In the Gospel according to John, the fourth
chapter, the Lord is speaking in the sermon
of verse 23, following, The hour cometh, and
the hour is, and the true worshiper shall
worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
For the Father seeketh such to worship him,
God is spirit, and they that worship him
must worship him in spirit and in truth.
That is the same text I had two
weeks ago, but I told you then that
I wanted to give two talks on that
text.
There must of necessity be some overlapping, but
since my purpose is to inspect the mind
and inspire the heart, I do not apologize
for overlapping and reiteration.
I'm going to call it reiteration, because it's
a better word than repetition.
Repetition nobody likes.
They say about a man, he's repetitious, but
nobody ever said about a man, he's reiterated,
whatever you would say.
Nobody worries about a man reiterating, because if
we reiterate, that is the best scholarly way
of repeating.
So I want to reiterate some of the
things I've said before, and then go on
with something else.
We will begin with this thought which I
closed with last time, that according to our
Lord Jesus, true worship is spiritual.
I have said that men have enslaved themselves
to externals, to objects and locations and times
and seasons and days.
That way our Lord has said that these
things were not important, but that the Old
Testament system, though they included days and locations
and seasons and foods and all that, they
were an external evidence of an internal thing
which God was pointing to.
And when our Lord came, then locations and
times and seasons lost their meaning, and worship
became spiritual.
And our Lord said here, God is spirit.
Not God is a spirit, for there's no
a there, it's a Jain or a King
James, but God is spirit.
That is, what God is, is spirit.
Just as we say man is flesh, we
say God is spirit.
And since God is spirit, natural worship must
accord with the nature of God.
So I don't think we'll have to be
a profound thinker to find that out.
I think it's taught all over the scriptures,
and it would seem to be so very
logical and right that true worship accords with
the nature of God.
That we worship God according to what God
is, and not according to what God is
not.
The terror and the frightful error of idolatry
is that they worship according to what God
is not.
He said about the Samaritans, you don't know
what you worship.
You worship according to what God is not.
But we Jews know what we worship.
And the salvation is of the Jews.
The Jews, not because they were better than
other people, because they were not.
Their prophets distinctly said they were worse than
some people.
But because God had revealed the truth to
them and given them the oracles, by self
-revelation God had made it possible for Israel
to worship according to the nature of God.
And Jesus Christ our Lord then says that
God is spirit, and that we worship according
to that nature of God.
You see, God is not affected by the
attributes of matter.
He is not affected by weight.
He is not affected by size.
He is not affected by space.
I can't help but I suppose you would
do, too, if you don't allow yourself to
get stunned.
I don't like to be stampeded by anybody.
And while it was an amazing thing that
John Glenn did the other day, I am
not greatly taken in by it, because all
he did was go up a hundred and
some miles and go around the earth three
times.
He went a little faster than most of
us have gone, and he went a little
higher.
But after all, it was only space that
he was invading.
And some people are greatly bothered by this,
and they feel that this will shock their
Christian life.
Not if they know why they are Christians.
It will only stun a man if he
is not a good Christian, not a good
and well-taught Christian.
A well-taught Christian knows that the great
God is not affected by space, and he
contains space in his bosom.
The well-instructed Christian knows God is not
affected by speed, that is, the getting of
people from one point to another, because God
alone will get from one point to another
point, but God lives around all points.
And so we worship God.
God is spirit.
God is not affected by location.
God is not some place to which you
come and can recede, but God is all
about us and contains space, and so he
is as near to one place as he
is to another.
That is a great comfort to know that
God is as near to one place as
he is to another place.
Now, God made us in his image, and
because he made us in his image, there
is a part of us which is like
God.
I wish that all Christians might see this,
that there is a part of us which
is like God.
The human soul is most like God in
anything that has ever been created.
It is the most like God.
Now, you say, how can this be, seeing
that there is so much sin in the
world, and so much that seems to be
so ungodly?
The answer is seen.
The answer is the fallen man.
The man is fallen, and just that man
has fallen does not mean that that which
is fallen does not have about it yet
the lineaments of the likeness of God, so
that it is easy for God to restore
us and redeem us, easy for God to
do it, because God has material to work
with that was once made in his image.
Let's find an Old Testament illustration and see
if we can.
Suppose that there is a vessel.
A man is a potter making a vessel.
He is going to make a beautiful teapot,
and while it is spinning on the wheel,
it runs into some sand or grit and
falls apart.
And there it is now, it's broken, it's
not useful anymore, but the material out of
which it is made, while it doesn't look
like a teapot anymore, while there is no
artistry there, and while the soul of the
artist isn't in it and can't be in
it because it has been broken on the
wheel, still it's a simple matter for the
potter to take up that material again and
take out the offending parts and make it
into another vessel.
He couldn't do that if he had iron,
he couldn't do it if he had rock,
but he can do it with clay, because
clay is the material with which he works.
It was broken the first time, he can
restore it using the same material, and so
God made us in his image.
And while we're not all together clear about
what that image of God is, we do
know that the human soul is like clay.
In the spin of temptation, man fell apart
and lost the artistry, the beauty, the holiness
of God, but he didn't lose the potentiality
to become God-like again if he got
into the hands of the divine artist.
And that's what redemption is.
Redemption is taking our material of fallen man,
and by the mystery of regeneration and sanctification,
restoring it again so that it is like
God and like Christ.
And this is why we preach redemption.
That's what redemption is.
It is not saving us from hell, although
it does save us from hell, but it
is making it so that we can be
like God again.
I want to talk a little more about
the qualities of worship, if we're going to
worship God correctly and rightly.
There's got to be spirituality, and that's in
the text in Acts 1, so we'll talk
about that first.
Worship has to be spiritual.
You can't worship without the Holy Ghost.
God is spirit, and the Holy Spirit is
the spirit of God, and therefore the Holy
Spirit is the only one who can properly
lead the heart out to worship God acceptably,
because the fallen human mind doesn't know how
to worship God acceptably, so that the Holy
Spirit takes the fallen human mind and points
it up and corrects it and purges it
and aims it and directs it so that
it is worshiping God.
That's why it's so vastly and vitally important
that we should know the Holy Spirit.
I've often felt like getting on my knees,
in fact I have gotten on my knees
more than one time, and apologized to the
Holy Ghost for the way the Church has
treated him.
We've treated him shoddily, we've treated him in
a poor way, we've treated him in such
a manner that if we would have treated
guests that way, the guests would slip away,
be stricken, and never return.
We have treated the Holy Spirit wretchedly, I
say.
He is God himself, God, very God of
very Gods, the link that binds the Father
and the Son, and himself of the substance
uncreated, of which Deity, of which is Deity,
and yet the Holy Spirit gets mighty short
shrift in the average church, even in the
average gospel church.
If we have a doxology to begin with
the service, let me sing, praise God for
whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures
here below, praise him above you heavenly host,
praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
That's a mention of the Holy Spirit.
And if we have a diction at the
close, we say the love of God, the
Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost,
so we have the Holy Spirit again.
We have him at the opening of the
service, and we have him at the close
of the service.
If we are outside of that, we don't
count on his presence, you see.
How many of us came here tonight counting
on the Spirit being present?
How many of you are counting upon the
Holy Spirit speaking to you this evening?
How many of you are trusting with me
that the Holy Spirit is going to take
a human voice and speak through it, that
he's going to take a human ear and
listen to it, that the Holy Spirit is
going to be in all this?
And if that's precisely what the Bible teaches,
it teaches them all through, and comes up
to a bright teaching in the epistles of
Paul, so that worship has to be in
the Spirit and by the Spirit.
The notion that just anybody can worship is
all wrong.
The notion that we can worship without the
Spirit is all wrong.
The notion that we can crowd the Spirit
into a corner, ignore him, quench him, resist
him, and yet worship God acceptably is a
grave heresy which we need to correct.
Only the Holy Spirit knows how to worship
God acceptably.
If you will look at the book of
Romans, you will find in the 8th chapter
that prayer, that only the Holy Spirit knows
how to pray his people.
It says here that, I can find it
here now without running around too much, but
in this 8th chapter, here it is in
verse 26, Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our
infirmities, for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought, but the Spirit
maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot
be uttered.
And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what
is the mind of the Spirit, because he
maketh intercession for the saints according to the
will of God.
And so even our prayers, they will be
mutterings and repetitions until the Holy Spirit takes
them and pledges them and cleanses them and
makes them acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
So it is impossible to pray without the
Spirit, and the most powerful prayer is prayer
in the Spirit, and we cannot worship without
the Holy Spirit.
I think it is time that the Church
of Christ should rethink this matter of the
place of the Holy Spirit in the Church
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We should rethink it in the light of
the scriptures, because without the Holy Spirit we
are as Israel was when she continued to
try to worship God after the fire had
left the holy place, and there was no
Shekinah there and no glory there and no
fire there and no light there and no
presence there, and yet Israel continued to worship
vainly and futilely, pitifully she continued to worship,
forgetting that the Holy Spirit of worship had
left her long ago.
I believe it is time the Church should
rethink this whole matter.
Spirituality is one of the ingredients of worship,
and without spirituality I cannot worship God acceptable
to Him, acceptably to Him, and no matter
how much I worship, if it is not
acceptable worship, then it is vain worship and
better not attempted.
The second ingredient in worship is sincerity as
distinct from formality or duplicity.
We have extreme and heinous examples of this
taught us by our missionaries.
They tell us about the heathen who worship
their God and they like to cheat him.
They like to cheat their God.
I remember hearing of a man who was
a sailor, and he was a big storm
at sea.
So he said to St. Anthony, If you
will save us from the shipwreck, I'll dedicate
a candle as big as my body.
Somebody heard him and said, Now you know
you couldn't do that.
He said, I know I couldn't too, but
St. Anthony doesn't know it.
He said, If I can just get some
milk, I can declare it.
I don't know whether that ever happened or
not, but I do know that it's quite
in order with what I know to be
true about a lot of so-called worship
and praying.
We think we can cheat the Lord, and
by crossing our fingers and meaning something else,
the Lord won't hear, won't notice.
We have got to be absolutely sincere if
we are going to worship God.
It is distinct from formality.
I do not know whether anything that is
merely done formally has any meaning at all.
I do not know that it has any
meaning before God at all, if it is
only done formally.
The Lord pointed out a little child and
said that the little child was the example,
and I believe that one thing about a
little child is complete sincerity.
No matter how embarrassing we may be talking,
how many embarrassing things we may be saying,
he is nevertheless absolutely sincere.
And it is this sincerity that we must
cultivate, and we must cultivate it prayerfully, if
our worship is going to be accepted of
Almighty God.
What a terrible thing to spend a lifetime
making offerings to the Almighty, all of which
are rejected.
Cain made his offering to the Almighty, and
God did not answer and would not accept
it, and Cain's countenance fell.
Honesty is the third ingredient that must be
in all prayers, as distinct from mere propriety.
I have got to be absolutely honest.
I suppose honesty and sincerity are twin brothers
and can't be separated, though they are certainly
not identical, but there must be complete honesty
before God.
I get on my knees and I ask
God, O Lord, meet our missionary budget.
And then the Lord knows that I am
not going to do a thing toward it.
He knows I am a dishonest prayer.
If I pray, O Lord, save this man
that I have never done anything toward winning
him, I am a dishonest prayer.
And if I ask God to do things
that I could do for myself, I am
dishonest in my praying.
But we have lardered it over and glossed
it over till it sounds shocking to hear
it said, it's true nevertheless.
And then simplicity is distinct from sophistry and
sophistication.
Simplicity, utter simplicity.
I have heard a few people pray in
my time that were utterly simple, almost embarrassingly
simple.
So simple-hearted that you tended to feel
perhaps they were intellectually strong.
But there is no incompatibility between intellectual power
and simplicity of heart.
Jesus Christ, our Lord, was simple and to
the point and direct.
And our old Quaker friends who lived generations
ago, maybe some of them still, or some
of them living now, their descendants, or at
least their spiritual descendants, simplicity was everything to
them.
You remember the old English Quakers when they
went before the King to take off their
broad-brimmed hats, because they thought that was
giving too much honor to a man.
They'd do anything before God but they insisted
on wearing those hats, and they looked out
too many a set of bars out of
many a prison just for that reason.
Personally, I don't think there'd be any harm
in it.
I'd take my hat off, there's nothing in
covering your head, you're certainly not worshiping anybody.
But the point is, they believed and did
what they believed, and God honored them for
living according to their faith.
Simplicity, utter simplicity.
They said in vain, vow.
They called each other Mary and John, whatever
the name was.
And they taught the Church of Christ to
be simple.
I get out sometimes among the Mennonite people,
and there's one thing about them is their
simplicity.
And the brethren in Christ, so-called river
brethren who wear the beards, well, they're utterly
simple, simple.
I said to the president of one of
their colleges one time, we were sitting together
in an automobile, I said, Dr. Hustetter, well,
you are supposed to be a simple people
and you're called a plain people.
Now, I said, I want to ask you
a question.
Are your people as simple as their dress
indicates?
He said, well, that is our aim, but
I don't know whether we ever reach our
goal or not.
He said, we aim to be plain people
and be simple, and so we dress simply,
but I don't know whether our people live
simply.
I thought that was a good, honest answer,
and I appreciated it, for it was not
claiming too much.
But at least there was an aim to
be simple.
The brother and sister, if we'd ever break
ourselves down and suddenly be faced with death
or some other tragedy or terror, and actually
be forced to see how unnatural we are
and how unlike ourselves.
You don't know the average man or woman,
we don't know ourselves.
We have lived like zoo lions, utterly unlike
the lion that roams the belt, and so
we're in this civilization of ours, pressed on
every side.
We tell so many lies without meaning to
do it, and utter so many untruths and
half-truths without knowing that we're doing it.
Following along with the Emily Post of the
day.
Emily Post.
Somebody called her the high priestess of the
decaying order, and I thought that was a
pretty good expression.
The high priestess of the decaying order.
You've got to have your knife here, your
fork here, your spoon there.
One dear man I knew about, who was
more at home in the factory, maybe, than
he was in high society, got invited to
one of those places one night, and he
said at one o'clock in the morning,
that is, they had a bank, wasn't it?
One o'clock in the morning, he said,
I had a tablespoon left.
He said, that's all I had.
He said, they had lugged it all away.
He didn't know what to eat, but he
knew how to eat, you know.
There's a story built on that.
A fellow went to, was invited to a
home, he had one suitcase, one little suitcase,
and the butler insisted on drawing his ball,
and he said that he wanted to know
about his, what do they call him, bathrobe,
and he had no bathrobe, and the poor
fellow was so embarrassed that he got up
in the middle of the night and went
home.
He couldn't take it.
Well, he was a simple man, being forced
suddenly to be in a highly complex social
situation where he didn't feel at home.
People of God ought to be the simplest
people in all the wide world.
The man I heard of had had a
great spiritual experience, great uplift, great breakthrough, great
rise into God, and afterwards somebody asked him
how it was and how about it.
Well, he said, I came to a place
in my life where I got down on
my knees and took a vow before God,
and I said, O God, I now hereby
vow before thee and solemnly promise that I
will never again utter a word in prayer
that I do not mean.
That would shorten a lot of people's prayers.
I challenge you to pray twenty minutes in
a public prayer meeting and mean every word
of it and not put any password on
or any decoration, but mean every word of
it.
It would stimulate your prayer, but it would
shorten them tremendously.
There must be simplicity.
If we are going to worship God, we
must worship God simply.
I don't care who you are or what
you are.
It must be simple.
My friend McAfee was traveling.
I have forgotten where.
It seems to me it might have been
in South Africa.
He was in the British possessions there, and
a great man, I don't recall who now,
but he was a Christian man, a fine
Christian man, but he was a great man.
He had a vast domain there and a
huge responsibility.
Mr. McAfee and his friends, they introduced him.
The man invited him in, and he was
dressed in pure white from top to bottom,
a pure white suit, and he looked upon
him.
He looked as if he should have been
an authority of some sort.
Mr. McAfee said something to the effect that
he looked imposing.
He said, It's a terrible thing, how much
corruption a nice white suit will cover.
How much corruption a white suit will cover.
He was a Christian man.
He never allowed his high position to change
that fact.
Never, never!
No Christian or two.
Abraham Lincoln was like that.
Nobody could ever get him to get on
a pedestal or pretend to be something that
he was not.
The stories about him are legion.
I think most of them true.
He was that kind of man.
He was President of the United States, and
he wanted to see a general.
And this general had a swelled head, and
the general should have been called to the
office to see the President.
But Lincoln knew that he had a big
head and a bad temper, so Lincoln went
to see him.
He made him sit two hours in his
office, the President two hours in his office,
waiting to get in to see the general.
And somebody said to him, Mr. Lincoln, why
would you humiliate yourself in that manner?
He said, I didn't mind that.
He said, All he was doing was insulting
me.
He said, That doesn't mean anything.
He said, What I want is to win
battles.
If he'll win battles, he can insult me.
It takes simplicity and humility, my brother, to
do that.
And it takes simplicity and humility to worship
God acceptably.
Most of us are a half a dozen
people.
I have an awful time, because I have
four or five repetitions.
And I have an awful time just trying
to be myself.
My wife helps out on it.
And, but just be myself.
To some people I'm this, and to some
people I'm that, and I think everybody's the
same.
So we try to live up to our
repetition.
It's always bad.
And then to worship must be internal.
The internality that's distinct from externalism.
Brothers and sisters, we ought to thank God
from the depths of our hearts that you
don't have to have any machinery to worship
God.
That you can worship God in spirit and
in truth, in the depths of your own
heart, as well as the angels in glory
can worship God.
And you don't have to have anything.
You don't have to die with a crucifix
in your hand.
You don't have to have holy water on
the dresser.
There used to be an Irishman by the
name of Mr. Dookley, lived in the state
of Pennsylvania, near where I was brought up.
And he wasn't a Catholic, but he was
married to a Catholic.
And he was good-natured, of course, and
very tolerant and friendly about it, and the
two loved each other, and it was all
good nature.
But he used to tell, he never knew
whether it was so, but much to her
chagrin, and much to his delight, and the
amusement of the company wherever they went, he
would tell about getting up one night with
his corn hurting him terribly, and feeling his
way to the dresser, and getting a hold
of what he thought was linoleum, and rubbing
it on going back to bed.
He said, Help!
But the next morning he found it was
his wife's holy water.
I am so delighted, brother and sister, so
delighted that all water is holy water to
me, and there isn't anything anybody can do
that can make it any holier.
That is H2O, and there isn't any Latin
word that will make it any H2O.
It's just right there, H2O, and there isn't
anything anybody can do about it, brothers and
sisters, nothing anybody can do about it.
There it is.
So it is with all the gadgets.
They mean a thing.
Anything may mean something to a worshiping heart,
but they mean nothing if the heart isn't
worshiping.
A wooden ring may mean a great deal
to a woman, but it's only because she
believes it tells her something about a man,
not because it has any value.
And if she loses it down the sink,
she'll swivel a little because she's lost it,
but she won't lose her husband, and she
won't lose his love, and she won't lose
that for which it stood and didn't know.
And so worship is an eternal thing.
Worship tells me something about God and me,
and I worship, I can worship truly because
something is true between God and me.
And if after years of going to the
same church, I come to associate that church
with worshiping God, that's natural, that's psychological, that's
conditioned reflex, I think they call that in
psychology.
But it doesn't mean that if I don't
go to that church again, or the church
burns down, that I can't worship God, and
worship God in spirit and in truth.
Now, how can worship be saved?
I believe that it's time that illuminated persons
begin to affirm worship, that we begin to
understand it again in the church of Christ.
I believe it will bring revival to us,
I think it will be some kind of
revival.
For who is the object of worship?
Back to our basic text.
He is thy Lord, worship thou him, so
shall the king greatly desire thy beauty.
Your soul is made to entertain God.
They can only see this.
It has delineaments of the Deity.
Your soul, somebody said, is a God-shaped
void.
If I were to carry it further, I
would say, your soul is a God-shaped
garment.
Your soul is a God-shaped garment, like
a glove shaped to fit your hand.
But God can't enter because it's full of
rubbish.
Try putting a lot of truck in your
glove sometime and then getting your hand into
it.
You can't do it.
A glove must be empty before a hand
can go into it, and the heart must
be empty before God can enter it.
That's why at the altars in times of
evangelism and prayer, and the pressure to get
people to write with God, we insist upon
an emptying out of ourselves.
That's why your soul is a God-shaped
garment, and God wants to clothe himself with
it, because he wants to clothe himself with
giving.
But he can't enter because there's rubbish in
it.
Have you ever searched your heart and found
out how much rubbish you have collected over
the past years?
How much more rubbish?
How much intellectual rubbish?
How much rubbish of habit?
Rubbish of custom?
Rubbish of things you do and don't do,
think and don't think?
Rubbish.
You just empty it out.
Now, who needs to have taken that into
account?
Our knowledge is filled with it, begging God
to empty us and fill us, empty us
and fill us.
We're getting away from it.
I'd like to come up, say, I found
something in a new way.
There's no new way.
No new way, it's as old as the
everlasting mountains.
Empty the rubbish out of your soul.
Turn yourself up to God in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and he'll fill
you and come in and clothe himself with
you.
Who wants to do it, I say?
Only the garment is unclean, and God won't
wear an unclean garment.
God wants to wear a pure garment.
Remember that the bride sat within, clothed in
needlework, in the righteousness, the righteousness of the
saints.
They worked their righteousness before God in purity
and obedience.
So let's ask God to cleanse us.
We can empty ourselves, but we never can
cleanse ourselves.
If you have something in you that prevents
God from entering, you can empty that out.
But if after you're empty you're unclean, you
can never cleanse yourself.
Only God can do that.
By the blood of the everlasting covenant, by
the fire of the Holy Ghost, by the
discipline of obedience, God cleanses these people and
makes them white in the blood of the
Lamb.
Who are these?
He says they came up out of great
tribulation, and their garments were made white in
the blood of the Lamb.
Your soul is the natural habitat for the
Holy Ghost.
Did you know that?
Your soul, yes your soul, is the natural
habitat for the Holy Ghost.
Just as everybody that knows about birds knows
that there are what we call natural habitats.
You don't go to a swamp to find
a wood thrush.
If you want to hear a wood thrush,
you go to the cool, leafy woods that
border a field and wait for the evening
to come.
And when the wood thrush quietly bursts men
loud and bold, as the shadows go deeper,
she will play her lovely flute in the
darkness.
You never go to the swamp.
If you want to hear a red-winged
blackbird make its clunk clunking sound, you don't
go to the cool woods in the evening.
You go to the swampland where the cattails
stick their brown flowers up.
There you'll find a red-winged blackbird.
And if you want to hear a wind
sing, you don't go to the wood and
you don't go to the swamp.
Go out in your own backyard.
There she will be, bubbling over with delight.
It's what we call natural habitat.
As a boy I used to trap rabbits,
and I knew where to find them.
As a country man, I knew where to
find rabbits.
I didn't set a trap out on a
bare knoll.
I didn't go to a clay bank and
set a trap.
I went among the bars, in the bar
patches.
And I watched until I saw, down underneath
the winding, wavy path, where the rabbits went
at night.
I set my trap there and the next
morning I had my bunnies.
Because I knew the natural habitat of the
rabbit.
I believe that the Holy Ghost has a
natural habitat.
I say as God, he is omnipresent and
imminent and fills all space and contains it.
But by habitat I mean where he makes
himself at home.
Where he makes himself heard and felt and
where he can speak and where he can
live.
And that natural habitat is nothing else but
the soul of a man.
So how do I know?
Because God made that soul in the image
of God and God can dwell in his
own image without embarrassment.
Just as the blackbird can sing there among
the cattails, just as the rabbit can hop
among the grass, just as the wood thrush
can sing unseen at the edge of the
woods at night, so the Holy Ghost wants
to come into your soul and live in
it.
Not a guest, but an inhabitant.
Not there, not weekending there, not a house
guest for a while, but a permanent inhabitant
who makes your soul.
Only sin can prevent that, brothers and sisters.
That is why worship and sin are incompatible
world without end.
That is why you cannot deal with the
matter of true worship and omit the question
of sin.
Sin will prevent worship.
You cannot worship God with sin.
Behold, I stand at the door knocked.
Can a man hear my voice and open
unto me?
I will come in unto him and will
dwell with him, suffer with him, and be
with me.
Here is the picture of Jesus in your
house, in your house, dwelling with you.
I will come in unto you.
Not in this instance I will take you
in unto me, but I will come in
unto you.
There you are, Jesus speaking in the house
of his friends, your house, as an individual
man or woman, dwelling in you, Christ in
you, the hope of glory.
There are two texts that made the Christian
missionary lines, two texts, or three texts, that
made the Christian missionary lines.
Christ being preacher, the God Almighty filled him
with the Holy Ghost, filled him, broke his
heart of the conditions of the world, and
gave him three texts.
Christ in you, the hope of glory.
That was one.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
That was the other.
And the third, going to all the world
and preach the gospel as a preacher.
It would be too bad for us if
we ever knew those three texts.
It would be too bad if we ever
forget that the Christ living in me makes
me a worshipper, nothing else will.
So now it's up to you and me,
my brother and sister, up to you and
me.
God has spoken.
If he hasn't spoken, there's nothing I can
do.
But if he has spoken, there's still nothing
I can do.
But there's something you can do, and there's
something he will do for you.
You don't need to think about your soul.
Your soul is a God-shaped glove, a
God-shaped garment.
And God wants to enter it and fill
it.
But it's full of rubbish.
If you get rid of the rubbish, you
don't have to beg God to come in.
Go fresh and light bulbs.
I don't know whether they make them like
that or not.
I've been too busy to care lately.
But they used to make the old-fashioned
light bulb, and on the end was a
little projection where it was made and it
closed up there.
And then it was pumped empty.
They pumped it out so that it was
a vacuum.
They used to take, when I was a
kid, they used to take the broken bulbs.
I forgot to show them those days, but
you could see the interior.
They used to take those bulbs, take a
pair of pliers, and break that little projection
off.
And there was a swishing sound as 14
pounds of a square inch of atmospheric pressure
rushed into that bulb.
You didn't have to get in the bulb
and get on your knees and beg and
say, please come in, atmosphere, please come in.
All you had to do was take away
the obstruction, and the atmosphere rushed in.
Nature, on the whole, is a vacuum.
So, my soul is a vacuum, and the
soul of every man.
Maybe we filled it with trash, but as
far as God's concerned, it's a vacuum.
We only have to empty it, empty it,
and God rushes in and fills it.
For he made it for himself, and he
doesn't have to be begged.
Do you believe that?
To wonder who knows, you only dare believe
it.
We're going to sing a number.
What number is that?
284.
We're going to sing a number, and as
we sing it, we're going to fill the
invitation open for those of you who want
to meet God.
And we're not going to do any dancing,
catwalking.
We're going to come boldly into the presence
of God and ask him for help, and
expect him to give it to you, and
not care what people think or say.
The kingdom of God suffers violence, and the
violence takes it by force, and we don't
care who knows it.
Do you want to come right back?
Why, you slip into the prayer room over
here.
I'll be singing number 285.