Hurricane Influenza that laid me low last week
has roughened up my vocal cords a little,
and I probably will have a bit of
difficulty.
But with the patience of my ears and
the goodness of God, maybe we'll get some
truth out of the word tonight, in spite
of everything.
In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of
John, verses 66 to and including 69, from
that time, many of his disciples went back
and walked no more with him.
Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye
also go away?
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom
shall we go?
Thou hast the words of eternal life.
And we believe and are sure that thou
art that Christ, the Son of the living
God.
Now it tells us here in plain words
that many went back and walked no more
with Jesus.
At first this whole thing had been romantic
and charming, something to excite the interest and
draw it.
A kind of liberace had come to the
shores of Galilee, a religious man with a
lot of romantic charm.
I don't mean it in the wrong sense,
I mean it in the religious sense.
A remarkable young man had come, and he
was gathering unto him many thousands to hear
him, many hundreds to claim to follow him,
and it all looked like something to do.
It had become quite the vogue to talk
about the strange, wonderful young man from Nazareth.
Now time had gone along and they were
becoming disillusioned.
I can see them standing with their little
beards bobbing while they talked with their faces
up close, agreeing that the charm, the luster
was wearing off of this man, that he
was too mystical after all, and too radical,
and to follow him would require too much
sacrifice.
And it might even be dangerous, in addition
to being very strict.
And they said, now things look good at
first.
And the impulse of religion ran throughout all
the land, and they gathered unto him, and
he said and did wonderful things, and it
looked very good at first.
But have you noticed lately that he's becoming
less and less practical and more and more
mystical?
Have you noticed it?
And it's even getting dangerous to follow him,
and he's now talking about his own flesh
and blood.
Something's wrong here.
So they went back.
And it tells us that in so many
words, many went back.
Now if the truth were known, some, maybe
even in this small audience tonight, who began
with our Lord in innocence and a certain
degree of ignorance, because everybody begins to follow
the Lord, I suppose, with a certain degree
of ignorance.
If you don't like the word ignorance, then
we'll say, an at least imperfect state of
imperfect knowledge.
Many have been wooed into this, and pressed
into it, and frightened into it, and excited
into it.
You know, religion is like almost anything else
that appeals to the emotional life.
Some of these singers come up every once
in a while, and whole groups will faint
in the audience when a young fellow just
gets up and passes a little wind over
his vocal cords.
And they actually faint.
And there's such a thing, you know, as
the psychology of the mob.
I don't mean to speak about it in
a wrong way, but there is such a
thing.
And while our Lord was never appealed to
this, he was such an unusual person that
he drew many who had no idea what
it was all about.
And lots of people have become followers of
the Lord, or at least church attendants and
even church members, who have been more or
less wooed into it, or excited into it,
or have come into it on a kind
of wave, by suggestion, without too much knowledge
of what the Lord meant when he called
them to him.
But now the glamour is wearing thin, and
the luster is wearing off, and a lot
of people, if the truth were known, are
secretly thinking of going back, because they have
found that the religion of Christ was not
all glamour, and there were too many demands,
and the fight was too hard, and the
cross was too heavy, and the weariness was
too much.
And they went back then, and some are
maybe thinking of going back now.
I wonder if I am talking to a
Christian, one Christian, that never had any wrestlings
with his own soul, whether it was a
profitable thing to go on the unpopular side
of things, always to be in the minority,
always to be on, apparently, the wrong side.
I wonder if any of you Christians, if
there is one, even a lonely one here,
that hasn't at some time talked to your
own heart about whether it paid or not,
and whether it really was worthwhile, the fight,
the struggle, the labor, the things you can't
do that you used to do, and wonder
whether you were wise in quitting them.
I wonder if there is one that hasn't
felt that someplace in his life, that the
demands were too heavy, that the weariness was
too great, and so you've decided to relax
and take it easy.
Now, a lot of people have just done
that, who still keep up their church membership,
and pay their dues, and even give commissions.
But they have nevertheless allowed themselves to get
into a state where actually, and truly, they
are not following the Lord anymore.
They have gone back in their heart, though
they have not yet gone to the place
where they have gone back with their feet.
Now, they went back, it says here.
You know, those are terrible words.
It says, many went back.
Many went back.
But I suppose that none of them, thank
you, sir, I suppose that not one of
them ever stopped to ask, what am I
going back to?
But you know what they went back to,
those who had lived with him, and had
come to feel the warmth like the sun
in the springtime.
Those who had looked into those hazel eyes,
and had felt something going into their hearts
when they did.
Those who had heard that voice, that simple,
quiet voice that was never raised to a
scream or a shout, but was not heard
raised in the streets, but quietly, like the
man who would not quench the burning wick,
nor break the wounded stock, our Lord quietly
and sweetly preached to them.
And now they were going back, these friends,
who had walked with him and stood beside
him, and called him by his first name,
or maybe respectfully they called him master, the
name given to a teacher, as we say
doctor or pastor.
They called him maybe by his religious name
or title.
But now they were going back.
And what were they going back to?
Well, I'm going to name a few things
that they went back to.
First thing, they went back to their sins.
They did go back to their sins when
they became afraid of the cost of following
him the rest of the way.
Then they became afraid and were filled with
that thing that sends men to hell, for
the fearful shall have their part in the
lake of fire.
And so they went back to their sins.
As a dog might go back to its
vomit, or a pig might go back to
his wallowing in the mire after he'd been
carefully brushed and trimmed for the fair that
he might be presented at the stock show.
After that was all over, then he goes
back where he was before.
Just a hog after all.
So they went back to their sins, these
people did.
And they went back to their loneliness.
After you have once walked with Jesus, even
a block, you can never be anything but
lonely if you go back.
And so if you've been thinking of going
back, remember what these friends went back to.
They went back to their loneliness, that ancient
cosmic loneliness.
They went back to it.
And remember, they went back to their unsatisfied
hunger.
He had said that if you eat of
the bread I give you, you shall never
be hungry again.
But now is this new hunger.
And they went back to that old hunger,
that unsatisfied hunger.
And they went back to their fears.
For they had come to him that their
fears might be removed.
And now they went back to those fears
again.
And they went back to despair and remorse.
And they went back to the grave and
back to judgment.
That's all.
There was nothing else to go back to.
And yet it says here plainly, many went
back.
Before we go back, we'd better question what
we go back to.
Before you decide to throw up the whole
profession of following Christ, you'd better find out
what you're going back to.
And I tell you this night, that there
is not one desirable thing that you can
go back to.
Not one lonely thing that you can go
back to.
And then, will ye also go away, said
Jesus.
Will ye go away.
Now here was Jesus' heartbreak, my brethren.
Here was his heartbreak.
For he was wounded here before they nailed
him on the cross.
It was his cross before the cross that
they were going back.
And he said, are you going to go
away?
I suppose that the human Jesus, in one
panicky awful moment there, wondered if the last
disciple would leave him.
And he would stand alone of failure.
As he says in the 49th chapter of
Isaiah, you will find it there, where he
questions if the children of Israel shall ever
return.
He says, and even if they do not
yet, will I be honorable in the eyes
of my God.
And here in a terrible moment, he wondered
if his last few disciples were going away.
This was the cross before the cross.
And all that have gone back and walked
no more with him in this age constitute
his cross after the cross.
For he had a cross before the cross
and he has a cross after the cross.
And the cross before the cross was when
Peter denied his Lord and Judas sold his
Lord.
And the disciples forsook him and fled.
And the multitudes went back and walked no
more.
And his popularity melted away around his feet.
And our Lord hung alone even before he
hung on that cross.
And now the cross after the cross is
to crucify the Lord afresh and put him
to an open shame.
It is to go back and bear his
cross no more.
And then Peter said, Lord, to whom shall
we go?
You could always count on Peter to have
an answer whether it had any sense in
it or not.
Peter had the answer and Peter said, Lord,
to whom shall we go?
Now I wonder if that was an impulse
of blind loyalty.
No, I don't think so.
I thought about this very reverently and I
crossed in a prayerful mood.
And I do not believe that this was
an impulse of blind loyalty.
I do not believe that this was like
the loyal fan of some politician who knows
that his boss is losing, but still keeps
feeding optimism and good hope into him down
to the last ballots counted.
I don't think so.
I don't believe this was loyal Peter saying,
Lord, to whom shall we go to try
to solve the wounds of Jesus and to
take some of the nails out of his
heart before they go them in on Calvary.
I doubt that very much.
I think I read deeper than that.
And I read that Peter had also been
tempted that when they went away, it was
the culmination of long days of discussion over
what he had said and what kind of
life he'd been living and what kind of
demands he'd been making upon them.
And Peter being human, of course, heard the
gossip.
And being the kind of fellow he was,
no doubt took part in it and was
talking with them and listening to them.
And Peter, too, was probably tempted here.
And he had given some consideration to whether
he had been right when he left his
nets and his father's boats and started following
this wonderful, strange, romantic figure that walked up
and down the hills and plains of Galilee
and Judea.
And he had searched his own soul.
But thank God, he had decided there was
no place to go and no one to
whom he could go.
For you notice that he did not use
the impersonal neuter.
He used the personal and said, to whom
shall we go?
Peter's heart had walked with Jesus until a
whom had formed in his mind.
Not a what, not a religion, not a
creed, not a what.
He did not say to what shall we
go, but to whom shall we go.
For a personality had begun to move up
into his life with eyes and ears and
a mouth and a personality.
It had moved up into Peter's life and
he was deeply affected, deeply affected by his
few months or maybe years of walking with
this strange, wonderful, magnetic personality.
So he said, to whom shall we go?
The others had gone back to a what,
but he said, to whom shall we go?
Now briefly I want to talk a little
bit about that.
Where shall we go and to whom shall
we go if we don't take Jesus?
I want to ask maybe if some might
say, well I will go back to some
more ornate religion.
Now I know that that is the case,
I know it, that the Quaker-like simplicity
of Jesus was a stumbling block for their
religion had been dramatized when the men with
the long beards and the long robes and
the phylactery stood on the street corners and
made long prayers.
That was dramatic, there was something dramatic about
that.
And when they mounted up the steps of
the temple singing the songs of degrees as
they marched in, that was dramatic.
And when the priest offered the sacrifice, that
was dramatic.
There was something about it all that appealed
to the flesh in a measure.
Now comes this quiet man saying, they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and
in truth.
And all your external religion is like a
tomb filled with dead men's bones.
And unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of God and drink his blood, you
have no life in you.
Out of the heart of the man comes
his evil and good, that was a strange
sound.
And they were disappointed and they wanted to
go back maybe to some ornate religion.
And I wonder if you might have felt
that or some that you know, oh he
was too direct and too simple.
And you know my people that if you
want an ornate religion, if you insist upon
doing it up dramatically and with a flourish,
I'd never waste my time coming down here.
I just never waste my time.
Because we just don't do it that way
here.
We never crack the whip in this place.
We try simply to preach a simple, direct
message and live a simple, direct life.
And have a simple fellowship of believers that
gather around the person of the Savior and
glorify him.
Now that's all we have to offer.
And I remember what Dr. Simpson said after
he had launched his great international missionary movement.
And somebody said to him, Dr. Simpson, what
is the hardest thing that you've had to
put up with in your long ministry?
Well he said, I think the thing that
has hurt me the most is to have
men come up to me and embrace my
movement and my teaching and follow me for
a while and then quietly turn away and
follow me no more.
The brethren who wanted what he had but
didn't want to pay the price to get
it, they were the brethren that had bothered
Jesus.
The nibblers who come, they want the product
but they won't pay the price.
And before they've settled what the price is,
they look like real followers of the Lord.
But when they find the price is too
high, they go back and follow no more.
Now that has always hurt the people of
God.
Always has hurt the leaders in the kingdom.
Always that's hurt the Wesley's and the Luther's
all down the years and the Paul's and
even our Savior here was hurt by it.
Now there is such a thing as an
ornate religion.
If you insist upon having everything done up
in fashion, you don't have to go far
to find a church that'll just satisfy you
perfectly.
All the appointments are religious and everybody has
some extra gigon that's religious and the pastor
has.
And the whole thing is thought out and
worked out and I think there's been collaboration
between Emily Post and the rest of them
just to how it should be.
It all looks so ornate and so wonderful.
A man looks so heavenly when he approaches
with a robe on.
Strip the robe off.
What do you got?
Just an animated clothespin.
That's all.
That's all you've got under the robe, ladies
and gentlemen.
But it looks so religious when the man
marches in.
What's he got?
Nothing anybody else couldn't have.
Well, if you want ornate religions, the world
is full of them, full of them.
And, but I want to ask you a
question, my friend.
There'll be a day, there'll be a day
when you'll lie quietly asleep and they could
fire off a cannon and it wouldn't wake
you.
And the great booming organ could play the
classic and it wouldn't wake you.
And the preacher could intone and it wouldn't
wake you.
And the rogue choir could sing and it
wouldn't wake you.
And the new windows might shine in the
sun with pictures of a shepherd and a
sheep and a cook and a staff.
It wouldn't wake you.
What good will an ornate religion do you
in the day when you sleep your last
sleep?
What good will it do you if the
preacher that preaches your funeral sermon has a
black robe on when he intones your corpse?
Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe
in God, believe also in me.
Never taking into account that you didn't walk
with him while you lived.
And why then should he quote that passage
over you when you're dead?
Oh, my friend, I appeal to your heart
tonight and say that Jesus alone has the
words of eternal life.
And you can ornament religion if you will.
You can spend thousands of dollars putting on
extra flourishes.
And when it's all over, it can't wake
one slumbering man from his grave.
It can't cleanse from his heart one lonely
sin.
It can't take away one bit of remorse,
nor remove the shadow of death from his
mind.
It can't purify his soul or cleanse his
spirit.
No, no.
And yet there are those who insist that
it's got to be ornate, that the simplicity
of the gospel church like this, the simplicity
of Jesus and no one else, they just
can't take it.
Their hands and everything they do has to
be done with drama and flourish.
Well, I'm not their preacher.
I'm not their preacher.
I'll never be able to help them, amen.
I can't do it.
Now, then there's somebody else that says, I'm
going to go to some church less exacting
than this.
I don't particularly care for ornamentation and display,
but there are churches that strike a nice
happy medium.
And they're less exacting, just as there are
ornate religions if you want them.
So there are churches that'll be easier on
you than this one.
And there are gospels that'll be simpler and
sweeter than the gospel of Jesus.
And there are messiahs and religious leaders everywhere.
But be careful to whom you go because
they're in that church that's so much easier.
There's no narrow road.
I still haven't forgotten the blow that came
to my heart when a young man to
this city, heard about this church, got acquainted
with our people, and got into our young
people's society, and then suddenly disappeared.
And we lost sight of him.
And I inquired around, what's the matter with
so-and-so?
He looks so good, I wonder where he
is.
Well, I was told by those that knew
him, he looked this over, but he decided
we were too straight-laced.
He believed that Christians could dance and would
do them no harm.
And so he has gone and joined a
church on the South Side where they can
dance.
Well, there are such churches, ladies and gentlemen.
There are churches that will let you do
anything but commit murder and still be a
member in good standing.
There are churches where you'll never be embarrassed.
The word will be taught so sweetly, and
the preacher will purr over you like a
tabby cat, and it'll all be so lovely
and sweet.
There are churches like that, and I recommend
them.
If you don't want to go to heaven
or follow the Lamb with us wherever he
goeth, if you don't want to bear the
cross, why, I say, that's all right.
Go to that church.
There are such churches.
No narrow road, no reproach from Christ's enemies.
It's quite the popular thing to be religious
now, you know, religious in the day in
which we live.
I just read the other day an article
where a fellow pointed out, rather bluntly, he
said the President of the United States had
announced the day of fasting and prayer for
America.
It was to be the 4th of July.
He said, what did the President do on
that day?
He caught four fish in the morning, played
18 holes of golf in the afternoon, and
played bridge all evening.
Well, yet there's a lot of religion in
Washington now, and a lot of religion every
place.
Why, they're even singing love songs called such
as the Kingdom of Heaven.
And you can just turn any place on
your dial you want to, and some calf
will be bawling a religious song, a cowboy
song, ghost riders in the sky, or something
else.
All right, there's plenty of religion, and it's
now possible to be religious and never know
the reproach of Christ's enemies.
Never have anybody lie in wait for you.
Never have anybody sneer at you.
Never have anybody call you old-fashioned.
Never have anybody wonder why you like that.
It's now the popular thing, the vogue is,
to be religious.
When a religious man, and God bless him,
he is, went to the White House and
began to talk about religion, and the Vice
President talked about religion, a few senators have
a religious breakfast, a religious egg, and religious
ham.
Why, now it's popular.
Every place you can be religious, and the
churches are capitalizing on it, don't think they're
not.
You can be a strict or at least
a faithful church member now, and never know
the cross, and never have an enemy, and
never have a narrow way, and never run
a thorn in your foot, and never feel
the cross in your heart, and never suffer,
and never walk into danger, and never be
afraid in the night, and never lose anything.
Churches like that, and they'll take you in.
They'll never ask you if you've been converted.
They'll never ask you whether you will live
right.
They'll never try to find out.
They'll be too glad to get you, and
give you an envelope, and get your name
on the list how much you'll give every
quarter.
They're anxious to get you, ladies and gentlemen,
and don't fool yourself.
There are churches like that.
If you want them, go to them.
Don't bother coming around here.
We'd like to have you come and at
least listen.
But if you've decided that you don't want
this rigorous kind of Christianity, there's lots of
unrigorous Christianity.
A lot of it, Brother McAfee.
And let's not waste any time following a
far-off Savior that we don't intend to
follow the rest of the way.
Oh, brothers and sisters, there is such a
thing as having church membership into a church,
even into gospel churches, where no demands are
ever made on your spiritual life or on
your life at all.
But remember, when you go there, you can
bid goodbye to inward peace, and you can
bid goodbye to life and immortality.
Now, that's not saying that if you've been
renewed by the Holy Ghost and born again,
that if you should go to some church
where you don't have the cross, I'm not
trying to settle that ancient dispute.
I'm only saying that those who went back
and did not follow him on to true
salvation, had no hope and no immortality and
no inward peace, neither will anybody else.
Then there are those that say, I don't
know, Mr. Tozer, something too direct and blunt
and uncritical and lacking intellectuality and learning in
the gospel evangelical churches.
I want something that has more learning in
it.
Well, there are such churches.
There are churches where you almost have to
have a college degree to even join.
There are such churches.
They are the learned saints.
And if you insist, all right.
A man wrote me, wanted me to run
some articles in the Alliance Weekly, religious articles.
They were to be about learned subjects.
He's a good and godly man, however.
But he's a learned man, and I wrote
and said, brother, the Alliance Weekly is not
a learned journal.
We still believe that people have hearts, and
we edit it for the hearts of the
people.
We edit it for that pulsating, loving, breathing,
full-bloomed thing within us that came from
God and will go back to God, that
cannot cease to be.
After all, our brains have rotted away, and
the worms have crawled in through our noses,
in through our sinuses, and into our brain
cavities, and have eaten out all the gray
matter of which we are so proud.
That pulsating, throbbing, living, breathing thing will still
be there, still be there, God-like, Christ
-like, forever and forever, while the suns burn
themselves out to cinders.
And so we preach to that part of
a man, and we labor to bless and
save that part of a man, and we
edit for that kind of and part of
a man.
So if we're just learning, we want, why,
we can get it.
If you just can't bear to have simple
language used, you can go and find where
they have learned the gobbledygook of Washington down
so perfectly.
When I was a young fellow, occasionally I'd
go to hear a preacher, and I never
knew what one of them meant, never, because
they didn't know.
They never called a man's wife his wife,
she was his compagnon.
And they never said, buy, they said, purchase.
You know, you'll purchase something.
Buy the truth and sell it not, said
the Holy Ghost.
Purchase the truth, said the preacher.
Always the big word, never a little one,
the Sermon on the Mount written in little
ones, but the learned come for eternity, insist
upon using the big ones, and nobody knows
what they're talking about.
You can have that if you wanted, but
I want to ask you, friend, what good
will it do you in the day when
the world's on fire?
What good will it do you in the
day when you sleep the last sleep?
What good will it do you in the
hour of your distress and your agony?
What good will it do you, as the
colored preacher had it, when you wrestle with
death and come off second best?
What good will it do you then?
Oh, it can't help you then.
I know one fundamentalist preacher that has eight
degrees.
A number of them are good men, but
he's not going to go to heaven on
those degrees.
You gotta have more than that to get
you through, and yet there are those that
won't go to the simple church, and they
won't follow the simple Savior.
They insist upon having John 3.16 expanded
in a book with a lot of Plato
in it.
No, my brother, it won't do.
What good will it do you to be
learned?
That's all right to be learned, and I
think we ought to be, but never confuse
learning with salvation.
Never, never, never.
Now I close, but in closing I want
to read to you what the most learned
and wisest man that ever lived in the
world said.
This wise, learned man, this man who is
the summation of all the knowledge there is
and all the wisdom, here's what he said.
At that time Jesus answered and said, I
thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent and hast revealed them
unto babes.
Even so, Father, for so it seemed good
in thy sight.
All things are delivered unto me of my
Father, and no man knoweth the Son but
the Father.
Neither knoweth any man the Father save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will
reveal him.
Come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly in
heart.
And ye shall find rest unto your souls,
for my yoke is easy and my burden
is light.
Now I haven't time to stand up before
you here and give you a lesson, of
course, but I can't find a word that's
longer than two syllables.
Come me, all ye that and are, and
I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am meek and lowly in
heart.
And ye shall find rest unto your souls.
Two syllable words and one syllable words, and
yet over this glorious, wonderful mosaic, this glorious,
God-laid pavement they have marched, the wise
and the prudent, and the simple and the
unlearned, and those like Wesley with an Oxford
degree, and those like Luther learned in his
day, and those like Augustine, the greatest of
the minds, the simple and the humble, and
the lowly have come over this same wonderful
pavement and have marched into the kingdom of
God, leaving all their show of wisdom behind
them.
As they came and heard him say, O
Father, I thank thee, thou Lord of heaven
and earth, because thou hast hid these things
from the wise and the prudent and hast
revealed them unto babes.
This is what I'm for, friends.
This is where I stand.
This is what I believe in.
And there probably isn't anything that the average
one of us couldn't learn, for I have
found that one of the functions of a
popular learning is to disguise ignorance under big
words.
And when you have run a man down
and cornered him and made him talk, he
doesn't know much.
I make it a business to find out
how much people know.
And I hear the learned, I get in
on invitation to learning on the radio, and
I get in on all the debates from
the universities that I can possibly get in
on while I'm trying to rest at home,
and I hear them make mistakes in grammar,
I hear them mispronounce words, and I hear
them do things that even I wouldn't do
here.
And yet they're so learned, O my brother,
there isn't any folly quite so sweet and
delectable, nor there isn't any folly quite so
damnable as the folly of the pride of
intellect.
You want to go to a more learned
church where the pastor can't talk in single
-syllable words as Jesus did, but has to
sound learned and intersperse every second sentence with
something to the effect that a quotation from
this or that great person.
Now, thank God it isn't a choice between
this church and all this other that I
have talked about, because there are dozens of
churches just as good as this or better.
I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about Jesus, not about this church.
Christ our Lord.
And I'm saying that you must humble yourself
like a little child, unselfconsciously.
You must come just as you are, and
without one plea, and hear him say, I
thank thee, Lord of heaven and earth.
Thou hast hid these things from the wise
and the prudent, and hast revealed them unto
these.
And you know what the Lord Jesus Christ
will do for you, sir.
If you will let him and you will
follow him, he will give you the tongue
of the learned, and he will give you
the ear of the learned, and he will
pierce your inner ear, and he will teach
you mysteries that are not written in books.
He will make you wiser than the sages.
But it's all an inward thing that goes
along with self-crucifixion and modesty and meekness
and quietness of heart, but it's that which
will live when everything else goes to pieces.
If God is capable of irony, if God
is capable of cosmic sarcasm, then it seems
to me there's a providential irony in America
today.
Who are the greatest minds on the continent?
I think we would all agree the greatest
minds on the North American continent are the
minds that have pierced through the mysterious barrier
and have gone back to the mystic essence
out of which all things are made, and
have penetrated the labyrinthine depths of the atom,
and have proved they weren't just using words,
they've proved they did it by creating bonds
out of those atoms that can blow cities
into oblivion.
They are the greatest minds, I say.
I say, is it not the providential, dramatic
evidence of a divine irony that that which
man values the most, his great mind, should
be used in the latter days to destroy
him, as though God in his heaven was
laughing and saying, look at the little fools,
the wise and the prudent and the debaters
and the disputers and the lament.
I've forced them to use their godless brains
to destroy themselves.
And if God is capable of irony, it's
an ironic flourish in history.
Oh no, my brother, bow that head and
bend those knees and humble that heart and
hear him say, come unto me all ye
that labor and are heavy laden and I
will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of
me, for I am weak and lowly in
heart and ye shall find rest unto your
souls.
A child can do that, a child.
Will you this night, this night while we're
here, quietly bow your heads and as a
child say, Jesus, Jesus, thou joy of loving
heart, I take thee this evening into my
heart to be my Lord and Savior, to
be my hope, my immortality, my eternal life,
my glory, my advocate with the Father, my
master, my boss.
I take thee, Lord Jesus, now this moment,
putting my knowledge, putting my carnal love of
drama and all the dramatics of religion, putting
it all away.
Oh Lord, I take thee now as mine.
That's how simple it is and that's why
some go back.
They say it's too simple, too mystical, too
inward.
No, not too, for Christ came to save
you inwardly first and then of course it
spills out and he saves you outwardly, but
he saves you inwardly first and you that
may have been tinkering with the idea that
you just couldn't take the pressure anymore.
The cross is too heavy on your shoulders,
too sore.
The nights are too long and the day
is unending.
The sun is too hot and the road
is too rough.
The hill is too steep.
The demands of Christ are too exacting.
The thorn's too sharp.
You want it easier and you want an
easier church and an easier religion.
I beg of you, if you go back,
think what you're going back to.
Back to sin, back to distress, back to
heavy heartedness, back to darkness, back to the
grave, back to judgment.
You can't afford it.
Lift up the hands that hang down, strengthen
the feeble knees.
Pull the belt another notch up and say,
Lord Jesus, you will help me.
I'll throw off this discouragement starting now, Lord.
I'll take a new lease on life and
a new hold on thee.
I'll dare to believe and I'll shuck off
this mantle of the night.
Thou will give me the garment of joy
and the garment of heaviness.
You'll do it all right, shall we pray?
O thou Son of God, thou most holy
Lamb, we are here, thy servants, this evening,
and we thank thee, Lord, that we are
not all there are.
We thank thee, Father, that there are many
others.
Thank thee this is not the only church.
Thank thee, Lord, that it isn't a choice
between the Alliance Church and hell, for there
are thousands of churches on this continent where
just as true and wonderful truth is preached,
and many of them in this city.
For this we thank thee this night and
give thee praise, Father, Lord of heaven and
earth, for all the good churches and good
preachers and good faithful men of God.
But, Father, there are churches that fatten and
grow on those who won't take them our
way.
O great God, pity and spare this refuge
for cowards, these great ornate edifices dedicated to
the deserters, paid for for the cowards, kept
up for the ignoble deserters from the army
of God.
Have mercy on such, O have mercy on
such.
But bless every gospel church, Lord.
Bless every gospel church in whatever denomination.
Bless every man that stands to preach tonight.
And, Father, some of them will stand with
robes on, but they will preach the word.
And some choirs tonight, wearing robes, will sing
the wonders of redemption.
Blessed be thy name.
Now, Lord, we bless thee and worship thee
tonight.
We have found the way past the veil,
through the blood, to the holy of holies
with God.
Blessed be thy name.
Now, Lord, we pray thee for any who
may be discouraged, who may be having a
hard time, who may have been secretly toying
with throwing it all up and saying, What's
the use?
They have been tempted and they have even
fallen.
O great God, have mercy upon thy sheep
tonight, thy poor brood-battered sheep.
Satan and wolves and bears and lions, they
have been after thy sheep.
Their jaws are slavering and their eyes are
keen and sharp and penetrating, and their paws
are soft as they pat around waiting.
O Lord, save thy sheep from the maw
of the dragon tonight.
Bless this truth.
Show us plainly through it that there is
nowhere to go, but show us also that
thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God, that Christ who should come to
turn our feet toward thee, as well as
our hearts.
Help us now as we wait upon thee,
Father.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.