So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty,
for he is thy Lord.
Worship thou him.
As you can see, there's desire on both
sides.
The king greatly desires the beauty of his
bride, and the bride is exhorted to worship
him who is the Lord.
He is thy Lord.
Worship thou him.
Now, I'd like to say that I believe
in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of
heaven and earth and of all things visible
and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Son of God, who is begotten of
Him before all worlds, who is God of
God and Light of Light and very God
of very God and begotten, not made.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the
Lord and Giver of Life, which proceedeth from
the Father and the Son, and which with
the Father and Son together is worshiped and
glorified.
And I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
who for us men and for our salvation
came down from heaven and was incarnated by
the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and
He suffered down under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
and was buried.
The third day He rose again from the
dead and sitteth at the right hand of
the Majesty in the heavens.
Now, why was this?
This we all believe, but why was this?
It had a purpose.
Not to give you peace of mind, though
that's part of it.
Not to deliver you from bad habits, though
that's part of it.
But what was the great central purpose of
the great God who never does anything without
a purpose in all this rich, golden, glorious
odyssey of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?
It was that He might make worshipers out
of enemies.
It was that He might take those whose
backs were to Him and turn their faces
to Him.
It was that He might persuade those moral
beings who had forgotten how to worship to
turn around again and bow in ecstatic adoration
before the presence of the Triune God.
So the purpose of Christ in redemption was
not to save us from hell primarily, but
it was to save us unto worship, that
we might become again worshipers of the Living
God.
Now, I'd like to state that worship is
the normal employment of moral beings.
That moral beings worship God normally as bird
saints.
Normal beings worship God, that's their normal employment.
And if you look in your Bible, you
will find that every glimpse of heaven shows
the people there, the persons, the beings there,
worshiping God.
Let me take the time to do what
I know sometimes bores some people, and that
is read a little from the scripture.
Listen to this.
It came to pass in the 30th year,
in the fourth month, in the fifth day
of the month, as I was among the
captives by the river Kebar, that the heavens
were opened and I saw visions of God.
In the fifth day of the month the
word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel
the priest, the son of Uzziah, in the
land of the Chaldeans by the river Kebar,
and the hand of the Lord was there
upon him.
And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came
out of the north, a great cloud, and
a fire unfolding itself.
And a brightness was about it, and out
of the midst thereof was the color of
amber, and out of the midst of the
fire also out of the midst thereof came
the likeness of four living creatures.
And the likeness of the firmament upon the
heads of the living creatures was as the
color of the terrible crystal stretched forth over
their heads above.
And under the firmament were their wings straight,
and one toward the other.
Every one had two, which covered on this
side, and every one had two, which covered
on that side their bodies.
And when they went I heard the noise
of their wings, like the noise of great
waters, as the voice of the Almighty.
The voice of speech is the noise of
an host.
When they stood they let down their wings,
and above the firmament that was over their
head was the likeness of a throne, as
the appearance of a sapphire stone.
And upon the likeness of the throne was
the likeness of the appearance of man upon
it.
And I saw as the color of amber,
as the appearance of fire round about within,
from the appearance of his loins even upward,
and from the appearance of his loins even
downward, I saw as it were the appearance
of fire and the brightness round about.
As the appearance of the bull that is
in the cloud in the day of rain,
so was the appearance of the brightness round
about.
This was the appearance of the likeness of
the glory of the Lord.
And when I saw it I fell upon
my face, and I heard a voice of
one that spake.
That is the Old Testament.
Come to the New.
After this I looked, and behold, a door
was opened in heaven.
And immediately I was in the Spirit, and
behold, a throne was set in heaven.
And one sat on the throne, and he
that sat was to look upon like a
jasper and a sardine stone.
And there was a rainbow round about the
throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
And I saw four and twenty elders sitting
clothed in white raiment, and they had on
their heads crowns of gold.
And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and
thunderings and voices, and there were seven lamps
of fire burning before the throne, which are
the seven spirits of God.
And the beasts and those give glory and
honor and thanks to him that sat on
the throne, who liveth forever and ever.
The four and twenty elders fell down and
worshipped him that liveth forever and ever, and
cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou
art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and
honor and power, for Thou has created all
things, and for Thy pleasure they are and
were created.
And I beheld and lo in the midst
of the throne and of the four beasts.
And in the midst of the elders stood
a lamb as it had been slain, having
seven horns and seven eyes, which are the
seven spirits of God.
And he came and took the book, and
they sang a new song, saying, Thou art
worthy to take the book and to open
the seals thereof, for Thou wast slain and
hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood
out of every kindred and tongue and people
and nation.
And behold, I heard the voice of many
angels round about the throne and the beasts
and elders, and the number of them was
ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of
thousands, saying with a loud voice, Worthy is
the lamb that was slain to receive power
and riches and wisdom and strength and honor
and glory and blessing.
And every creature which is in heaven and
on the earth and under the earth and
such as are in the sea and all
that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing
and honor and glory and power be unto
him that sitteth upon the throne and unto
the lamb forever and ever.
And the four beasts said, Amen.
And the four and twenty elders fell down
and worshiped him that liveth forever and ever.
Now there, my brethren, is a picture of
heaven, just a little peep into heaven.
Just cup our ear and listen, and we
hear it, for it's going on now.
Not something that's prophetic only.
It's prophetic in the sense that it will
be in the future, but it's present in
the sense that it also is now.
And my friends, our Lord taught that worship
is a moral imperative.
Now let me read to you a brief
passage only from the book of Luke.
Listen, And when he was come nigh, even
now at the descent of the Mount of
Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began
to rejoice and praise God with a loud
voice for all the mighty works that they
had seen, saying, Blessed be the King that
cometh in the name of the Lord.
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
Some of the Pharisees from among the multitude
said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples.
But he answered and said unto them, I
tell you that if these should hold their
peace, the stone would cry unto God.
It's a moral imperative, my brethren, and God
will have somebody worship him if he has
to raise up a shouting, singing stone.
Now we have a little song we sing
sometimes, and I want you to note it.
I just want you to note it.
It says, Bless, O my soul, the living
God.
Call home thy thoughts that are overbroad.
The old man of God believed, as I
believe tonight, that when our thoughts are roaming
all over the face of the earth and
are not centered on God, that they're away.
They're like a stray dog out in the
alley.
They're roaming away from home.
Call home thy thoughts that are overbroad.
Let all the powers within me join to
work and worship so divine.
What work is there?
What worship is there so divine as worshiping
God?
Bless, O my soul, the God of grace.
His favor claims thy highest praise.
Why should the wonders he hath wrought be
lost in silence and forgot?
Another one tells us that it is a
guilty silence, and cries break to his tongue.
Break, my tongue, thy guilty silence.
That when a man or woman born to
worship God is not worshiping God, the very
silence of his tongue denotes guilt in his
heart.
And the man who did not worship God
today has a guilty tongue.
For worship is a moral imperative.
Worship belongs to heaven and to all beings
that are moral beings.
Not to the beasts, not to the birds
that fly and the worms that crawl, but
all beings with moral perception and intelligence.
It is the business of our tongues to
be worshiping God, and when we do not,
we are guilty.
Now, I would like to tell you this,
that worship is the missing jewel in evangelicalism
today.
The churches decked yourself with everything.
I read yesterday in the newspaper that the
churches had been building all this summer, and
that we were running into a whole welter
of dedications.
Now, God bless them, and I'm glad for
every building that went up this summer.
We happen to be in a boom.
You've heard about it.
Everybody has more money than's good for him,
and so the churches are building, and that's
all right, and we've decked ourselves with every
kind of ornament.
We have everything, but there is one shining
gem that has been lost to the church,
and it has been lost even to the
evangelical church.
I got a letter this week.
I don't know whether those friends are present
tonight or not, and if they are, they
will understand.
I got a letter from a woman, and
she said, Mr. Tozer, we were out to
hear the sermon on worship, and I'd like
to tell you this, that my husband, who
was a Parsi, that is, a Zoroastrian fire
worshiper, had to teach me to worship the
Savior.
Even though I was brought up in a
certain denomination, I had to learn from my
converted Parsi husband to worship God.
Worship, my friends, is the missing jewel in
evangelicalism, and the awesome and wonderful jewel, with
its mysterious luster, has been all but lost
to us.
We meet together, and we go through rituals
and forms, but worshiping God is something else,
and we've forgotten to worship God.
There was once a noble being, and it
disturbs me.
I don't know too much about this now,
and don't press me for a very careful
exegesis, because I'm not sure I know who
this is, but I read about it in
the inspired word of God.
He forgot to worship.
Listen, thou hast been in Eden, the garden
of God.
Every precious stone was thy covering.
The workmanship of thy tablets and thy pipes
was prepared in thee in the day that
thou wast created.
Why did he have tablets and pipes, which
are, of course, musical instruments?
Why did this creature, this anointed cherub that
covereth, why did he have in his divine
workmanship these instruments built in?
He was a walking organ, a walking harp.
God made him so.
I have set thee so, it goes on
to say.
Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God.
Thou hast walked up and down in the
midst of the stones of fire.
I've read quite a little about fire tonight,
but don't forget, my brethren, that we, when
we come to try to understand what God
is like, the best we can do is
to talk about spirit and fire.
Now, physical fire is not God, and God
warned against that, and said, when thou gazest
up into the sky and sees the sun
or the stars by night, do not fall
down and worship them, for that is an
abomination unto Jehovah thy God, for so did
the nations around thee.
So we're not fire worshipers, but we recognize
that God dwells in fire, and these creatures
came out of the fire and stood with
their six wings.
With twain they covered their faces, and with
twain they covered their feet, and with twain
they did fly.
And when the Holy Spirit came upon them
at Pentecost, he came with fire and sat
upon each one of them.
It is as near as God can get
to telling us what he's like, that strange,
mysterious, lustrous, shining, beautiful thing.
And thou wast perfect in thy ways from
the day that thou wast created, till iniquity
was found in thee.
And he who had come beautiful beyond all
description, with his worship built in, and who
was permitted to walk up and down amidst
them, the shining, holy stones of fire, now
finds iniquity there.
God finds iniquity in him, therefore I will
cast thee as profane out of the mountain
of God, and I will destroy thee, O
covering cherub, from the midst of the stones
of fire.
I believe that Satan, if I should be
wrong in my exegesis, is some being, for
I read from Ezekiel 28, and if a
great being like that could be cast out,
and would be and was cast out of
heaven because he forgot the purpose of his
creation, if he forgot that his tongue was
made to sing the praises of his creator,
if he could be cast out, hurled down
from heaven, sheer over the crystal battlements, then
I ask you, is it not possible that
the church that forgets to worship God is
in danger of losing her place among the
stones of fire?
Is it not possible that the church that
doesn't worship, that only meets and knits, or
only meets and reads, or only meets and
sings, or only meets and fellowships, or only
meets and eats?
Is it not possible that that church may
lose her candlestick?
Jesus said at one time, you remember, to
the Ephesian church, I'll pluck thy candlestick, I'll
remove it.
I don't know what that means exactly, but
I don't want it to happen to me.
If God were to wake me tonight at
two or tomorrow morning at two or three
o'clock, wide stark awake and say to
me, I am removing the Alliance candlestick from
the corner of Seventy Communion, I wouldn't have
to write to Moody Monthly to find out
what it meant.
I wouldn't have to look up the various
commentators to see what it meant.
I'd be terrorized and I'd fall on my
face and cry, oh God, these are thy
people, these are thy people.
Turn not away, my God, from these thy
people, for they belong to thee.
And what will the heathens say if you
destroy the people?
I don't have to know all that means.
I only know that it's terrible enough just
to read it.
I will tear, take that candlestick out of
its place.
So there's danger that we Christians should simply
be utilitarian Christians, using Jesus Christ as an
escape hatch from hell, that we should simply
use the Lord as we use insurance and
social security and whatever else fits into our
scheme of self-promotion.
But worship, worship, my brethren.
God has made us to worship, and the
man who doesn't know how to worship doesn't
know, doesn't know the purpose of his creation.
I'd like to analyze worship if I could
a little bit.
It can't be done.
It lies beyond, it lies beyond the intellect.
But we can stand and at least admire
and walk around her holy battlements and see
the gates of Jerusalem and look a little.
Now what is it?
I think that worship is an attitude.
It is a state of mind, a sustained
act, if you could allow that, subject to
degrees of perfection and intensity, certainly, because not
even the apostles could worship God always with
the same degree of intensity.
And all the great mystics and devotional writers
that I have heard of during the years
and have read about and seen their hymns
and their devotional works, they all claim that
the intensity and degree of worship rises and
falls, that it's impossible to sustain it too
long.
Even on the mountaintop there they could not
stay too long, the Lord said, want down
the hill.
So I do not claim that this is
to be a continuous unbroken, and yet it
is to be unbroken in some measure, because
it embodies a number of factors, mental, spiritual,
and emotional worship does.
And let me, let me point to some
of the factors.
One is boundless confidence in the character of
God.
And nobody can worship God unless he has
this boundless confidence in the character of God.
You see, confidence is necessary to respect.
You cannot respect anybody you have no confidence
in.
And of course you cannot worship anyone you
do not respect.
So that we have to have respect raised
to the nth degree.
We must have respect that that believes with
absolute confidence in God, in the character of
God, in the in the being of God.
And worship rises or falls depending upon the
the idea that the church has of God,
whether it is high or low.
Now it so happens that the evangelical concept
of God is very low today.
An Englishman by the name of Phillips, the
man who has made the translations, wrote a
little book that somebody put in my hand
called Your God is Too Small.
Well, it is true, the God of the
evangelical is too small.
We can put him in our pocket, or
put him up the way some of our
friends do to keep us from having accidents.
I threatened to buy Brother Erickson a plastic
saint put up in front of his car
to keep him from having accidents.
Doesn't protect you from policemen because I saw
a police tagging a car that had a
plastic saint on it one time.
And I said to the cop, well I
learned one thing, saints don't protect you from
cops.
He said, no they don't.
I got so many to tagging them, I'm
tagging them.
He said they're following me around.
If I don't do it, they'll get me.
So this God we have now, this God
isn't much bigger than Saint Christopher.
And the God of popular Christianity can't be
worshipped because he isn't respected.
And he isn't respected because he's not big
enough.
And the sovereign God of our fathers that
we sing about, the God of Abraham that
the Jews sang about, the God of Abraham,
praise.
And that mighty God, that mighty God brought
men to their knees with great respect.
And so boundless confidence is first.
And the second is admiration.
Now admiration is the appreciation of the excellency
of anything.
And man is made capable of appreciating excellency.
If you were to bring a canary or
a nightingale or a mockingbird in here and
play this piano to it, I suppose it
wouldn't.
I've understood canaries will sing when you turn
the radio on.
I guess they do appreciate a little, but
you, they certainly wouldn't be able to appreciate
as much as an audience like this.
They certainly wouldn't be able to understand the
beauty of music.
And certainly the lower creatures have not in
them the ability to appreciate or to admire
as we do.
God has made us with ability to admire.
And then he has given himself to us
as the object of our boundless, unlimited admiration.
And this can grow, this admiration.
It can grow in knowledge and in depth
till it fills the heart with wonder and
delight.
To admire God, just to admire God, not
to admire people.
I quite agree with the young man's prayer
here tonight.
Oh God, save us from people and from
big shots.
He didn't use, he won't use slang the
way I do, but save us, oh Lord,
from people.
We're always hearing the big fella did this,
another big fella did that, another big fella
did that, and I feel like crying.
Oh God, we have heard man's voice, and
we're weary.
Speak thou to us, oh Lord, for I
want to admire God.
I can admire man who was made in
the image of God, but my admiration for
man is only because he was made in
the image of God.
God is the object of our admiration, my
brethren.
And when we admire, did you ever hear
music?
You know, there are some things that are
so wonderful that you can't use them.
Matthew Arnold said about the poetry of Burns,
he said that some of the poetry of
Burns is so piercingly, piercingly, so penetratingly pathetic,
such piercing papers in it that it hurts
you.
You can't read it.
And have you ever heard a piece of
music that hurts you?
Hurts you?
That you bent over with pain when you
admired it to a point where it got
the better of you.
And there are certain great works of literature
like that.
Certain great passages in Milton and Shakespeare are
so great that the average rank and file
can't rise to take it.
It's too deep and wonderful.
So when we admire enough, it becomes a
delightful pain.
It becomes an enjoyable agony within the bosom.
Agony, why?
Because we're not big enough inside.
God is going to make us bigger.
He's going to make us—Paul cried, Be thou
enlarged.
Thou art constricted, he said, within your heart.
Be enlarged.
And he wants to make us big enough
to admire God and admire him with wonder
and delight.
And then following in this analysis is fascination.
That is, it's to be filled with a
moral excitement.
I'd never have been able to understand, and
I can't to this day, the solemn, sad,
long-faced, composed, poised, self-possessed, temperate, and
cold people who sing hymns and are not
affected by them, who hear the scripture but
are not affected, who pray in a monotonous
drone.
I've not been able to understand them because
the fascination of worship is a moral excitement,
and it excites us inside.
And by excitement, I use the word mean
when I say excitement.
There's an excitement about love, an excitement about
adoration.
And this fascination, it captivates and it charms
and it entrances.
And the Christian who's ever seen God in
holy worship, I say he's been struck with
astonished wonder at the inconceivable elevation, at the
magnitude and splendor of the being we call
God.
And I pray that God will send to
us again.
I pray that he will send to us
again men out of the fire, men who've
walked up and down in the midst of
the storms of fire, and can come back
to the world not to be great founders
or great promoters or great mixers, but whose
presence with us is as the presence of
an angel.
When they looked upon the face of Stephen,
they saw him as the face, his face
as the face of an angel.
Because he said, I saw, I see Jesus
lifted up, I see him standing.
And his face shone.
The shining of the face of Stephen has
done more to illuminate the church of the
living God than ten thousand theologians and cold
teachers of the law.
My brethren, we need men out of the
fire again.
We need bold, terrible men.
We need men and women who have fought
their way and prayed their way and been
scorned maybe and called fanatics and scoffed at
and named every name as this song says,
the colored song, when they've called me everything
but a Christian.
There were Christians, but they called them everything
but a Christian.
And some of these will have to go
through the fire and be called everything but
a Christian to push in and beat their
way past the flesh and the world and
the devil and cold Christians and dead deacons
and elders that are cold in the general
level of things.
And they'll have to push themselves in until
they're fascinated by what they see and find
there.
Elijah came down from the mountains of Tishbe,
girded about the loins with a leathern girdle
and walked into the presence of the king
and said, you don't know who I am,
but I am Elijah.
I stand in the presence of God.
And that's why he could command fire when
the occasion required it.
And Ezekiel, before God ever allowed him to
be a preacher at all, had to have
this first chapter experience that I read part
of tonight.
Isaiah, before he could ever write his great
book, had to see God high and lifted
up with his train filling the temple and
had to hear the vibrant voice of the
seraphim crying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God Almighty.
And so it was with some of the
other prophets, Jeremiah, and so it was with
some of the apostles.
Paul could never, that stiff, cold, hard man
of theology and logic, he never would have
been the blazing apostle, terrific in his heat,
except he'd had that experience on Damascus Road
when God's light shone round about him brighter
than midday and blinded him for three days.
Oh, that we might raise up some people,
I don't care whether they're Baptists, Presbyterians, Reformed,
or what they call themselves.
I wouldn't ask God to let them come
out of this society of ours.
If we have lost our worship, then our
candlestick will be removed.
I would only pray that God would raise
them up, that is all.
As old brother MacArthur used to say, I'll
follow the man with oil on his forehead,
and I'll follow the man with the flame
that sits there, and I don't care what
denomination he calls himself.
So fascination, the inconceivable brightness, the unbelievable elevation,
the magnitude and the splendor of God, when
shines in upon a human heart, it changes
things, brethren, and we're not what we used
to be.
It doesn't kill our sense of humor, but
it chastens it.
It doesn't destroy all fun, but it takes
levity out of the system, so we never
can again be anything but serious-minded men
and women.
And I pray God it may be so.
But passing on to adoration, adoration.
Adoration, of course, is the state of adoring.
It is to love with all the power
within us.
It is to love with fear, and with
wonder, and with yearning, and with all.
Our trouble is, dear people, we have hearts
as big as the world, and the object
of our love, the smallest little tease in
the pub, that's our difficulty.
That's what's the matter with the people out
on the highways tonight.
That's what's the matter with the women that
keep the houses down here.
That's what's the matter with the men who
stand and belch over the bar and drink
their beer in some saloon tonight.
That's what's the matter with the women who
go into weird cults up on the Gold
Coast because they have too much of their
husband's money to know what to do with.
That's the matter with the people who are
out tonight raising hell all over the world.
God has given them ability to love and
they can't find anything worthy of their love.
Out in Hollywood it leaps like a drunk
bird from one bow to another.
Jumps here and then shucks it off and
jumps there, and shucks it off and jumps
there until they're married as much as three
and four and eight, ten times.
Because they're trying to find something to love
and they can't find anything worthy of their
love.
God made them too big inside.
Thou has said eternity in their heart.
Even a fallen man, even the fallen chariot
never found again an object worthy of his
love.
And all the devils that have fallen and
the beings, the angels that fell out have
never found an object worthy of their love.
Never, never.
That's why I grieve when I see someone
made in the image of God off in
a little sidetrack doing silly things, foolish things.
Little, spending their lives doing little things.
There died some year or so ago a
great woman, the greatest woman athlete probably that
ever lived, Babe Didrikson.
And I was discussing Babe Didrikson with one
of the men of the church, penetrating mine,
he has, and he said, well, she was
a great woman unquestionably, but it seems too
bad that she should have dedicated her greatness
to jumping over things and knocking little balls
and doing little things that were unworthy of
respect.
If you want to do that to keep
you in good shape, all right, I stretch
rubber bands in order to keep me healthy.
And so you go ahead and do that
if you want to, I don't mind.
But to dedicate your life to it, my
friend, to dedicate your life to it.
There are men who start the last of
April and end in the first week in
October and every day, except when they're traveling,
they're looking at ballgames.
Well, it seems to me this is an
awful thing.
When God has made our heart as big
as the world, that we should pick out
a tiny little object and kneel before its
ambition, or at least love it so much.
Jesus, when they came to him and said,
what is the great commandment of the law?
He said, this is the greatest commandment.
Thou shall love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart and with all thy mind
and strength and with all the power in
you, you are to love God.
So adoration is love with fear and wonder
and yearning and awe.
When Jesus walked among men, he affected them
two ways, and sometimes two ways at once.
He affected them with a magnetic drawing.
He affected them with a fear that repulsed.
And the same heart that yearned for God
with a great yearning also in awe, some
fear might have been repulsed by the greatness
and elevation and magnitude of the being we
call God.
This is not only to love, but it's
to feel a possessiveness, a crying mind.
Go through your Bible and see how many
times that men say, mine to God, my,
mine to God.
They tell us the personal pronoun shouldn't be
used in religion.
That's the difficulty with it.
We're using it about ourselves and about what
we've done and about where we've been and
about who we know and about what we
own.
But we're afraid to use it about our
relation to God.
And one of the great theologians who was
a Luther said, the whole heart of religion
lies in its personal pronoun.
When the human heart cries with a psalmist
or a prophet or an apostle or a
mystic, mine, mine, mine, God is mine.
And when the human heart worships God and
says, mine, God says, yes, I am.
I'm yours.
So shall the King greatly desire thy beauty.
For he is thy Lord, worship thou him.
And at times, at times, all this rises
to the place of breathless silence, wrapped in
deep, adoring silence.
Jesus, Lord, I dare not move, lest I
lose the smallest saying meant to catch the
ear.
Now, when all these are present, these mental,
emotional, and spiritual factors are present continually.
They're present in varying degrees, but when they're
present, they're present in song and in praise
and in prayer and in mental prayer, in
inward prayer, in ejaculatory prayer, kept blazing by
long seasons of prayer.
They condition our thoughts and our words and
our deeds.
And they give us a philosophy of life.
They give us an outlook, a vantage point.
They give us what the moderns like to
call a scale of values.
That's all right, because the don't throw it
away.
But they give us a scale of values.
We value some things more than others, and
we learn what is valuable and what isn't.
And it hallows every place and every time
and every place.
And it can do that for all of
us.
And it gives back the glory which Jesus
had with the Father before the world was.
It prepares the heart to worship.
When Jesus said, come unto me, all ye
that labor and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest, he talked about a
burden.
And what was that burden?
It was the burden of the tuneless heart.
It was the burden of the voiceless nightingale.
It was the burden of the heart that
was capable of tremendous all but infinite love
that couldn't find an object.
It was the burden of the man whose
tongue was made to praise God, but it
had been guilty in his mouth for all
the years.
And what is the rest?
The rest is, among other things, the rest
of adoration.
My brethren, you will learn more in a
half hour of adoring silence in the presence
of God with your Bible than you will
learn in all the schools.
And I believe in the schools.
I've supported the schools.
I've promoted them.
I've preached to their people.
I've done everything possible, and I've never talked
them down.
But you will learn more of God.
Wesley said it.
Augustine said it.
Thomas Acampus said it.
And I've repeated it a thousand times.
But a little while spent adoring, a little
while spent caught between fear and fascination, between
joy and repentance or the sharp pangs of
repentance, adoring God, you will learn more, more
of light, more, more of light than you
will ever find at any other time.
O Father, we beseech thee for all of
these.
Take them through the fire and through the
flood, but above all things, through the blood.
And if they have to sit by the
river Kebar, as Ezekiel did, or be thrown
down into a pit, as Jeremiah was, or
be surrounded by dancing fanatical foes, as Elijah
was, or be on the Isle of Patmos,
as John was, or to fall flat down
in a faint, as Daniel did, oh, whatever
the cost, we pray thee, make Christian worshipers
out of these men and women.
This we ask in Jesus' name.
Everybody stand by their Maccabean leaders as a
whole.