In that forty-fifth song, where we have
been, more or less, over the last week's
song, forty-five, which I habitually attribute to
David, but which the commentators say was written
by Hezekiah, at least some of them do.
Personally, I don't care who wrote it.
It's wasn't it that matters.
He says, My heart is indicting a good
matter.
I speak of the things which I have
made touching the King.
My tongue is the pen of a ready
writer.
Then he addresses the King.
Thou art fairer than the children of men.
Obviously, this is a Messianic song, and he
is addressing the Messiah.
Thou art fairer than the children of men.
Grace is poured into thy lips.
Therefore, God hath blessed thee forever.
Gird thy sword upon my thigh, O Most
Mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty.
And in thy majesty ride prosperously, because of
truth and meekness and righteousness.
Thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things.
And arrows are sharp in the heart of
the King's enemies, whereby the people fall under
thee.
Thy throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The scepter of thy kingdom is a right
scepter.
Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness.
Therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed thee with
the oil of gladness above thy fellows.
O thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes
and cashew out of the ivory palaces, whereby
they have made thee glad.
King, whose daughters were among thy honorable women,
on their right hand did stand the Queen
in gold of Ophir.
Hark, O daughter, and consider and incline thine
ear.
Now he is addressing Church, the daughter.
Hark, O daughter, and consider and incline thine
ear.
Forget also thine own people and thy Father's
house.
So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty.
For he is thy Lord, worship thou him.'
Now, we have been trying to define and
otherwise get to the root of worship as
near as we could over the last weeks.
Tonight, for a bit, I want to talk
about two things.
One, who the object of worship is, and
the other, the all-entireness of worship.
Now, there can be only one.
We cannot worship whom we will, for there
is only one to worship.
In the 45th of Isaiah, God says, I
am Jehovah, and there is none else.
There is no God beside me.
I guarded thee, though thou hast not known
me.
That they may know from the rising of
the sun and from the west, that there
is none beside me.
I am Jehovah, and there is none else.
I form the light and create darkness.
I make peace and create evil.
I, the Lord, do all these things.
Drop down the heavens from above, and let
the skies pour down righteousness.
Let the earth open, and let them bring
forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up forever.
I, Jehovah, have created it, so that there
is only one object of worship, and that
object is God.
I wish that I were worthy and able
to talk about him to you.
I wish I could adequately set forth the
glory of the object whom we are to
worship.
If we could set forth his thousand attributes,
dwelling in unapproachable life, whom no man can
see and live, holy and eternal, omniscient and
omnipotent and sovereign, and believe that if we
could see these things, we would be globally
humbled.
God's people are not as humble as they
ought to be, and they are not as
militant as they ought to be.
And I believe that one reason that we
are not as humble as we ought to
be is that we do not see God
in his sovereignty here.
But David sees him, or the writer here
sees him.
Certainly David does in many of his psalms.
Isaiah does, Daniel did, Jeremiah, Ezekiel.
They saw God, and now we see him
here in the incarnation.
Whoever wondered how it could be that we
Christians could fall on our knees before a
man and say, Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever.
Now, our Jewish friends hold that against us.
Even when they are friendly with us, they
still hold it against us.
They have been taught, and they should have
been taught, that there is only one God.
I suppose they say, if I have the
truth, they say more than any other verse
of scripture, they say, Hear, O Israel, the
Lord thy God is one Lord.
And they keep repeating that.
That's basic to them.
That's great basic truth to them.
They say, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy
God is one Lord.
But we say, I want to introduce you
to the Son of God, a man born
of the Virgin Mary in your land of
Palestine, in the little town of Bethlehem.
And I want you to kneel with me
and worship this man.
And they properly and rightly say, No, we
appreciate your kindness and all that, but we
cannot worship a man.
And I agree with them.
I can't either.
That man doesn't exist.
That man never drew the birth of life.
Before whom I will kneel and say, God,
with the lone supreme exception of the man
Christ Jesus, the man whom the prophet saw
in his vision, and who blessed this man,
the King, and said, Thy throne, O God.
How is it then?
How can we get out of this state
of confusion if there is one God and
none other?
And we say Jesus Christ is a man,
and we say we should never worship man
whose breath is in his nostrils.
And how can we say, O soul, get
down on your knees before him and worship?
Here is the great mystery, and I stand
bareheaded before it.
I kneel and take my shoes off my
feet before this burning bush, and I do
not understand it.
But it is what the old theologians call
the theanthropy, that is, it is God and
man united in one person.
Not two persons, but two natures.
The old English, old American poet, now he
was from England, but he went to New
England, and he wrote these words.
He said, addressing God, he said, And is
thy Godhead as not satisfied?
Married my manhood, making it thy bride?
So the nature of God and the nature
of man are united in that man Christ
Jesus.
All that is God and all that is
man are there fused eternally and inextricably and
inseparably fused, so that as the fire burned
in the bush and the bush was not
consumed, and Moses had not hesitation to dwell
but to kneel before the bush and worship
God, he might have been charged by those
who could not see the fire in the
bush and did not know the fire was
there.
Suppose that there had been some Jew who
knew the teaching of the Jews, but from
Abraham on that there was one God alone.
Suppose they had seen this man kneeling before
a bush with his face in his hand,
hiding his face, and they had not been
able to see the fire.
They would have said, What do you mean?
You are worshiping a bush.
You are an idolater.
But he would have known better, because he
knew that the bush and the fire were
united and fused there, and the bush was
not consumed, and the man worshiped not the
bush but the God who dwelt in the
bush, and so he knelt before that bush.
Yet that is an imperfect and inadequate illustration,
for as soon as the fire departed from
the bush, it was but a bush again,
and no man could kneel and worship that
bush, for it was but a bush again,
and still, and perished and rotted away, a
bush finally.
But that man, Christ Jesus, into whom God
entered with all of the full charge of
Deity, bringing him to incandescence and light heat,
there was never any departure there, except for
that awful moment when he said, My God,
my God, forsaken me.
He took your sins, all of the putrefying,
terrible mass of your sin, unto his very
self and died there.
God turned his back for a moment, but
the Deity and the humanity never parted, and
they remain today united in that one man.
So when you kneel before that man and
say, My Lord and my God, thy throne,
O God, is for ever and ever, we
are talking to God, for by the mystery
of the theanthropic union, he has become God,
and God has become man in the person
of the Son.
And so the old writers saw this.
If I didn't believe the Bible, for any
other reason, I'd believe it for the 45th
Psalm and the 53rd of Isaiah.
I would see how the prophets foresaw down
the centuries, they saw farther than you can
see with the great electric telescopes and great
electronic telescopes.
You can see into the light years, and
they could see still further, and they saw
all this.
Now this one they saw and called God,
this one they saw, they saw him in
his beauty.
And I ask you to notice the description
of him here.
They described him as radiantly beautiful and romantic,
and they described him as a limbsome being.
They said that he was fair, that he
was loyal, that he was gracious, that he
was majestic, that he was true, that he
was meek, that he was righteous and loving
and glad and fragrant.
Now, if I were going to flash about
in the dictionary to find words to describe
something or somebody that I would be glad
to kneel before, here it is.
Here is the description.
He is fair, and he is kingly, and
he yet is gracious.
Not the king who stands in his dignity
and looks down his nose at the world,
but this king is a gracious king.
But his graciousness does not take away from
him his majesty, and then he is true
and he is meek.
Meekness and majesty.
I'd like to write a hymn about it,
or a book about it, or I'd like
to paint a picture about it, or compose
music about it.
The meekness and the majesty of Jesus.
You don't find meekness and majesty united very
much.
The meekness was his humanity, the majesty was
his beauty.
You will find them united, everlastingly united.
So meek he was that he nursed at
his mother's breast and and belched and threw
up like any baby, and milk ran down
his little chin.
He was a human being like any other
human being.
But he was God, and in his majesty
he stood before Herod and before Pilate.
In his majesty.
And when he comes down the sky it
will be in his majesty, and the majesty
of God, and yet it will be the
majesty of the man who is God.
Majestic and meek, this is our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Before his foes he stands in majesty, before
his friends he comes in meekness.
You can have either side you want.
If you do not want the meek-sided
Jesus, you'll know the majestic-sided Jesus.
The harlots came to him, and the babies
came to him, and the publicans came to
him, and the sick came to him, and
the bleeding woman came to him, and the
devil-possessed man came to him.
And they came to him from everywhere, and
they touched him, and they found him so
meek that his power went out to them
and healed them.
But when he comes in majesty, they will
find him majestic.
Then here is the Lord, it says, Worship
thou him.
I think this call to worship bears a
thousand pairs of wings.
I do not think you have to be
very fanciful or poetic to know that when
you talk about worshiping the Lord and the
duty of holiness, that you are talking about
something that will please the heavenly host.
I wonder why it is that always we
think of worship as something you do when
you go to church.
God's poor, stumbling, bumbling people, how confused we
can get, and stay confused for a lifetime
and die confused.
And then write books to confuse us further,
and write hymns to confound the books, and
confuse us further, and we are doing it
all the time as if the only place
you could worship God.
We come into God's house that is dedicated
to him, it is made out of bricks
and linoleum and stuff, and we come to
the house of the Lord, and we say,
The Lord is in his holy temple, let
us all kneel before him.
Very nice.
I think it's nice to start a service
that way once in a while.
But any of you may come into your
office Monday morning at 9 o'clock, if
you can't walk into that office and say,
The Lord is in my office, let all
the world be silent before him, then you
are not worshiping the Lord on Sunday.
If you can't worship him on Monday, you
didn't worship him on Sunday.
And if you don't worship him on Saturday,
you are not in a very good shape
to worship him on Sunday.
This idea that God is in the box,
they say is a Catholic idea, but we
just enlarge the box here, and God is
in this place.
And when you leave and drive down the
avenue, you have a faint homesick feeling that
you are leaving God in the big box.
No, God isn't there any more than God
is in your car.
God isn't there any more than he is
in your home.
God isn't there any more than he is
in your factory.
I used to work for the D.
F.
Woodridge Company, making rubber tires, and I used
to work for another company, I can't think
of it for the moment, a smaller company
in North Acton, Ohio.
They made tires, too, and I guess still
do, but I passed out of there 10
years ago.
But I remember that I used to work
there and worship God until I had tears
in my eyes.
Nobody ever saw the tears or asked me
about it, but I wouldn't hesitate to tell
them why, because I went along there.
After you have worked a while at something,
it gets automatic.
You can think about something else.
So I got so I could do my
work with the passing skill, and then I
could worship God.
If God isn't in your factory, if God
isn't in your store, if God isn't in
your office, then God isn't in your church
when you go there.
I wish we could keep that in mind.
I believe that when we worship our God,
the breath of the Lord is in us.
That's why we have been staying in heaven
above.
Now, I want to talk a little bit
to you about the time I have left
about the all-entireness of worship, and I'd
like to say to you that the total
length, the whole man, the whole woman who
has got to worship God, faith and love
and obedience and loyalty and conduct in life,
all of these are to worship God, and
if there is anything in you that doesn't
worship God, then there isn't anything in you
that does worship God very well.
If you departmentalize your life and let certain
part of you worship God, but other parts
of you do not worship God, then you
are not worshiping God as you should.
It is a great delusion that we easily
fall into the idea that in church or
in the presence of death or in the
midst of serenity, a great storm.
I have grown around with fellows that always
had to have a storm or a mountain
peak or something, or a deep valley stir
them up.
You carry worship inside your heart, you can
have your worship with you.
I have been with fellows who got awfully
spiritual when they stood on a curve on
the mountain and looked down.
I remember we were caught in a storm
one time in the mountains in Pennsylvania, and
you could see out there, for I forget
how many miles they told us it was,
I think it was 50 from where we
were, but you could see right out over.
We huddled up against a rock while a
storm hit us, and the hailstones, I won't
say how big they were, because I'd be
exaggerating, they seemed bigger than they were, they
came rattling and roaring down on us, and
we huddled against the car, against the rock.
That great storm meant quite surely we broke
over the mountain.
The beautiful thing, and occasionally I'm in a
position like that, and I get with some
fellow, and we begin to yell, Hooray for
Jesus, or some other corny expression at a
time like that.
My brother and sister, I don't have to
see a storm on a mountain to make
me know how glorious he is.
The stars in their courses tell about it,
and the babe that cried yonder in the
gallery tells about it, and the flower that
blooms by the way tells about it, and
the fine snow that sifted down the day
tells about it.
We don't have to have it dramatically brought
home to us, because that's true.
It's a great delusion to think that because
we feel suddenly expansive and poetic in the
presence of storm, or stars or mountains that
we're spiritual.
No, that's not necessarily true at all, because
murderers and tyrants and drunkards feel like that.
There never was a drunkard yet, but when
he came to himself, he didn't have such
feelings, and there never was a tyrant yet,
after he had been given the command to
slay a dozen men.
Glorious idols on his way home might see
something of an old poetic worship or fancy
in him.
Let's not imagine that as worship, my brethren.
There is no worship wholly pleasing to God
until there is nothing in me displeasing to
God.
I want you to write that down.
I've never written on this subject.
I want to, but I haven't yet.
In case I don't get to it, I
want you to at least remember that.
That there is no worship wholly pleasing to
God until there is nothing in me displeasing
to God.
I cannot departmentalize my life and worship God
on Sunday night, worship him on Monday, worship
him in my songs and displease him in
my business engagements.
I can't do it.
I cannot worship God in silence in the
church on Sunday to the sound of hymns,
and then go out and serve the next
day or the next that I'm displeasing to
him.
No worship is wholly pleasing to God until
there is nothing in us displeasing to God.
Now, does this discourage somebody?
I never had a deeming much to encourage
people in the flesh.
They listened to me long enough to get
some encouragement in the spirit.
But I never had very much faith in
people.
Now, really, I trust people, of course, and
I love people.
I think as much as the average person,
maybe a little more than the average.
But I never trusted them very much.
I believe that we're all singers and we're
all alike and we're all down, we're all
in the mist, we're all in the valley
of sorrow together, and our breath is in
our nostrils, and the dearest friend we'll have
will say, I'll see you Monday morning in
London, on his way to people's engagements, he'll
pitch a button and put them out to
the Lord.
I say, I don't trust people.
I trust their good intentions, I know they
mean well, but they can't fulfill it.
You're not overlapping that much, but I remember
one time I wrote something to the effect
that the world was in a fix and
everybody was no good, and a woman wrote
me a letter.
Oh, she said, how long will you get?
Why, she said, look, look at the advances
science has made, look at our wonderful young
people, look how much they know these days,
look at what they learn from television, look
at how many college students we have.
And she went on and she really writes,
well, that's subject in her description of, first
of all, the young people, how marvelous they
were.
Well, nobody likes young people any more than
I do.
I could be completely happy surrounded by 49
of them all the time, but I know
what they are, I know what they are,
they're just young people and people are bad,
and there's nothing in any body that can
be made good until Jesus Christ comes and
changes that person and lives in that person
and unites the nature of that person by
the mystery that united him in philanthropic endowment
with God the Father Almighty.
Then you get a good man, and the
Bible doesn't hesitate to say you get a
good man and full of the Holy Ghost.
But without Jesus Christ there is no goodness,
and so I don't apologize at all for
what I say to you, that your worship
has to be all-entire, that it has
to take you all in, and that if
you're not worshiping God in all your life,
you're not worshiping him acceptably in any body
of life, that discourages you, and I will
only say that you've got to prepare yourself
to worship God.
I remember Dr. Buswell, who was then President
of Wheaton College, said, We are suffering from
a rash of amateurism in religion.
Well, I know how he meant it, and
I mean it to you a little more
than he did.
When I say that we are suffering from
a rash of amateurism, we'd like to have
just everybody, any time, anywhere, worship God.
You've got to prepare yourself to worship God,
you see, my friend.
And that preparation is not always a pleasant
thing.
There must be some revolutionizing changes made in
your life.
There must be some things destroyed in your
life.
You give an invitation in the church and
say, Everybody go into the inquirer room.
If you'd like to get something more, you
can fill the building.
If you say, Go into the inquirer room,
all of you who would like to get
rid of something, you'll get very few people
that will come, because they don't like to
admit they have anything they ought to be
rid of.
But the gospel of Jesus Christ is not
only constructive, it's destructive.
It destroys certain elements in you that shouldn't
be there.
Now, what is there then to do?
Worship thou him, and if every hour of
my life has to worship him, let me
point out that there is no magic in
faith, there is no magic in the name.
Somebody says, Yes, but I worship in the
name of Jesus.
You don't worship in the nature of Jesus,
for name and nature are one, and the
Bible don't know.
Name and nature are alike.
He that asketh anything in my name doesn't
mean the name J-E-S-U-S.
It means his nature.
And whoever asks after his nature, who is
like him and asks in accordance with his
will, that man can get what he wants,
and so we must worship him.
And when we come to him, it isn't
enough if I live like a tramp on
Monday, and Monday night I have a crisis,
and I get on my knees and call
on the name of Jesus, and think that
there is some magic in that name, I'll
be disappointed and disillusioned.
For if I am not living in that
name, I cannot pray properly in that name.
If I am not living in that nature,
I cannot pray rightly in that nature.
So we cannot live after our nature and
worship after his.
It is when his nature and our nature
begin to harmonize, that the power of his
name begins to be felt.
Don't misunderstand me.
I know that the name of Jesus Christ
is far above all the names of all
kings and queens and archangels and presidents and
prime ministers, above Moses and Aaron and all
the rest that I have ever had honoring
all the wide world.
I know that.
And I know that at the name of
Jesus every knee shall bow and every tongue
confess that he is Lord, to the glory
of God the Father.
And he will adore his kingdom, and he
will ride down the sky, and he will
call to the nations of the earth, and
they will come before him, and he will
be their God supreme.
He will say that he is God of
left, and he will say that he is
God of right.
I know that.
I also know that we cannot take advantage
of that name by any twist of religious
magic.
We have got to live in that name.
We have got to live in it.
So I say to you, the name is
not rest until every era in our total
life is rest in God.
Everything in us honors God.
Now, I'm asking you, does your business honor
God?
Does it honor God?
Are you living so?
Now, I don't know what you do, and
I don't know if it's my knowledge of
business, other than to speak at the ministry
of the sanctuary and ask you, is your
business such that it honors God?
If it doesn't honor God, then I can't
see how you can honor God.
And worship is honoring God.
If your business doesn't honor God, you can't
honor God.
You are buying and you are selling.
You know that cynical expression in the book
of Father Adamson.
It is not, it is not, says the
buyer.
But after he buys, he says, aha, I
have bought it.
So he talks it down, meaning when he
is buying it, meaning he gets a bargain
and pulls it out of the shiny case.
You smile at that.
But I wonder if that fellow can get
on his knees and say, holy, holy, holy
Lord God Almighty, and get a witness from
God as a layman that his sacrifice is
accepted.
When you cut corners, you curse and you
curse and you curse, you cannot possibly please
God.
Now, I want to mention that simply as
a symbol, the relation to the opposite sex.
How can we worship God if our relation
to the opposite sex is such that God
is disposed with it?
Now, I am not opposed, but I believe
that our relation with each other ought to
be right, ought to be pure.
And God said to the young man, if
you fall, treat the younger one as sisters.
And I believe that if we treat them
any other way, we are displeasing God.
And no man who is careless in his
approach to the opposite sex can get on
his knees and worship the Father Almighty, for
the Father Almighty is displeased, and the displeased
God isn't accepting worship from any man.
And I wonder if the relation in your
home life, in your school life, in your
tithing, in your use of money, is always
pleasing to God.
What you do with your time.
Some of us imagine our time is our
own, we can do with it as we
please.
No, sir, your time isn't your own.
Your time belongs to the God who created
time.
Your God belongs to the one who gave
you a few years of jewels or of
money to spend.
God said to you, here are a few
years, here are seventy dollars, take it, take
it.
You take it, according to some, seventy years
over, a year over.
I know there are some people who go
beyond that.
I don't say us now, but I say
some have gone beyond that.
But we do go beyond it.
But remember, if God gives you a little
bonus, you are seventy years old, and the
Lord smiles and says, I'll give you a
little bonus.
He gives you a few more years, very
well, good, fine.
But remember, this is yours.
As long as you get to thinking it's
yours, you'll have it.
Your time must honor God.
Your home must honor God.
Your spending must honor God.
Your eating must honor God.
I read you this morning, you remember, didn't
you?
He said, I remember something you said to
me.
I'm back to that place now where everybody
is coming and going.
I remember something you told me.
It's tripping back there.
I was about finished, but I don't know.
He said, I remember you told me, watch
it.
When you get into middle life and beyond,
you're likely to get careless and backslide.
It was Philpott, that great preacher, who prayed,
Oh God, don't let me live to be
a wicked old man.
I think he was quoting somebody that's coming
to the line when you get older, get
lazy, get into a rut, get ill.
There'll be more deception long before the doctors
arrive and leave themselves out of house and
home.
I've seen old fellows.
I wonder why they can't keep their work
done.
Well, they sit back, put on a hat
and a toga, and when they touch a
quidditch, they'll be a little more laid down.
Well, anyhow, we can get fat and sloppy
and lazy, and we can reminisce, we can
bore people with our stories, and we can
do all that and not leave a very
big testimony for Jesus Christ.
I'll talk about my good friend, Max Reich.
Max Isaac Reich, I didn't pronounce Reich right,
you German-speaking people know that, but that's
the way I pronounce it.
And he was a Jew, and he was
a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, son
of a rabbi, an Oxford man, converted under
me in London.
Pinched like an angel.
Stained up with his elbows on the desk,
which no preacher ever should do.
Wrapped one leg around the other, which no
preacher ever should do, and pinched like an
archangel.
Do you want what he called a son
or Isaiah?
Oh, you can hear the angels clapping their
wings.
Oh, what they told about the Messiah of
the world.
Bless you.
I remember, that's the way it was.
I said to him one day on the
train, I said, Brother Reich, your being here
is not scriptural.
He said, why?
And I said, well, the Bible says an
ox and a mare shall not be hitched
up together.
And he said, which of these three will
be one and which will be the other?
Well, I said, what I mean is, I
said, there is a very rigidly Calvinistic in
his reading, you're a quaker.
Oh, and he said, don't give me my
head and let me go, and don't bother
me, that's all he wanted.
He didn't argue with anybody, he just wanted
to talk about Isaiah seeing the Lord.
And they were two of his desks shut,
and he had a boomer in his mouth.
He had an old wife, you know, he
was very old, and he had an old
wife, and he always talked to his king
before the bus, and he said to some
of the men around him, he said, well,
you didn't remember seeing the pin-up girl?
And the pin-up girl, the pin-up
girl was his old Gentile wife.
And he went back to Princes, and the
men lay down and died.
He was carried by the angels into Abraham's
abode.
That's the way to die, brother, and that's
the way to live.
And if you want to die right, you've
got to live right, and if you want
to be right when you're old, you have
to be right when you're young.
And he said to him, because he was
shameful of how old people are to go,
and how they ought to be, keeping pure
as they were old, we must not rest
ourselves until every area of our total life
begins to honor God.
There isn't any department that's secular.
There isn't any department anywhere outside of our
lives that's not worshiped.
We say, God, I worship you in this
room and this room and this room, but
that room I can't worship you in.
Why?
Well, that's not a consecrated room.
That part of my nature belongs to me
and Adam, and I can't worship you there.
You're not worshiping him right in this place
until you're worshiping him in every place.
And I repeated, you can't worship him in
the kitchen.
You can't worship him adequately in the church.
Now, is all this attainable?
The end of the cooperation between God and
the soul.
In God's part, there's love and grace and
atonement and obedience on your part.
Obedience and yielding and keeping on your part.
Grace and atonement on his part.
So shall we do something?
You've been coming to hear these talks on
worship.
One day a day.
And I hope it's inspired somebody.
But just to hear about them doesn't help
us too much, unless we do something about
them.
These are times of preparation now.
Times of testing.
Our brother told us this morning, who had
been in the far east, written.
He told us that the Communists didn't believe
that we were dedicated enough to him.
And he talked about militant atheism.
Isn't that an awful expression?
I was a girl that was an atheist
somewhere, living in a little cottage by myself,
in no box, and everybody went by, mean
nasty fellow nobody wanted to approach, and they'd
say about him, he's an atheist.
Only one you know in every town he
may have been.
He was probably a phony, but he said
he was an atheist.
Now they were organized and got done.
Militant atheism.
The real Christians are going to be saw,
pussycat type of Christians.
Pussycats with our claws, too.
Saw.
They'll never get that.
See?
Militant atheism.
You can hear the march of their feet,
the one, two, three, four, of the march,
as they take one country after another, the
Christians, serving God at our own convenience.
How terrible, how utterly terrible, how awful.
If you came to be a follower of
the one who had not, go ahead and
lay his head, and then you'll lay it
back against the cross and die.
So these are times of preparation and testing
and changing.
And I'm glad there's time.
Thank God there's time.
I don't know when time will be called
on us one of these days, but there's
time now.
The game is still being played.
The fight is still on.
The plow is still in the furrow.
And God still loves us.
The Holy Ghost is still present.
I wish that you'd be coming this way.
I want you to come to the platform.
Please do.
And I want you to pray a moment.
But before you pray, I'd like you to
pray a little bit, let's have a moment.
And when you pray for her, I'd like
all of you here who have said, I
want you to pray for me.
My heart is stored, and I need to
follow on.
I'd like to have you pray for me.
Put your arms around me and say, Oh,
Lord, I bless you.
I bless you down here.
Yes, in your name.
Let us up to you over here.
Yes, I see you.
Yes.
Again, our Father, we bow before thee in
the name of our blessed Redeemer.
We have sensed again this evening the moving
of thy Holy Spirit in our midst, and
we say, Oh, Lord, our Lord, how excellent
is thy name.
We have sensed, our Father, the awesomeness of
thy presence, as God the Holy Ghost, exalting
thee and working in the heart, brings us,
Lord, before thy throne again.
We desire above all things, our Father, to
exalt thee in the activities of each day.
We desire to know within that we live
and move and have our beings in thee.
We have understood, dear Father, that in us,
that is, in the flesh, there is no
good thing.
But, Father, we rejoice to know that thou
art God, and there is none like unto
thee.
We thank thee for the revelation of thy
holiness.
We bless thy name tonight, our God, that
thou hast redeemed us from our sin by
the blood of thy Son, Jesus.
Our Father, we pray for those who are
gathered in this place.
Each one has heard tonight.
Many have indicated a desire to hold themselves
entirely to thee and to the cause of
thy blessed Son, Jesus.
O Holy Ghost of God, having convicted us
of our sin again this month, of righteousness
and of judgment, we pray that thou will
graciously do a work in each life.
Young or old, having indicated a desire, may
they know that sweet coming upon of the
Holy Ghost now, as there is full surrender
made.
Dear God for the student, where there is
an intellect, and where that intellect is being
yielded to thee now, sanctify it, we pray
thee, to the glory of Christ.
To the businessman whose heart burns within him
as he meditates upon thee in those things
which be above.
God take the business that is given to
thee tonight.
To the mother in the home whose responsibility
is in her household.
May she look well after the ways of
her household.
May she sense that strangeness of the anointing
of God for the many details and activities
of the day that will bring her entire
family to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
For the young or for the old, for
the leader, for the educator, for those of
us who name the name of Christ in
our calling, dear Father, melt us afresh this
night that Jesus Christ might be glorified through
this gathering together.
Be pleased as we convene this gathering to
move upon us in a way that will
be unmistakably of thyself.
Father, take us from this place either into
the place of prayer within the building or
into the closet as we return to our
respective places.
Bring souls to the saving knowledge of Christ
this night as believers give themselves afresh to
the Lamb of God, the one who taketh
away the sin of the world in his
blessed name we pray.
Amen.