Pilgrim's Progress, a Christian is given certain
information, instruction, by one of the characters, the
evangelist or someone else, and he says, these
things do make me both hope and fear.
And I feel the same way when I
come to the Bible, particularly the writings of
Paul or the sayings of Jesus.
They do make me both to hope and
to fear.
They both encourage me and make me ashamed.
I am ashamed, for instance, that the man
Paul in prison could write a letter, a
brief letter, I think probably, well it would
easily go on two typewritten pages, and yet
pack it so full of truth that it
takes me weeks to go over it, and
then I don't hope to get everything that's
there.
For instance, this morning, in the third chapter
of Titus, for that's the book I have
been preaching from in the mornings as you
know and to which I now refer, the
third chapter of Titus, the eighth verse, there
are a little line and a saying which
he simply threw in, Paul just threw that
in.
If anything that's inspired can be said to
be thrown in, I do not mean to
slight what he said, I only mean to
say that to him this obviously wasn't a
critically important thing, and yet I find that
I can, I can't get by it, I
have to preach a whole sermon on it.
Here are the words, these things are good
and profitable under man.
Now Paul, I say, put that in as
a kind of salty saying, and yet it
makes, it gives me material for a whole
talk.
That's humiliating to me to know that the
man of God, as he was inspired by
the Holy Ghost, can put into a few
words that which it takes me a whole
sermon to fathom.
Well here we have the saying, these things
are good and profitable under man.
Now what things?
Possibly these things, that men might be careful
to maintain good works, but more likely all
these things, from verse 2 or chapter 2
verse 1 on, where Paul says, speak thou
the things which become sound doctrine, for these
things are good and profitable under man.
He said that aged men were to live
gravely and temperately and patiently, aged women were
to live and become of holiness, young women
were to be sober, discreet, keepers at home,
good, obedient, young men were to be sober
minded, and that workmen were to work as
Christians, and that all down he tells us
how we're to live, and then says we're
to be subject under principalities and powers and
obey magistrates, then he says, and then we,
another thing I want you to keep saying
is, that everybody that believes in God should
be careful to maintain good works, and then
sort of adds it up at the bottom,
because these things are good and profitable under
man.
I know that you don't want a lesson
in semantics, nor do you want a lesson
in English, but let's look a minute at
that word good.
These things are good.
The word good has a long list of
meanings in the average dictionary, because it's one
of those workhorse words that you can get
on and ride anytime, and because it just
means so many things, but here the thought
of morality is not present.
When he says these things are good, he
doesn't mean these things are morally good, virtuous.
They are all right, I suppose, if things
can be, but that isn't what he means.
What he means is these things are valuable
to you.
These things are to your advantage and profit.
That's what he means by good.
You'll find exactly the same Greek word we
have in our English, but the same original
word where it says some fell into good
ground.
Now good ground wasn't ground morally good, virtuous.
A hunk of earth can't be morally good.
A turned-over sod can't be virtuous, but
it means valuable and profitable.
There is soil, so work out that you
can plant something in it, and it will
either not come up at all, or if
it does, it will be a scrub and
that will produce practically no fruit at all.
There's other ground.
You can see it as you go, say,
take a train here and go through Indiana
and Ohio, and as you go through, you
see the great black field.
Now those fields are originally buffalo walls, probably,
and the buffaloes beat with their hooves over
the centuries down into the ground.
They reeds and rashes and grass and weeds
until it's literally alive with power and fruitfulness.
The result is they can grow almost anything
over there.
The great truck farms that are at least
one of the places where we get our
onions and lettuce and tomatoes and we serve
on our tables all over the United States.
At good ground, although it's not morally good,
the idea of virtue isn't there, then we
say they bring us forth good fruit.
There are trees that bring forth fruit that
can be eaten, good fruit, profitable fruit.
Then there are trees that bring forth only
lumpy, small, sour, wormy fruit that's no good,
and we have the same repeater said, Lord
it is good for us to be here.
He didn't mean this is a morally holy
place.
He meant it's advantageous, it's a good thing
for us, this is a great place to
be.
Now with that definition, I've gone way around
Robin Hood's celebrated barn to get to the
meaning, and now let's apply that meaning a
little.
Say suppose there's a sick man and the
doctor says to him now, you take this
treatment.
It won't be pleasant but it'll be good
for you, you'll be well in ten days.
That is a good thing.
It's good in the sense that it is
advantageous, it's profitable to him, you'll get well
if you take it.
We say to a starving child, here eat
this, this will be good for you.
The child eats it, it nourishes the little
body, and pretty soon the eyes begin to
shine again, and the color come back into
the face, the good food, that is advantageous,
profitable food, has made the little one healthy
again.
We say to an intelligent young man, it
is good for you that you should finish
high school, and he comes around again and
says, now I'm finished high school, what shall
I do?
And we say, well you're intelligent, I believe
you're a college material, it's good for you,
go on, go on to school and learn.
We mean not that the college is going
to be a morally good place, although it
should be that certainly true, but we mean
if you study certain subjects they'll profit you.
So that's what Paul meant when he said
these things are good and profitable unto men.
In other words, God always has the good
and the profit of people in mind.
If you could just put that down, and
after you've heard that, then if we dismiss
and you go home, if you'll remember that,
and take that with you, and hold that
as a tenet of your faith, it will
help you in this wild, wicked old world.
Almost everybody that comes to us comes for
their own profit.
They come to you, and these things are
good and profitable unto them.
Somebody comes to your door selling you something,
and it's because if he can make a
sale it'll be good and profitable unto him,
but he's not thinking about you.
It is so with everything.
They sing anthems about cigarettes now, and that's
because it's good and profitable unto the man
who is selling the cigarettes.
That it gives the man who smokes it
lung cancer, that means nothing to them.
He'll have a son who will be ready
by the time the old man dies of
lung cancer, he'll have a son whom he's
taught to smoke the dirty thing, and there
he'll be, and his family will be good.
They know it's good and profitable unto them.
But it's wonderful to hear it turned around,
and to hear it said, God always thinks
of that which is good and profitable unto
us.
That when God approaches us with an exhortation,
a command, he never comes saying this will
be good for me, but this is good
for you.
This will be good for you.
The whole book of God is like that.
When we rise to the everlasting, when we
rise to the eternal, how beautiful and how
solemn it all is.
For that sick man, though he take that
treatment and get well, he'll later die, notwithstanding,
and if the starving child eats the food
and gets its health back, it will die
after a while, too.
The student will wither away and cease to
need the learning that he with such great
pain managed to get at the college or
university.
So that's only for time.
We say go ahead, eat, drink, take care
of yourself, learn, read, think.
These are good and profitable things, but we
realize that we're thinking in time and talking
in time.
These things are good and profitable for time,
but when God speaks to a man, he
says these things I say to you are
good and profitable to you forever.
God always thinks in terms of eternity and
thinks forever.
Isn't it a solemn and a wonderful thought
that you have in your bosom that which
time can't wear out?
Isn't it a wonderful that you have in
your breast that which the passing of the
centuries cannot diminish or that cannot grow old
with the passing of the years?
One of these times, when people get back
and we're settled again, we're in our three
worst Sundays of the year, but when we
get around that we'll have our people with
us, I'm going to start a series, oh
I'm going to call it a journey into
God.
Then before I get to that, I want
to preach a sermon called the space age
seen from above.
I've been, I've heard enough about this space
age, and I can only take things so
long, and I've been kicked around enough about
this space age deal, and I'm going to
reply now, Christians going to reply, what about
this space age business, and I'm going to
think from the throne down, and when you
think from the throne down brother, you're not
the slightest bit worried about vanguards or any
of the rest.
If they blow up or go up, it
makes no difference, because you're thinking from the
throne down, but I won't preach my sermon,
I'll wait for the time, and he'll come
in here, all right.
Now think about the eternal soul of the
man.
Here he is, what space to that man,
what time to that man, what space or
time to that man, what matter to that
man, what motion and law and attraction and
gravitational pull and the zones of radiation, an
empty space, what's that to the man?
He, God Almighty made him of a different
material altogether, he lives differently, he's of another
matter altogether, nothing to him.
So God says now here, I've given you
that which cannot wither, which cannot die, which
cannot cease to be at any rate, and
what shall it profit you to gain the
whole world and lose your soul?
God made the earth and he made man
upon it, and he wills the good of
that man.
God wills, vigorously, actively wills the good of
that man.
If we could get a hold of a
half a dozen great ideas, and they begin
to then get a hold of us, it
would change our whole outlook.
One is that God is not passive and
sluggish, waiting to be stimulated, but that God
is the active aggressor, waiting for us to
recognize it.
If we could only see that, that God
wills actively and aggressively my highest good for
the longest time, and he says these things
are good and profitable, he means this will
be advantageous to you while the ages roll,
this will profit you as long as the
stars burn, and when I've wiped them out
as a child, wiped out a picture off
a blackboard, you'll still be there eternally profiting
by these things.
Now God means the fullest development of my
soul, and he makes the appropriate preparation for
it, beyond death and beyond the resurrection, and
in the heaven above and in the fellowship
of God forever.
Now good and profitable, I think that these
words could be written over everything that God
ever said or did in his relation to
man.
This is good and profitable for you, God's
children would only find that out and stop
fighting.
You know there's a little saying in the
world, they say don't fight it, sort of
cute little saying people have, well don't fight
it, and so they just give up to
the deal, whatever it happens to be.
But if we could only remember that the
will of God is not something to fight,
but something to accept joyously, it would change
our whole lives.
When God made the garden, he made, or
made Eden, he made a garden eastward in
Eden, and he said there to the man,
now this is good and profitable for you,
and he put the man in there and
said this is good and profitable, and he
made certain fruits and he said now these
are all for you, look at them hanging
there, all of these trees, here's one, don't
bother that, because for my own reasons I
have proscribed that, but all the rest of
the garden's yours, and these things are good
and profitable for you.
And then when man had disobeyed and sinned,
God cast him out of the garden, and
why?
Because it was good and profitable for him
that he should not remain in the garden,
each of the trees that would fix him
like a photograph plate, so that he never
could change.
God put the man out where he could
be fluid and malleable and changeable, so God
could get hold of him and change him
back from his sinful state, back to his,
back to holiness.
So God drove him out of the garden,
and of course man mourned his trip out
of the garden, Milton shows Adam and Eve
hand-in-hand walking away from the gate
of the garden, looking pensively back over their
shoulder at what had once been their happy
home, and then hand-in-hand they went
out into the world.
But it was good and profitable for them
that they should.
That's always God's motto, this is good for
you, this is profitable for you.
And then come all down to the scriptures,
when God instituted sacrifice and redemption.
He said, here, slay this animal, put the
blood on the altar, confess your sins for
that's good and that's profitable for you.
And later on, when the time came, that
Mary, as the little song says, had a
baby.
And they named his name Jesus all across
the world.
God wrote, this is good and profitable for
you, this is good and profitable, and when
Jesus opened his mouth and taught them, it
was to their good and their profit.
And when he died on the cross, if
they'd had eyes to see, they could have
seen, written in letters of fire, this is
good and profitable for all men.
For God means it always to be so.
It is the devil's calumny, the devil's libel,
that God looks upon men seeking to find
fault and to punish and to harm.
The devil brought that dirty, scandalous libel to
Eve and got her to sin.
And he's been telling every one of Eve's
children from that hour to this.
There sits God on the throne, the great
bully, and you're weak and helpless and short
-lived and you've got eternity to throw his
weight around.
And so they turned the minds of people
against God, forgetting that God gave man free
will and said, this is good and profitable
for you.
God gave man the world and said, it's
good and profitable for you.
And God sent his son to die and
raised him from the dead and set him
at his own right hand and said, this
is for your profit, this is for your
good.
If we could only remember that, know that
all we've got is thinking of our good
and our profit.
Let's suppose it's a little baby.
Let's think it's a little baby.
There, there he lies, the sheep.
There, there they lie, face down, cheeks red,
hair tousled, one sock kicked off, the other
is still on.
Indeed, restful, healthy slumber.
And the parents pass by and tiptoe in
and see.
What do they think about?
And they go out again smiling.
Are they going to plan how they can
get him?
How they can harm him?
Are they going to sit out in the
living room and plan the blocks and hindrances
they can put in his way?
Are they going to teach him evil, harm
him?
No, you know better than that.
Every father that's normal, they have normal few,
I can't tell you about them.
But every normal father thinks about his family.
Every normal father.
Well, I remember, this wasn't a spiritual thing
to do, but it was a perfectly normal
thing to do.
If I'd have been more spiritual, I wouldn't
have done it.
But being just where I was, I did
it, and it was perfectly normal.
I used to think of my six boys,
and I used to think if I should
die or something should happen to me, what
would happen to them, and I used to
wake up in a state of panic way
back there.
I got over it, but it was normal.
I was thinking of the welfare of those
boys.
And every normal father or every normal mother
thinks only of the welfare of the children.
And if ye, being evil, know how to
give good gifts unto your children, how much
more will your heavenly Father give good things
to those that ask him?
Because God is aggressively determined that he will
give you that which is good for you,
that which will profit you the longest time.
So, God sends these things to us.
The promises, the warnings, the exhortations, there they
are.
Some of them are pretty severe, but if
you'll notice and read the fine print, you'll
see there, this is good for you, this
is profitable for you.
And then when it comes to the things
we don't like, sorrows and pain and loss
and tribulations, nobody ever will love them yet.
Nobody ever rushed headlong into pain deliberately yet.
Even the man who takes a gun and
puts it to his temple knows he's going
to cause himself sharp pain, but it'll only
be for an instant and then his pain
will be over, so he thinks.
So he's trying to escape pain, not trying
to run into it.
And yet when God allows them to come,
he says, this is good for you, and
I'm thinking of your problem.
Do you ever teach, do you ever have
anybody in your family take piano lessons?
You know, the easiest thing in the world
is to get them to start, and the
hardest thing is to keep them at it.
You know that?
The easiest thing in the world, it's a
romance.
Ooh, I'm going to take piano.
So off they go.
And for the first week, you can hardly
get them loose from the piano.
Second week, they taper off.
Third week, you have to keep reminding them.
Fourth week, threatening them.
And then after that, if you've got good
sense, you call the whole thing off.
Because you know, if you have to drive
them to the piano, they'll never be Horowitz
anyway.
Well, the point I'm trying to make is
that God has to make us do some
things, sort of.
I know we're free will, but sometimes the
Lord puts a little pressure on us.
And when we look up into his face
questioningly, he says, now this is good for
you.
This is profitable for you.
When I was a small boy, I used
to have the unfortunate habit of picking apples
off the tree before they were ripe and
eating them, with the result that you can
easily guess, but which I, for certain reasons,
am not going to go into.
And of course, I'd be sick.
I'd be in bed, cramped and miserable, and
my mother would go to the doctor.
Now personally, I think that probably the doctor
gave the same powder.
They tasted the same and looked the same,
no matter what I had for the first
14 years of my life.
Same doctor brought me into the world, fed
me this white powder, and I think it
probably was the same stuff.
But at least the point was, my mother
thought it was good for me, and so
she made me take it.
It was bitter.
The idea in that day was, the worse
it tasted, the better it would be for
you.
I think that that probably was taught in
the medical school at that time.
Now I don't know whether that's true, but
I do know this, that sometimes God gives
you bitter medicine and you might just as
well face up to it.
This modern notion that Christianity is one huge
Sunday school picnic with a swim thrown in.
It's all wrong, my brethren.
It's all wrong.
The Christian life is a reasonably happy life,
and if you live close to God, a
very happy life.
But a life shot through and through with
sorrows and hardships and pains and tribulations.
And these sorrows and tribulations are not God's
highest will, for there are not going to
be any of them in heaven.
But in this mixed up world where we
are now, and with us in the shape
we are, they're necessary to us.
So the Lord gives us the bitter medicine
and says, now this is good for you.
This will be good for you.
Take it and thank me for it.
Good for you.
Now, he says, good work, good work.
That God's people should maintain good works.
This is good for you.
Do it, do it.
I want to ask a couple of questions
and then I'm going to close.
I want to ask, why is it that
it's so hard to get people to do
the things that are good for them, and
so easy to get them to do what's
sweet and pleasurable for them, whether it's good
for them or not?
I wonder why.
Why is it hard to get people to
do the things that are good for them?
Why is it so easy to get people
to do the things they like to do,
even though they know they're not good for
them?
Why is it that when it's a choice
between the flesh and what's good for us,
ninety-seven times out of a hundred Christians
will choose the flesh?
Why is it when God gives us a
choice between time and eternity, the vast overwhelming
number of people will choose time?
Why?
Let me give you an example of what
a fool a man can be.
Choosing the immediate short-range profit instead of
the long-range profit.
I came out of the United States Army
as a young man.
The United States government at that time had
on every one of their men, they had
a $10,000 insurance policy.
One day I got a letter from the
government, it was all amended, and the letter
said this.
Now we can, you can take your choice.
We will give you, I think it was
$150, veteran benefits, now in cash.
Or we will give you your paid-up
policy for life.
We'll just hand it to you, you don't
have to pay a dime on it, it's
yours.
If you live to be 108, when you
die, your relatives will get $10,000 cash.
I was a young, struggling preacher in my
first pastorate, getting about $3.48 a week
as a salary.
I was superintendent of Sunday school, janitor, chairman
of the board, and was the board, and
was just generally everything.
What I didn't do, my wife did the
rest.
And you know what I took?
I took the short-range $150 instead of
the $10,000 I might have had if
the government had paid my sentence.
Now there, that's an illustration.
God says now you can have your choice.
Time or eternity, get the short-range thing
or take the long-range thing, wait for
it.
Almost every time we take the short-range
pleasure and lose the long-range benefit.
Why?
Why is it when it's a choice between
God and the flesh, almost every time the
flesh wins and God loses?
Why is it when God runs on a
ticket against flesh, why must always it be
that the flesh defeat God in the voting?
It's because we're so badly fallen.
It's because we're so deeply and incurably tempted.
And it's because only now and again does
God find one bold enough and faithful enough
that he'll earn short-range benefits and take
the long-range promise.
Moses was one.
He despised the court of Pharaoh that he
might claim the long-range promises of God.
Go to the 11th in Hebrews and you'll
see it.
A long list of them that spurned short
-range benefits and took eternity and the long,
long profits that God gives to men.
Always remember God gives you choices and then
says now this isn't so good but this
is good and profitable unto you.
For God's sake, my brethren, let's learn to
take the thing that's good for us rather
than the thing we like.
Let's learn to suffer it out and batter
it through.
People are suffering in this city of Chicago
tragically and won't get one little bit of
blessing out of it.
Old Andrew Murray said it's shocking to think
how much suffering some of God's people can
do to not profit by it.
I hear and see and meet many people
whom I talk every week almost.
I have interviews in which people pour their
sorrows and griefs out to me.
And they, without seeking it, get sorrows and
tribulations and hardships that Christians don't have and
won't take.
And if God offered it to them, they
wouldn't accept it.
They'd escape it and plow around it to
get away from it.
Too bad.
Who's done this?
I think an enemy has done this and
I think I know his name.
It's an enemy.
He has done this.
The devil has done this.
That evil one who hates us.
Always remember if it's the world or the
flesh and the devil and they make a
proposition, always remember it's for your pleasure for
a short run.
And God sets over against that something that
isn't so pleasant, but that's for your good
and your profit while the ages hold.
Young people, learn to choose the hard way
if it's God's way.
For it's good and profitable unto you.
You can start in the beginning, God made
the heaven and the earth, and end up
with even so, come quickly Lord Jesus, amen.
And all the way through, this is good
for you and profitable unto you.
I recommend you go into this and let
it slice you and chew you and grind
you and soften you and prepare you for
eternity.
Because you're going there one of these days,
you're going there either having lived a life
of artful dodging of the cross, artful escaping
of tribulation, the easy fleshly way, or you're
going there like the Christian on his road
to the celestial city, wearing his armor and
carrying his sword with his whole under his
arm, ready to face any dragons or lions
or devils that are in the way.
Always remember, whatever the devil says, if God
speaks, it's good for you.
And when God speaks, it's good for you,
good and profitable for you.
So if you don't like to do it,
do it anyway and thank him.
Don't grumble, don't complain.
Don't pull a poor mouth and go through
life gloomy.
Thank him for everything and say Father, this
isn't particularly enjoyable, but I enjoy it anyway,
knowing that you sent it and it's good
and it's profitable for me.
Amen.