapse who sins?
The answer is there is a difference between
coming into discipline and coming into condemnation.
The believer who fails his God and sins
comes into discipline but not into condemnation.
But the sinner is already under condemnation.
The Christian who has believed on the Son
could I give you an example?
There were two men Peter and Judas his
carrier.
Peter had believed had heard Jesus Christ and
believed on the Father and had passed out
of death into life and was out of
condemnation and he got in a tight spot
and failed God.
Another one of the apostles also got in
a tight spot and failed God.
One was Peter the other was Judas.
Christ looked on Peter and brought him under
discipline and Peter repented and wept copiously as
it says in the original.
Tears and floods of tears he wept copiously
and in his repentance was restored to favor
and blessing.
He did not come into condemnation but he
did come under discipline.
But Judas his carrier went out and it
was night and he went to his own
place and he was the son of perdition.
Judas his carrier who never believed on the
Father nor the Son and who never was
regenerate went out to night in condemnation.
Peter who believed but failed went out to
discipline and forgiveness.
There is the difference my brethren.
You come to Jesus Christ as you are
weary and worn and sad.
Come to Jesus Christ as you are sinful
and tired and without self-confidence knowing you
can't live it, knowing it.
Come anyway.
Hear the words of Jesus and believe on
the Father and the Son.
Trust the words of Jesus that believing on
him and God will give you eternal life.
God will promise you that you will never
come into judgment for that is condemnation.
God has given me a passage of Scripture
to which I am clinging and holding tight.
I don't understand it.
That is why it's like this.
I don't understand why it's like this.
Telling God about this every once in a
while.
For this is as the waters of Noah
unto me.
For as I have sworn that the waters
of Noah should no more go over the
earth so have I sworn that I would
not be wroth with thee nor regroup thee.
For the mountains shall depart and the hills
be removed but my kindness shall not depart
from me.
Neither shall the covenant of my peace be
removed, saith the Lord, that hath mercy on
thee.
And I tell God about this every once
in a while and I put my name
in here so he'll be sure that I
know who he's talking about.
He says, I'll never be angry again and
I'll never rebuke you again.
Discipline?
Yes, I expect discipline but I don't expect
ever to see an angry face in God
Almighty's heaven again.
And that's not because I'm good but that's
because he has sent a Redeemer.
In a little wrath I hid my face
from thee for a moment but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord, thy Redeemer.
And because the Lord is our Redeemer we
never need to worry after we have trust
if we do trust and walk on with
him.
Now that's in the book.
Well, there's a little running commentary on what
our Lord said.
It certainly isn't all but it's something.
And I pray that God may give every
one of you courage to go on believing
and then I trust that you who may
not believe might this very night pass over.
The narrow little line separates between believing and
not believing.
Having life and not having life.
You have heard his words.
Do you believe on him?
Do you believe on the Father who sent
him?
Do you believe?
Then will you believe?
Will you believe now?
Right now will you believe in the name
of the Son of God?
As the Father quickeneth the dead from the
graves so the Son quickeneth whom he will.
And whoever hears his voice and hearkens he
shall be quickened to eternal life by the
Son who takes this honor from the Father
and receives this authority.
Will you now believe?