Let us turn to Matthew chapter 22.
You'll find there our text, or at least
the first part of the text of the
evening.
I'm going to do a bit of weaving
tonight with the Scripture, and I really think
that this is the warp.
We'll come to the wolf in just a
little while, but I want you to see
these deep, important strands of truth, and on
them we'll seek to lay the fabric of
God's mind and will for us tonight.
And so it is from verse 34 that
I would begin reading, But when the Pharisees
had heard that our Lord Jesus had put
the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together,
and one of them, which was a lawyer,
asked him a question, tempting him, saying, Master,
which is the great commandment in the law?
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.
This is a very unusual statement.
On these two commandments hang all the law
and the prophets.
I don't like to use that word key
lightly, but I do think that in one
sense this is a key, a key to
understanding the law and the prophets.
Let's look at it closely, if it's that
important.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
This is a commandment given by God through
Moses to Israel.
Undoubtedly, the Pharisees thought that Christ would have
selected one of the ten commandments and brought
that out.
At least that's what they were intending to
have him do, so that they could then
accuse him of having slighted the other.
But he, knowing what was in men, came
to the very root of the matter.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
Now, this is a commandment, and God made
us, and he knows all about us.
And he knows that we do not have
direct control over our emotions.
And this is, in essence, an emotional word.
Thou shalt love.
Normally, we think of this word as having
to do with emotion.
But it's most important for us to understand
tonight that as the word love is used
in the scripture, it does not primarily refer
to sensibilities, or feelings, or emotions.
It's a good Anglo-Saxon word, actually.
We don't use it in its original form.
Oh, it does occur.
For instance, did you know that the word
love actually has its roots in the Anglo
-Saxon word lifon, which means together?
The only way lif has survived is in
the word beleif, which means to live, or
act, or exist together with.
And the way that it changed its form
was the word luth.
Two old men in King James, England, sitting
on a stone fence, watching the young people
go by, would say, I, your John and
my Mary, I see their luth.
Well, what's that mean?
That means they're together.
They enjoy being together.
And finally, they announce they're just going to
stay together and build a home together.
And that idea of being together is the
root idea of love.
And so to beleif literally meant to live,
act, have your being together.
To beleif on the Lord Jesus Christ, as
it was used by the King James translators,
meant to link yourself with him.
He used an expression, take my yoke upon
you and learn of me.
Link yourself and go together with me.
Two oxen in the same yoke always usually
went in the same direction, or else you
had an upset wagon, or you had an
accident.
And so it is that to beleif on
Christ is to live together with him.
And to take the word love, then, as
it was used by the King James translators,
is quite a distance from the common use
of the word love, as we hear it
in secular music and find it being used
secularly.
I think very often when we read, Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God, we're really
talking or thinking about having a warm feeling
about God.
You know, a kind of a happy, warm
glow.
It's not what it's talking about at all.
Not what it's talking about at all.
To love God with all your mind and
with all of your heart and with all
of your soul means that you brought all
the powers and faculties of your personality into
focus together with God, with God's purpose and
God's plan, and your purpose is joined his
purpose.
To love God, therefore, means that you have
committed all of the powers of your entire
being to the end of pleasing God, fulfilling
his plan for you, satisfying his heart in
regard to you, seeking to glorify him, doing
everything you can to ensure his blessedness, his
satisfaction with you, and his happiness.
In other words, you as a person have
now united your purpose with God's purpose and
you are, if you please, yoked with him,
committed to him.
But translate that into the next phrase.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
Now, what does this mean?
Feel warm and soft and sort of kindly
glowing about your neighbor?
No.
It means that if you want food and
clothing for yourself, you want food and clothing
for your neighbor.
If you want peace and security for yourself,
you want peace and security for your neighbor.
Whatever you think is right, intrinsically right for
you, is equally right for your neighbor and
you, therefore, have an obligation to seek the
blessedness, the happiness, the highest good and fulfillment
both of yourself and of your neighbor.
Well, that's coming pretty close to giving us
a definition of God's use of the idea
or the word of sin.
Sin has to be the very opposite of
this.
We've defined sin, theologians have, as being selfishness,
an inordinate and improper self-love, a desire
for one to be at the expense of
others, to have satisfaction and to have possessions
or to have position without due and proper
regard for the rights and the interests of
others.
That's sin.
If we understand that, then we would see
why our Lord would say on these two
commandments hang all the law.
Well, why?
What is God's law?
God's law is an expression of his mind,
an unveiling of his purpose to ensure the
greatest good and happiness and blessedness of everybody.
Thou shalt not steal.
Why?
Well, that's to protect the works of your
hands and the reward of your service.
And it's also to protect others from you.
But God, you see, wants to have you
enjoy the fruit of your labor, and he
wants others to enjoy the fruit of their
labor.
And so God's law is the expression of
his mind, the revelation of his intention that
everyone should have an opportunity to experience the
highest good and blessedness and fulfillment of all
of their possibilities.
A sinner is a moral gangster.
He's part of the spiritual mafia.
He's a person that said, my pleasure, my
satisfaction, the gratification of my appetite, the indulgence
of my whims, is so important that I
don't care what it does to God or
what it does to others.
I am God and I will please me
at whatever expense it may be to others.
And God has said the soul that's in
it, it shall die.
Why?
Because it's run amuck in a moral universe.
A sinner is a person who's committed himself
to the purpose and the practice of pleasing
himself without due and proper regard for the
interest of God and the rights of others.
And that's why God has said the soul
that's in it, it shall surely, surely die.
And therefore, as Christ said, except you repent,
you'll perish.
Well, why?
Because the attitude of the sinner is, I'll
do what I want to do, I'll get
what I want to have, I'll be what
I want to be, and I won't let
anyone stand in my way.
I'll please me.
Now, he may not.
He may not do that with the acrimony
and the spirit in which I've done it.
He may be perfectly gracious and sweet and
smiling and pleasant and yet be as tough
as a sharp steel in his ambition to
achieve his own ends without regard for the
interests of others or the purpose of God.
And therefore, God has made it clear in
his word that until there's a change of
mind from something to something, one will perish,
except you repent, you'll perish, said Christ.
In the mind of the sinner, I'll do
what I want to do, I'll get what
I want to have, I'll take, I'll be,
has to give way to another attitude, complete
change from my will to thy will.
It's that simple.
Now, on the basis of that changed direction
and changed attitude and changed purpose, there's the
possibility of forgiveness.
Paul said he was night and day, from
house to house, teaching repentance toward God and
faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
So by definition, if you have been converted,
if you are a child of God through
faith in Christ, you have repented.
If you haven't repented, you aren't a Christian.
It's that simple.
And if you have repented, then you have
fixed and formed an entirely new purpose, which
is to please God, to gratify God, to
seek his highest interest and his blessedness and
his happiness, which is synonymous with thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and mind and soul.
This is, this is the expression of it.
But, you see, the evidence that you have
changed in your attitude toward God is seen
in the fact that you've changed in your
relationship toward people.
For one to say that they've repented toward
God and yet they can remain ruthless and
cruel and selfish in respect to people means
that they've lost all meaning of word.
The whole thing has been a confusing jumble
of nonsense.
Because if you've been born of God, you've
partaken of the divine nature.
You have a new heart, a new nature,
a new life, a new spirit.
And this is the issue that we find,
and now I'm going to put a little
bit of the, put the shuttle through and
try to put a little woof onto this.
This is what you find over in Matthew
chapter 25.
If you will turn to it, you will
see that the Lord is explicit.
Here he's told the Pharisees and his disciples
beside him the nature of repentance and faith
and the evidence of this new life that
you have, you have truly repented and, and
you have truly believed on God and love
him in this sense.
The evidence is going to be seen in
your relationship to people.
Now isn't it gracious of our Lord to
give us a preview of judgment?
Aren't you glad that he isn't going to
spring something on us then that he didn't
advise us of in advance?
And therefore it is possible for you to
have a preview of, of that meeting.
And that's what he's given here.
Oh, I know that in this 34th verse
it would seem, just looking at it casually,
that he's dealing with nations, but nations are
made up of people and he's dealing with
people.
He said in Matthew 7, many will say
unto me in that day and I will
say unto them.
And so here he's talking about, about individuals
who comprise nations.
Then shall the king say unto them on
his right hand, come you blessed of my
father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from
the foundation of the world.
For I was hungered and you gave me
meat.
I was thirsty and you gave me drink.
I was a stranger and you took me
in.
Naked and you clothed me.
I was sick and you visited me.
I was in prison and you came unto
me.
Then shall the righteous answer him saying, Lord,
when saw we thee and hungered and fed
thee or thirsty and gave thee drink?
When saw we thee a stranger and took
thee in or naked and clothed thee?
Or when saw we thee sick or in
prison and came unto thee?
And the king shall answer and say unto
them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as
you have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, you have done
it unto me.
And then shall he say also unto them
on the left hand, depart from me ye
cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil
and his angels.
For I was in hunger and you gave
me no meat.
I was thirsty and you gave me no
drink.
I was a stranger and you took me
not in.
Naked and you clothed me not.
Sick and in prison and you visited me
not.
Then shall they also answer him saying, Lord,
when saw we thee and hungered or a
thirst or a stranger or naked or sick
or in prison and did not minister unto
thee?
Then shall he answer them saying, Verily I
say unto you, inasmuch as you did it
not to one of the least of these,
you did it not to me.
And thee shall go away into everlasting punishment,
but the righteous into life eternal.
Now he's not talking about salvation by works
here at all.
He is talking about a salvation that works.
There's a lot of difference.
Because the scripture is quite clear in stating
that all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God.
And sin is selfishness.
Sin is self-love.
Sin is that disposition, that committal of the
will to the principle and the practice of
pleasing oneself without regard for the will of
God or the right, the interest of others.
And so what does he say?
Well, in effect he is saying unto that
one group, you repented and you believed.
And there was evidence of repentance and faith
by a transformed life.
You were new creation, new creatures.
That's what he's talking about.
And to the others whom I think were
equally religious, I do, I believe with all
my heart that this other company were religious.
I think the illustration of it is given
in that parable of the Good Samaritan.
Who was it that went by and saw
the wounded man in the ditch?
It was the rabbi.
Who was it that went by?
It was the Levite.
Why were they, why didn't they have time?
Well, they were so busy with their religious
duties, they didn't have time for a Samaritan
in the ditch.
But who was it that came?
Well, it was a man who had absolutely
no obligation, but he had something else.
He had concern.
And I believe that our Lord indicated in
that that this company of people, and they
know that he is Lord, and they said,
When saw we thee, hungry, thirsty, naked, blind,
and did not minister to thee?
Because they were a religious people.
Just as in Matthew 7, to which I've
referred, Many will say unto me in that
day, Lord, we prophesied in your name, we
cast out devils in your name, we did
miracles in your name.
They knew the right places to be, the
right things to say, the right things to
do, and yet he said, I will send
you away with you.
I never knew you.
Why?
Well, I think it's here.
He's simply saying those who have received the
gift of eternal life are changed.
Well, why?
I think it isn't difficult to understand.
If you, for instance, were to study carefully
2 Corinthians chapter 13 and verse 5, you
would find that the apostle writing to that
church said, Examine yourself whether you be in
the faith.
Prove your own self.
Know you not your own self, how that
Christ be in you, except you be reprobate.
You see, salvation is not a decision, it's
not a scheme, it's not a plan, it's
not a scripture verse, it's not an it,
it's not even an extension of your existence
for eternity.
Salvation is a person, Jesus Christ.
Now, David knew that.
In the 27th Psalm he said, Jehovah is
my life and my salvation.
He is my salvation.
In the New Testament it's clear.
When Christ who is our life, not when
Christ who has given us eternal life, when
Christ who is our life shall appear, he
that hath the Son hath life.
Well, why?
Because Christ is life.
And so what is he saying here?
That day that he's described as the day
of judgment, what's he saying?
Simply this, I am always myself.
This is what the Son of God is
saying.
There's only one Christ.
And if you have repented of your sin,
if you have pledged yourself thereby in repentance
and faith to please God in everything, to
seek his greatest happiness and blessedness and satisfaction,
then Jesus Christ has come into you and
the evidence that Jesus Christ has come into
you is that you have been changed.
And you begin to feel the same way
Christ felt.
And you begin to act the same way
Christ acted.
And you respond the same way he responded.
And the evidence of salvation, therefore, is in
a changed life.
Again, you go back to John.
John, in his first letter, describes a people
saying, if you see your brother have need,
then you say, be fed, be warm, be
clothed.
And you don't do anything to help him.
How?
How does the love of God dwell in
that man?
What's he saying?
Why, he's saying if Jesus Christ has come
into you, if you've been made partaker of
the divine nature, there is only one Christ,
and he is always consistent with himself.
Well, let me illustrate it.
Many years ago, two missionary friends of mine
went into, uh, I knew them, one of
them was here, back this year, Gordon Beecham,
who's over at Sebring, Florida, retired missionary to
the interior mission, North African mission, and John
Hall, who, uh, is with the Lord.
These two young men, then, in 1915, went
into the Tonga.
If a person died of leprosy, the body
was taken to a cliff and thrown down
where there were known to be dens of
hyenas and consumed by the beasts.
Otherwise, for any other purpose of death, the
body was taken by the blood relatives to
the sacred grove, there put into a large
clay cooking pot, the flesh was cooked, and
the family ate at that pot till the
flesh was gone.
The bones were taken from the pot, stripped
of all remaining flesh, and put under a
cairn of stones to which the family would
then return with sacrifices every year.
Now, it was into this tribe that John
Hall and Gordon Beecham came.
The second man in the tribe that was
won to Christ was a tall, strong, stalwart
warrior by the name of Karga.
Karga's father had been killed by the neighboring
Beleri people, and in the presence of the
elders of the Tongali tribe, Karga had taken
a blood oath that he would not cease
his warfare against the Beleri people until he
had killed one hundred Beleri
warriors in reprisal for the death of his
father because his father, they felt, had been
unfairly ambushed.
And so he was well on the way
to carrying out his blood oath when he
met John Hall and Gordon Beecham and the
gospel of Jesus Christ penetrated his heart, and
he opened his heart to receive Christ.
He came to work at the station.
There he helped them as an informant with
the language while he learned more about Christ.
One night, alone in his hut, he said
Jesus spoke to him.
He said, Karga, when the Beleri people want
their children to go be quiet, they say,
shh, be quiet, or Karga will hear you.
They frighten their children with your name.
And Karga, you're my boy now.
You're a Jesus boy.
And you're not going to kill the Beleri.
I want you to go to the Beleri
tomorrow and tell them about me.
So the next morning, instead of coming to
work, Karga came with his bow and arrows
and spears and calling his dog, or his
dog on the leash.
And the missionaries saw him, and they said,
where are you going?
And he said, I go to the Beleri.
And they raised their hands and said, oh,
Karga, you're a Christian.
You can't go to the Beleri now and
continue your blood oath.
Oh, if you don't understand, Jesus spoke to
me last night, and he said, I must
go and tell the Beleri about him.
And then you know what they said?
Oh, Karga, you can't go to the Beleri.
They'll kill you.
He said, I go to the Beleri.
He started down the path.
They never expected to see him again.
But he walked right into the village, and
the people were so astounded, they let him
come.
And he went right up to the hut
of the family that had killed his father.
And he said, I've come to you with
a Jesus talk from the Holy Spirit.
And he sat down, and they listened as
he told them what Jesus Christ had done
in dying for them, and how he wanted
them to learn about Christ, and they needn't
be afraid of him anymore, and he wasn't
afraid of them.
And he came back, and every afternoon after
that, he'd do his work, and about 2
o'clock, he'd put on his clothes, and
he'd take his little, just beginning primer, a
few verses, and he'd walk down to the
Beleri people.
After a year, he came with a family
that had killed his father, and he presented
them for baptism, and they said, we need
a pastor to teach us.
Can't Karga be our pastor?
So here, Atangali became a pastor of the
Beleri church, and at one time, he had
over 2,500 people meeting in that church
on Sunday morning, and he personally, most of
whom he'd won to Christ, and almost all
of whom he'd baptized.
They didn't have that many Sunday nights.
There were only about half that many.
About 1,200 of them went all through
the area to different tribes, having little meetings
in huts, giving the message at night that
he'd given them in the morning, and that's
why the attendance was smaller than Sunday night.
But what was it?
It was the power of the gospel.
God had changed a life from hatred and
fear and anger to one that was concerned
that these who'd been his mortal enemies, whom
he'd sought to kill, might come to know
and love Jesus Christ.
Now, that's what you have here.
You and I had been committed to selfishness.
No, you see it in your grandchildren.
You knew it in your children.
You know in your grandchildren you have your
daughter brings her little boy over and your
son brings his little girl over and you
put them down on the floor, and the
first thing you know, your grandson picks up
the truck and hits your granddaughter over the
head with it.
Well, why?
Because she wanted it, and it's his.
And apples don't fall too far from the
tree, you know.
You were doing the same thing a time
ago.
Now, that makes me wonder sometimes when I
find people in churches after they've been members
for 30 years still sitting in the pew,
scratching and pulling hair and biting at one
another.
It's all right for babies, I guess, but
you don't think of it as becoming conduct
for Christians and yet think of the churches
that have been ruined because professing Christians have
been biting and pulling hair and scratching and
gouging.
You wonder if they've ever partaken of the
divine nature, if they've ever passed from death
to life.
You wonder if they are children of God.
Now, the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith,
self-control.
And so our Lord Jesus said here when
I was hungry, since I had given you
a new heart and you had repented of
your sins and received me and I had
come in when I was hungry, but, oh,
when did we see you hungry?
Oh, I identified myself with everyone that was
hungry.
I identified myself with everyone that was thirsty.
I identified myself with everyone who didn't have
adequate clothing.
That's why the rest of the world, you
know, laughs at America.
We're a Christian nation.
We send 23,000 foreign missionaries.
We give 200 million dollars just to keep
those evangelical missionaries on the field.
Altogether, there are 33,000 missionaries, but that
includes all groups, cults, and others, and 300
million plus, but 200 million and 23,000
are the evangelical community.
And yet, have you ever stopped to realize
that 50% of the world's raw material
is processed by American-owned companies?
In other words, it takes the processing of
50% of the world's raw material to
provide enough income to keep us living in
the standards to which we've become accustomed.
6% of the world's people receive the
reward for processing 50% of the world's
raw material, and that's why the communists are
so successful in saying imperialists, not colonial, not
political, economic imperialists.
And this is why it's so difficult.
Our missionaries go and say, Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God, and the people say,
What is that?
50% of the world's raw material processed
by 6% of the world's people.
Can it be?
Well, there has to come a time when
we begin to recognize that if we're going
to be internationalists, if we're going to send
23,000 foreign representatives, if we're going to
send all of these people, we've got to
realize that the people are thirsty and they're
naked and they're hungry and they're concerned.
And if you have been born of God,
when I tell you about the church in
Central America and the church in Africa and
the church in India where the elders sit
there and look into the faces of their
dying children with kwashiorkor, a malnutritional disease, the
brain is enlarged, the head is enlarged, and
the belly is swollen, the limbs like rubber
or plastic, and from the hips down covered
with horrible ulcers, all because they didn't have
enough protein, all because they didn't have the
food they needed.
And here sits this father, and he's a
Christian, and he loves Christ.
Missionary's up there on the hill, he's fat
and in fair flesh, has a car to
drive and a radio, but the people down
below.
Somebody comes in and sits down on the
other side of the fire.
You know why?
What's the matter with your baby?
Oh, it has the hunger sickness.
What's going to happen to your baby?
Is it going to die?
Have you had others have the sickness yet?
The only baby I have living is that
one over there, the rest of them have
died.
Well, you know who did it?
Why, we don't have any food.
Do you know why you don't have any
food?
No, I don't know why.
It just doesn't grow, isn't enough, there's too
many people.
And then they point up, they're the ones,
and they point to the missionary or they
point to the governor.
They're the ones.
You follow what?
And we'll give you the food.
We'll help you get the food.
And who is he?
He's a communist.
Isn't it amazing that in the three countries
where we've had the greatest success as missionaries,
we've lost them to communism.
We've had the greatest success in any country
in China.
Honestly, great churches, schools, printing plants, seminaries.
Oh, we had it all.
And we did something right.
But whatever it was we didn't do, we
can't do it any longer there.
We're out of it.
Did you ever know that every single one
of the leaders of communism that took over
China had been trained in Christian schools?
Every one, including Mao himself.
Why?
Because they didn't see any possibility of getting
food and clothing for their people from the
east or from the west.
And the only place their human need could
be met was with the promises out of
Russia.
And the second country where we had even
a greater percentage harvest for Christ was Korea,
with the purest church we've ever had on
the face of the earth, in my estimation.
No one could be a member of the
Korean church unless he brought somebody that he
personally led to Christ.
And yet, with that tremendous success, we lost
North Korea and 450,000 believers were killed
in night and day.
And Vietnam.
In all of Indochina, the greatest harvest for
Christ we ever had was in North Vietnam.
Whatever we did right, the church was established,
but every single one of the leaders that
took over North Vietnam and established communism had
been trained in Christian schools, and they saw
no possibility of the human need of the
people being met from Christianity or from the
west.
Why?
Oh, I don't know just why.
I think I know something.
I think that somehow or other we lost
sight of the fact that the Lord Jesus
had identified himself with people that were hungry
and naked and thirsty and imprisoned by their
hopelessness and their despair, and somewhere or other
we got the idea that it was wrong
to care about the human need of people
and the aspirations and the hopes of people.
But the Lord Jesus Christ said, in that
day, in that day, I am going to
know my own because those into whom I
come react just like I did.
When I saw people hungry, I said, give
me them to eat.
When I saw people sick, I wanted to
see them healed.
When I saw people bonded, I wanted to
see them set at liberty.
And I'll know my own because all of
those into whom I come feel the way
I feel, react the way I react, because
I'm always true to myself.
And I will be myself in them.
Now, this is not a social gospel.
This is nothing less than the insight into
the nature of the Son of God and
the concern and the burden that the Lord
Jesus Christ had the people in the totality
of their needs.
Now, my ancestor, my great-grandfather, came with
his mother and his wife and three little
children, Albert and Alma, and I don't know
the name of the little girl.
And they came from Wisconsin and moved over
toward Willmar, Minnesota to go out to a
homestead.
Back in the early 1850s.
And when it was just at dusk, they
were in the ox cart going up just
a little ways, a couple of miles to
a homesteader's cabin to spend the night.
And Chief Little Crow, a Sioux Indian, had
sent his son and 12 brave out on
the warpath into Chippewa country against the white
people.
And they had come all this distance from
Dakota, off their own area, and the first
ones they came onto were the Dustin family.
And the arrows began to fly.
The oxen broke away.
An arrow went through the breast of my
great-grandmother.
My great-grandfather had an arrow through his
heart, was instantly killed, was scalped.
My great-grandmother was scalped while still alive.
They found the little baby, dashed its head
out against the wheel of the ox cart,
and Alma and Albert huddled down in the
things and didn't cry, one of them four
and the other six.
The next day, when the oxen had gone
back to Willmar, the feathers came out and
found the two little children.
And the only part of the dust that
the Indians wanted were their scalps.
And sometimes I think the only part of
people that we want are their souls.
We sometimes collect souls the way the Indians
collected scalps.
And that's what he's saying.
My concern is for people and their fears
and hopes and their needs and their yearnings
and their longings.
Nothing can meet the needs of a human
heart but God.
The only way to God is in and
through the Lord Jesus Christ.
And he said, when I come into you,
when I live in you, you're going to
find that the love of God will be
shed abroad in your heart by the Holy
Ghost, and you're going to feel the same
way, the same way that I felt.
We still have opportunity in this country.
We still have opportunity in many parts of
the world.
We still send our missionaries, but they're sent
by you, sent by your churches, sent by
your gifts.
In some way, somehow, we who know and
love Jesus Christ have got to reveal again
the fact that the Son of God is
concerned about people.
Oh, yes, we want them to know in
the forgiveness of sin.
We want them to know them with the
gift of eternal life.
But we've also got to be concerned about
them.
You can't say to that church in Indochina,
and to that church in Central America, and
to that church in Africa, too sad, be
war, be close.
We've brought you the gospel.
You can't say that.
Look what else we've done.
As a means, as a handmaid, as a
tool of our evangelism, we've set up our
dispensaries.
And so we sent our nurses and our
doctors.
And I've seen the letters that came back
from my missionary friends, and they said, when
we came here nine years ago, nine out
of ten children died before they were one
year of age.
But, praise God, we've been here.
We've had our clinic classes.
We've gone into the villages.
And now in the area we serve, in
just nine years, only one out of ten
of the children died in the first year.
Nine out of ten live.
What happened?
Well, you see, that was a handmaid of
evangelism.
But what we didn't realize that we were
doing was to change the balance between population
and food supply.
And so in just two or three generations,
what's happened?
We've outstripped the food supply.
So now what do you find?
Oh, nine out of ten children live the
first year.
But four out of the nine die by
the time they are six of malnutrition.
And of the five that survive, three of
them are permanently damaged by inadequate protein from
the time they're weaned until they're six.
And so what's happened?
We've thrown the whole balance between population and
food out of control and yet don't seem
to feel responsible.
We're international, we evangelicals.
We live with the world before us.
Your children grow up reading and praying for
missionaries.
Oh, how imperative it is that we understand
the Lord Jesus Christ.
We have to understand that to love God
means that we want to please Him and
gratify Him and satisfy Him.
But the only way in the world you
can ever prove that you love God is
that you love people.
You can't take a dollar out here and
blow it to God.
He doesn't need it.
He pays the streets of heaven with it.
The only place that will help is in
time.
The only way you can ever evidence to
anyone that you love God is that you
love people.
And so he said the first commandment is
to seek the blessedness, the happiness, the satisfaction
to be together with God and His purpose.
And the second is like unto it.
Thou shalt seek the same blessedness and happiness
and fulfillment and satisfaction for others which you
want for yourself.
You want food?
Then you've got to want them to want
food.
Do you want dignity?
Then they've got to have a right to
dignity.
Do you want respect as a human being
with security for your person?
Then they must have.
Do you want security against your old age
with provision for your needs?
Then so must they.
That whatever it is right and proper for
you to want, you should want.
But what you want for you, you must
want for them.
Why are the young people in our colleges
turning away from the church?
Why is it that men like Stokely Carmichael
say, Christianity?
No.
Jesus Christ?
Yes.
Because what they read in the Bible isn't
what they see around them.
What do we need?
What revival do we need today in this
last third of the twentieth century?
It's to become acquainted with our Lord again.
To understand what it means to be a
Christian.
To be one, one of Christ.
One in whom Christ is.
Using your eyes to see the lost and
needy.
Using your brain to think.
Your ears to hear.
Your heart to feel.
Your hands to serve.
Your feet to go.
Your lips to speak.
Christ, free to live in you his own
life.
This is what he's talking about.
And this is what it is when you
read in Ephesians 3, 17, that Christ shall
dwell in your heart through faith.
When Jesus Christ is free to dwell in
you, then he is going to be himself
in you.
We have not several Christ's.
We have but one.
And the evidence that you know God, that
you've been born of God, that you are
a Christian, one of Christ, and that Christ
is in you and in me is going
to be by permitting him to be himself
in us and through us again.
What did he say?
In that day, I'll know my own.
Those into whom I've come, those that have
been made partaker of my nature, those that
have inherited that gift of eternal life that
I died to bring, they will be the
ones that when they saw human need, when
they saw me, I identified with them.
I never heard an evangelical talk like that.
Well, all I can say, friend, to have
any contact with this generation, we've got to
come back and learn of Christ.
And he said, take my yoke upon you
and learn of me.
Learn of me.
What is it?
He wants you to present your brain, your
eyes, your ears, your heart, your hands, your
feet, to the living in you.
He can live through you his own life
again, and he can love through you.
Now, here we are, most of you with
the snow of years upon your brow, and
yet you're living to see the most crucial
time in the history of our planet, and
you are in a position to make tremendous
changes in the destiny of this planet.
If you can just understand that whatever days
there are left, Jesus Christ wants to just
be himself through you, just live in you,
Christ dwelling in your heart through faith.
But this is what he'll be.
This is what he'll do.
There's only one Christ, and this is how
he'll manifest his presence.
Let us bow together in prayer.
Father, it's marvelous when you take a savage,
brutal, cruel, with bloodlust and passion for it,
and you cleanse him from the past, and
you give him a new heart and a
new life and a new nature, and you
make him a new creation, and you cause
him to love the tribe he's hated and
to witness to them in his own peril
and see them brought in hundreds to thee.
We can marvel at this and rejoice at
thy grace, but here tonight, Father, our men
and women, who have all the potential and
possibilities that can come from education, from information,
and from opportunity, can we not love those
whom we've despised?
Can we not be the channels by which
thy grace can be revealed to those whom
we've even detested?
Can we not be, Lord, the instrument by
which those whom we have considered hardly worthy
of anything but our score can through us
learn of thy love, thy grace, thy mercy?
Can we not use those skills, that talent,
and those resources, our prayers, our knowledge, to
help the needs of men that in their
despair, in their hopelessness, see nowhere to turn
but to the empty promises of communist atheism?