Tonight, I want to read two verses from
John 14, and then turn to John's first
epistle and read it out to you.
John 14, 13 and 14.
Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that
will I do.
That the Father may be glorified in the
Son.
If ye shall ask anything in my name,
I will do it.
Now that's what John records Jesus as having
said.
Then, in 1 John, same man is writing,
but now writing out of divine inspiration, and
writing in line with what John said, our
Lord said, these words, this is the confidence
that we have in him.
That if we ask anything according to his
will, he hearth us.
And if we know that he hear us,
whatsoever we ask, we know that we have
the petition that we desired of him.
Now you will notice similarity in the language,
in the phrase, in the emotional mood of
the two passages.
John was the author of the last one,
and he quoted our Lord as having spoken
the first passage.
So I want to talk tonight about faith
as confidence in God.
And this may have a familiar ring in
as much.
As it will constitute my philosophy of faith,
and it is of course among us evangelicals
a theme that we like to dwell on.
Now John says that Jesus said, ...whatever we
ask in his name, he would do.
Then he says that we have this assurance,
that if we ask anything according to his
will, he hearth us.
And if he hear us, we have the
petition that we desired of him.
Now let me say this to begin, that
there is a great deal of praying being
done among us that doesn't amount to anything.
It is fruitful and never brings back anything
to us.
Now there is no good possible can come
of trying to cover this up, or attempting
to deny it.
We will do a great lot better by
admitting that there is enough prayer made any
Sunday to save the whole world, four or
five suburbs of the world.
But the world isn't saved, and much of
our praying is simply the echo.
The only thing that comes back to us
is the echo of our own voice.
Now this has a very injurious effect upon
the Church of Christ.
Not only injurious, but sometimes disastrous.
There are about six things that unanswered prayer
does in a congregation over an extended period.
It tends to chill and discourage the praying
people.
If we continue to ask and ask and
ask like a petulant child that doesn't expect
to get what it asks for, but continues
to whine for it, we continue to do
that and never get an answer.
Temptation is that we will get chilled and
cold inside of our heart and get discouraged.
And then it confirms the natural unbelief of
the human heart.
For remember this, that the human heart by
nature is filled with unbelief.
It was unbelief that led to the first
act of disobedience, and therefore not disobedience, but
unbelief was the first sin.
While disobedience is the first recorded sin, back
of the act of disobedience there was the
sin of unbelief, or the disobedience never would
have taken place.
So to pray and pray and have a
church pray, pray for her sick and have
them all stay sick or die, pray for
deliverance and never get it, pray for a
thousand things and never see one of them
brought to pass, I say the effect is
to confirm the natural unbelief in the human
brain.
And then it encourages the idea that religion
is unreal.
And a great many people have that idea,
religion is unreal.
It is a subjective thing purely, and there
is nothing real about it.
There is nothing to which it can be
referred.
I use the word coarse.
Everybody's mind immediately jumps to a large animal
with short hair and hears its stand-up
intelligent face fast on its feet and powerful.
Everybody knows what the word coarse means because
our English word coarse has a reference, something
to which the word refers.
I use the word lake.
Everybody thinks of a large body of water.
I use the word star.
Everybody thinks of a heavenly body.
But we can use the word faith and
belief and God and heaven and all these
words, and there is nothing to which it
refers.
They are just words like pixies and fairies
and such things.
And that encourages that false idea in our
hearts when we pray and pray and pray
and get no answer.
And then it gives plenty of occasion to
the enemy to blaspheme.
The enemy loves to blaspheme.
He's a dirty-mouthed, obscene blasphemer.
And I don't like to abuse the devil.
I don't like to even abuse the devil,
but I have a lot of secret sympathy,
though I wouldn't myself use it, but I
have a lot of secret sympathy for that
rough old Irishman, William Nicholson, who calls the
devil a dirty old pig.
And he is just that, an obscene old
pig.
And he loves to blaspheme.
And if he can get a lot of
Christians howling to high heaven for weeks on
end and then see to it that they
never get an answer, I don't know what
he says, but I know what he says
that has moral obscenity in it, and he
blasphemes God.
And worst of all, perhaps, it leaves the
enemy in possession of the field.
The failure of a military drive, when it
once fails, the worst part is not the
men they lose, the worst part is not
the face they lose, the worst part of
the failure of a military drive is that
it leaves the enemy in possession of the
field.
And when the people of God pray and
pray and get nowhere, it leaves the enemy
in possession of the field.
And my listening people, this is in itself
a tragedy and a disaster.
The devil should be on the run.
We should never see anything but the back
of his neck.
He should be always retreating and retreating, and
his worst fighting should be rear-guard action.
Scorched-earth policy, burning and destroying as he
goes, but always on the run.
But instead of that, the obscene and blasphemous
enemy smugly and scornfully holds his position, and
the people of God let him have it.
And it, of course, retards the work of
the Lord great.
Having no prayers answered, having prayers sent up
to heaven that come back empty, it is
like sending an army out without weapons.
It is like sending a pianist down to
a piano without fingers.
It is like sending a woodman into the
woods without an axe.
It is like sending a farmer into the
field without a plow.
The work of God stands still.
Now Jesus said, Anything we'd ask in his
name we could have it, and John said,
This is the confidence, the boldness, the assurance
we have.
I'm not adding words.
Our English tongue is a very highly versatile,
almost volatile tongue, and we can say anything
we want to say.
It is the richest of all the languages
because it has received tributaries from everywhere.
But our difficulty is that sometimes we have
to use a half a dozen words to
mean as much as one word means in
a means in another language.
So when the Holy Ghost said, This is
the confidence we have in him, that word
confidence, our English word confidence is not enough,
so the translators call it, This is the
boldness we have in him, and others say,
This is the assurance we have in him.
So it takes the words confidence, boldness, and
assurance to mean what God meant when he
said, This is that which we feel toward
him.
Now right here comes a parting of the
way between the man of faith and the
man of unfaith.
For the man of unfaith rejects flatly this
kind of teaching, that this is the confidence
that we have in God, that if we
ask anything according to his will, he'll give
it to us.
The man of unfaith says that can't be
so, and he will not accept it, and
he demands the proof of human reason.
Now we're going to leave aside a little
for the moment the fact that unbelief is
a moral thing.
It is not a mental thing at all,
but a moral thing.
Unbelief is always sinful because it always presupposes
an immoral condition of the heart before it
can exist.
Faith is not the failure of the mind
to grasp the truth.
It is not a bad conclusion drawn from
logical premises.
It is not the failure or unsoundness of
a logical premise.
It is a moral sin.
But we'll leave that aside for a little
bit and simply say that the man of
unfaith cannot understand the language that I'm giving.
This is the confidence that we have in
God, that if we ask anything according to
his will, he hears us.
If he'll ask anything in my name, I
will do it.
He says I've got to have a reason
about this.
But the man of faith feels confident.
The man of faith does not dare rest
on human reason.
I have wondered sometimes why somebody didn't come
out, they'll do it one of these days,
and say that I have used reason to
prove that reason was no good.
But here's what I have done.
I have used reason to do what reason
can do, the I-Z and namely to
show that there are things that reason cannot
do.
I have never been against human reason.
But I have been against human reason.
Trying to do things of human reason is
not qualified to do.
I once more say to you that the
great difference today in the world is not
between the liberal and the fundamentalist.
But the great gulf fixed today is between
the evangelical rationalist and the evangelical mystic.
The one who believes God and disbelieves human
reason and the one who believes that the
things of God can be proved by and
grasped by human reason.
You will live, if I don't live to
see it, some of you younger people will
live to see that I was right in
what I'm saying.
We have evangelical rationalists that insist upon trying
to reduce everything down to where it can
be explained and proved.
And the result is, we have rationalized faith
and we have pulled Almighty God down to
the low level of human reason.
There are some things human reason cannot do.
And you can use human reason to discredit
human reason.
Anything that human reason can do, I'm for
it.
Turning human reason loose.
You have a can opener in your house
and what woman does it?
You don't use it to mend your little
boy's stocking.
You use it to open cans.
Your husband has a hammer and saw.
He doesn't use them to paper the wall
of the living room.
He uses them to cut board and pound
nails.
Everything was created for a purpose and I
claim that there are some things human reason
can't do.
Human reason and faith lie not contrary to
each other but one lies above the other.
Faith, when we're believers, we enter another world
altogether, a realm that is infinitely above little
reason.
My thoughts are not your thoughts nor my
way is your way.
High as the heaven is above the earth,
so great are the thoughts of God above
the thoughts of man.
Faith never goes contrary to reason.
Faith simply ignores reason and rises above it.
Reason could not tell us that Jesus Christ
should be born of the Virgin Mary, but
faith knows he was.
Reason cannot prove that Jesus took upon him
the form of a man and died under
the sins of the world, but faith knows
that he did.
Reason cannot prove that third day he arose
from the dead, but reason knows that he
did.
For faith, I mean faith knows, for faith
is an organ of knowledge.
You see, the fundamental rationalists say the human
brain alone is an organ of knowledge, and
they forget there are at least two other
organs of knowledge.
Feeling is an organ of knowledge, too.
All the reason in the world couldn't tell
you the temperature was 98 today.
You felt as if it was, didn't you?
I did, even I, and I can stand
the heat like a lizard, but I've had
enough of this.
And I know that it was hot today.
I have an organ of knowledge, feeling.
A young man loves a young woman.
How does he know it?
You read the Encyclopedia Britannica and reason to
it?
No, he listens to the ticking of his
own heart.
He knows it by feeling.
Feeling is an organ of knowledge, and reason
is an organ of knowledge, and faith is
an organ of knowledge.
And they've got to believe that.
Reason cannot say, Jesus rose from the dead.
Faith knows he did.
Reason cannot say, he sits at the right
hand of God the Father Almighty, for reason
doesn't know, but faith knows that he did.
Reason cannot say, he shall come to judge
the quick and the dead, but faith knows
that he'll come.
Reason cannot say, my sins are all gone,
but faith knows they're gone.
It's all down the line.
Faith is an organ of reason, and the
man is an organ of knowledge, and the
man who believes, he's having knowledge that the
man who merely thinks can't possibly have.
Poor little old brain can come staggering along
behind like a little boy trying to keep
up with his dad, coming along on his
little old short stubby legs trying to reason.
That's why in the New Testament the word
wonder appears, and they wondered at him, and
they wondered at him, and they all marveled.
Faith was going ahead doing wonders, and reason
was coming along wide-eyed marveling.
That's always the way it should be.
But nowadays we send reason ahead on his
little short legs, and faith never follows.
Nobody marvels because they can explain the whole
business.
I claim that a Christian is a miracle,
and just the moment you can explain to
a Christian, you have no Christian left anymore.
Some of you may have read William James'
Varieties of Religious Experiences.
I've read it two or three times.
It's helpful to me because I'm a man
of faith.
But William James did this.
He tried to psychologize the wonders of God
working in the human brain.
But when the early disciples, they were on
Solomon's porch in prayer and praise, people stood
back awestruck and durst not join themselves to
them.
And the real Christian is somebody that cannot
be explained by human reason.
Something happened that psychology cannot explain.
And faith is the highest kind of reason
after all, for faith goes straight into the
presence of God and what goes behind the
veil.
For also our Lord Jesus Christ has gone
our forerunner for us and engages God Almighty
and reaches that for which he was created
and communes with the source of his being
and loves the fountain of his life and
prays to that one that begot him and
knows the God that made heaven and earth.
He may not be an astronomer, but he
knows the God who made the stars.
He may not be a physicist, but he
knows the God who made mathematics.
There may be many technical and local bits
of knowledge he doesn't have, but he knows
the God of all knowledge and enters in
past the veil into the presence and stands
hushed and wide-eyed and gazes and gazes
and gazes upon the wonders of the universe.
Faith takes him there.
Reason cannot disprove anything that faith does, but
reason can never do it.
Some of you, my dear friends, may have
wondered why a few weeks ago I sat
down and took my pen in hand and
wrote a tongue-in-cheek, half humorous, half
ironic review of the book Prior Claims because
it's all going in the wrong direction.
It is supporting the Bible by reason, and
it's coming to the help of God Almighty
by a few scientific facts.
No, my brethren, good men are doing it,
better men than I, but they're wrong.
Not all the scientific facts ever assembled in
any university of the world can support one
spiritual fact because you're in two different realms.
You're two different worlds with one, one deals
with reason, the other deals with faith.
If the sun were to start rising in
the east, very west and going to the
east, and if the summer were to have
no fall but suddenly plunge into winter, and
if the corn were to start growing down
instead of up, and if the goonie birds
were all to start laying eggs and hatching
puppies out of them, it wouldn't change my
mind about God or the Bible, for my
faith in God is not dependent upon some
support of scientific help.
We don't even know they got their science
straight in the first place.
Faith is an organ of knowledge, and this
is the confidence that we have in him.
Faith mounts up on its long, heavenly boots,
up the mountains, up toward the shining peaks,
and says, God says it, and I know
it so.
Why?
This is the confidence that we have in
him.
You see?
This is the confidence that we have concerning
him.
Now, you see, we're dealing with him.
I don't recommend we have faith in faith.
There's an awful lot going on these days.
People have faith in faith.
There are men going around preaching faith.
No, I don't preach faith.
Never, never did, and so help me God,
I'll not start it now.
Let them know better.
Nobody ought to go around preaching faith.
I'm not preaching faith tonight.
The Bible says this is the confidence that
we have in him.
There's the origin and source and foundation and
resting place for all our faith.
In that kingdom of faith, we're dealing now
with him, with God Almighty, the one whose
essential nature is holiness, the one who cannot
lie, and the one before whom goes faithfulness
and truth.
Faithfulness and truth, I say, go before him.
He can't lie, and we're dealing with a
character, you see, brethren.
Our confidence rises as the character of God
becomes greater and more beautiful and more trustworthy.
Oh, my, this thing of memorizing promises in
order that we might have more faith.
Now, I'm a memorizer.
I got a New Testament in cadence form,
and I have a book of Psalms in
long meter form, easy to memorize, and I
carry them around with me and memorize.
So I'm a memorizer.
I believe in it, strictly believe in it.
But if we think that more verses will
bring more faith, we're on the wrong track.
It won't.
Faith does not rest upon promises.
Faith rests upon character.
Faith rests upon the one who made the
promise.
It's written of Abraham that he staggered not
at the promises of God through unbelief, but
waxed strong in faith, giving glory to God.
So the glory went to God, not to
the promise.
What's the promise for?
The promise is that I might know intelligently
what to claim and what direction to go
and what God plans for me and what
God will give me.
Those are the promises.
They are the intelligent direction.
Suppose a man made a will, just thinking,
if I made a will, all I'd have
to will to anybody would be of some
books, a little household furniture, but a few
books, that'd be it.
I will to my son this book, and
so on.
That'd be it.
But suppose that I made a will, and
my heirs came in to listen to the
reading of the will, and the lawyer said,
says, I will to my son, Lowell, a
yacht in the Gulf of Mexico.
I will to my son, Stanley, a hundred
-acre estate in Florida.
To my son, Wendell, a rich uranium mine
in Nevada.
Everybody'd say, well, the old man cracked up
before he died.
He doesn't have one of those things.
Not one.
He doesn't own one of them.
He doesn't even have a, he doesn't have
a toy sailboat from Ten Cents Store.
He doesn't have a thing.
He actually made a will with no character
back up.
The old fellow would crack up when he
went.
They'd all smile and go out and say,
well, it was all right up to the
time he made that will, but there was
no character.
Nobody could make good on that will.
But suppose some rich man makes a will.
He dies, and they call in the heirs,
and they read, as I will, ten times,
will, so they say, it's all right, he
can make good.
He's a great businessman, a well-to-do
man, a man that had the confidence of
all the American business public.
Everybody trusted him down to the last.
The will, he makes the will in order
that his heirs might know what they can
claim.
But his will is only as good as
his character.
And if he's got no character, or he's,
as I pictured myself to be, penniless, then
he, the will doesn't mean a thing.
He might, I could promise a yacht, but
I haven't got a yacht.
I could promise an estate in Florida, but
I don't have an estate in Florida.
Duckton remembers me with a lot of gratitude.
I fed ducks when I was down there.
Sat on the bank and fed ducks by
the time you sent me down there to
rest.
But I have no property in Florida.
How can I will what I don't have?
So you see, brethren, faith does not come
from promises.
Faith comes from confidence in God.
But faith rests upon character, not upon promises.
But the promises are as good as the
character of the one who made the promise.
So when I read my Bible, I have
a promise.
This is the confidence we have in him.
You ask anything according to your will, they
hear it up.
If we hear it, we have the petition.
That's a promise from God.
Jesus said, Whatsoever ye shall ask in my
name, I will give it.
There's a promise from God.
How good is the promise?
As good as the one who made it.
How good is that?
Ah, this is the confidence we have.
Faith says, God is God, the holy God
who cannot lie.
A God who is infinitely rich and can
make good on all of his promises.
A God who is infinitely honest and never
cheated anybody.
A God who is infinitely true and never
told any lies.
That's how good a promise is, that God
makes.
It's as good as God is, because God
made it.
But we push God off into the corner
and use him as an escape from hell
and to help us when the baby's sick.
And then we go our way.
And then we try to pump up faith
by reading promises.
No, it won't work, brother.
It won't work.
This is the confidence that we have in
him.
He glorifies God by faith.
There's God, not the promises.
Promises, of course.
We learn what God wants to do for
us.
We learn what to ask for.
We learn what God has willed to us.
We learn what we may claim as our
heritage.
We learn from the promises how we should
pray.
But faith always rests down upon the character
of God.
Is that difficult to see, friends?
Why is nobody else in the whole world
saying it?
Why aren't we saying that to our people?
Why aren't we telling our evangelical people once
more, you've got to get to know God.
You've got to get past making God a
lifeboat to save you.
You've got to get away from making God
a ladder out of a burning building.
You have to get away from the idea
that God simply exists to help you run
your business or fly your airplane.
That God isn't simply a waterboy bringing you
water while you have fun.
God isn't simply a red cap carrying your
suitcase and serving you.
God is God.
He made heaven and earth and holds the
world in his hand and measures the dust
of the earth and the balance in the
sky.
He spreads out like a mantle.
And the great God Almighty is not your
servant.
You're his servant.
He is your father.
You're his child.
He sits in heaven, your honor.
The angels veil their faces before the God
who cannot lie.
I think it would be a wonderful thing
if every preacher in America would begin to
preach about God and nothing else for one
solid year.
Just one solid year, preach about God.
Who he is, his attributes, his perfection, his
being, the kind of God he is.
Why we dare to trust him?
Why we can't trust him?
Why we should trust him?
Why we can love him?
Why we should love him?
Why we dare not?
All short of loving him.
Keep on preaching God, God, the triune God,
and keep on until God fills the whole
horizon and the whole world.
Faith would spring up like grass for the
watercourse.
Then let a man get up and preach
a promise and the whole congregation would say,
I can trust that promise.
Look who made it.
This is the confidence.
Brethren, confidence may be slow in coming.
Because you see, you and I have been
brought up in a land of lies.
David, in his haste, said all men are
liars.
But I don't grieve that he ever changed
his mind when he cooled off.
Because everybody is built alike.
Don't anybody get mad now and leave because
he'll only come back, sorry, afterward.
Everybody has a deceitful heart, desperately wicked by
nature.
And we are brought up in a world
of lies where lying is a fine art.
And on the radio, and I'm not a
betting man, but I'll buy you a soda.
If you can find an advertising program where
the announcer can talk for 20 seconds without
lying.
Now listen to me.
If there is a program anywhere that tells
the exact truth, I don't know where it
is.
Lying has become an art.
They lie in pictures, they lie on the
radio, they lie on billboards, they lie in
magazines, they lie everywhere.
And of course, we've got that psychology.
We don't have confidence in people.
We've got the psychology of distrust.
Reason tells us don't trust them.
Don't trust them.
If a man were to come down to
my house and offer me a $100 bill,
I wouldn't take it.
Unless, of course, I knew the man.
If he won't do that, I know he'll
take it.
But no man can come a stranger and
rap on my door and say, Pardon me.
I am giving $100 to some upstanding citizen
in your neighborhood.
I'd say, You don't even know my name,
mister.
I've seen your kind before.
Goodbye.
One day I got a don.
Somebody done me.
He said, You owe me such and such
for a fountain pen which I sent to
your house.
I'd never gotten any fountain pens.
I wrote him a little letter back.
And it was a racket.
It was a racket.
Boy, I'd come along and say, Good morning,
Mr. Tozer.
He'd ask the next fellow next door what
my name was.
So he knows me.
Twenty-six, true haircut, and a smile that
won't come off.
And I'd say, What are you doing?
Selling magazines?
Oh, selling magazines?
Oh, I should say not selling magazines.
I should say not.
What gave you that idea?
And after about 15 minutes' conversation, you'll find
out he's taking subscriptions for magazines to get
through college.
But they call it something else.
You don't believe the man who comes to
your house unless he has a reputation that
dates way back.
You can believe the polar bear man.
He won't steal your teeth before he leaves
because he's got a reputation to maintain.
But for the most part, we live in
a land of lies and deception.
And we have a psychology of disbelief ground
into us from our birth.
But when we enter the realm of kingdom
of God and the realm of faith, everything
changes.
Everything is different there.
Never was there a lie told in heaven.
Never in the sweet kingdom of God did
anybody deceive anybody else.
The dear old Bible is a book of
absolute honesty.
Jesus, when he walked among men, didn't pull
the trick of the evangelist.
Uh-uh.
Now raise your hand.
Now put it down.
Now go get it.
Never any of that.
The fellow, a couple of evangelists I heard
one time.
Evangelist led the song leader out.
And he said, now my brother and co
-worker, he said he'd been away from his
family a long time.
And this morning he got a letter from
his wife.
It all reached for an acre of chips.
Began to blow.
Very tender.
He said, let me show you what he's
got.
And he pulled out.
And he said, here's what was in the
letter.
Telephone bill due.
Electric light bill due.
Gas light due.
Said back in his town, his little wife
is keeping the home fires burning.
And he's out here serving God.
Now, let us all stand and pray that
the Lord will send in the money to
pay this fellow's electric light and telephone and
gas.
I stood up, but I didn't pray, ladies
and gentlemen.
I'm telling you that.
No scoundrel ever get me to pray.
You can't.
You can't trust people much.
But in the kingdom of God, nobody ever
cheats you like that.
Nobody ever goes down to some dear old
lady with a mother complex, rubs back it.
I used to have a lot of tube
hair.
He said, you remind me of my dear
old mother.
Will you pray?
I need 500.
And so they prayed tenderly.
And before he leaved, he gets her poor
old check for 500.
I have more respect for a man who'll
take a gun and go out and get
it in the danger of his own life.
Hear me?
I've got more respect for the gunman who
meets a man and says, give me your
money or I'll put a bullet through you.
He doesn't know but what a policeman around
the corner will put a bullet through him.
And he does it the hard, tough way.
And he gets it.
And I've just as much respect for the
man who robs with a gun as I
do for the dirty cheats who take advantage
of a motherly old woman and pray hypocritically.
Yet that's been done.
And I'm considered a cynic and a pessimist
and a scoundrel for daring to say so.
I'll say it all right if it cuts
my audience down to nobody but MacArthur.
Because if there's anything, any old place where
we ought to be honest, it's in the
Church of God.
Brother, what you hear from this pulpit, you
can believe.
And the old boy may be wrong, but
he's honest.
And if I know it, no man will
ever stick his feet down here on this
rug who isn't honest.
The cheat can't get within gunshot of the
Church.
But the Bible always tells us the truth.
It tells us David was a man after
God's own heart and then tells us David
fell and committed the doubt.
We wouldn't do that now.
We'd smooth that over and leave that chapter
out, but God put it in.
It tells us Peter was an apostle of
the Lord and that he cursed and swore
and said, I never knew him.
It tells us that Paul was a man
full of the Holy Ghost and turned on
the high priest and said, you white of
the wall.
And he said, you know, that's the high
priest.
Oh, he said, I'm so sorry.
The apostle apologized and said, I was thanked
by it up to that moment, but I
sort of lost it there.
Excuse me, I didn't know he was an
apostle of the Lord.
The Bible always tells all the time.
It doesn't tell you that if you accept
Christ, it doesn't tell you that you're going
to relax and go to bed and sleep
12 hours.
It doesn't tell you that you're going to
suddenly become successful and grow hair on your
bald spot.
It just tells you that you'll have eternal
life now and lots of trouble and hardships
and thorns and cross-bearing and glory in
the world to come and eternity with God.
And if you're a man enough to put
up with the thorns and the crosses and
the hardships and the hostility, you can have
the crown.
But you buy the crown by blood, sweat
and tears.
That's what the Bible tells you.
Honest, good, honest, old Bible.
No wonder they die with this beside their
bed.
No wonder they lay this on the breath
of the saints when they lay them away.
When I die, I want you to put
a Bible on my breast, but don't put
a Scopia Bible on my breast, please.
Just a plain text King James Version.
Amen?
All right.
Now, don't come down and criticize me for
saying that because it won't do you a
bit of good out of laughing your face.
Well, amen.
Just this little word and then I'm finished.
Three minutes to nine, and I'll be done
at nine.
One in my name.
He says, what does that mean?
Anything he asked in my name means asked
according to his will for the promises come
in.
You've got to get those promises to know
what his will is.
Memorize them, learn them, get him a part
of your bloodstream so you'll have him on
tap at any moment fully counting on his
merit, the merits of Jesus.
We're going to heaven on the merits of
another.
We'll get in because another one went out.
We'll live because another one died.
We'll be with God because another one was
rejected from the presence of God in the
horror and terror of hell.
We'll have the vision beatific because one hung
with darkness around him.
We'll go to heaven on the merits of
another so your faith rests down upon the
character of God and the merits of the
Son of God.
And you don't have to have a thing,
not a thing, only your poor miserable soul.
The more miserable you feel yourself to be,
the nearer to the kingdom you are.
Somebody said, as I quoted before, humanity's divided
into two classes, the good who think they're
bad and the bad who think they're good.
And the bad man who thinks his good
is shut out of God's kingdom forever.
But the good man in God's kingdom is
not much very likely to run around talking
about how good he is.
He's more likely to say he's worthy to
be called an apostle.
He's the chiefest of sinners and an unworthy
servant.
And God likes to hear that kind of
language if it's genuine.
So if I come in humility depending upon
the merits of another, if you pray and
say, Oh Lord, I've been a good boy,
answer me with prayer, you'll never get your
prayer answered.
If you pray saying, Oh God, for Jesus'
sake, good, you'll get the prayer answered.
If you come saying, Lord, if you'll do
this, I'm sure that I promise that I'll
do this, you'll never get the prayer answered.
But if you throw yourself recklessly out upon
God and make no reckless promises but trust
his character, trust him, and trust the merits
of his son, you'll have the petition that
you asked of him.
Why can't we see wonders done in this
day?
Why can't we?
I don't believe in wonders that are organized
and incorporated.
Miracles incorporated.
You can have it.
Healing incorporated.
You can have that.
Evangelism incorporated.
You can have that.
Vision incorporated.
Without a vision incorporated, the people perish.
You can have all that whenever we've got
to incorporate it and get a letterhead and
a president and secretary and a trailer.
You can have all that, God, isn't it?
But the man of faith that can go
alone into the wilderness and get on his
knees and command heaven, God's in that.
And the man who will dare to stand
and let his preaching cost him something, God's
in that.
And the Christian who will put himself in
a place where he must get the answer
from God, he must get the answer from
God, God's in that.
Live as Dr. Brown calls it, living hazardous.
I believe in God.
And I'll never be caught asking God to
send me a trinket to play with.
Oh Lord, do a miracle for me so
I can ride a track.
God is not going to send Santa Claus
toys to his little children.
But if you're in trouble, and you have
confidence in God, and you'll go in the
merits of his Son and ask him and
claim the promise, God won't let you down.
God will help you and get you out
of your trouble.
Do you know that?
I've had them come to me, although I
don't preach in a section of the city
where I have more than too much contact
with criminals.
I've had them come to me and tell
me, brothers and sisters, I've been in prison,
and I ought to be in prison again.
Now I'm converted, and what will I do
when I say, go back and tell the
authorities, but first before you go, let's ask
God.
And on one or two occasions, I've had
God upset the police court and the judges
and all the rest and get that fellow
out, because he dared to believe that when
he was in trouble, God would get him
out of trouble if he'd tell the truth.
And God's that kind of a God.
Here old John Callahan is in heaven now,
God bless his Irish memory.
He was a scoundrel if ever one existed.
He was a criminal in our office.
And John got converted in prison.
And he got converted the old fashioned way.
He hadn't dispensationalized.
He just got converted.
So finally they let him out.
And he said, there was just one thing
bothered me, and that was my mug shot.
You know what a mug shot is, any
of you people?
One of these shots that keep on police
records, you know, front view and profile, and
your number underneath, and they kept that.
The governor pardoned John, but he still had
his picture in the rogues gallery.
And he said, I felt so humiliated about
that.
So he said, I called on God, and
I said, oh God, please, I'm your child
now.
Please get that picture out of the rogues
gallery.
So he said he was somewhere preaching, and
they met the governor of the state.
And they sat and talked together at a
banquet.
And he got to talking about the pardon
the governor had given him.
He said, if you believe in me, and
you believe in God, and you'd like to
stand and set a crown on what God
done for me, would you do me a
favor?
He said, I'll do my best.
He said, will you get that picture out
of the rogues gallery for me?
Well, John, he said, that's a tough one.
He said, that's regulation.
I don't know what I can do.
He said, a few days later, he got
a yellow envelope without a stamp on it,
saying, $300 penalty for private use.
You got him.
He got him around March the 15th.
And this one was from the governor of
the state, and it said, and it's very
little in it except his rogues gallery picture.
He said, he put that in a drawer
in his desk, and when he'd eat with
the governor or talk with some big shop
and sit down there and say, John Callahan,
you ate with the governor.
You've shaken hands with great men.
He said, whenever I'd feel that come over,
he said, I'd reach down and get my
rogue gallery picture out and say, John, there
you are.
That's you, and there's where you'd steal me,
but for the grace of God.
He said, I always humbled.
Promises of God, brethren, the merits of Jesus'
blood and the character of God, that's the
ground of our hope, not our goodness, not
what we promise to do and not what
we have done, but what he promises us,
and he can't lie, he can't he
can't not
lie, he can't he can't he can't he
can't he can't he can't he can't he
can't he can't he
can't he can't he can't he can't he
can't he can't he
can't he can't he can't he can't he
can't and not using advertising techniques to succeed,
but to tell the old, old story that
men have loved so well.
We continue to tell it in honesty.
As we honor thee, then, O God, we
look for thee to honor us in our
ministry, in our church, in our people, in
our praying, and we ask thee tonight, O
God, that we close this meeting for another
new search, another new lurch forward.
A few months ago we heard thee say,
Consider no more the old things, for I
will do new things.
Thou hast done for us.
Thou hast brought up our Sunday school.
Thou hast enlarged us.
Thou hast let us have branches over the
wall.
Thou hast helped us.
And now, Lord, we are encouraged to believe
that what you promise you will do, and
we pray thee for another lurch.
O God, we've taken some ground, now we're
going to take some more ground.
Together, unitedly, we pray that this fellowship in
our homes, everywhere, and all the brothers and
sisters and young people and children that make
up our fellowship, shall see a fall and
winter that will confuse the devil and confound
his purposes and cause all the people to
fail, O God, in this grace.
We count on it, Father.
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and this is
the confidence that we have in thee, that
if we ask anything according to thy will,
thou dost hear us, and if thou dost
hear us whatsoever we ask, we have the
petition that we've asked of thee.
Unitedly, we take these petitions for larger missionary
offerings, for larger outreach of spiritual fellowship, for
larger influence in the Holy Evangelical Church, and
so we might come back again to simplicity,
honesty, modesty, meekness, scripture, worship, holiness, and the
power of the Spirit of God.
Granted for Jesus' sake we pray.