While he is a God of mathematical exactness,
he is also a God that could take
babies in his arms and pat their heads
and smile.
He is a God that could forgive and
a God that does forgive.
So we had better make the study of
this Bible of ours the business of our
lives, to find out what God is, and
then conform our views to God.
And then ourselves, that's the second thing where
we make a mistake in any kind of
false teaching.
Because any wrong idea of God is bound
to give us a wrong idea of ourselves.
Some people approach God through science, through the
study of anthropology.
But anthropology without theology is bound to arrive
at an error at last, bound to arrive
at a dead-end street.
You and I can only explain ourselves in
the light of the doctrine that God made
us, out of the dust of the ground
and blew into our nostrils a breath of
life, and so man became a living soul.
Science has discovered many things about God, but
they have not discovered it in context.
They have not begun with God and reasoned
down to his world.
No, they have begun with the world and
tried to reason up with God and stopped
short of finding God.
And the result is only tragic to everybody.
If a man is wrong about God, he
is bound to be wrong about himself.
If he is wrong about the artist, he
will be wrong about the picture.
If he is wrong about the potter, he
will be wrong about the vessel.
If he is wrong about God, he will
be wrong about the creature.
So, while multiplying scientific facts all around about
us, men are wrong because they have let
God out and say in their heart there
is no God.
Or if there is a God, he is
a God of mathematics and laws, but not
the God as the Bible makes him out
to be.
That is all wrong.
And my friend, you cannot know truth about
yourself unless you first know truth about God.
You came from the hand of God and
back to God you must go for better,
for worse, for judgment or for blessing.
And until we take God in and understand
God and let God be what he claims
to be and believe about ourselves what God
says about us, we are believing false doctrine.
If you believe you are any better than
God says you are, you are in error.
If you believe you are any different from
what God says you are, you are in
error.
You have falsified the data, or somebody has
falsified the data and made you a victim.
No, no, my brother, believe about yourself what
God says about you.
Believe you are as bad as God says
you are, and believe you are as far
from him as God says you are, and
then believe in Christ, you can come as
near to him as he says you can.
And accept what he says about you as
being truth.
Then there is sin.
Now, sin cannot be understood until we believe
in God and believe what God has said
about ourselves.
Sin is that intrusive phenomenon, that ever-present
ubiquitous phenomenon.
There it is, hate and lying and dishonesty
and murder and crime and injustice, necessitating law
and police and jails and gallowses and locks
and graves.
But there are those who would deny it,
and of course that's falsifying the data.
There are those who would rename it, and
they're falsifying data.
There are those who would treat it as
a disease, and they're falsifying data.
God said that it's a breaking of the
law.
God said it's a rebellion against his will.
God said that it's a nature inherited from
our fathers and mothers.
God said that it's an act against the
faith and love and mercy of God.
God said it's rebellion against the constitutive authority
of the majesty on high.
God said it's iniquity and personally chargeable to
the one who commits it.
God says the soul that sinneth shall die.
We had better believe about sin, what God
says about sin, or we will be falsifying
the data.
And falsified data in spiritual things is more
terribly wrong, and will bring more terrible consequences
than falsifying data in material things.
The doctor who miscounts the number or the
amount of that which he gives a patient
may kill the patient.
That would be only to destroy a body.
The preacher who misjudges or miscounts the truth
concerning sin and man and God will damn
his hearers, which is infinitely more terrible.
Truth concerning God means that I must accept
God's sovereignty, God's holiness, God's justice, God's grace,
God's love, and all that the Bible says
about God.
Concerning myself, it requires that I must believe
in myself as a fallen image of God,
one who once bore his image but fell.
Now, the fourth is Christ himself.
For if I do not have a right
concept of God and of myself and of
sin, then I will have a twisted and
imperfect concept of Christ.
And I have no hesitation in saying that
it is my honest and charitable conviction that
the Christ of the average religionist today is
not the Christ of the Bible at all,
but a manufactured Christ, a Christ painted on
canvas, a Christ drawn from cheap poetry, a
Christ of the liberal and the soft and
timid person, a Christ that has not in
him the iron and the trury and the
anger, as well as the love and grace
and mercy that he had who walked in
Galilee.
If I have a low conception of God,
I have a low conception of myself, and
if I have a low conception of myself,
I have a dangerous conception of sin.
And if I have a dangerous conception of
sin, I have a degraded conception of Christ.
So here is the way it works.
God is reduced and man is degraded and
sin is underestimated and Christ is disparaged.
No wonder Jude said the terrible things that
he said.
And I recommend that some of you that
are so nice, you're no good.
I recommend you read the book of Jude
once.
I recommend you read that book of Jude.
Get your teeth filed and to a sharp
eating edge.
Get your teeth into something.
Dare to believe something.
Dare to stand for God.
This awful day of so-called tolerance, this
awful day when men are ready to believe
anything.
The newspapers will carry headlines about the tragically
mistaken group they now call, after four or
five changes of name, Jehovah's Witnesses or Father
Divine or what have you.
No, my brethren, you and I are not
called to smile and smile and smile.
We are called sometimes to frown and rebuke
with all long-suffering and doctrine.
We must contend but not be contentious.
We must preserve truth but injure no man.
We must destroy error but not harm people.
Where men were wrong in other days, they
contended and in contending became contentious.
They tried to preserve truth and so to
do it they destroyed those who held error.
All this is wrong.
Let us preserve truth but injure no man.
Faith of our fathers, we will love both
friend and foe in all our strife and
love thee too, to preach thee to whose
love knows how, a kindly, even, virtuous life.
In closing, here is what he says to
us.
He says in verse 19, Let's pity them,
let's be sorry, let's pray for them, let's
weep over them, let's turn away from them.
Verse 20, Now he has come to his
own, true believers in God and Christ.
Then he gives them four or five things
to do.
I'll pass swiftly over them.
Building up yourselves on your most holy faith.
Are you these days building up yourselves?
Have you read a book of the Bible
through recently?
Have you done any memorization of scripture texts
or scriptures these days?
Have you sought to know God or are
you looking to the radio for your religion?
Or have you a Bible and do you
study it?
Build up yourselves on your most holy faith.
That's one.
Praying in the Holy Ghost.
I do not hesitate to say that most
praying is not in the Holy Ghost.
The reason we do not pray in the
Holy Ghost is because we do not have
the Holy Ghost in us.
No man can pray in the Spirit except
his heart is a habitation to the Spirit.
It's only as the Holy Ghost has unlimited
sway within us that we are able to
pray in the Holy Ghost.
I do not hesitate to say that five
minutes of prayer in the Holy Ghost will
be worth more than one year of hit
and miss praying that isn't in the Holy
Ghost.
Praying in the Holy Ghost.
Third, keep yourselves in the love of God.
Be true to the faith, but be charitable
to those who are in error.
Never feel any contempt for anybody.
No Christian has any right to feel contempt,
for contempt is an emotion that can only
come out of pride.
So let's feel no contempt.
Let's be charitable and loving toward all while
we keep ourselves in the love of God.
And then, looking for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.
And of course, that is the second coming
of Jesus.
Looking for Jesus Christ's coming.
The mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ that
is coming.
Wonderful, isn't it?
That his mercy will show itself that he
is coming.
Even his mercy will show itself then, as
it did on the cross, as it does
in receiving sinners, as it does in patiently
looking after us, Christians, and it will show
itself at the coming of Jesus Christ unto
eternal life.
Then, verse 22, If some have compassion, making
a difference, and others save with fear, pulling
them out of the fire, hating even the
garments spotted by the flesh, there is a
charge that we should win others, that we
should do everything in our power to bring
others to Christ.
Saving them with fear, pulling them out of
the fire.
Wesley, all his life, referred to himself as
a brand plucked from the burning.
Never called himself anything else than a brand
plucked from the burning.
He knew that he was on fire already
with the hot flames of hell when Jesus
Christ grabbed him out of the fiery pit
and extinguished the fire by his own blood.
Wesley became Wesley.
He never dared to rise and think of
himself as a great Oxford man or a
great genius.
Always he thought of himself as a brand
plucked from the burning.
So now we look forward to Jesus Christ's
coming, looking for the mercy of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Here is what the old silk weaver said
about it.
These are a few short lines from Thurston.
There is a balm for every pain, a
medicine for all sorrow.
The eye turned backward to the cross and
forward to the morgue.
That's what Paul said.
If ye do show forth the Lord's death,
till what?
Till he come.
There is a balm for every pain, a
medicine for all sorrow.
Some of the old saints in days gone
by called the communion service the medicine of
immortality.
We couldn't follow them in every one of
their beliefs, but that I think they were
right.
The medicine for all sorrow, an eye turned
backward to the cross and forward to the
morgue.
The morgue of the glory and the psalm,
when he shall come.
The morgue of the harping and the palm
and the welcome home.
Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways.
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the heath?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the liberals?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to the dead church?
Meantime, what are we going to do?
Give up to those who have chosen to
walk in the low shadows of Christianity?
Never dare to contend without being contentious.
Dare to preserve truth without hurting people.
Dare to love and be charitable and dare.
Meantime, in his beloved hands are ways.
And on his heart, the wandering heart at
rest.
And comfort for the weary one who lays
his head upon his breast.
Thank God for the old silkweeds who walked
with these saviors.
It was not that God took them.
So let us think of the medicine of
immortality today.
Let us, by the grace of God, with
charity for all and hatred toward none, with
determination to be loyal to truth, if it
kills us, let us put our chin a
little higher and our knees a little lower.
Let's look a little further in to the
throne of God, for Jesus Christ is at
the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
Let us be courageous, attentive, severe
but kind.
Let us pray in the Holy Ghost and
keep ourselves in the love of God and
build ourselves up in the most holy faith
and win all we can until the day
of the glory and the song.
Amen.