Twenty-seventh chapter of the Book of Acts,
and the twenty-third verse.
You will find an incident in the life
of the Apostle Paul that parallels the text
from which we've been preaching these last two
Sundays.
In the twenty-seventh chapter of the Book
of Acts is the story of the terrible
storm and shipwreck of Paul as he was
sent, a prisoner bound to Jerusalem, to Rome
from Caesarea.
In the twenty-third verse of the twenty
-seventh chapter, For there stood by me this
night the angel of God, whose I am,
and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul."
Now, the text from which we've been speaking
the last two Sundays in the eighteenth chapter
of the Book of Acts, the ninth and
the tenth verses, Then spake the Lord to
Paul in the night by a vision.
Do you believe that?
For there stood by me this night the
angel of God, whose I am, and whom
I serve, saying, And then the text in
the eighteenth chapter, Then spake the Lord to
Paul by the night in a vision.
Evidently the Lord is somebody, a personality, an
entity, a character.
Evidently he speaks, and he lives, and he
directs, and he guides, and he's interested, and
he's full of the intensive life.
Do you believe that?
So many, the Lord Jesus is there.
He's a historical character.
They are readily willing to admit his historicity.
Like Washington lived, or Lincoln lived, or Buddha
lived, or Alexander the Great lived, or Napoleon
lived.
There must have lived somewhere sometime a man
by the name of Jesus.
But he's dead, and he died two thousand
years ago.
Then there are those to whom the Lord
Jesus possibly is at the heart and center
of a great religious faith of which we
are nominally a part, but he's far, far
away.
There's no conception, there's no sense, there's no
feeling, there's no persuasion, there's no consciousness of
his being present, of his being active and
alive and vitally intermingled with our lives and
our destinies.
Then there are many who look upon the
Lord as an influence, and they identify him
and his life like they identify our immortality.
We live in the good influences that we
set in motion in the earth, but when
we die, we die.
Our influence will live like the influence of
the Lord may be alive, but he is
dead.
And the tendency of all of those things,
and a multitude of others I could mention
like them, the tendency of it all is
to depersonalize the Lord Jesus.
He no longer is active and vibrant, he's
no longer somebody, he's no longer a personality,
he no longer lives as such, like you
live now.
But he's become identified with historical processes, with
influences, with memory, with history.
But he's not prevalent and not active and
vibrant and living in any of the issues
today with which we actually have anything to
do.
He's not somebody who looks and cares and
loves and watches and works and helps and
guides and keeps.
He's just something out there, indefinable, intangible, ethereal,
evanescent, but not real and actual.
I have a friend, he's still my friend,
though he's on the opposite side of the
theological world from me, I have a friend
who's a pastor in Virginia, and he's very
liberal, he is decidedly modern.
And we were talking about George Frederick's book,
Prayer, a great book, a very fine book,
splendidly written, entitled Prayer.
And the great divine theory of prayer is
this, he says, Prayer is the same sort
of a thing for good in this world
as though a man had something wrong with
his foot, or he had something wrong somewhere
else in his body.
And so the physician gives him a shot
in the arm, and the circulation of the
blood takes that shot in the arm and
it goes all around, finally gets down there
to his foot, and his foot is healed
and made well because of the thing the
doctor did over here.
Now he says prayer is that way.
When a man prays, he sets good influences
in the world, and they circulate around and
around and around, and by and by they
will break and will be answered in the
mediation of the thing for which the man
prayed.
It may be over there, it may be
in China, it may be in Hong Kong,
it may be in India, it may be
some other place.
But his idea of prayer is that there's
not any personal God to whom you actually
talk, there's not any actual God up there
who listens to you and turns things in
order that your prayer might be answered, but
that we just set forth good influences in
the earth.
Now my liberal friend in Virginia says, that's
just great, that's just right, that's what prayer
is.
But I said to him, if that's all
prayer is, then there's not any God.
There's not anybody who listens to it.
There's not anybody who answers.
There's not anybody who directs this thing and
has it in his hands.
It's just an influence for good that we
set forth in this earth, and that's all.
That's all.
I could not tell you the number of
men, Christian men, two for ten, leaders of
the denomination of great drive in so many
areas, not so much ours as in other
faiths and communions, who identify the whole Christian
faith and the whole Christian message with social
work.
We worship the Lord Jesus, we serve him
by being good to those who need us.
We feed the poor, we heal the sick,
we minister to those who are in poor
housing conditions, and the whole kingdom of Christ
is identified with tremendous social movement.
And that's the way we serve him, that's
the way we know him, that's the way
we love him.
We do it through the people, and Christ
is identified with the people.
I remember reading a book by James Street
called The Gauntlet.
Neverbody read that thing when it was published
a few years ago.
And the whole thesis of that book is
that Christ is identified with humanity, and when
you serve humanity, you serve Christ.
I could go on for hours with stuff
like that.
Now, this message tonight concerns the reality and
the personality, the somebody-ness, the like-youth
of the Lord Jesus Christ.
For the Lord spoke to Paul in the
night by Ephesus.
In the nighttime, he appeared before Paul and
said to him, and he could speak, and
he knew Paul, and he knew what Paul
was doing, and he was guiding Paul in
a tremendous way.
Do you believe that?
That he's somebody.
Now, the thesis of this message is that
Jesus is an entity in himself, and that
he has flair, and that he has bone,
and that he has a personality, that he's
somebody.
The Spirit of God is also called the
Spirit of Jesus.
And the Spirit of God is in my
heart, and he's in your heart.
And the Spirit of God is in this
world, and the Spirit of God is in
this church.
But the Spirit of God and the Spirit
of Jesus is not the Lord Jesus himself.
I cannot enter into the mystery of the
Trinity, and I don't try.
I cannot understand it, I don't accept it.
Nobody does.
But I know this, that according to the
Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Lord
Jesus is like you are.
He has flair, and he has bone, and
he's in a place, and he looks down
on us, and he can appear to us,
and he can talk to us, and someday
we shall see him as a man, as
an individual, as a character, as a somebody.
And another thing about the Lord Jesus, he
always was.
He always was the Lord Jesus.
He always was that somebody.
He always was the Lord God, Omnipotent.
But he was somebody.
He was not ethereal and intangible.
He was like you are.
He was a reality.
He was a being.
I think, and I'll give you the scripture
for it, the Jehovah, the I Am, the
Yahweh of the Old Testament is the Lord
Jesus incarnate of the New Testament.
They're the same character.
They're the same individuals.
In the eighth chapter of the book of
John, Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I
say unto you, Therefore Abraham was, I Am.
I've heard that before, haven't you?
I Am.
When Moses was shepherding the sheep of Jethro,
his father-in-law, he was on the
backside of the desert at Sinai, and as
he was shepherding the flock, there was a
bush that burned without being consumed.
And Moses stopped and said, I say, look
at this great sign.
And he stood there and watched the flames
in the bush unconsumed.
And out of the fire and out of
the flames, the Lord God spoke to Moses.
The Lord God spoke to Moses.
And he commanded Moses to go down into
Egypt and deliver people.
And when Moses said, And what is the
name of the God that speaketh to me?
The voice came from heaven saying, I Am.
You go down to Egypt and tell them
the great God whose name is Yahweh.
I Am that I Am.
And Jesus said, Verily I say unto you,
Therefore Abraham was, I Am.
I Am.
The voice that speaketh unto Moses out of
the burning bush was the voice whom we
know in the New Testament.
But as the Lord Jesus Christ, he is
the same person, the same God.
I have another persuasion in there.
In the 12th chapter of the Gospel of
John, in the 41st verse, after John quotes
from Isaiah, he says this, These things said
Isaiah when he saw his glory and spake
of him.
Now, from the quotation, I turn to Isaiah.
And the quotation is from the 6th chapter
of the book of Isaiah.
And John says, Isaiah said this when he
saw the glory of Jesus.
So you turn to the 6th chapter of
the book of Isaiah and what does it
say?
You listen to it.
In the year that King Uzziah died, I
saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne,
high and lifted up, and his train filled
the temple.
Above it stood the seraphim.
Each one had six wings.
Which plane he covered his face.
Which plane he covered his feet.
And which plane he did fly.
Had one cried unto another, saying, Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
Who was that?
Isaiah saw him on a throne high and
lifted up.
John says in the 12th chapter of his
gospel that Isaiah saw the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was the Lord Jesus that he saw.
The Jehovah of the Old Testament.
The great I Am of the Old Bible.
In the New Testament he is incarnate in
the form of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Born of the Virgin.
They're the one and the same.
The Lord Jesus is somebody preexistent in the
endless ages before the world were made.
And the Lord Jesus is a man.
He's somebody.
He's a character.
He's an entity.
He's a personality.
He's like you.
For the Lord God says, let us make
man in our image.
You were made in the likeness of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And in time he's a man.
He's a person.
Incarnate, the Lord Jesus is somebody like you.
When you turn to the pages of church
history, for hundreds of years the church was
involved and the whole empire was involved and
all theology and philosophy were involved and sometimes
the East went to war with the West
over it.
They were involved in Christological controversy.
They were trying to define, to delineate, to
describe, to set in clear definition who Jesus
was, who he was.
They called it Christological controversy.
They were led by men like Arius and
Sebelius and Eutychius and Nestorius and the Monophysites.
And for centuries the conflict waged and raged
who Jesus was.
Now, those Christological conflicts and those Christological controversies
were not only true in the development of
church history but they go clear back and
back and back to the very days of
Christ himself.
In the days of the Christian religion when
it was first promulgated it had a tremendous
antagonist in a philosophy, a Greek philosophy called
Gnosticism from the Greek word gno.
What do you mean this word comes from
the Greek word g-n-o?
Gno, to know.
They were sophists.
They were initiated into the mysteries of delirium
knowledge.
They were Gnostics they called themselves.
And it had a tremendous hold upon the
people and Gnosticism was the greatest rival of
Christianity.
Now, Gnosticism was eclectic.
It was not exclusive.
It would accept any faith.
It would accept any philosophy.
It would put its arms around anything.
So when Christianity under Paul and Timothy and
John and those men, when Christianity came to
be a relentless and a dynamic thing in
the history of the world, Gnosticism put its
arms around it.
It amalgamated.
It began to, in its eclecticism, to take
the great principles of Christianity and make them
a part of the system of Gnosticism.
Now, there were two great systems of that
that the Apostles met.
One was Gnosticic, from a Greek word meaning
feeling, and the other was Corinthian Gnosticism from
the arch enemy of the Apostle John in
Ephesus, a man by the name of Corinthian.
Now, Gnosticic Gnosticism said this, Jesus just seemed
to be a man.
He was no actual man.
He was no actual personality.
He was no actual somebody, but he just
walked around here in the days of his
life in the earth, and he just looked
like a man.
He just seemed to be a man, but
he wasn't a real man.
Now, the first epistle of John was written
against Gnosticic Gnosticism.
You look how John starts off, that which
was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have used to phone, and our hands
have handled the word of life, and honest
to goodness real genuine man, for the life
was manifested, and we have seen it, and
bear witness, and show unto you that eternal
life which was with the Father, and which
was manifested unto us, that which we have
seen and heard, declare we unto you.
That book, that epistle, 1 John, was written
against Gnosticic Gnosticism.
These teachers and sophists who were going around
all over the Roman Empire saying, Jesus is
not a real person.
He's not a real man.
He was not a real somebody.
He just seemed to be.
No, said John.
He was as real as you are.
And our hands touched him, and we felt
of him, and we held him, and our
eyes looked upon him, and our ears heard
him, the word of life, the Son of
God.
Now, Corinthian Gnosticism.
Corinthian Gnosticism was the thing written in Ephesus
when John was pastor of the church in
Ephesus.
And this was the doctrine of Corinthus.
Corinthus said he was a man all right.
He was a man all right, an actual
man.
He lived and walked and talked and lived.
He was a man all right.
But he wasn't God.
He wasn't God.
The Spirit of God came upon him.
They called it some of those angelic names.
They call them in Greek eon.
The eon came upon the Lord Jesus at
his baptism.
In the story of the visitation of the
heavenly spirit in the form of a dove,
the eon came upon Jesus at his baptism.
And the eon left the Lord Jesus on
the cross when Jesus said, Lord, into thy
hands I commend my spirit.
And Corinthus said that Jesus was just a
man, like any other man.
But he had a special endowment of an
angelic power from above.
But he was nothing but a man.
Now against that, the apostle John wrote the
gospel of John, the first gospel.
And he started off with Adam Powell as
the deity of the Son of God.
Don't you remember it?
In the beginning.
In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word, and he's using a Greek
philosophical term there, translated Word, Logos.
In the beginning was the Logos.
The Word.
And the Logos was with God.
And the Logos was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him.
And without him was not anything made that
was made.
John is saying there that this man, the
Son of God, is using himself.
In the beginning he was, and he was
God.
The personality, the entity, the somebody of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
And in heaven, resurrected and in glory, he
is still the same Lord Jesus.
Handle me and see, said the Lord.
But it is I myself, for a spirit
hath not flesh and bone, such as ye
see me have.
The Lord Jesus is in a place.
I go to prepare a cup of flesh
for you.
If I go and prepare a cup of
a flesh, like this is a flesh, if
I go and prepare a flesh for you,
I will come again and receive you unto
myself.
The Lord Jesus is in a place.
He is in the heaven, and he lives
there, a man.
He hath flesh and bone.
Thomas said, I don't believe it.
I don't believe it.
Except I put my finger in the scars
in his hand, and except I thrust my
hand into his side, I wouldn't believe it.
And the next Sunday night, when they were
gathered together, the Lord himself appeared in the
midst, a man.
Just like he was in the days of
his place, only immortalized, glorified, resurrected.
And he held out his hands and said,
Behold, we sever your fingers.
And he opened his side, and there was
a scar in the side from the spirit
of the Roman soldier, the same Lord Jesus.
He lives.
He is some body.
Flesh and bone.
He has a body, resurrected, glorified.
But it's he, and he speaks, and he
works, and he's with us, and he helps
us, and he guides us, and he blesses,
and he keeps us.
He sees us through, this Lord Jesus.
The Lord spoke to Paul in the night,
saying, he knew him.
He was with him, and he helped him,
and he walked greatly in his name.
Now, we have a glorious promise from that
same Lord Jesus.
Wherever you are, there am I in the
midst of you.
He's here.
He looks upon us.
He sees us.
He watches.
He knows, and he cares.
Lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the age.
He works with us.
He helps us.
He empowers us.
He does marvelous things for us, this Lord
Jesus.
He's somebody, just like you're here.
He can be here.
Just like somebody can help you, he can
help you.
Just like somebody can walk by your side,
he can walk by your side, this Lord
Jesus.
Somebody just like you.
Just like you.
And he works marvelously and gloriously.
There's a very popular picture called The Rose.
It's a cinemascope, widescreen, and possibly will have
the greatest run of any picture thus far
that's ever been made.
In the screen display, the presentation, of those
who made that picture, you will find a
man's name, William Freeman.
Last summer, when we had our big Cotton
Bowl campaigned here in Dallas with Billy Graham,
there was a man here in the city
who owned three nightclubs here, owned two in
Las Vegas, Nevada, an actor and a movie
magnate.
He was here in Dallas.
He had three children.
It was Sunday, and the children wanted to
go swimming, and all the places were closed
except the fair park.
So he took his three children on a
hot summer afternoon and went out to the
fair park.
After he had delivered his children where they
could swim out there somewhere, he walked up
and down the midway until he got tired
of the midway.
He didn't have anything to do, and he
heard something was going on in the Cotton
Bowl.
So he went to the Cotton Bowl and
sat down under the sea 105 degrees.
He sat down there and listened to that
service, and to my amazement, Billy Graham made
an invitation.
You remember it if you were there?
I didn't think anybody would come.
Couldn't imagine anybody responding.
That was the most unpromising thing I ever
saw in my life, that blazing sun.
He gave an invitation, and the first man
who responded to that invitation was this man,
William Freed.
Came down out of the Cotton Bowl there
at the front, stood in front of a
stand.
He sold his three nightclubs here in Dallas.
He got rid of his nightclub in Las
Vegas, Nevada.
He's in Jerusalem now.
The United Artists are preparing within a period
of about two years, they are preparing to
play on the screen for the first time
in the history of the world, the last
story of Jesus Christ.
The first thing that had to be settled
in preparing a film depicting the Lord Jesus
was who was going to be the Christ,
who's going to play the part of Jesus.
And it was finally decided that the man
who did it would be anonymous.
He will not be named in the pictures,
nor will he be named in the advertising,
nor will he be named before the world.
He's going to remain anonymous as far as
any publicity is concerned.
No famous actor, no anybody.
He's going to have an anonymous man Who
is the anonymous man?
It's the actor, William Fried.
He is doing it now.
And about two years from now, United Artists
will present for the first time the story
of the Lord Jesus to the world.
And where'd it come from?
Why, you stand amazed in the presence.
The first man who walked out of that
cotton gold stand and stood down there in
front of that little place where the man
preached was this man, William Fried, who so
largely shaped and gave the road to the
world.
Why, it happens all the time.
It happens everywhere, everywhere.
I talked to a man this morning begging
him to come back to the Lord in
the church.
He said, there's so many difficulties lying in
the way.
I said, come over there to the congregation
and look.
If I could take time out for it
and have the opportunity to do it, I
could have men stand up all over this
house, all over this house, and tell you
stories of the miracles of regeneration that would
almost be unbelievable.
What you once were, and you once were,
and what you once were, and what you
now are.
One of the finest Christian men that belonged
to this church, and one of the greatest
consecrated men that I have ever known, came
out of a gutter, came out of a
gutter.
If you were to see him now with
a big, fine executive job and a lovely
family, you'd say, Pastor, you mean he?
You mean that man?
You mean, you mean he was in the
gutter?
I mean that man was in the gutter.
He was in the gutter.
That's what the Lord has done for us.
He lives.
He's somebody.
He can speak to us.
He walks with us.
He talks with us.
He empowers us.
He makes us able.
He gives us wisdom and direction.
And the Lord Jesus speaks to Paul in
the night.
He talks to you.
He can talk to you any way that
he wants.
Just like I could.
Just like somebody next to you.
The Lord can be somebody to you.
I cannot close without saying a word of
the comfort of that.
The indescribable blessedness and sweetness and preciousness of
that.
I cannot close without it.
The Bible, in telling the story of the
three Hebrew children who were thrown in the
fiery furnace, when the king looked in there,
don't you remember, the king turned to those
who cast in those three Hebrew children and
said, didn't we put three in the furnace?
Were there not three in the furnace?
And the captors said, yes, we threw three
men in the furnace.
And the king said, but I see four
men walking free in the fiery flames.
And the covenant of the fourth one and
the farm of the fourth one is like
unto the Son of God.
Who was he?
That was the Lord Jesus.
Free him, call him.
The fourth one walking with the three Hebrew
children.
Who was it that closed the mouths of
the lions when Cain was cast, when Daniel
was cast, and the dead alive?
Who closed the mouths of those lions?
Whose story is it all the way through?
It's the Lord Jesus.
He's the one that Thomas was talking about
when he said, Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I
won't be afraid for thou art with me.
Thou art with me.
The preciousness of the presence, the comfort of
the nearness of Jesus.
He is with us.
Do you remember Ellis Fuller?
Do you remember him?
All that man.
Pastor of the First Church, Atlanta, Georgia.
Went to the president of the Southern Seminary
and we had him here for two weeks
at a revival meeting.
Do you remember that?
Oh, there are some things and messages and
sermons that Ellis Fuller preached here in this
movement that will stay with me as long
as I live.
He blessed my life.
Ellis Fuller, then president of the seminary in
Louisville, Kentucky.
This is one of the little things that
he said that has stayed with me through
these years.
He had a little boy and the little
boy was taken to the hospital for an
operation.
The pastor said to the church, nobody to
call me, nobody to get in touch with
me, nobody to know where I am.
He went to the hospital and though it
was against the rules of the hospital, being
a trustee of the institution, he got updated
and he put it in the room with
that boy and stayed with that son, stayed
with the boy.
Went in the operating room with the boy
and stood there as the anesthetic was administered
and as the operation was done and then
went back into the room with the boy
and he stayed with the boy all day
long as the lad came to consciousness and
at night time he pushed his bed right
over there next to the boy's bed and
lay down to go to sleep with his
hand on the hand of his boy.
And in the night time while they were
lying there close together before the lad dropped
off to sleep he turned his head and
said, Daddy, this is the greatest day of
my life.
And Ellis Fuller said, Son, the greatest day
of your life, why son, this has been
the most terrible day I've ever lived through.
I've been so anxious, head full of care.
Son, the greatest day of your life.
And the boy said, Yes sir, daddy, this
has been the greatest day of my life.
Daddy, you've been with me all day long.
I am persuaded that the sorrows and the
tears and the heartbreak and maybe the despair
and discouragement and disappointment and finally the death
that come into our lives are just somehow
that we might know the nearness of the
presence of Jesus.
So I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death.
I will fear no evil for thou art
with me.
And it's a great day.
It's our greatest day if He is there.
And in the night the Lord speaks to
Paul.
He's somebody the Lord.
Well, and while we sing the song, somebody,
you, give your heart to the Lord.
You come, stand by me.
Put your life in the hands of God.
You come, stand by me.
Somebody, put your life in the Spirit.
You come, stand by me.
Pastor, here I am.
Here I come.
Taking the Lord as my Savior.
Or coming into the fellowship of the Church.
However, the Lord says, open the door and
lead the way while we make appeal.
You come, you come.
On the first note of the first sentence,
anywhere somebody needs me.
I want to be baptized.
I want to come to the letter, or
come to the letter, or by faith, or
by rededication of life.
However, God says, lead the way with the
joy.
Anywhere, somebody needs me.
While we stand on faith.