Now, because I know the subtle power of
psychology, I wouldn't for the world remind you
that this was the hottest October day in
history.
90.3. Actually, .03, I don't know what
it would be.
Three-tenths of a degree above 90.
There had never been anything like it in
all the history of Chicago.
Well, 2.30 this afternoon.
And this is still warm.
But I want to preach to you tonight,
and I want to quote quite a little
scripture, or read quite a little scripture, and
tonight I'm going to do what I usually
don't like to do, and that is keep
turning and giving a lot of scripture to
buttress what I'm saying.
Usually I have a quote to be able
to quote it, or will refer to it,
but this time I want to turn a
little, and you will excuse that, I hope.
And you young preachers, if you're here, don't
follow it, because it isn't a good way
to do.
I want to ask a question.
Verse 66 of the sixth chapter, 666.
No reference there at all to that 666
in the book of Revelation.
John 6, verse 66.
From that time many of his disciples went
back, and walked no more with him.
Now I want to ask, why did they
go back?
And then I want to answer the question
from the Bible itself.
But nobody has any right to ask questions
that he can't answer from the scriptures.
So I'm going to ask the question, why
did they go back?
For it's very plain here, very plain, that
many of his disciples, it doesn't say a
few of his disciples, and it doesn't say
tasters nor hangers-on, but those who had
counted themselves his followers, and obviously had been
listed among his followers, such lists as they
might have had, I don't imagine they had
a book with it in, but they were
counted as his disciples, because the scripture specifically
identifies them as his disciples, and says they
went back, and walked no more with him.
Now I can answer the question of why
they went back two ways, and the first
one is by telling you that he himself
was the reason.
Jesus himself was the reason they went back.
Why did they go back?
And the answer is Jesus.
You see, my friends, our Lord was not
a subscriber to the philosophy so very current
in our day, that we are to trim
the gospel to the expectations of the public,
and if they won't accept it in its
undiluted form, then we are to dilute it
in order to win them.
Jesus never heard of that, and he did
not practice that.
He gave it to them as boldly as
it was possible, and many of them went
back.
Jesus would have been condemned for that in
the day in which we live.
Now, you know, they say bring your jive
records, bring your bebop records to church, and
play them in the rumpus room, and actually
I saw that.
You'll see that in the Alliance Weekly one
of these times.
It'll come out.
I see it ahead of time, and I
read that piece of news, that they said
now you come and bring your jive records
and just raise hell.
They didn't use that word.
And they said, we hope that way to
win them.
Well, what I'd like to know, who is
converting whom?
I asked that question once.
I never got any answer.
Who converted whom there?
Did the pastor convert the brethren with red
-hot sizzling records, or did they convert him?
I am suspicious that I know which one
got converted.
You know, when two beings run head-on,
you're never sure which is going to convert
the other.
When Christianity and the Roman Empire ran head
-on for the first 200 years, Christianity converted
the Roman Empire.
And they did it by fire and blood
and murder and drowning and thrown to the
lions and rotting in prison and the beheadings.
That's the way Rome treated the Christians in
all the time.
That Rome was treating the Christians that way.
Romans were being converted to Christ.
And then along came Constantine.
And Constantine, as many say, same man.
Along came Constantine, and he converted the church.
And Rome converted the church to him and
to them.
And they lost their power and didn't lose
their heads.
They used to have power and lose their
heads.
But in the 4th century, they lost their
power and kept their heads.
They conformed to the Roman Church or to
the Roman world.
And out of it was born the Roman
Church.
Now, our Lord never had anything to do
with a thing like that.
He wouldn't modify his doctrine.
Either they took him as he was or
they didn't take him.
They didn't apologize.
Nobody apologized and went around.
Peter never went around saying, now, to the
multitude behind Jesus' back, now, Jesus said, he
that eateth my flesh.
But he didn't mean that.
I just want you to explain.
That's what's 1st century theology.
He didn't really mean that.
Nobody was around there explaining.
They either took him as he was or
they didn't come.
So I'm afraid if our Lord were to
come back to earth, he'd find himself a
very old-fashioned man, very much out of
date in the day in which we live.
But why did they go back?
They had been following him.
They liked the way he did.
He did miracles, and that looked good.
And he was a very gracious, wonderful man.
And they rather were drawn to him personally.
And he talked to them about heaven and
God and spiritual things and their eyes misted
over and their hearts were warm.
And they felt, oh, this is good.
We want to hear this.
But ultimately they went back and walked no
more with him.
Now, why?
Well, I'm going to tell you why.
And to show you that I'm a good
devotee of the Schofield Bible, I've got seven
readings.
And they are found here in verses 26
and 27, the first ones I'll read.
Labor not for the meat that perishes, but
for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life,
which the Son of Man shall give unto
you.
For him hath God the Father sealed.
Ye seek me not because ye saw the
miracles, but because ye did eat of the
loaves and were filled.
Now, they had come to the Lord and
they wanted to identify him with economic success.
Now, there'd be plenty to do.
I wish that I could divide myself up
into ten parts and be as ten preachers.
I still would have more to say than
those ten preachers could say.
And I'd like to talk on this modern
heresy of identifying salvation with economic success.
So that capitalism and Christianity have now married
up.
And they were going together a while, but
they've actually married up now.
And now we are making economic success to
be a proof that Jesus Christ is who
he says he is.
I trusted in Jesus Christ and I didn't
have a dime.
And now ten years have passed and I
have a dime.
And we were economic success.
You see, that's the thing that it is
now.
And brother, I don't mean to be unkind.
I'm a Christian businessman myself in a way.
And I preach for the brethren and I
love them and we're good friends.
They count me their marriage pastor down at
the Christian Businessmen's Society.
But I'd like to say this to you,
friends, that the theory that's among them that
if you become a Christian, your sales will
begin to rise and your profits to increase
is all hogwash.
And there isn't anything in the Bible that
teaches it.
In fact, the Bible teaches exactly the opposite.
And these same people here, these Christians in
Jesus' time and in the book of Acts,
they didn't have a big success and a
wad of money would choke an elephant in
the bank.
They lost everything for Christ's sake.
But this bunch of carnal people, they wanted
to identify Jesus with economic success.
And he ran a sword through that and
turned it around twice.
He said, I know your crowd.
You follow me because you think that I've
got a restaurant and you can eat free
the rest of your life.
You seek me not for spiritual reasons but
because you ate of loaves and were filled,
he said.
That's why you seek me.
And then he rebuked them.
And don't labor for the meat that perishes,
but labor for that which is unto eternal
life which God the Father will give.
Now that was a shock.
That was one reason they went back.
Now I don't mean that all seven reasons
were present in the minds of all.
Just as not all people come to Christ
for the same reasons, so not all test
and then go away.
There are different reasons affecting different persons.
And then the second reason that they went
away from him was found in 28 and
9 if I have it right here.
And they said, what do we do?
That we might work the works of God.
And Jesus said, this is the work of
God.
That you believe on him whom he has
sent.
Now you see, he made their eternal hope
to depend not upon their labor but upon
their right relationship to Jesus Christ whom God
has sent.
Now that was a big shock.
Much that's religion in our day, very much
that is religion in our day is simply
morally laboring for that eternal life.
They are doing this and doing that and
laboring and putting down segregation and getting ecumenicity,
I can't pronounce it either, for the whole
wide world.
And doing good things, selling flowers for crippled
children and all right, God knows it's good.
This they should have done but not left
the other undone.
And it's the thing that they left undone
that the Lord talked about here.
He said, why, you say, how can we?
What does the Lord want us to do?
And by the word do, you show your
legalism and your jury.
Why, he said, you don't do.
You get into a right relationship first before
you do anything.
The sinner jumps up and says, all right,
God, I'm at your service.
I've got a wonderful voice and my I
.Q. is literally way up there among the
tree tops.
And I have a good education.
I've got a B.R.E. and a
D.D.E. and I have a lot
of stuff.
And Lord, if you can get me, you've
got something now.
And God said, I don't need you and
I don't want your works and I don't
need your activity.
Salvation doesn't come by doing, it comes by
a right relationship to him whom he has
sent.
Believe on him whom he has sent.
And he couldn't take that.
They said, well, we've been taught all our
life to give alms to the poor and
lay up treasures in heaven and get merit
for ourselves.
And now here he comes along and says,
you don't have to do any of that
stuff at all.
That it's believing on him whom he has
sent.
And they said, all right.
And they turned away from him on that
account.
Then verse 30, they wanted a sign.
Now, these are different kind of people.
They said, therefore unto him what sign showest
thou then that we may see and believe
thee what dost thou work?
And he refused them a sign.
Now, we have that class of people among
us too.
If you can't do a miracle or two,
they won't believe you're a child of God
at all.
Some people, I'm just an old dried up
carnal man and not even born again because
I can't do miracles.
I haven't got a miracle at my fingertips.
And they'll quote a passage and say, now
if you're what you claim to be, how
about that?
Well, that was the way they came to
Christ.
They said, show us a sign.
Our fathers, they had their signs.
You give us a sign.
And he flatly refused them a sign altogether.
And he said to them in that 30
-what-verse, he said to them, now you
don't need a sign because our fathers ate
manna, and they said he gave them bread
from heaven, and Jesus said, I am the
bread.
And I am the sign myself.
I am the sign.
Here's what a certain element in the church
of Christ forgets, ladies and gentlemen.
They forget that there is such a thing
as moral proof.
Do you know what I mean?
There is such a thing as moral proof.
Now, there's such a thing as miraculous proof
too.
Our Lord Jesus Christ did miraculous things among
them.
He says so specifically.
He says so in the 2nd chapter.
This first sign he did among them.
But when they came and started asking for
a sign, he refused them a sign and
said, I am the sign.
Now, you see, that type of personality demands
that there be some kind of an external
test of Jesus Christ's presence.
He walks among them quietly as he walked
by Galilee, and they won't believe in him
until he has done something miraculous.
Now, he did miraculous things, and he still
does miraculous things, but he doesn't do it
to confirm or to prove anything to carnal
people.
The Lord will heal a man if he
wants him to live.
He'll raise that baby up from its cradle
of death, but he won't do it because
some old sharp-eyed deacon is demanding that
he do it.
He wouldn't do it for the devil's sake
in the desert.
When he had been in the wilderness forty
days and nights, he flatly refused a miracle
three times.
In other words, he said, I am my
own proof.
There is such a thing as a moral
proof.
My brethren, there is such a thing as
men walking among us that carry their own
credentials on their moral life, and they're from
God a voice and a conscience.
And they don't have to do miracles.
John did no miracles.
But he was a voice, and he was
a conscience.
And he finally cut his head off because
he was a conscience.
I'm not speaking against miracles.
I happen to be among those that believe
the days of miracles are not past.
And I believe that if we have faith
and the need is there, and we're spiritual
and not carnal, the Lord our God will
answer parental wonders for us even today.
And I believe that if we were the
kind of people we ought to be, we'd
see more of the Lord's wonders in the
land of the living.
But I have sense enough to know that
the Lord himself is the only sign he's
ever going to give to a believing people.
He came, he lived, he bled, he died,
he rose, he pleased.
And that's the moral proof.
And when the Holy Ghost came silently from
heaven like a silent flash of light and
entered the breasts of men, nobody ever could
argue again about Jesus being the Christ.
They rose and preached, he was the Christ.
He was his own proof.
And he's his own proof today.
The holiest sign Chicago can have is a
man who lives good in a bad world.
A woman who keeps clean in a dirty
world.
A young person in high school who keeps
her mind and heart and body clean in
a dirty school.
And a young fellow in the army who
keeps right with God among all the obscenity
and filth of an army barracks.
And I know, there is your miracle.
There is your sign.
There is your wonder.
There is your proof.
Holiness is its own proof.
Righteousness is its own sign.
There's nobody yet been able to invent an
excuse nor explanation for righteousness.
Nobody.
Ten sick people came down here and knelt.
And ten of them rose healed.
There'd be 25 men down at Chicago University
who would prove psychologically how it happened.
Now, they wouldn't, but they'd try it.
But you can't argue against a holy life.
And our Lord walked among them on holy
man.
He was their sign.
And he refused them another.
They said, OK, if you won't play ball
with us, we'll go back.
And they went back.
Then there was 64 and 65.
Let's look at that.
64 and 65.
I think I have it right.
I marked them down here.
But there were some of you that believed
not, said Jesus.
And you do not believe.
Therefore, I said unto you, that no man
can come unto me except the Father which
hath sent me draw him.
That was last Sunday night's talk, so I'll
only briefly say.
Here the Lord told them a most disturbing
thing.
He told them they weren't morally able to
believe on him.
He told them they were going to perish
because they had never heard God speak.
Because they weren't morally in a position.
They had never gotten in touch with another
world.
They never longed for another world.
They were as crooked as Jacob without having
Jacob's longing.
They had his bad qualities without his good
qualities.
And they didn't want to know God.
And they didn't listen for the voice of
God.
He said you're not morally ready.
Now you see, people want Christianity, particularly they
want the gospel, to be a kind of
a beanbag that can be tossed around and
grabbed by anybody that can get to it
in anybody's hands and they can hide it
or hold it or do as they please
with it, always tossing it around.
He took it out of all their hands
and said, I am the sovereign God.
And I am in charge.
And my Father is in charge.
And he gives it to the morally prepared
and to no other.
That shocks some of you out of a
two year's growth.
But you're getting too tall anyhow.
It won't hurt you.
Because you've been taught the opposite.
Jesus taught them bluntly that there was a
moral preparation.
Not that he saves the good, but that
he saves the bad who know how bad
they are.
And that's moral preparation.
The Lord didn't come to save the righteous.
He came to save the sinners who knew
they were sinners.
That's moral preparation.
When a man knows he's a sinner, knows
how bad he is, and he's had his
heart opened by the voice of God to
his conscience, he's still lost, but he's prepared
to be saved.
The flippant.
The flippant and the insincere and the superficial
and the shallow who make religion a jukebox.
You put a dime in and press a
button and get this old house or something
else.
Jukebox religion.
No, my brother.
Jesus Christ, the Sovereign, took it out of
the hands of dying men and said that
God Almighty moves among men and by his
Holy Spirit and he's reaching and finding the
prepared ones, the ones that have heard him
and listened and who know they're bad and
know how bad they are.
That's moral preparation.
Leading to repentance.
They couldn't take that.
They went back.
And I know there are hundreds of people
who go back from hearing me.
I know you people want a crowd gatherer.
You'd better get rid of me fast.
Because too many people hear me, come way
out here to hear me and flip me
over and shrug and never come back and
I don't blame them.
I feel like saying, will you also go
away?
Now, verse 5 or point 5, verse 53
to 58, listen to what it says again.
Familiar with this too.
Jesus said, Except ye eat the flesh of
the Son of Man and drink his blood,
ye have no life in you.
Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood
hath eternal life, and I will raise him
up at the last day.
For my flesh is meat indeed and my
blood is drink indeed.
He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my
blood dwelleth in me and I in him.
As the living Father hath sent me and
I live by the Father, so he that
eateth me, even he shall live by me.
This is that bread which came down from
heaven, not as your fathers did eat man
and are dead.
He that eateth me, or of this bread,
shall live forever.
Many therefore of his disciples, when they heard
this, saying, This is a hard saying.
Who can hear it?
Jesus said, Does this offend you?
Now they couldn't get this, and they didn't
want this.
They wanted the religion they could get their
hands on, and label it, and cut it
to measure, and fit it, and put a
tag on it, and boss it.
The Lord said, Oh no, you'll never get
salvation that way.
I'm boss.
I'm Lord.
My Father is sovereign.
And you'll either get salvation through me and
eat me and live off me and bow
and take what I say, or die in
your sins.
I, of course, did not say it in
that very many words, but the whole book
of John tells us that.
Men who will not eat of him and
drink of him, they shall die and perish.
Now, it has always been an offense to
the world.
You know that church history shows us that
one of the charges brought by the Romans
against the early Christians was cannibalism.
They said, The Christians eat babies.
We know they do, because we have had
our spies among them, and we have heard
them pass out food of some sort.
We didn't know what.
And when they passed it out, we heard
them repeat, This is my body broken for
you.
Take, eat.
They ate babies, they said.
So there were many a Christian lost his
life because they said he was a cannibal.
And they arose in the righteous indignation and
slew him, sent his whole lot to be
with the Lord under the false trumped-up
charge that he was a cannibal.
And of course, when the Lord stood there,
a man and said, My flesh is meat
indeed, and my blood is drink indeed, they
didn't know he meant to say that he
was going to pour out his blood for
their redemption.
They didn't know he was saying, I am
the word, I am to you what the
mother's milk is to the babe.
Some old English preacher I heard years ago
said, What did Jesus mean when he said,
He must drink of my body and of
my blood, eat of my body and drink
of my blood, before you can have life?
He said, I can tell you.
He said, I was visiting in a home
the other day, and he said, There I
saw a lovely little mother, and he said
she had a big strapping boy baby, a
big ox of a fellow full of power
and vim and noise and hunger.
And he was a breast-fed baby.
And the old preacher said, This little mother
was thin and skimmy and worn out and
happy, but mighty thin.
He said, Why?
He said, He was literally living off her
flesh for the milk she was giving him.
He said, When I saw that, I knew
what our Lord meant.
The word which I have spoken unto you,
you live from the sincere milk of the
word, and you live off my body which
I gave for you.
They didn't know that he meant that, and
so they turned away.
But here's the odd thing.
He didn't waste any time explaining or making
it easy.
Go to a lot of preachers and give
them a terrible verse like, He that cometh
to me and hateth not his father and
mother and wife and all the rest, and
they'll explain it away and say, Jesus didn't
mean that.
It says back in the Old Testament and
is repeated again in the book of Romans
that God hardened Pharaoh's heart.
More preachers have run to God's defense on
that and explained that he didn't harden Pharaoh's
heart, surely harden Pharaoh's heart.
God doesn't want anybody running to his defense,
these little fellows who will be dead tomorrow
and forgotten day after tomorrow, running to defend
the sovereign God sitting on his throne.
Brother, if God says that, let it stand
in its bald grandeur.
Don't run to prop up the mountain with
a two-by-four.
Don't put a match under the sun or
try to hold the river back from running
over Niagara.
Let her go.
God put her there and he'll take care
of her.
And so the truth of God stands and
we ought to believe it as it is
and we'll die if we don't and we'll
perish unless we do believe it as it
is.
They didn't.
They said, we won't take that kind of
stuff.
They'd have said now, they'd have given him
a name this long, a hyphenated series of
Latin words borrowed from Sigmund Freud.
They'd have said that he had an Oedipus
complex combined with a death wish and a
mother fixation.
And they'd have said he was insane and
they did say that about him, of course.
Not in this chapter, but they said more
or less about him through his lifetime.
This strange man had the devil, they said.
But he said, I am the bread of
life and it was beyond them, so they
went back.
Verse 62.
He claimed to have descended from God.
He said, this bothers you?
Why, what if you should see the Son
of Man ascend up where he was before?
He was before and so he had to
descend to get down here and he said,
fools, I go back.
What do you think?
And they couldn't believe that either.
And you know this ascension and descension business
is still bothering people.
This idea that Christ came down and went
back and he came down in a body
and went back in a body and came
and took a body and went back in
a body and he'll come back in a
body, that bothers people an awful lot.
I didn't attend that conference over at Evanston,
but I understand that the second coming of
Christ was more or less up for discussion
and a lot of them turned away from
it.
The liberals in this country didn't like it
because the liberals from across the water believed
Christ was coming back.
Isn't that a weird outfit anyhow?
Isn't that a strange thing that a man
can be a liberal and not believe the
Bible and yet believe Christ is coming back
and preach if you don't get ready?
For Christ coming, you'd be disappointed?
Isn't that a strange thing?
You know, friends, the only answer I have
to that was given to me by a
dear old man named M.A. Dean.
They called him Ma Dean in the conference
where he was because he was M.A.
Dean.
And I was a very young preacher and
he was an old man and I said
to him, Brother Dean, can you tell me
how it is that some people are so
inconsistent and they do this thing right and
then they flop on that and he said,
Well, young fella, I've thought about it for
years and the only answer I've got is
that some people are spiritually cross-eyed.
He said their eyes cross and that's all
I know.
They look this way and they cross.
I think these people who are liberals and
yet believe in Christ coming, they must be
cross-eyed.
It was the kindest and most charitable explanation
I had for them.
But it's still, still an awful bothersome question.
A fellow wrote me a letter here the
other day.
I told Brother Chase about this, Mr. McAfee.
He wrote me a letter from a college,
a university out in the east and he
said, Mr. Tozer, I've been reading your books
and Finney, and he named a C.S.
Lewis and he said, Now you three have
been a bridge to me across which I've
moved to Brunner.
And I said, Well, I'm in good company
anyhow.
Finney and C.S. Lewis helped to wreck
him and he blames me for it too.
But what I'm trying to get at is
this, that such a man as Brunner doesn't
believe Christ rose in his body, doesn't believe
the resurrection was in Christ's body, and yet
he believes that Christ rose, but doesn't he
believe he rose in his body.
I don't understand how he could rise unless
he rose in his body.
And I wrote the young fellow back and
said, Young fellow, if you were 50 years
old, I'd recommend you raise Brunner just to
know what he's talking about.
But I said, You'd better stick to the
Scriptures and some books that are right with
God or you'll be in the bushes.
But anyhow, these men, they believe and yet
they don't believe.
And they're all confused.
And these people were confused.
Now they said, Listen to me.
Nobody ever descended.
He was born, they said.
We know his mother.
He was born.
But he never descended.
Now he's talking about ascending, reversing his descent.
And they said, We don't get all this
he came, he's coming, he came, he's coming
stuff.
These bunch of fundamentalists.
And pre-millenarians talking about ascending and descending.
I don't get it.
So they wouldn't have any more to do
with him.
And I think that's the sixth one.
And then the seventh one is, that's verse
63.
He said, It is the spirit that quickeneth.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
The words that I speak unto you, they
are spirit and they are life.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
Now you say that to a Quaker and
of course he wouldn't mind.
But say that to a Jewish Pharisee and
he didn't mind.
Because he'd actually trimmed his beard in a
religious way.
Did you know that?
His beard was trimmed after the most orthodox
way.
And his garments were measured.
And the little trimming put on them here,
the phylactery.
Everything was just as it should be.
And the flesh profited everything.
They were good men and they did righteous.
And they tithed and minted and cummined and
rued.
And they lived good lives.
And the flesh was everything to them.
And Jesus said to them as quietly, You've
got it all wrong, you big boys with
the trimmed beards and the memorized texts and
the keeping of holy feasts and holy days
and standing in the marketplaces and making your
long prayers.
You've got it all wrong.
That's flesh.
And the flesh profiteth nothing.
It's the Spirit of God that quickens it.
And you don't understand that.
And they said, Well, this man's upsetting all
our past, all our church.
Everything will be upset if we listen to
him.
Because we have founded our hopes upon our
morality and upon our almsgiving and upon our
goodness and our high birth and our circumcision
and our feast keeping.
We've founded our hopes upon it.
And he sweeps it away with one sweep
of his hand and says, The flesh profiteth
nothing at all.
It's the Spirit that giveth life.
And he turned Christianity into an intensely, innately
spiritual thing and swept away all their externals.
You know, brother and sister, and you'll excuse
me now for blunt language and you'll know
that I mean it seriously, you're not serving
God right at all until you can serve
God without anything on.
You're not serving God right as long as
you have to have one lonely button to
serve him with.
If your service to the Lord Jesus Christ
depends upon anything you can wear, you're not
serving him right.
You're not serving God until you can serve
him without anything to eat.
For if your service to God depends upon
your food, you're not serving God right.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
Profiteth nothing!
And you take away a lot of robes
and yokes.
Some ritualists have taken them out tenderly and
unfolded them and with shining face have shown
me their cute little dickies that they wear.
A man that can't serve God without a
carefully cut coat and a right-made collar
and a velvet dickie, he's not serving God.
He's serving the flesh.
You know that.
He's serving the flesh.
A man that has to have his chain
and the right shoes and the right pants
and the right collar and the right dickie,
he's not serving God.
He's serving the flesh.
I repeat, a man can't serve God right
until he can serve him with nothing on.
If he has to have a certain garment
to feel that he's pleasing God, he's serving
the flesh.
And the man in his bath is as
holy as the man standing in a pulpit
wrapped in fourteen bath robes and seven chains
around his neck and two bells to ding
-dong on.
Candles burning behind him and all their boys
to hold up his coat.
The flesh prophet of nothing, ladies and gentlemen.
The flesh prophet of nothing.
We might as well learn that.
You don't learn that from the Quakers, either.
Get her stopped.
But in fact, nevertheless, that day he took
it out of the hands of the flesh
and of the beard and their hair and
their parity.
That's why a man when he's young can
serve God with lots of hair, and when
he gets old he can serve God just
as well without any hair.
And that's why a woman when she's young
and graceful can serve God in her beauty,
and when she gets old and fat she
can still serve God because the flesh prophet
of nothing.
And that's why a young fellow that can
play football as one of our Alliance preachers
did, he shocked some of the dear old
Alliance people out of fourteen years of good,
solid, honest growth by preaching in the Alliance
church on Sunday and playing on the Iowa
State football team on weekdays.
Got the youngest Ph.D. ever taken out
there.
They want him to go to Washington and
help head the something or other.
He said, no, I'm opening the Alliance branch.
Excuse me, I don't care to.
And they still write him a couple times
a week and ask his advice.
All right, there he is.
He's a good looking, you know it, you
wouldn't believe.
Just look at the guy and say, I
took him out to lunch.
I just wanted to look at the fellow.
Thirty-two years old.
And brother, if you ever saw a handsome
great big beast, he said, give him thirty
years and that black shiny hair of his
will be what's left of it.
It'll be as gray as the dawn.
And those great strong shoulders will be bent
over.
Mother Nature and Father Time will pull him
down, twist him up, bend him over, line
his joints and harden his arteries.
But he who serves God at thirty-two
in his strong masculinity and health can serve
God just as well at eighty-two when
he's old and bent and tired and ready
to die.
And if age makes any difference, looks makes
any difference, size makes any difference, abilities make
any difference, then it's not true Christianity.
Flesh profits nothing, said Jesus, and swept away
all the flesh with all of its pride.
Little black eyes, girls want to be blue
eyes.
And girls with straight hair want to be
curly.
Sweet little blonde girl with blue eyes and
hair just as straight as lead pencils.
She'll say, don't you think you're just a
little bit curved back there?
No, honey.
Not a bit, just as straight as wire.
We all want to be different, and all
want to be different.
Jonathan Edwards was a little sawed-off fellow,
nearsighted, and read his terrible, wonderful, God-anointed
sermons like this.
Look up and read and read and look
up.
It must have been an awful sight, but
500 souls were converted one night when he
preached on Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God.
Nice to be like my friend Berg out
in Iowa.
Looked like a quarterback, but that guy looked
like a quarter of a man.
But he had that which made him a
man of God, a spiritual man.
I'd just like to add this about my
big friend out in Iowa.
I sat there talking to him across food
I couldn't eat.
I had the awfulest time getting anything I
need anymore because restaurants are getting bad.
But I was looking at him over the
chicken livers and something or other, and I
said, listen, boy, you've got a Ph.D.
in your brain.
You look like something out of an arrow
collar ad.
You could turn to politics and be elected
like that to Congress.
You've got it all, boy.
But let me tell you something.
Sweep that whole thing under your feet.
Tramp on it and get filled with the
Holy Ghost and be a prophet to your
generation.
He bowed his head over his food and
said, oh, that's smarter than we give him
credit for, even if he has a Ph
.D. He knows his Ph.D. won't help
him.
The flesh profiteth nothing.
It's only the spirit that profits.
When I come back from Atlanta, I want
to preach on the text Will Ye Also
Go Away?
But I'm going to stop tonight by asking
whether we're going to allow the errors that
ruin the Jews to ruin us.
These renegade disciples turned away and perished, I
suppose.
Maybe they came back as some of my
dear friends who are strong in their belief
that they were converted and that they certainly
would come back.
I'll say that's all right.
I agree with you.
I hope they did.
But for the time being, they went away.
And in going, they went because they were
earthbound.
They were talking to one who was as
spiritual as the heartbeat of God.
They were talking to one that while he
had a body, he was as unfleshly and
unearthly as an angel.
They were talking to one who had come
from another world and was soon to go
back to that other world.
These religionists were bogged down in their flesh,
bogged down in their clay.
They loved the earth.
They loved to eat.
They loved food.
They loved sleep.
They loved pleasure.
They loved even to be known as being
widely known as being religious.
He came a tender, spiritual man from another
world.
And they, oh, people, you ought to understand.
After all you ought to.
You oughtn't to make that mistake.
You oughtn't to make that, you oughtn't to
ask of me that I entertain you.
You oughtn't to ask of me or this
church that we provide entertainment for you or
your supposed young people.
You oughtn't to ask it.
You oughtn't to know better.
They ask it.
You turn coldly away and let them die.
You oughtn't to know better.
In the days to come you will love
my memory because I stood and stuck my
old skinny jaw out and refused to give
you anything but God.
You love me for it but you don't
now.
All right, you oughtn't to make that mistake.
They trusted in the flesh and they couldn't
see that the bread of life was.
He died for us in his flesh and
rose and his blood was poured for us
and that we now believe his word and
thus receive the benefits of his broken body
and shed blood.
You can see that, can't you?
They couldn't.
They perished because they couldn't.
Can you?
There are thousands who can't.
There are religionists by the thousands who can't
and they wanted to labor for their salvation.
Give them something to do, they said.
Give them something to do.
I recommend a greased pole and say, now
you climb that greased pole and if you
get to the top you've got salvation.
You know, if I put a greased pole
out here and chant around it and have
a nice picture put up and play colored
light over it and say the second greased
pole of the covenant.
If you can climb to the top you'll
have eternal life.
We'd have to get the police to keep
the crowds away from that greased pole.
Everybody would be wanting to do something to
get to heaven.
The Lord said, no, no, friends, that's not
the way.
It depends upon a relationship to Jesus Christ.
People would dash up in their big cars
and get out wrapped in furs and say,
could I have a chance to climb the
pole?
Hoping to climb the pole and wrap their
furs around them and drive off in their
majesty.
He says, honey, you don't do it that
way.
Can't be done that way.
Might as well walk on your two pretty
little feet.
Come and kneel on your two knees for
salvation doesn't come by effort.
Salvation comes by relationship to me in faith.
You believe me, whom God has sent, that's
your salvation.
Then after that, you can do all the
good works you want to in my name,
but you don't get saved that way.
Isn't it too bad people don't see that?
Don't you make that mistake, I plead.
Don't do it.
They did it and died.
Don't you do it.
Why did they go away?
I repeat, they went away because they couldn't
get him to conform to their idea that
religion ought to be a profitable thing.
They ought to have profit and sales and
money and goods.
He said, oh no, that's not it.
Labor not for that which perishes.
And he couldn't get them to give him
a sign.
They couldn't get him to give them a
sign.
He said, I'm the sign.
I'm the bread of life.
You eat of me, you live.
They couldn't take that.
And they couldn't believe that religion was a
spiritual thing, essentially, and salvation was internal.
They couldn't believe that.
Well, they said, isn't there something you do?
Isn't there something you do?
Can't I cut something or splash water on
something or twist something or massage some part
of you?
Can't I do something?
Don't you do anything, Lord?
The flesh profits nothing.
No massaging, no oil, no anything can save
a man.
But Jesus Christ and faith can save a
man.
So, brethren, let's have hope.
And you can be saved tonight.
You can believe on him tonight.
But don't turn away and don't demand that
Jesus Christ trim and cut his salvation to
please you.
Take him as he is and come as
you are.