And today I'd like to speak to you
from the theme, Ten Shekels and a Shirt,
as we find it here in chapter 17.
Judges chapter 17.
I'll read the chapter and then I will
read a portion also from the 18th to
the 19th chapters that the background might be
clear in our minds.
And there was a man of Mount Ephraim
whose name was Micah.
A little background if you please.
There was a situation where the Amorites refused
to allow the people of the tribe of
Dan to any freedom, access to Jerusalem.
And they crowded them up into Mount Ephraim.
The sad thing when the people of God
allow the world to crowd them into an
awkward position.
And so they were unable to get to
Jerusalem.
And we find that out of this come
the problems we're about to see.
There was a man of Mount Ephraim whose
name was Micah.
And he said unto his mother, the 1100
shekels of silver that were taken from thee,
about which thou cursest and spakest of, also
in mine ears, behold, the silver is with
me.
I took it.
And his mother said, blessed be thou of
the Lord, my son.
And when he had restored the 1100 shekels
of silver to his mother, his mother said,
I had wholly dedicated the silver unto the
Lord from my hand for my son to
make a graven image and a molten image.
Now, therefore, I will restore it unto thee.
Yet he restored the money unto his mother.
And his mother took 200 shekels of silver
and gave them to the founder who made
thereof a graven image and a molten image.
And they were in the house of Micah.
And the man Micah had an house of
gods and made an ephod and a teraphim.
This is incidentally the images that Rachel brought
to remember.
The images is literally the word.
And he consecrated one of his sons who
became his priest.
In those days, there was no king in
Israel, but every man did that which was
right in his own eyes.
And there was a young man out of
Bethlehem, Judah, the family of Judah, who was
a Levite.
And he sojourned there.
And the man departed out of the city
from Bethlehem, Judah, to sojourn where he could
find a place.
And he came to Mount Ephraim to the
house of Micah as he journeyed.
And Micah said unto him, whence comest thou?
And he said unto him, I am a
Levite of Bethlehem, Judah, and I go to
sojourn where I may find a place.
And Micah said unto him, dwell with me
and be unto me a father and a
priest.
And I will give thee 10 shekels of
silver by the year and a suit of
apparel and thy vitual.
So the Levite went in and the Levite
was content to dwell with the man and
the young man was unto him as one
of his sons.
And Micah consecrated the Levite and the young
man became his priest and was in the
house of Micah.
Then said Micah, now I know that the
Lord will do me good seeing I have
a Levite to my priest.
In those days, there was no king in
Israel.
And in those days, the tribe of the
Danites taught them an inheritance to dwell in.
For unto that day, all their inheritance had
not fallen unto them among the tribes of
Israel.
And the children of Dan sent of their
family, five men from their coasts, men of
valor, from Zorah and from Ashtale, to spy
out the land and to search it.
And they said unto them, go search the
land.
Who, when they came to Mount Ephraim, to
the house of Micah, they lodged there.
When they were by the house of Micah,
they knew the voice of the young man,
the Levite.
And they turned in thither and said unto
him, who brought thee hither?
And what makest thou in this place?
And what hast thou here?
And he said unto them, thus, and thus
dealeth Micah with me, and hath hired me,
and I am his priest.
And they said unto him, ask also we
pray thee of God, that we may know
whether our way which we go shall be
prosperous.
And the priest said unto them, go in
peace, before the Lord is your way wherein
ye go.
And now if you'll go over to the
latter part of the chapter, verse
14.
And answered the five men that went to
spy out the country of Laish, and said
unto their brethren, Do ye know that there
is in these houses an effort, and tariff
him, and a graven image, and a molten
image?
Now therefore consider what we have to do.
And they turned thitherwards, and came to the
house of the young man, the Levite, even
unto the house of Micah, and saluted him.
And the six hundred men appointed with their
weapons of war, which were of the children
of Dan, stood by the entering of the
gate.
And the five men that went to spy
out the land, went up, and came in
thither, and took the graven image, and the
effort, and the tariff him, and the molten
image.
And the priest stood in the entering of
the gate, where the six hundred men were
appointed with weapons of war.
And these went into Micah's house, and fetched
the carved image, the effort, the tariff him,
and the molten image.
Then said the unto them, What do ye?
They said unto him, Hold thy peace, lay
thine hand upon thy mouth, and go with
us, and be to us a father, and
a priest.
It is better for thee to be a
priest unto the house of one man, or
that thou be a priest unto a tribe,
and a family in Israel.
And the priest's heart was glad.
And he took the effort, and the tariff
him, and the graven image, and went in
the midst of the people.
So they turned, and departed, and put the
little one in the cattle and the carriage
before them.
Well, there's the story.
This isn't part of the actual history of
the judges.
This is a gathering together of some accounts
that enable us to see the social condition
in that period when every man did as
seemed right in his own eyes, and there
was no king in Israel.
And so we understand that Micah was unable
to get to Jerusalem, and perhaps for some
kind of devout reason, he decided he would
build a replica of the temple on his
own property.
And so he built what he thought would
be an appropriate building, and he made the
instruments of the tabernacle, for this was part
of the furnishings, the effort included among them.
But then he also gathered some of the
things and the people around him, the tariff
and the images, which God had forbidden.
But you see, nevertheless, there was a desire
to get along as best he could, so
he took a little bit of the world
and a little bit of Israel, of that
which had been revealed by God, and he
sort of mixed them up until he had
something that he thought might please the Lord.
And then, of course, he was delighted beyond
words when a wandering young preacher came along
from Bethlehem, Judah.
He was a Levite.
His mother was of the tribe of Judah,
though he himself was a Levite.
God had given permission through Moses that the
Levites might marry into other tribes, and they
might join themselves to other tribes.
So this young man didn't like the living,
and every Levite was provided for, but he
had wanderlust and an itching foot, and so
he started off to see if he couldn't
do better for himself than was being done.
He felt that being a Levite was good,
but there should be opportunities associated with it.
And so he came to the house of
Micah, and there he waited.
There he was invited in and asked to
become the priest.
And Micah made a deal with him.
He said, You'll be my priest, be my
father and priest, then I'll give you ten
shekels and a shirt.
It says a suit, but you understand that
the people of the day wore what would
be called a jalabia, a long sort of
an outsized, well, I was going to say
nightgown.
I don't know if that's exactly what it
is, but it's an appropriate lease, something like
that.
And so he gave him a suit of
clothes or a change of apparel and his
food and ten shekels a year.
This was pretty good living for him, and
so he decided that he would stay there
and enter into the mixture of idolatry and
so on that was in the house of
Micah.
But the people of Dan came along.
They were supposed to have driven out the
Amorites, but the Amorites were too difficult, so
they wanted to find someone that was a
little easier to get out, to move.
And they came to, as you've read, to
Micah's house, and the Levite told them to
go ahead.
And then you find that they discovered that
there were some people after the manner of
the Zidonians at Laish, and they were peaceful
and no one was there to protect them,
and so they figured this would be a
very good place to take some land for
themselves.
And when they came with the men that
were set out to conquer this area, they
figured that since they'd found the land through
the young Levite, it would be splendid to
have his assistance.
And so they went into the house of
Micah, took all the things that he had
made, and it cost a good bit of
money because at least 200 shekels had been
given for this one piece of furniture.
And so they just took it all, made
it theirs, and took the Levite.
Rather hard on Micah, but you'll notice that
the young Levite was able to adjust himself
to this.
It was amazing how flexible he was, and
how easily he could accommodate himself to such
changes, when there was a little rationalization along
the way.
As soon as he could begin to see
that it was far more important to serve
a tribe than a one-man family, and
he could minister to so many more, why,
he could see the wisdom of this, and
he could justify it.
And so with no real strain of conscience,
he could make the adjustment, hold his hand
over his mouth, while they took the furniture
out of the little chapel that Micah had
built.
But he was a wise man nonetheless.
Rather than go along at the front, which
put him in a place of danger, or
at the rear, which put him in a
place of danger, I say he was a
wise man.
He put himself right in the middle, so
that if Micah sent any of his servants
to get him, he was safe, with soldiers
on every side.
What can we call this, and how will
it apply to our day and generation?
Would I be out of line and order
if I were to talk to you for
a little while about utilitarian religion, and expedient
Christianity, and a youthful God?
I would like to call attention to the
fact that our day is a day which
the ruling philosophy is pragmatism.
You understand what I mean by pragmatism.
Perhaps pragmatism means if it works, it's true.
If it succeeds, it's good.
And the test of all practices, all principles,
all truth, so-called, all teaching, is do
they work?
Do they work?
Now, according to pragmatism, the greatest failures of
the ages have been some of the men
God has honored most.
For instance, whereas Noah was a mighty good
ship builder, his main occupation wasn't ship building,
it was preaching.
He was a terrible failure as a preacher.
His wife and three children of their wives
was all he had.
Seven converts in 120 years, you wouldn't call
that particularly effective.
Most mission boards would ask the missionaries to
withdraw long before this.
I say as a ship builder he did
quite well, but as a preacher he was
a failure.
And then we come down across the years
to another man by the name of Jeremiah.
He was a mighty effective preacher, but ineffective
as far as results were concerned.
If you were to measure statistically how successful
Jeremiah was, he would probably get a large
cipher.
For we find that he lost out with
the people, he lost out with royalty, even
the ministerial assassination voted against him and wouldn't
have anything to do with him.
He had everything and everything failed.
The only one he seemed to be able
to please was God, but he is otherwise,
he was a distinct failure.
And then we come to another well-known
person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was a failure from the judging from
all the standards.
He never succeeded in organizing a church or
denomination.
He wasn't able to build a school.
He didn't succeed in getting a mission board
established.
He never had a book printed.
He never was able to get any of
the various criteria or instruments that we find
and are so useful.
I'm not being sarcastic at all.
They are useful.
And our Lord preached to for three years,
healed thousands of people, fed thousands of people.
And yet when it was all over, there
were 120 or 500 that he could reveal
himself after his resurrection.
And the day that he was taken, one
man said, if all the others forsake you,
I will, I'm willing to die for you.
And he looked at this one and said,
Peter, you don't know your own heart.
You're going to deny me three times before
the cock crows this morning.
And so all men forsook him and fled.
And by every standard of our generation or
any generation, our Lord was a signal failure.
The question comes then to this, what is
the standard of success?
And by what are we going to judge
our lives and our ministry?
And the question that you're going to ask
yourself is, is God an end or is
he a mean?
And you have to decide very early in
your Christian life, whether you're viewing God as
an end or a mean.
Our generation is prepared to honor, with signal
honor, anyone that's successful, regardless of whether they've
settled this problem or not.
As long as they can get things done
or get the job done or, well, it's
working, isn't it?
Then our generation is prepared to say, well,
you've got to reckon with this.
And so we've got to ask ourselves at
the very outset of our ministry and our
pilgrimage and our walk, are we going to
be Levites who serve God for 10 shekels
and a shirt?
Serve men perhaps in the name of God
rather than God, for though he was a
Levite and performed religious activities, he was looking
for a place, a place which would give
him recognition, a place which would give him
acceptance, a place which would give him security,
a place where he could shine in terms
of those values which were important to him.
All his, his whole business was serving in
religious activities, and so it had to be
a religious job, and he was very happy
when he found that Micah had an opening.
But he had decided that he was worth
10 shekels and a shirt, and he was
prepared to sell himself to anyone who would
give that much.
Somebody came along and gave more, he'd sell
himself to them, but he put a value
upon himself, and he figured then that his
religious service and his activities was just a
means to an end, and by the same
token, God was the means to an end.
Now in order to understand the implications of
that in the 20th century, we've got to
go back a hundred and fifty years, a
hundred years at least, to a conflict that
attacked Christianity.
Just after the great revivals in America with
Phinney, the Spirit of God having been marvelously
outpoured upon certain portions of our country, there
came an open attack on our faith in
Europe under the higher critics.
Darwin had postulated his theory of evolution, certain
philosophers had adapted it to their philosophies, and
theologians had applied it to the scripture, and
so about 1850 you could mark the opening
of a frontal attack upon the Word of
God.
Satan had always been insidiously attacking it, but
now it was open season on the books,
open season on the church, and Voltaire could
declare that he would live to see the
Bible become a relic and just have its
place only in museums, that it would be
utterly destroyed by the arguments that he was
so forcefully presenting against it.
Well, what was the effect of this?
The philosophy of the day became humanism, and
you can define humanism this way.
Humanism is a philosophical statement that declares the
end of all being is the happiness of
man.
The reason for existence is man's happiness.
Now according to humanism, salvation is simply a
matter of getting all the happiness you can
out of life.
If you're influenced by someone like Nietzsche who
says that the only true satisfaction in life
is power, and that the power is its
own justification, and that after all the world
is a jungle, and it is therefore up
to the man who would be happy to
become powerful, and become powerful by any means
he can use, for it is only in
this position of ascendancy, or as we saw
last night in the worship of Moloch, that
one can be happy.
And this would produce in due course a
Hitler who would take the philosophy of Nietzsche
as his working operating principles and guide, and
would say of his people that we are
destined to rule the world, and therefore any
means we can use to achieve this is
our salvation.
Somebody else turns around and says well no,
the end of the being is happiness, but
happiness doesn't come from authority over people, happiness
comes from sensual experience, and so you would
have the type of existentialism that characterizes France
today, that's given rise to beatnikism in America,
and to the gross sensuality of our country.
That since man is essentially a glandular animal
whose highest moments of ecstasy come from the
exercise of his glands, the salvation is simply
defined the most desirable way to gratify this
part of a person.
And so this became the effect of humanism.
At the end of all being is the
happiness of man, and John Dewey, then an
American philosopher influencing education, was able to persuade
the educators that there were no absolute standards,
and children shouldn't be brought to any particular
standard, that the end of education was simply
to allow the child to express himself, and
expand on what he is, and find his
happiness in being what he wants to be.
And so we had cultural lawlessness, when every
man could do what seemed right in his
own eyes, and no god to rule over
it.
The Bible had been discounted and disallowed and
disproved according to what they said, and God
had been dethroned.
He didn't exist, he had no personal relationship
to individuals.
Jesus Christ was either a myth or just
a man, and so they taught, and therefore
the whole end of being was happiness as
the individual would establish the standards of his
happiness and interpret it.
Now religion then had to exist because there
were so many people that made their living
at it, and so they had to find
some way to justify their existence.
So back about at that time in 1850,
the church divided into two groups.
The one group was the liberals who said,
who accepted the philosophy of humanism, and tried
to find some relevance by saying something like
this to their generation.
We don't know that there's a heaven, we
don't know that there's a hell.
But we do know this, you've got to
live for 70 years, and we know that
there's a great deal of benefit from poetry,
from high thoughts and noble aspirations, and therefore
it's important for you to come to church
on Sunday so that we can read some
poetry, that we can give you some little
adages and axioms and rules to live by.
And we can't say anything about what's going
to happen when you die, but we'll tell
you this, if you'll come every week and
pay and help and stay with us, we'll
put springs on your wagon and your trip
will be more comfortable.
And so we can't guarantee anything about what's
going to happen when you die, but we
say that if you'll come along with us,
we'll make you happier while you're alive.
And so this became the essence of liberalism.
It has simply nothing more than to try
and put a little sugar in the bitter
coffee of the journey and sweeten it up
for a time.
This was all that it could say.
Well now, the philosophy of the atmosphere is
humanism.
The chief end of being is the happiness
of man.
There's another group of people that have taken
umbrage with the liberals, these groups, this group
of my people, the fundamentalists, that say, we
believe in the inspiration of the Bible, we
believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, we
believe in hell, we believe in heaven, we
believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of
Christ.
But remember, the atmosphere is that of humanism.
And humanism says the chief end of being
is the happiness of man.
And humanism is like a miasma out of
a pit, it just permeates every place.
And humanism is like an infection, an epidemic,
it just goes everywhere.
And so it wasn't long until we had
this, the fundamentalists knew each other because they
said, we believe these things.
They were men for the most part that
had met God.
But you see, it wasn't long until having
said, these are the things that establish us
as fundamentalists, the second generation said, this is
how we become a fundamentalist.
Believe in the inspiration of the Bible, believe
in the deity of Christ, believe in his
death, burial, and resurrection, and thereby become a
fundamentalist.
And so it wasn't long until it got
to our generation, where the whole plan of
salvation was to give intellectual assent to a
few statements of doctrine.
And a person was considered a Christian because
he could say uh-huh at four or
five places that he was asked to.
And if he knew where to say uh
-huh, someone would pat him on the back,
shake his hand, smile broadly, and say, brother,
you're saved.
And so it had gotten down to the
place where salvation was nothing more than an
assent to a scheme or a formula.
And the end of this salvation was the
happiness of man because humanism has penetrated.
And so if you were to analyze the
fundamentalism in contrast to liberalism of a hundred
years ago as it's developed, for I'm not
pinpointing it in time, it would be like
this.
The liberal says the end of religion is
to make man happy while he's alive.
And the fundamentalist says the end of religion
is to make man happy when he dies.
But again, the end of all of the
religion that was proclaimed was the happiness of
man.
And whereas the liberal says by social change
and political order we're going to do away
with slums, we're going to do away with
alcoholism and dope addiction and poverty, and we're
going to make heaven on earth and make
you happy while you're alive.
We don't know anything about after that, but
we want you to be happy while you're
alive.
They went ahead to try to do it
only to be brought up with a terrifying
shock at the First World War and utterly
staggered to the Second World War because they
seemed to be getting nowhere fast.
And then the fundamentalists along the line are
now tuning in on this same, same wavelength
of humanism until we find it's something like
this.
Accept Jesus so you can go to heaven.
You don't want to go to that old,
filthy, nasty, burning hell when there's a beautiful
heaven up there.
Now come to Jesus so that you can
go to heaven.
And the appeal could be as much to
selfishness as a couple of men sitting in
a coffee shop deciding they're going to rob
a bank to get something for nothing.
And there's a way that you can give
an invitation to sinners that just sounds for
all the world like a plot to take
up a filling station proprietor's Saturday night earnings
without working for them.
And humanism is, I believe, the most deadly
and disastrous of all the philosophical stanchions that's
crept up through the grating over the pit
of hell.
And it has penetrated so much of our
religion.
And it is in utter and total contrast
with Christianity.
And unfortunately it's seldom seen.
And here we find Micah wants to have
a little chapel, and he wants to have
a priest, and he wants to have prayer,
and he wants to have devotion, because I
know the Lord will do me good.
And this is selfishness.
And this is sin.
And the Levite comes along and falls right
in with it, because he wants a plate.
He wants ten shekels and a shirt and
his food.
And so in order that he can have
what he wants, and Micah can have what
they want, they sell out God.
Ten shekels and a shirt.
And this is the betrayal of the ages.
And it's the betrayal in which we live.
And I don't see how God can revive
it until we come back to Christianity.
It's in direct and total contrast with the
vengeful humanism that's perpetrated in our generation in
the name of Christ.
I'm afraid that it's become so subtle that
it goes everywhere.
What is it?
In essence it's this.
That this philosophical postulate that the end of
all being is the happiness of man has
been sort of covered over with evangelical terms
and biblical doctrines until God reigns in heaven
for the happiness of man, Jesus Christ was
incarnate for the happiness of man, all the
angels exist, everything is for the happiness of
man.
And I submit to you that this is
unchristian.
Isn't man happy?
Didn't God intend to make man happy?
But as a byproduct and not a prime
product.
What is?
It was that good man that's so admired
by the fuzzy thinkers of our day out
there in Africa.
Dear Dr. Schweitzer, bless his heart, he's a
brilliant man, a philosopher, doctor, musician, composer, undoubtedly
a brilliant man.
But Dr. Schweitzer is no more Christian than
Miss Rose.
And he would call it a personal insult
if he were to say he was a
Christian, because he doesn't see Christ as having
any relevance to his philosophy or life.
Dr. Schweitzer is a humanist.
Dr. Schweitzer was sitting on the bow of
the boat going up the broad Congo River
toward his station, watching the Belgian government officials
with their high powered rifles shooting at the
crocodiles sunning on the mud flats along the
river.
And they were expert marksmen.
And as they would use these dum-dum
bullets that would explode inside the crocodile and
just send them spinning up into the air
from the contraction of muscles.
And he said, how do you know so
much about it?
Well, to my shame, I was guilty of
the same thing in the Nile.
And they were there.
This was what they were sport was.
They'd bagged them and they'd take towels and
they'd put strings around the place where their
gun was and had a little place for
the gun.
And then they'd tie knots so that they
could see how many crocodiles they killed.
Colossal waste of life.
And it was there that Schweitzer saw the
essence of his philosophy.
And do you know what it is?
Three words.
Reverence for life.
Crocodile life.
Human life.
And other kinds of life.
My friend George Klein, who was with us
last week going back to the Gaboon, was
just about 50 or 60 miles away from
Dr. Schweitzer's station.
You know, Dr. Schweitzer is so convinced of
the reverence of life that he doesn't like
to sterilize his surgery.
He has the dirtiest surgery in Africa because
bacteria are life and he doesn't want to
hurt any of the good bacteria with the
bad.
So he sort of lets them all grow
together.
His organ broke.
Someone had sent him out an organ and
the means of playing it.
And so Mr. Klein is an expert organist
and an organ repairer as well.
So he went over to see Dr. Schweitzer
and Dr. Schweitzer said, George, do you think
you could fix my organ?
He said, I wouldn't be surprised.
Let me try it.
So he took the back off and it
was amazing that he discovered a huge nest
of cockroaches.
With characteristic American enthusiasm and zeal, George started
toppling all over the cockroaches, not to let
a one of them get away.
And the good doctor came out, his hair
standing straighter than it had for a long
time.
And because of his anger, and he said,
you stop that right now.
George says, why?
They're hurting your organ.
He said, that's all right.
They were just being true to their nature.
He said, you can't kill those.
So one of the boys came in and
said, it's all right, Mr. Klein.
He reached down very tenderly and picked them
up and put them in a little bag
and crimped the top.
And he put each cockroach in and they
took them out in the jungle and let
them loose.
Now here was a man that believed his
philosophy, reverence for life.
Utterly committed to it.
Utterly consistent, even when it came to the
matter of a cockroach or a microbe.
Do you see?
This is humanism.
This is consistency.
Now I ask you, what is the philosophy
of mission?
What is the philosophy of evangelism?
What is the philosophy of a Christian?
If you'll ask me why I went to
Africa, I'll tell you, I went primarily to
improve on the justice of God.
I didn't think it was right for anybody
to go to hell without a chance to
be saved.
And so I went to give poor sinners
a chance to go to heaven.
Now I hadn't put it in so many
words, but if you'll analyze what I've just
told you, do you know what it is?
It's humanism.
That I was simply using the provisions of
Jesus Christ as a means to improve upon
human conditions of suffering and misery.
And when I got to Africa, I discovered
that they weren't poor ignorant little heathen running
around in the woods waiting for, looking for
someone to tell them how to go to
heaven.
That they were monsters of iniquity that were
living in utter and total defiance of far
more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed
they had.
They deserved hell because they utterly refused to
walk in the light of their conscience and
the light of the law written upon their
heart and the testimony of nature and the
truth they knew.
And when I found that out, I assure
you, I was so angry with God that
one occasion in prayer I told him that
it was a mighty little thing he'd done,
sending me out there to reach these people
that were waiting to be told how to
go to heaven.
When I got there, I found out they
knew about heaven, didn't want to go there.
And that they were loved their sin and
wanted to stay in it.
I went out there motivated by humanism.
I'd seen pictures of lepers.
I'd seen pictures of ulcers.
I'd seen pictures of native funerals.
And I didn't want my fellow human beings
to suffer in hell eternally after such a
miserable existence on earth.
But it was there in Africa that God
began to tear through the overlay of this
humanism.
And it was that day in my bedroom
with the door locked that I wrestled with
God.
For I was coming to grips with the
fact that the people that I thought were
ignorant and wanted to know how to go
to heaven and were saying, someone come and
teach us, actually didn't want to take time
to talk with me or anybody else.
They had no interest in the Bible and
no interest in Christ.
And they loved their sin and wanted to
continue in it.
And I was to the place at that
time where I felt the whole thing was
a sham and a mockery and I'd been
sold a bill of goods and I wanted
to come home.
And there alone in my bedroom, as I
faced God honestly with what my heart held,
it seemed to me I heard him say,
yes, will not the judge of all the
earth do right the heathen are lost.
And they're going to go to hell not
because they haven't heard the gospel.
They're going to go to hell because they
are sinners who love their sin and because
they deserve hell.
But I didn't send you out there for
them.
I didn't send you out there for their
sake.
And I heard as clearly as I've ever
heard, though it wasn't with physical voice, but
it was the echo of truth of the
ages finding its way into an open heart.
I heard God say to my heart that
day, something like this.
I didn't send you to Africa for the
sake of the heathen.
I sent you to Africa for my sake.
They deserve hell, but I love them and
I endured the agonies of hell for them.
I didn't send you out there for them.
I sent you out there for me.
Do I not deserve the reward of my
suffering?
Don't I deserve those for whom I died?
And it reversed it all and changed it
all and righted it all.
And I wasn't any longer working for Micah
and ten shekels and a shire, but I
was serving the living God.
I was there not for the sake of
the heathen.
I was there for the Savior that endured
the agonies of hell for the heathen who
didn't deserve it.
But he deserved them because he died for
them.
Do you see?
Let me epitomize, let me summarize.
Christianity says the end of all being is
the glory of God.
Humanism says the end of all being is
the happiness of man.
And one was born in hell, the deification
of man.
And the other was born in heaven, the
glorification of God.
And one is Levite serving Micah and the
other is a heart that's unworthy serving the
living God because of the highest honor in
the universe.
What about you?
Why did you repent?
I'd like to see some people repent on
biblical terms again.
And would George Whitefield know it?
He stood on Boston Common speaking to 20
,000 people and he said, listen, Senator, you're
a monster, monsters of iniquity and deserve hell.
And the worst of your crimes is that
criminals owe you then you haven't had the
good grace to see it.
He said, if you will not weep for
your sins and your crimes against the holy
God, George Whitefield will weep for you.
And that man would put his head back
and he would sob like a baby.
Why?
Because they were in danger of hell?
No.
But because they were monsters of iniquity that
didn't even see their inner care about their
crimes.
Do you see the difference?
The difference is here's somebody trembling because he's
going to be hurt in hell.
And he has no sense of the enormity
of his guilt and no sense of the
enormity of his crimes and no sense of
his insult against deity.
He's only trembling because his skin is about
to be singed.
He's afraid.
And I submit to you that whereas fear
is this good office work in preparing us
for grace, it's no place to stop.
The Holy Ghost doesn't stop there.
And that's the reason why no one can
savingly receive Christ until they've repented.
And no one can repent until they've been
convicted.
And conviction is the work of the Holy
Ghost that helps a sinner to see that
he is a criminal before God and deserves
all of God's wrath.
And if God were to send him to
the lowest corner of a devil's hell forever
and ten eternities, that he deserved it all
and a hundred fold more.
Because he's seen his crimes.
He's not been convinced he's caught, but he
has seen his crimes.
And this is the difference between 20th century
preaching and the preaching of John Wesley.
Wesley was a preacher of righteousness that exalted
the holiness of God.
And when he would stand there with the
two to three hour sermons that he was
accustomed to deliver in the open air, and
he would exalt the holiness of God and
the law of God and the righteousness of
God and the justice of God and the
wisdom of his requirements and the justice of
his wrath and his anger.
And then he would turn to sinners and
tell them of the enormity of their crimes
and their open rebellion and the treason in
their anarchy.
The power of God would so descend upon
the company that on one occasion, it is
reliably reported that when the people dispersed, there
were 1800 people lying on the ground, utterly
unconscious, because they'd had a revelation of the
holiness of God.
And in the light of that, they'd seen
the enormity of their sin.
And God had so penetrated their minds and
hearts that they had fallen to the ground.
It wasn't only in Wesley's day.
It was also in America, New Haven, Connecticut,
Yale.
A man by the name of John Wesley
Redfield had continuous ministry for three years in
and around New Haven, culminating in the great
meetings in the Yale Ball, the first of
the Yale Balls back in the 18th century.
And the policemen were accustomed during those days,
if they saw someone lying on the ground
to go up and smell his breath, because
if he had alcohol in his breath, they'd
lock him up.
But if he didn't, he had Wesley Redfield's
disease.
And all you needed to do if anyone
had Redfield's disease was just take him into
a quiet place and leave them until they
came to, because if they were drunkards, they
did stop drinking.
And if they were cruel, they stopped being
cruel.
And if they were immoral, they gave up
their immorality.
If they were thieves, they returned what they
had.
For as they had seen the holiness of
God and seen the enormity of their sin,
the spirit of God had driven them down
into unconsciousness because of the weight of their
guilt.
And somehow in his overspreading of the power
of God, sinners repented of their sin and
came savingly to Christ.
But there was a difference.
It wasn't trying to convince good men that
he was in trouble with a bad God,
but that it was to convince bad men
that they deserved the wrath and anger of
a good God.
And the consequence was repentance that led to
faith and led to life.
Dear friends, there's only one reason, one reason
for a sinner to repent, and that's because
Jesus Christ deserves the worship and the adoration
and the love and the obedience of his
heart, not because he'll go to heaven.
If the only reason you repented, dear friend,
was to keep out of hell, all you
are is just a Levite serving for 10
shekels in a shirt.
That's all.
You're trying to serve God because he'll do
you good.
But a repentant heart is a heart that
has seen something of the enormity of the
crime of playing God and denying the just
and righteous God the worship and obedience that
he deserves.
Why should a sinner repent?
Because God deserves the obedience and love that
he has refused to give him.
Not so that he'll go to heaven.
The only reason he repents is so that
he'll go to heaven and tell him to
try to make a deal or a bargain
with God.
Why should a sinner give up all his
sins?
Why should he be challenged to do it?
Why should he make restitution when he's coming
to Christ?
Because God deserves the obedience that he demands.
I have talked with people that have no
assurance of sin forgiven.
They want to feel saved before they're willing
to commit themselves to Christ.
But I believe that the only ones whom
God actually witnesses by his Spirit are born
of him.
Are the people, whether they say it or
not, that come to Jesus Christ and say
something like this, Lord Jesus, I'm going to
obey you and love you and serve you
and do what you want me to do
as long as I live, even if I
go to hell at the end of the
road, simply because you are worthy to be
loved and obeyed and served and I'm not
trying to make a deal with you.
Do you see the difference?
Do you see the difference between being a
Levi serving for 10 shekels in a shirt
or a Micah building a chapel?
Because God will do you good.
And someone that repents for the glory of
God.
Why should a person come to the cross?
Why should a person embrace death with Christ?
Why should a person be willing to go
in identification down to the cross and into
the tomb and up again?
I'll tell you why.
Because it's the only way that God can
get glory out of a human being.
If you say it's because you'll get joy
or peace or blessing or success or fame,
then it's nothing but a Levi serving for
10 shekels in a shirt.
There's only one reason for you to go
to the cross, dear young person.
And that's because until you've come to the
place of union with Christ in death, you
are defrauding the son of God of the
glory that he could get out of your
life.
For no flesh shall glory in sight.
And until you've understood the sanctifying work of
God by the Holy Ghost, taking you into
union with Christ in death and burial and
resurrection, you have to serve in what you
have and all you have is that which
is under the sentence of death, human personality
and human nature and human strength and human
energy.
And God will get no glory out of
that.
And so the reason for you to go
to the cross isn't that you're going to
get victory.
You will get victory.
It isn't that you're going to have joy.
You will have joy.
But the reason for you to embrace the
cross and press through until you know that
you can testify with Paul, I'm crucified with
Christ, isn't what you're going to get out
of it, but what you'll get out of
it, but the glory of God.
By the same token, why ought you press
through to know the fullness of the Holy
Spirit?
Why ought you press through to know the
fullness of Christ?
I'll tell you why.
Because the only possible way that Jesus Christ
will get glory out of a life that
he's redeemed with his precious blood is when
he can fill that life with his presence
and live through it his own life.
The genius of our faith wasn't that we
were going to go through the motions like
a Levite that were hired to serve God.
No, no.
The genius of our faith was that we'd
come to the place where we knew we
could do nothing, and all we could do
would be to present the vessel and say,
Lord Jesus, you left us something.
And everything that's done will have to be
done by you and for you.
But oh, I know so many people that
are trying to know the fullness of God
so that they can use God.
A young preacher came to me down in
West Virginia, Huntington, West Virginia.
Well, the reason is I've got a great
church.
We've got a wonderful Sunday school program.
We've got a radio ministry, drawing.
But I feel a personal need and a
personal lack.
I need to be baptized with the Holy
Ghost.
I need to be filled with the Spirit.
And someone told me, God's done something for
you.
And I wondered if you could help me.
I looked at the fellow, and you know
what he looked like?
Me.
He just looked like me.
I just saw in him everything that was
in me.
You thought I was going to say me
before.
No.
Listen, dear heart.
If you've ever seen yourself, you'll know that
you're never going to be anything else than
you were.
For in me, in my flesh, there's no
good thing.
But like me?
He was like a fellow driving up in
a big Cadillac, you know, to someone standing
at the filling station, saying, Pull her up,
bud, with the highest octane you got.
Well, that's the way it looked.
He wanted power for his program.
And God is not going to be a
means to anyone's end.
I said, I'm awfully sorry.
I don't think I can help you.
He said, Why?
I don't think you're ready.
I said, Well, suppose you consider yourself coming
up with a Cadillac.
You've talked about your program.
You've talked about your radio.
You talked about your Sunday school in church.
Very good.
You've done wonderfully well without the power of
the Holy Spirit.
That's what the Chinese Christian said, you know,
when he got back to China.
What impressed you most about America?
He said the great things Americans can accomplish
without God.
And he'd accomplished a great deal, admittedly, without
God.
Now he's wanted something power to accomplish his
ends even further.
I said, No, no, you're going to you're
sitting behind the wheel and you're saying to
God, Give me power so I can go.
You won't work.
You've got to slide over.
But I knew that rascal because I knew
me.
I said, No, it'll never do.
You've got to get in the backseat.
I could see him leaning over and grabbing
the wheel.
No, I said, Never do in the backseat.
I said, Before God will do anything from
you, you know what you've got to do?
I said, You've got to get out of
the car, take the keys around, open up
the trunk lid, hand the keys to the
Lord Jesus, get inside the trunk, slam the
lid down, whisper through the keyhole.
Lord, look, fill her up with anything you
want and you drive.
It's up to you from now.
And that's why so many people, you know,
do not enter into the fullness of Christ
because they want to become a Levite with
10 shekels and a shirt.
They've been serving Micah, but they think if
they had the power of the Holy Ghost,
they could serve the tribe of Dan.
It'll never work.
Never work.
There's only one reason for God meeting you.
And that's to bring you to the place
where in repentance, you've been pardoned for his
glory.
And in victory, you've been brought to the
place of death that he might reign.
And in his fullness, Jesus Christ is able
to live and walk in you.
And your attitude is the attitude of the
Lord himself who said, I can do nothing
of myself.
I can't speak of myself.
I don't make plans for myself.
My only reason for being is the glory
of God in Jesus Christ.
If I were to say to you, come
to be saved so you can go to
heaven.
Come to the cross so that you can
have joy and victory.
Come to the fullness of the spirit so
that you can be satisfied.
I'd be falling into the trap of humanism.
I'm going to say to you, dear friend,
if you're out here without Christ, you come
to Jesus Christ and serve him as long
as you live, whether you go to hell
at the end of the way, because he's
worthy.
I say to you, Christian friend, you come
to the cross and join him in union
and death and enter into all the meaning
of death to hell in order that he
can have glory.
I say to you, dear Christian, if you
do not know the fullness of the Holy
Ghost, come and present your body a living
sacrifice and let him fill you so that
he can have the purpose for his coming
fulfilled in you and get glory in your
life.
It's not what you're going to get out
of God.
It's what he is going to get out
of you.
Let's be done once and for all with
utilitarian Christianity that makes God a means instead
of the glorious end that he is.
Let's resign.
Let's tell Micah we're through.
We're no longer going to be as priests
serving for 10 shekels and a shirt.
Let's tell the tribe of Dan we're through
and let's come and cast ourselves at the
feet of the nail-pierced son of God
and tell him that we're going to obey
him and love him and serve him as
long as we live because he is worthy.
Two young Moravians heard of an island in
the West Indies where an atheist British owner
had 2,000 to 3,000 slaves.
The owner had said, no preacher, no clergyman
will ever stay on this island.
If he's shipwrecked, we'll keep him in a
separate house until he has to leave, but
he's never going to talk to any of
us about God.
I'm through with all that nonsense.
Three thousand slaves from the jungles of Africa
bought to an island in the Atlantic and
there to live and die without hearing of
Christ.
Two young Moravians heard about it.
They sold themselves to the British planter and
used the money they received from this sale
for he paid no more than he would
for any slave to pay their passage out
to his island for he wouldn't even transport
them.
And as the ship left the river at
Hamburg, left its at Hamburg and was going
out into the North Sea carried with the
tide.
The Moravians had come from Hernhut to see
these two lads off in the early twenties,
never to return again for this wasn't a
four-year term.
They'd sold themselves into lifetime slavery, simply that
as slaves, they could be as Christian where
these others were.
The families were there weeping for they knew
they'd never see them again.
And they wondered why they were going and
questioned the wisdom of it.
And as the gap widened and the houses
had been cast off and were being curled
up there on the pier and the young
boys saw the widening gap, one lad with
his arm linked through the arm of his
fellow raised his hand and shouted across the
gap the last words that were heard from
them.
They were these, may the land that was
slain receive the reward of his suffering.
This became the core of Moravian mission.
And this is the only reason for being
that the land that was slain may receive
the reward of his suffering.