If ye have known me, ye should have
known my Father also, and from henceforth ye
know him, and have seen him.
Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the
Father, and it sufficeeth us.
Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so
long time with you?
And yet hast thou not known me, Philip?
He that hath seen me hath seen the
Father.
How saith thou then, Show us the Father?
Believest thou not that I am in the
Father, and the Father in me?
The words that I speak unto you I
speak not of myself, but the Father that
dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.
Believe me that I am in the Father,
and the Father in me, for else believe
me for the very works sake.
Now we'll stop with verse 11 for tonight.
Let us pray again.
Now, Lord, we pray in the name of
our Lord Jesus for help tonight.
Lord, we know that the world, the flesh,
and the devil conspire to grab away every
seed that is sown, every holy impulse, every
high intention, every holy vow.
O Lord, we pray, undo the work of
the devil, and work thou savingly in the
hearts of the people, cleansing, and purifying, and
sanctifying, and delivering, and setting free.
Great God, we need help out of heaven
tonight.
Human brains can't do it.
Human personality can't do it.
Human training can't do it.
Human learning can't do it.
Even if we had any of these things,
they cannot do it.
O Lord, it is thee, and thee alone,
that can break the power of canceled sin
and set the prisoner free.
Only thou can open blind eyes.
Only thou can move the will to obedience.
O Lord, help us tonight.
By the Holy Ghost, help us tonight.
Help us not because we're good, but because
thou art God.
Help us not because we amount to anything,
but because thou dost love us.
Help us out of grace tonight and out
of mercy.
Graciously be with us, and let thy light
shine over us, as it shone over Israel
in ancient days.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, let me begin by saying that no
nation has ever risen above its religion.
I don't think it would be very difficult
to prove this statement, that no nation has
ever risen above its religion.
Whether that nation is pure or impure, high
or low, depends upon what kind of religion
it has.
That is, in the qualities that belong to
our humanity, our best humanity.
A nation might, like Hitler's Germany, for a
few hectic, brief, unnatural years, have a degraded
pagan religion, and yet ride high in things
commercial and industrial and military.
But you see how it was top-heavy
and tumbled over of its own weight?
It had to do it.
Russia today apparently is greater than its religion
because it has no religion, or at least
the official Russian line is that it has
no religion.
So that for a time, a nation can
seem to be greater than its religion.
It can have a low religion and yet
rise to high peaks, seeming to be so.
But in the qualities that belong to our
best humanity, no nation ever yet rose above
its religion.
And no nation today is above its religion,
and I think it is safe to predict
that no nation can ever rise above its
religion.
I might say that that ought to be
a matter of grave concern for the United
States of America.
If our religion rots, our nation will rot.
And there is no law that can be
passed, no political party that can come to
power, nothing that men can do by way
of assuring itself the nation for the future
that can save us.
The nation will only be as great as
its religion, no greater.
Now a nation can go below its religion.
It can nominally have a high religion and
yet sink below it, just as a man
can live at the foot of a mountain
and never rise higher than the top of
the mountain, but can all his lifetime live
below the top of that mountain.
Yet if he should climb the mountain, he
can't get above the top of it.
So that no nation ever got above its
religion, but a nation can live below its
religion.
And then the second thing is that no
religion ever rose any higher than its concept
of God.
No religion ever rose any higher than its
concept of God.
That is the most vital thing that can
be known about any church or any man
or any nation.
And every religion, whether it is high or
low, whether it is pure or impure, noble
or base, depends altogether upon what it thinks
of God.
Now there have been pagan religions in the
past that while they were pagan and they
weren't saved and they weren't Christian and they
weren't redeemed, yet they managed to have a
stable society and have some kind of stable
pagan worship because they had a lofty concept
of God, the Greeks for instance.
But no religion can ever go higher than
its concept of God.
If they have a base God, they'll have
a base religion.
If they have a higher God, they'll have
a higher religion.
Now I'm talking about the religions out of
Christ and the religions that are not Christian.
And there have been some great religions, but
they have been all dependent upon their concept
of God.
But a higher concept of God means that
men will strive to higher things and do
the best they can even though they're out
of Christ and even though they're not born
new, even though they're not redeemed, they will
attempt something better if their concept of God
is higher.
Now those are philosophical considerations which I lay
down for you and say simply this, that
the most vital fact about any nation is
what it thinks of God.
Now I'm not a historian, neither by profession
or by any great amount of study of
history, average I would say, but I do
believe this, that I could predict the future
of any nation if I could discover exactly
what that nation's concept of God is.
Now if I could learn exactly what America
thinks of God, if I could discover exactly
what the rank and file, the masses, and
the lower echelon leadership in America thinks about
God, if I could send out a questionnaire,
God forbid that I should do it, too
much of it's been done, but if I
could send out a questionnaire and ask the
question, what do you think of God?
When you think of God, what do you
think of?
How does it strike you?
What concept enters your mind when you think
about God?
And if I could find a pattern that
would tell me what the majority of the
people thought about God, I could predict the
future of the nation, barring of course the
possibility of a revival that would change all
that.
But even a revival cannot come where a
concept of God is low.
A missionary cannot go to a heathen land
and preach the gospel, and one of the
first things they've got to do is to
talk about the high God and purge the
mind of the people from low and unworthy
and ignoble and base concepts of God.
We cannot rise higher than our concept of
God.
Your faith cannot rise higher than your concept
of God.
And that is why I, for one, am
indignantly crusading against this concept of God as
the man upstairs, the nice, lovely, palatable God
that you can slap on the back and
laugh and tell him a joke, the God
that'll condescend to anything and pal along with
anybody.
That kind of God is not the God
of the Bible, either Old Testament or New.
It's not the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, not the God that gave
the law to Moses, not the God that
led the children of Israel out of Egypt,
not the God of Isaiah nor David, not
the God of John or Paul, not the
God of Luther nor the God of Wesley,
not the God of the church.
It is another kind of God, a pally,
soft God that will condescend to anything and
overlook anything with no spine and no character.
That God is the divine teddy bear, the
huge panda that everybody can cuddle to and
coo about, but they have no respect for
him because they have no concept of him.
I say I'm crusading against that.
I'll probably talk myself hoarse and go to
an old folks' home, and they'll go right
on doing it till the judgment day.
But as long as I'm alive and able
to talk, I'm going to keep talking about
it occasionally at least.
I don't want to be a bore and
I don't want to get off on one
string, but if I get on one string,
I'm going to make it a good string.
And I say that not only a nation,
but a church.
You say, oh, well, every church has the
same concept of God, every church knows about
God, they read their Bible, it's the Christian
concept of God.
No, not by a long shot.
God has been watered down and modified and
edited and qualified and changed until the lot
of churches, many churches have no high concept
of God at all.
I'm not in any wise inclined to think
that the rank and file of this church
really believes in God as God is or
thinks about God as God is.
I don't think that.
I know you're lovely people and I don't
want you to get mad at me, but
if you do, you'll only have to pray
and repent and get right with God about
it.
Anyhow, so don't do it.
But even though you're nice people, I don't
think for a minute that all of you
have a high biblical concept of God.
We have our concept of God, if it
could be thought of as a river, we
have received tributaries from everywhere.
Tributaries from books and fiction and religious literature
of various kinds until even a church like
this, that ought to be a sound biblical
church, our concept of God is likely to
be down, so that instead of thinking of
God as he is, high and lofty, inhabiting
eternity, whose train fills the temple and who
walks on the wings of the wind and
makes the clouds his chariot, instead of our
thinking about that high God, the God we
know about or think about and conceive as
a smaller God, very much smaller God, I've
been accused of being against evangelism.
I'm not against evangelism.
I'm for God's evangelism and Holy Ghost evangelism.
I've been evangelist for two weeks now over
at Beulah Beach.
I believe in evangelism.
But I have listened to evangelistic sermons that
set forth a God that I couldn't respect
and wouldn't want to go to heaven and
have to live with for another few million
eternities.
I wouldn't want to, brother Kim.
I don't want to live with a God
like that.
The kind of God that I've heard set
forth in pitiful, nose-ringing, eye-drenching stories.
There's no God we're like, one of us.
A poor little, undersized, small-minded brother gets
up and begins to chatter about the God
that he's made in his own image and
then I'm supposed to want to go to
heaven and sit beside the throne of a
God I couldn't respect on earth.
No.
I want the God of the Old Testament
and the God and Father of the New.
Or else I can't, I don't want to
go to heaven.
I'd rather go somewhere in some neutral place.
I have courage enough to say I'd rather
go to hell.
But at least I hope there's a limbo
in between where I can stay as far
as possible from these teddy bear gods that
are being preached now and again.
Our people have a lot against old John
Calvin.
I know I don't go along with everything
John Calvin believed but one thing he did
believe I'd go along with he had a
high concept of God.
He believed in God's sovereignty, God's high and
lifted up and so do I.
So did John Wesley for that matter.
You don't have to be a Calvinist to
believe in a high and holy God.
But in these days it helps.
Now, incidentally, don't get me wrong praying for
me now with groanings that can't be uttered.
Just save your wind, brother, because I know
what I am.
Now, I say this, that if we could
find out exactly what this church thinks about
God, we'd know our future.
We'd know where we're going to the next
year.
If we could find out exactly what all
of us think about God.
When you think about God, what do you
think about?
When God comes into your mind, what's your
concept of God?
What do you picture?
What is God like?
If you can discover that in the church,
the average and the level of the church,
all of us together, if we give a
concept of what God is like, I can
tell you where we're going for the days
to come.
Same with a man, an individual Christian.
Christians go to revival meetings and they get
on their knees and beat the bench and
pray and imagine they can at an altar
get an experience that will guarantee them for
all the time to come and give them
a kind of spiritual security.
All will be well, thank you, for this
world and the world to come.
No, my brother.
A man can have an emotional experience at
an altar and yet never have any satisfying
knowledge of God at all.
Never any high concept of God.
Brethren, Jesus Christ, our Lord, taught us who
God was.
Now, this longing after God that Philip revealed
here, this longing after God, Philip said, Show
us the Father.
Show us the Father!
And I'm sure he wasn't a heckler.
I'm sure this was not a critic.
I'm sure this honest Philip, he must have
been a good, honest man, I believe.
At that stage in the game, he was
even a converted man.
And Philip was a good, honest-hearted man
and he honestly wanted to see the Father.
The invisibility of the Father had been one
of the heavy things, the heavy things that
he couldn't understand.
Oh, God, show us the Father, he said.
The old rabbi back in the ancient days,
I told you about it here a few
weeks ago, he was a great old man
and a fine old believer, religious man.
He was taken in before a king.
And the king said to him, Now, you've
been talking all around over my kingdom about
your God, Jehovah, your God, Jehovah.
Now, he said, I want to have a
showdown here with you.
Either you'll produce him or shut up.
You'll let me look at him and see
him.
Then if you can produce your God, I'll
let you preach.
But if you can't produce him, you'll have
to keep quiet and never mention him again
in pain of death.
The old rabbi said, Sire, let us walk
in the garden.
They walked into the garden.
It was blazing noonday.
And the sun was hanging there, hot and
bright and heavy.
And he said, Sire, behold the sun.
And the old king looked at the sun
and then jerked and sneezed a couple of
times.
And he said, Sire, look at the sun.
And he looked again, but did the same
thing and finally unable to see, he said,
Rabbi, I can't look at the sun.
He said, You just sat in here to
produce God and let me look at him
and you can preach.
And you can't even look at one of
the smallest lights that he created.
How then can you look at God?
The old king said, You and walk back
into the palace, a wiser man.
Let us see the Father.
The invisibility of God has been the string
upon which has harped the atheists.
We don't have any professional atheists preaching nowadays.
We used to have them a few years
back.
Such men as Ingersoll would go up and
down the country preaching.
And one of his favorite tricks was to
say that nobody could see God and they
couldn't produce God and that God was all
just an idea in people's minds.
Clarence Darrow was the last nationally known man
that argued that way.
Show us the Father, they said.
And I don't think that this man, Philip,
when he said that, was in any wise
a critic.
I don't think that this was petulant speech
at all.
I think that Philip, when he said, Show
us the Father, was giving vent to a
yearning in his heart.
He wanted to get through to God, the
invisibility of God, the fact that God can't
be seen.
You close your eyes and pray a while
and open them and see the wall.
Where God isn't there visible.
Well, the effort to know God and find
him and reach him has been one of
the nobler activities of the human race.
It has given to the world many great
religions.
Now, when I say many great religions, don't
any of you good, solid, fellow fundamentalists sit
there and sweat because I'm not saying that
religions are all alike and that we're all
bound to that same heavenly mansion.
I know better than that.
I know that no man cometh unto the
Father but by our Lord Jesus.
I know that there is no forgiveness of
sin except through the blood of Jesus.
I also know that men unaided by inspiration
and unassisted by the light of God have
strained and reached out their hand, as Paul
said, seeking if perhaps they might find God.
And I have never been able to find
it in my heart to sneer at the
honest pagan who raised fetches his hungry hands
toward God and prays to a God he
doesn't know.
And when Paul came to the streets of
Athens and found an altar to the unknown
God, Paul did not sneer, neither did he
deliver them a schooling lecture.
He said, The God you're reaching after and
can't find is the God I preached.
And he began there and took it as
the point of departure.
And there have been many of the religions.
I heard a young Hindu once tell how
he was converted by reading John 1.1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God.
And that very language was cast, or the
very thoughts were cast in the language with
which he was familiar.
And pretty soon the Lord led him through
those verses on to believe in Christ as
his Savior.
There have been great religions, I say.
And they've all been the effort to discover
God.
And in addition to great religions, there have
been great philosophies, and there are, and great
systems of metaphysics.
But God has never been discovered that way.
Because the highest religion there is outside of
Christ is but a man's religion.
And the highest philosophy, the highest any man
ever climbed on the ladder of philosophy was
a man-made ladder.
And no man ever got above his own
temple, above his own brains.
No man could ever rise above his own
brains.
But if God could be discovered that way,
either by fastings or by visions or by
journeys and pilgrimages to Mecca or to some
river or to Palestine, if God could be
gotten to that way, and that in us
which corresponds to our eyes and our ears
and our hands could get hold of God
that way.
And I want to point out something to
you, brethren.
That only the finest minds could know God.
If God could be known only by philosophy,
then only the finest minds could know God.
I wouldn't want to ask you.
You're an average, well-educated congregation here, even
above the average.
But I wouldn't want to ask you tonight
to pass an examination on Plato's Republic.
I don't know how many of you could
pass an examination on Plato's Republic.
Plato's Republic is considered to be, I suppose,
the Bible of philosophy.
And yet there are not very many Christians,
not even, I don't, now listen, don't be
fooled, not very many liberals could either.
They say we fundamentalists couldn't, and they say
we're dumb.
They can't either.
Only they just pretend they can.
Their preacher can.
They think they can.
They can't.
They know lots more about the TV program
than they do about Plato's Republic.
You couldn't tell me what Spinoza teaches.
I'm quite sure you couldn't.
And Pythagoras and Aristotle and what was the
difference between Aristotle and Plato's concepts, the average
person's too busy to find all that out.
And only the finest minds can take it
in.
And therefore, if God was discovered by the
intellection, by the activities of the human brain,
only the finest minds could know God, and
the rest of us would have to be
satisfied not to know God.
When Lord Bacon wrote Nova Morganum, the new
organ of learning, he sent a copy of
it to King Henry VIII.
King Henry VIII tried to read it, sent
it back, and said, this book is like
the peace of God it passes all understanding.
He said, here's your book.
Now, if it required a mind that can
understand Nova Morganum to get converted and to
know God, then that would rule out probably
about 75% of human beings.
A man would have to have a very
fine mind.
And not only that, he'd have to have
great learning.
That is, he would have had to use
that mind properly.
In addition to that, he would have to
have unlimited leisure before he could know God.
It takes a lot of leisure to study
and get learning.
It takes a lot.
You've got to do a lot of thinking.
Some of the old thinkers did very little
else with that.
The old Socrates did very little else only
run around barefoot in the streets of Athens
and talk and think.
If you're going to be learned, you've got
to have a lot of time to put
in on it, brother.
And if you have to work for your
living or raise babies, you might just as
well say, well, I'll do the best I
can, but goodbye learning.
I never can be one of the superior
half-dozen minds of the world.
I can't be.
But you think that God the Eternal Father
would give redemption to the world and then
give it only to a few great minds?
Do you think that he would send redemption
to the world and make it available only
to the great scholars?
Do you think that he would send redemption
to the world and let it be available
only to those who had unlimited leisure?
We American people have more leisure probably than
anybody else in the world because we have
so many gadgets to do our work for
us.
You women don't do very much because you
have push-button.
Now, don't come around and sass me after
church because that's true when you know it's
true.
Your mother did five times as much and
your grandmother did four times as much as
she did because we're now in the age
when we have leisure.
Leisure, always leisure.
Some of you dear sisters wouldn't know so
much about the TV shows if you didn't
have a lot of leisure.
You have more time.
If you had to work as your grandfather
worked and as your father worked, you wouldn't
have time to sit around and weep over
synthetic paid trained seals who perform for your
TV screen.
If you had to have as many tears
over the loss as you do over John's
other wife, we'd have twice as big a
church and you'd be twice as good a
Christian.
Amen?
We have more leisure, I say, than anybody
else in the world, but not even Americans
have enough leisure to really be learning in
that high lofty sense of the word.
God knew better than that.
God was all wise and so he brought
salvation down.
And the message of Christ is not directed
to the learned particularly.
They can come in if they want to
come in by the door.
The man with fifteen degrees can lay his
degrees aside and get on his knees and
come like the rest of us.
The man of profound learning can come like
the rest of us.
The man of such leisure that he can
travel in Europe and spend his winters in
Florida and his summers in Canada fishing, he
can come the humble way of the rest
of us.
God sent his message down to the plain
people.
And that's why I love plain people.
I'm at home among them, I am one,
and I love to be among the plain
people.
Now God had to demonstrate himself some way.
He had to satisfy that craving that made
Thomas or Philip say, Show us the Father!
And he had to demonstrate that himself to
satisfy that cry that David gave, I shall
be satisfied when I look upon him.
I long to see him.
My heart and my flesh cried out after
God.
So what he did was that he walked
down into man's level down on the earth.
Listen.
If he had known me, he should have
known my Father also.
From henceforth you know him and have seen
him.
Philip says unto him, Lord, show us the
Father.
And it suffices us.
Jesus said, Have I been so long time
with you, and yet hast thou not known
me, Philip?
He that has seen me has seen the
Father.
How do you say, Show us the Father?
Believe now, not that I am the Father
and the Father in me.
The words that I speak unto you I
speak not of myself, but the Father dwelling
in me doeth the work.
Believe me that I am in the Father
and the Father in me.
Here was a man standing and saying, If
you have got acquainted with me, you already
know the Father, and you already know what
the Father is like.
O brethren, this is the most wonderful thing
of all wonders.
This is one of the purposes of redemption.
And I think the theologians, at least the
preachers of theology, are not bearing down hard
enough right here.
We ought to remember, brethren, that there is
not one purpose in incarnation, not two purposes
in incarnation, but multi-fold purposes in incarnation,
a multi-fold purpose, many purposes.
And one of the purposes in the incarnation
was that the heart-hungry men and women
of the world, the ones that are heart
-hungry and want to know what God is
like, could know what God is like without
studying Plato.
And they can know what God is like
without getting degrees.
They can know what God is like and
not have the leisure to read all the
learned books of the world.
They can know God because God demonstrated himself
here.
Christ is the manifestation of God to men.
Christ is God walking among men.
Some of the borderline liberals say that God
revealed himself in Christ.
Let's correct their preposition.
He did not reveal himself in Christ.
He revealed himself as Christ.
There is a change of preposition on you
there, sir.
Take that in out of there.
He did not reveal himself in Christ.
Oh, he did that too.
But we have not said enough when we
say that God revealed himself in Christ.
We must go on to say he revealed
himself as Christ.
So it can be said with certainty that
who knows Christ knows God.
And whoever knows our Lord Jesus knows the
Father.
And whose eyes look upon Jesus look upon
the Father.
And it may be said that whoever knows
God can know God through Christ and must
know God through Christ.
And it can be said that God does
always act like Christ and Christ always acts
like God because Christ is God walking among
men.
It may also be said with certainty that
increasing knowledge of Christ means increasing knowledge of
God.
If God will let me, and there are
a lot of people throughout the country praying
that he will, if God will let me,
I am going to write at least one
more book.
It is to be called The Knowledge of
the Holy, and it will be on the
attributes of God devotionally considered.
I will consider the Father, Son and Holy
Ghost in their biblical and lofty glory and
show what it means when we say God
is sovereign, what it means when we say
he is immutable, what it means when we
say he is omniscient, and so on, clear
down the line till I have had twenty
chapters and twenty attributes.
Brethren, that will be a help to the
heart perhaps and a help to the mind,
and I trust that God will use it
to help elevate the concept of the whole
evangelical church from our present-day bearer God
to the high and lofty God that inhabited
eternity.
But I would say this, the simplest little
old lady in her black bonnet and her
wire-rimmed glasses and her big print Bible
can know God and never know what an
attribute is, brethren.
She can know God and never have heard
of the word.
She can know God if she meets Christ.
For he that hath seen me hath seen
the Father.
I am the Father and the Father in
me.
How sayest thou?
Tell us about God when God's been walking
among you telling you about God.
Jesus is God and you don't have to
be a theologian to know it, my brethren.
You can know God through Christ if you
will know Christ.
How then can you know Christ?
A little later I'll tell you.
Now, put this down in your Bible or
down in your head and remember somewhere that
Christ is God acting like himself.
That's all.
God never strains.
There's never any play acting with God.
God never puts on a face, never comes
out and takes a character.
God always acts like himself.
The most relaxed man that ever walked the
streets of any city was Jesus Christ, our
Lord.
Perfectly relaxed.
He could turn calmly, look at a man,
cut him to bits or draw him near
and forgive his sins and heal his diseases
depending upon the attitude he came in.
He was always relaxed.
When they came to get him, there he
was, they found him.
But when it was too early yet and
he didn't want to die yet for a
few days, he passed quietly through their midst.
That doesn't say how he did it, but
he did it.
Perfectly relaxed.
God is always relaxed.
Remember that.
Some of you go to God praying as
though God were as badly excited as you
are.
There are Christians that they mistake hysterics for
spirituality.
There's a magazine that comes to my desk
and it's a good magazine, all right, and
I read it and I get some help
out of it.
But I only have one criticism of it
and that is it's hysteric.
It wants revival, it wants a blessing, and
it wants God down, it wants the Holy
Ghost down, but it wants it so bad
that it never can use just ordinary English.
Everything is, what do you call it, souped
up.
Everything is souped up, you know, and a
new punch put in everything and ethyl is
put in all their gasoline and an extra
kick in everything.
It never can relax.
If God's people could only know who God
is and then relax and believe Him, we'd
get somewhere.
But as it stands now, we either are
lazy and don't care anything about God or
we get hysterical.
Christ never was hysterical, never.
The only time that he was ever for
even one little moment out of control was
that awful, unspeakable, holy moment in the Garden
of Gethsemane when he said, Father, Father, take
this cup away but yet not my will
but Thine be done.
That was as near as he ever came
in the awful article and agony of his
death.
The only time that he was ever knocked
for a moment that he wasn't in perfect
control.
So don't mistake hysteria for spirituality, brother.
The two ain't the same.
You'll excuse my good German.
Now, Christ is God acting like himself.
I just want you to get that idea
and take it out with you.
That when Jesus walked the earth, he was
just God walking around acting like himself.
And when he went to the right hand
of the Father, he was still God acting
like himself.
When he sent the Holy Ghost down, the
Holy Ghost is God acting like God.
Always God acts like himself.
Never can get God out of character.
He always acts the same.
He'll be the same, always the same, forever
the same, because that's his immutability, you see.
That's what that word means, means he's unchanging.
And he'll never be any different from what
he is now.
People change, but God never changes.
People's moods change.
Some people cultivate it, because they read in
a magazine one time about some movie actress
that has moods.
And so they go around moodiest can be.
God bless you, honey.
Don't you wish you had some sense?
Wouldn't it be nice if you'd wake up
sometime and really rub your head until the
circulation started?
The day will come and you will be
bald and have nine chins.
God help you, young fella.
Think for tomorrow!
Think for the future!
Think about day after tomorrow and next year
and next eternity.
That's why I talk mean and rough to
you because I love you and because I
don't want to handle you soft.
Jesus was God walking around showing his power
and Jesus was God walking around showing his
holiness.
The horrible travesty that we have in America
today is Christianity without holiness.
Christianity without holiness.
Say, I accept Jesus and then go raise
hell!
I accept Jesus.
You don't accept Jesus at all, mister.
You are a deceived man.
You are no better off than if you
had never heard of God.
Because the one of the very first qualities
of Christianity is holiness.
Purity, right living, right thinking, right longing.
But we have a Christianity today that has
no holiness in it.
The Son of God was a holy Son.
The Holy Father is the Holy Father in
heaven, not in Rome.
And the Holy Ghost is the Holy Ghost
and our Bible is the Holy Bible.
And the Church is called the Holy Church.
Go out into all the world.
And heaven is a holy heaven and the
angels are holy.
And therefore we ought to take seriously the
Biblical doctrine of spirituality and holiness.
Evangelical Church has fallen so far into the
gutter from the day in which we live
that we preach salvation without holiness, which of
course is a travesty on Christianity.
Dr. Torrey would have said so.
James M.
Gray would have said so.
And Moody would have said so.
But I don't know why we're not hearing
it now.
When Christ was God walking around acting like
Himself in love, Jesus loved everybody.
He loved them in an easy, relaxed, wonderful
way.
He loved the people.
People came to Him and had made those
mean old theological Pharisees mad as the devil.
They said, Why don't they come to us?
They didn't come to them because they found
no warmth there.
You know that a bird will always go
to the warm side of the hill in
the early spring.
The flocks or bevvies, I think they call
them, of Bob White used to fly around
out of home on the fireman when the
snow was almost gone.
The poet said the snow doth fare ill
on the top of the bare hill.
And it was faring so well that there
was only a patch here and there but
was still cold.
And the bevvies of Bob White would come
to the sunny side of the hill and
settle down there.
You could walk around on the dark side
of the hill where the snow was and
you wouldn't find one.
But go on over the hill and down
where
the
this group of people because he was God
walking around acting like God in love.
And the reason they didn't come to the
Pharisees was the Pharisees had no love.
There was a fire going out in the
stove.
Nobody ever wants to stand around the stove
when the fire is going out.
Some of you city hicks don't know the
joy that we farmers used to have.
A little pot-bellied stove.
And he was the thing you know that
was shining like a cherry.
And you would come in half frozen and
come and they had a I don't know
why they put it there but they had
a kind of a fender all the way
around the pot-bellied part of the stove
and lean back in a chair and put
your feet up on that fender.
It wasn't so hot it didn't burn your
shoes, old brother.
They've never had any modern conveniences that can
beat that for sheer downright pleasure.
I look back on that as real pleasure.
Nowadays they squirt your heat through little holes
in the wall and do all sorts of
things and it's more convenient I'll admit that.
But it lacks character somehow.
You just can't fall in love with a
grill.
But I used to love the little old
pot-bellied stove.
I used to love it.
Father would get up ahead of the rest
of us and we slept in rooms upstairs
that were completely cold.
If it got down to zero the room
got down to zero.
We got into our clothes and got downstairs
and came out of that awful rigid country
up there and here was this nice cherry
colored stove.
That was a wonderful thing.
We brought our clothes down dressed around the
stove.
All I say is nobody ever comes around
stoves when the fire's gone out anymore.
And Jesus had love in his heart and
love is always warm.
And love is always attractive.
And the people come to the churches where
it's warm.
They come to Christians that are warm.
Old D.Y. Schultz wrote a great book
on the Holy Ghost years ago.
One of the sentences that jarred me was
this.
He said the absence of inquirers among people
claiming to be filled with the Holy Ghost
is a serious question whether or not they
are filled with the Holy Ghost.
I don't think you got that so I'll
repeat it round two the other way.
The absence of inquirers.
A man says I'm filled with the Holy
Ghost but he never draws anybody to him.
Nobody ever comes and says will you help
me?
Will you pray for me?
Will you tell me about the Lord?
Will you lift my burden?
Will you do something for me?
He's filled with the Spirit but nobody comes
to him.
Wise old Dr. Schultz said the absence of
inquirers among those claiming to be filled with
the Holy Ghost raises a serious question whether
or not they have been.
If there's fire in the stove you'll always
find a wayfarer with chilled lame feet and
frost on his whiskers coming up near the
stove.
And that's why they love Jesus Christ our
Lord and that's why people love him today.
They always find him sympathetic, understanding, and never
sarcastic.
If God would just get sarcastic once I'd
die of grief.
And I'm sarcastic every once in a while.
But God never gets sarcastic.
His prophets used to, but he was always
tender.
He could cut the head off of an
old hypocrite, but he never turned on anybody
that was poor and helpless and in need.
Never turned on a woman taking an adultery.
He said, Well, I told you so.
Remember when you were sixteen how you used
to act?
Never.
He said, Nobody else be
a good girl from now on.
Go on, forgive him.
She went out tears streaming down her cheeks.
Couldn't he have cut her to bits?
And then go on to the next town
and told it as an illustration.
That was love walking around.
God's own love walking around acting like love
acts.
And those babies.
You see that little shaver we dedicated this
morning?
That long name of his, long Dutch name,
God bless him.
He took those little fellows up in his
arms and held them and loved them, just
acting like God.
That's all.
That's what God thinks of babies.
That's what God thinks of poor women.
That's what God thinks of everybody.
Everybody but me, a fellow full of the
devil.
A fellow come around here full of the
devil, everybody would say, Well, he's a queer
one, isn't he?
And we'd isolate him.
He'd walk around all by himself.
But Jesus went and cast the devil out.
Christ, I say, is God acting like God
in loyalty.
Think of the loyalty of Jesus.
If ever there would have been a time,
if ever there would have been a time
when justice would have allowed Jesus to turn
his back on his disciples, it was at
the cross.
For they all forsook him and fled.
And he could have said, Here I've spent
three years.
Here I've spent three years teaching my disciples,
healing the sick, raising the dead, stilling the
waters, feeding the multitude, talking of the Father's
house.
Here I've spent three years, and I haven't
one man that will stand with me.
I scrape the dust off my shoes.
I turn away from him.
He could have done it, but you know
what he did?
He was loyal to that bunch of renegades
and cowards who forsook him and fled.
Loyal to the people who hadn't the courage
to come to his rescue.
Loyal to those who would not even come
out and stand and be counted.
Loyal to the end, and died loyally for
those who had no loyalty for him.
Why did he have that loyalty?
Was that human loyalty?
Yes, but it was more than human.
It was God's loyalty.
God has been loyal to the human race,
even though way back there, thousands of years
ago, we turned our back on God in
the person of Adam, and walked out, and
in Adam's fall we sinned it all, and
we all walked out on God.
But God remembered us, all remembered us.
And all their smoke and the lamb bled,
and God kept saying, down the years and
down the years, here, here, we'll have a
Redeemer.
And then a mother groaned, and a babe
cried, and the angels sang.
And God had come to earth loyal to
His renegade race.
And when they took Him out to crucify
Him, loyal still.
And He's loyal at the right hand of
God tonight.
And you'll go home from here and sit
up till one o'clock in the morning
watching half-dressed movie actors play on your
TV screen.
And you claim to be converted, and God
loves you, and will be loyal to you
through faith, and confession, and humility.
It's awfully hard to get people to repent,
because that means humility.
And we build up a saga about ourselves.
That's why it's dangerous to be a Christian
leader.
Dangerous to be a Christian leader.
Brethren, it says James, and be careful, don't
everybody want to be teachers?
God's dangerous.
Dangerous to get a saga built up about
yourself.
Get a reputation for being godly.
And then when the Holy Ghost comes and
begins to lacerate your heart, you're ashamed to
go to an altar.
Ashamed to confess because people think you're a
hypocrite.
Your old brother, Peter Robinson.
Ah, Peter Robinson knew God.
Peter Robinson was a cook, a chef in
one of the finest hotels in this country.
And a little boy there, he was born
crippled.
Peter Robinson believed the Lord would heal him,
but he didn't.
And one day he said to God, God,
I'm not going to eat again until my
boy's healed.
Couldn't walk.
He was 24 years old but couldn't walk.
And his wife said, do you think that's
wise, Peter?
He said, I believe that's a God in
me, and that's all right.
So he went down, and he said, the
first day or so it wasn't so bad,
but the second and third day it was
getting terrible.
And in this fine high-class restaurant he
was dishing up food that was just utterly
out of his world, you know, for these
high-class patrons.
And he said he baked pancakes in the
morning that would melt in your mouth.
And he said, here I was, waiting on
God between times and at night, and cooking
pancakes that just made your mouth water, and
I said to God, no, I'll not eat
until the boy's healed.
So the third or fourth day he came
home, and they were talking it over, and
he said, all right, he said to his
wife, until he's healed, I'm fasting, I'm waiting
on God.
He said he turned to one of his
daughters in his bed, and he turned and
said, what's the matter?
She said, look, look!
And the little guy was down and running
around all over the floor.
And from that time on he was all
around all over the floor, perfectly delivered, perfectly
delivered.
Now, I don't say that for everybody, I
wouldn't go that far.
I would only say God did that for
a simple-hearted black man who knew enough
to trust him.
Now, I started to tell you about Peter.
Peter was up in the balcony one time
at a meeting way back, and somebody gave
an altar call.
And Peter not only came to the altar,
and he was a Christian worker well widely
known.
Not only came to the altar, but he
ran, ran all the way down the attic,
dropped to his knees to the altar, and
somebody said to him, Peter, why did you
run to the altar?
Well, he said, when I heard the invitation
given, I knew there was something wrong here,
that I ought to go down there and
get straightened out.
And he said, I heard a voice say,
Peter, go down to that altar.
And he said, another voice said, Peter, don't
go.
And he said, I recognized that second voice.
He said, I knew it was the devil.
And he said, I not only wanted to
go, but I ran to fight.
He got down there in a hurry to
show the devil I was going to go
to that altar.
Brethren, humility is a beautiful thing, but not
very many people have it.
If I were to say, let all who
want to know the Lord a little better
come down to the altar, this altar would
be filled, and the front row was filled.
If I would say, all that are not
perfect would like to have the Lord bless
you a little, we would have it again
filled up on the platform.
But if I say, has God spoken to
you, sir, alone, and is he calling you
to confession and humility, humbleness, and admission of
wrongdoings, you are hard to get along.
Because people don't want to humble themselves.
They want to humble themselves if provided they
can do it en masse, but they don't
want to do it in the singular.
This pluralizing our humility, brethren, won't work.
This pluralizing our confession, singular.
If David had got on his knees and
had prayed a long beautiful prayer for Israel,
the 51st Psalm never would have been written,
and David never would have gotten back to
God.
David said, I did it, God, I did
it.
Have mercy on me, God, I did it.
He singularized it.
And if you will singularize your confession and
say, God, it is I, it is I,
Christ will reveal himself to you.
And as you know Christ, you will know
God.
And the longing to see the Father will
be satisfied, and your heart will know what
God is like, and you will have a
lifetime and eternities to come to build up
and increase the knowledge of the infinite, incomprehensible
God.
Oh, my friends, singularize this spiritual experience tonight.
Don't hide behind the plural.
Let's say, I.
I, Lord, I.
Now, some of you can't testify, you just
haven't the courage to testify, unless you're with
a group that testifies, and then you're very
vocal.
But you're silent as a mouse when you're
out with people you're afraid to testify.
Now, do you think that's good Christianity?
I don't.
Some of you don't tithe.
You say you can't.
You're raising your family and you can't.
You better have better success raising your family
if you do.
But you say you can't and you have
not, so you've cheated God.
Some of you are just plain worthless.
You're here tonight, and I'm glad you are,
but you're worthless.
And so you're far from God.
Some have been angry today, bitterly angry, about
something.
Maybe in the home, maybe somewhere.
You spout it off, and then you've got
calmed down and got your Bible and came
to church.
You didn't fool God.
I don't know it, but I'm guessing.
Now, those things must be confessed out, and
we must humble ourselves and get them out
of our system.
And we must admit these things to God.
And then as we do, oh, Christ manifests
himself in light to our heart.
And as we know him, we know God.