This morning we're going to forsake the epistle
to the Hebrews and take a look in
the first chapter of the first epistle to
Peter, and begin at the first verse with
the first word.
First word in the first verse of the
first chapter of the first epistle of Peter.
The epistle of James is very often given
the title of being the most practical epistle
in the New Testament.
But I always find this epistle to be
more practical, maybe because I need it, I
don't know.
But this message this morning is designed with
two ends in view.
One to encourage people who maybe have made
a recent commitment to Christ, a fully total
commitment, and the other to encourage people who
would like to do that but they're afraid
of tomorrow.
They say, well, if I lived on a
camp like this, I could really live the
victorious life, but when I get outside.
Well, that's a different situation.
Well, that's true, the situation is different, but
God is not different.
And the Spirit who indwells us now is
the same Holy Spirit who will indwell us
continually.
Let's read together just verses 15 and 16
here.
But he which has called you is holy,
so be ye holy in all manner of
conversation, because it is written, be ye holy
for I am holy.
One of the recurring words in this epistle
is the word holy.
Notice in the second chapter, verse five, ye
also as lively stones are built up a
spiritual house, a holy priesthood.
And then in verse nine he says, ye
are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation.
And he says in the third chapter and
verse five, after this manner of all time,
the holy women.
And so he goes on and uses this
word that is a kind of frightening word
to many people in the day in which
we live, because some people become very eccentric
about the way holy people should live.
A man said to me recently, he said,
I believe you're very interested in the holiness
people.
And I said, I'm not a bit interested
in them.
Not a bit interested in holiness people.
I'm interested in holy people, but they're very
different from holiness people.
The Pharisees in the New Testament are the
holiness people who lost the glory and then
they put the accent on external things.
Now I sure believe you should be modest,
but I was at a camp a while
ago where I was rated as, well, maybe
my true category, way down in the list,
because I wore a tie.
The real holiness preachers do not wear ties.
A tie is a sign of vanity.
You're trying to show off.
And the ladies wore long skirts, which are
all right.
But I said, if sanctification is determined by
the length of your skirt, the nuns have
got you beat.
I wouldn't say they all said hallelujah, but
there you are.
You see, we put the emphasis on externals.
I think one of the troubles with, well
let me say this, that the Word of
God says that we're to rightly divide the
Word of Truth.
It does not say rightly interpret the Word
of Truth, though we should do that.
That to rightly divide the Word of Truth
is not necessarily rightly interpreting the Word of
Truth.
For instance, I'm hoping this morning that this
very simple message will clear a lot of
your thinking.
And I trust I'm rightly dividing the Word
of Truth, because I'm bringing you the message
that I feel God wants you to have
at this moment.
I don't think it's the right thing.
Let me say this.
I think a few minutes ago we sang,
Years I Spent in Vanity and Pride.
I went into a large church in England,
and I heard some marvelous singing, little children's
voices.
And I opened the door, and there were
maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty
little children on those tiny little chairs, and
then their feet didn't even touch the floor,
and there wasn't a child in that room
over five years of age.
And they were singing lustily, Years I Spent
in Vanity and Pride.
Now I couldn't understand that.
How can five-year-old children spend years
in vanity and pride?
Now I could bring you a message, or
you could go to, say, a rest home
for old ladies, and preach on, put on
the whole armor of God.
I don't think that would be rightly dividing
the Word of Truth.
Or you could go to a class of
vigorous young teenage boys, and take a section
out of the life of Moses.
Take this child and nurse it for me.
I don't think that's rightly dividing the Word
of Truth.
I think there is a word which is
essential to people at that moment.
That is dividing the Word of Truth.
If you need a word of rebuke, that
is a word of truth to you.
If you need a word of exaltation, then
this is the Word of Truth.
And this is rightly dividing the Word.
In other words, it's due meat in due
season.
Now on top of that, we must, of
course, rightly interpret the Word.
But the trouble with interpretation is we go
as far as it's comfortable to go.
Years and years and years ago, when I
was a boy, and that's a long while,
but no I wasn't, I was a young
preacher at that time, and a very famous
American executive wrote a book.
Bruce Barton wrote a book, The Man Nobody
Knows.
Now that book has been republished, and it's
well worth reading, though there are areas in
it you won't agree with.
But as I said last night, or the
night before, I would like to rescue Jesus
Christ from stained glass windows and children's cramming
books.
I think they're vulgar, I think they're almost
blasphemous very often, they're certainly grotesque, and they're
not right.
And I think Bruce Barton was doing that
in words, but he wrote this book that
became a bestseller, and 30 years after, it's
still selling very well.
It was The Life of Jesus, The Man
Nobody Knows, and then he followed that with
another book about the Bible, The Book Nobody
Knows.
And I've been very tempted to write a,
um, another book on the life nobody lives.
Because I could easily prove to you, I
think this morning, that there are no Christians
anymore.
No Christians anywhere.
Anybody here doesn't have two coats, raise your
hand.
Well you're not Christian, you're not Christians, because
Christians don't have two coats, do they?
And you carry neither purse nor script, and
if you push too far enough, most heresy
that we have is truth that is pushed
too far.
I believe in sanctification, the Bible teaches it.
I do not believe in sinless perfection.
Dispensationalism is error, actually.
There was no dispensationalism until a hundred years
ago.
The world didn't know a thing about it,
then somebody brought it up, and everybody fell
for it.
Strangely enough, I'm not trying to, uh, sabotage
your theology.
You say, I believe in the imminent return
of Jesus.
He could come before we get home, which
I don't believe.
And that theory was never propagated until 1834,
and it was started by a woman.
Now that's rough on the Baptists, but that's
really true.
It was started by a woman, and it
became very popular.
You know, lots of people would like Jesus
to come today for two reasons.
One, they're afraid to die, and the other,
they don't want to go through any tribulation.
And if Jesus came today, well, that'd be
great, because we wouldn't have to, uh, uh,
face death, maybe very coldly, and the other
thing is, we, uh, well, we wouldn't have
to go through what I'm sure the church
is going to go through.
After all, if you were in Russia this
morning.
Oh, let me put it this way.
A man came into my office a while
ago, and I said to him, where have
you been?
And he said, well, I had a wonderful
experience out on the West Coast.
I met my cousin, and he told me
his cousin has joined a group of people,
and he said, my brother, my cousin never
reads the Bible.
He doesn't know a thing about it, but
I found him, and he put his hand
up like this, living in a house, oh
boy, a mansion, and beautiful foreign sports cars,
and I don't know what he didn't have.
I asked him how he got it.
He said he'd joined this certain group, and
he said, you know what my cousin said,
and he doesn't know a thing about the
Bible, he said the world situation is heading
up, and soon there's going to be a
superman on this earth, and he's going to
rule the nations of the world, and we've
got him on the ground floor, and because
of this, we're getting money from various directions,
and when this man gets into authority, we're
going to help to rule the nations.
And he said everything about that man, except
named him as the Antichrist.
And then he said, why don't you come
and join our group?
It's a good thing you came today, if
you'd come tomorrow, he said, I'm taking a
place for, a plane for Basel, and I'm
going to the university to try and get
a degree there in the occult.
Now he has a number of degrees, and
on the way he said, I'm going to
South America, into a certain mountain, and there's
an old woman there, I believe an Indian
woman, and she has a great big, um,
well, to switch over to a lady who's
caused a lot of sensation in Washington, she,
she reads a crystal.
And people sometimes say to me, do you
think that, uh, Jean Dixon is, is, is
a God guided person?
And I say very emphatically no, because if
she was, at first she'd witnessed for Christ,
and she's never mentioned his name yet.
She's got spiritist instincts, she, uh, she doesn't
look at the Bible, she looks through a
piece of glass made in Cornell or somewhere.
Now the Bible doesn't say you should receive
power after you've bought a crystal.
It says that you receive power after the
Holy Ghost has come.
But this woman in South America has a
crystal which has been hewn out of the
side of the mountain, and it's the shape
of a skull, and she predicts world affairs
out of this.
And this man said, I'm going to see
her because she is one of the most
amazing women in the world.
Now remember this, Adolf Hitler made every move
right until the last one.
And he did that because he stayed out
of bed every night, not consulting the Holy
Spirit, but familiar spirits.
His guide was a crawly and old wrinkled
woman that was in touch with evil powers,
and he made every move right.
He roped Europe, and he went on almost
to world dominion until he came to the
last fence, and then he missed it.
The devil offered him the kingdoms of this
world, and he bowed down, and he was
going to take them, and then the devil
did what he always did, he gypped him.
But this woman has this skull, and this
man said, I'm going to see her.
And he said, do you know the people
that come to consult her from all over
the world, the people that come there the
most are either Jewish people or mainly Roman
Catholic priests.
And he said the Roman Catholic Church had
offered her a blank check for this crystal
that she has.
But then he said this, which was more
disturbing, he said, I I met a friend
out there in California, a man who used
to be a missionary in China.
And he had been on a tour, and
as he came back from Australia or somewhere
down under, he he stopped off in Formosa,
and he learned that there were a number
of Chinese people there who had been living
in a certain province where he used to
be a missionary.
And he went to see them, and they
were doing what they always do, they're industrious.
Ask the folk that have been to Hong
Kong, almost every room in Hong Kong is
a factory, everybody's making money.
There are no Jews in Hong Kong, there
are no Jews out in Thailand, they can't
make a living.
The Chinese are the Jews of the Orient,
they now do the Jew, and so the
Jew has to run.
But he went to see these Chinese people,
and he greeted them in eloquent Chinese, because
he used to teach them in Chinese, and
they ignored him.
And he spoke again, and they spoke again,
and they went on working, and he went
up to a man, and he said, Do
you know who I am?
He said, Yes.
He said, I'm the, I'm your former pastor
in Hunan province, or whatever it was.
I've lost my hair, I'm a little heavier,
and so forth and so on.
But uh, isn't that somebody, you know, all
these Chinese names they have, Sing Hai, and
Sing Lo, and Wan Lang, and all the
rest of it.
And uh, he said, Yeah, that's right, you
remember them?
Yeah, I uh, yeah, these, the, well, I
used to be in my church, and I
greeted you once, and I greeted you a
second time, in the name of the Lord,
and you ignored me.
That, now this is not Oriental courtesy.
Why do they ignore me?
And he shot the answer back, he said,
Because you're a heretic, you're a false prophet.
Well he said, I'm not a false prophet,
I led you to Christ.
Ah yes, but after that.
Remember you had some big maps of the
world?
Remember you had one area, all red, this
is Russia.
Remember telling us the Russians, and you made
a red mark, will invade China, and take
over China, and they'll burn our churches, and
they'll rape our women, and they'll take our
sons that way, and take our daughters this
way, and they'll tear our Bibles up, and
burn the churches before us in the street.
Remember saying that?
Yeah.
And remember telling us that just before that
happened, the Lord would take his little darling
church out of it, and we wouldn't experience
it, it would just be left to the
sinners, and the unbelievers, and the others, but
we would escape.
We would not go through tribulation, we're going
to be caught away, and wrapped up in
the arms of the Lord, and he's going
to take his darling children into his breast.
He won't let one hair of your head
suffer.
Well the preacher went in on his feet,
he came out on all fours.
You see we do a lot of our
interpreting inside the framework of the American economy.
Oh sure you can build a university, or
you can build a great evangelistic empire in
America, because this is the most affluent society
in the world, but you can't do that
in Russia.
If you tag on to being filled with
the Holy Ghost, that after you've been filled
two years, you should be a millionaire, and
if you're not, you didn't get it, you
better be parachuted into Russia or China.
They'd accept that, but it wouldn't work, I'll
tell you that much.
And again we like to twist, it's comfortable.
If I preach this over the nation this
morning, and then said now, which I wouldn't
say, but I'd like you to send me
a dollar to support my program, I wouldn't
get any dollars.
But if somebody told you some lies, if
somebody told you you're going to be raptured
before tribulation comes to America, boy you'd feed
him, because that's what you want to know.
You want to know you're not going to
suffer, you want to know you're going to
be wrapped in his dear arms.
Now after all brethren, why was Daniel in
the lion's den?
He didn't escape and get a rapture, he
went through tribulation.
And I have an idea that Paul went
through a little bit.
Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword, imperils of
the deep, imperils of mine own countrymen, imperils
amongst false brethren.
I, I, well maybe I'm wrong, but I
kind of figure that's tribulation.
And your tribulation was, it, it, we, my
dear wife and I were in a certain
place two weeks ago, we went to a
lovely church, and I said well there are
not many people in, and I looked at
the Sunday school register, a notice on the
wall, you know we never put any prayer
meeting attendance up there, but it said, it
just said Sunday school last Sunday four, four
hundred and uh, what was it, 453.
Attendance this morning, 150.
Do you know why?
It rained.
Tribulation.
You imagine sitting through a service with wet
feet, wouldn't that be terrible?
Or splashed your nylons going into church, oh
dear.
You know what ladies do just before they
go into church, they go like this.
If we spent as much time preparing our
hearts as we spent setting our hair and
all the other things, we'd be in the
millennium right now.
If I didn't know what the Bible said,
I would think the Bible said the Lord
looketh on the outward appearance and not upon
the heart.
Maybe that's in the Amplified, I don't know,
but anyhow, the authorized version says that God
looketh not, not, not.
He doesn't know whether your hair's set or
what.
I, I remember taking a morning service in
Teen Challenge one morning and just before I
spoke, the song leader, a boy who had
been on drugs for 17 years, and he
came in Teen Challenge one day and he
just knelt down there and said to God
something like this, I'm rotten, I'm corrupt, nobody
wants me, the police have given up on
me, the judge threw me out, they won't
take me in Lexington, I'm too hopelessly gone
in drugs, oh Jesus do something.
And right there the Lord transformed his life,
he didn't have to take cold turkey, which
is just sweating it out really.
Right there the Lord delivered him from sin
and delivered him from the habit of drugs
and wonderfully saved him and he was a
miracle of God's grace.
And he said before Brother Ray Mills speaks,
let's all stand up and sing Amazing Grace.
And I looked down the side of this,
this room, a fairly long room.
Every girl there was either a prostitute or
had been a lesbian or was involved bisexually
or some other way.
And one girl was the queen of the
call girl racket.
She came to our office one day with
a $5,000 mink coat on, a snow
-white Cadillac outside and burst into tears and
said she wanted to get some help.
She had five other mink coats at home
and a jewel box like this with real
jewels in and she was supposed to have
about $250,000 stashed away.
I looked at all these girls, some of
them pregnant, some had been pregnant, some diseased,
some had got delivered.
They'd been to Lexington, they'd been to jail
and here were all this bunch of riffraff,
now very attractive, washed and renewed and in
their right mind.
At the side here, here's a boy, I
remember saying to him when did you start
in crime?
He said, I carried a, I carried a
point, what do you call it, .28, well
I don't know much about guns.
Anyhow, he carried a revolver when he was
eight years of age and was in a
double murder and remembered shooting a man, murdering
a man when he was eight years of
age.
And had been so many murders in New
York and round about he couldn't even remember
how many was it.
Another man had just done ten years in
Sing Sing, where nobody sings.
And all the other boys were criminals and
they stood and sang Amazing Grace and you
know before we were through the stanza, tears
were running down their faces.
And I never realized what that word really
meant till those boys sang it.
To save a wretch like me.
And when it came to wretches, you could
see them wince and close their eyes and
the tears ran down their faces and the
girl's blouses were wet with tears.
And they sang it over and over, to
save a wretch like me.
And then a couple of Sundays afterwards I
went to a stuffy church, I don't know
what it was, maybe Baptist.
But anyhow, it was a very stuffy church
with a lovely choir and everybody was so
nice.
There's a little blonde woman here with curls
and, and, and do you know what they
said before Brother Ray and those preachers were
going to sing Amazing Grace.
And I thought what, in an outfit like
this?
And they sang Amazing Grace and this little
darling girl here with the, with the curls,
you know she sang something like this, Amazing
Grace.
How sweet the sound that saved.
And you know she couldn't get through that
stanza, that little curl wouldn't sit down and
she had Amazing Grace.
And she was hitting the thing down and
you know she sung that hymn totally unconscious
and when she sat down she was as
dry as the sand out there.
But these other kids had been lifted out
of a horrible pit.
Then you want Amazing Grace really was.
David never describes the horrible pit, he just
declares it.
He saved me out of a horrible pit.
And you say Mr. Raven, I was never
deep in a horrible pit.
Well friends let me remind you, you are
going to one anyhow.
And so I don't want to get guilty
of straining any truth at all, but I
think the scarecrow that the devil has put
in the field of spiritual living is the,
is the scarecrow of sinless perfection.
No man with any intelligence believes in sinless
perfection.
But again I say we're living in a
day when we're more afraid it seems of
sinfulness, pardon me, we're more afraid of sinfulness.
Well that's an interesting word, Peter.
Peter.
When Jesus found him he wasn't Peter, he
was Simon.
And the word Simon really means shifty.
And Jesus says you're Simon, you're shifty, you're
not very responsible, but by the time I'm
done with you, you'll be Peter, you'll be
a rock.
If you took a grain of sand and
put it under a microscope, you'll discover that
little tiny grain of sand has got peaks
on it like that and cavities in it
like that.
Now you can't build on sand, but if
you put that sand under pressure, those cavities
will fit into those, I mean those peaks
will fit into the cavities and get locked
together, then you get sandstone.
And you can build.
We have some cathedrals in England, the Abbey
at Bath, the foundation was laid in 444.
Much of it was destroyed, but the foundation
remains.
It's been standing there now for 1,500
years.
If it was sand it wouldn't stand, but
it's sandstone.
Now Jesus says you're Simon and you're going
to be transformed by the power of God
and from Simon you're going to become Peter.
When we were out on the west coast
earlier this year, a man gave me a
piece of petrified wood.
Petrified wood, well it's the same thing, it's
just the accent you put on it.
It was once soft and you could chip
it with your fingers, but it's gone through
a process and become petrified or petrified, it's
become solidified.
And the Lord says you're shifty and irresponsible
and not very dependable, but I'll take your
personality and knit it together and you shall
become Peter.
And notice, will you please, that Peter has
become an apostle.
He's really made it.
Sure he's gone through a lot of tribulation
and distress and trial and difficulties, but now
he has graduated and he has become Peter,
the rough fisherman.
I say again we've got all kinds of
ideas about holiness.
If people are holy they have to wear
certain garments and maybe get shut away up
in a monastery or a convent or something.
Now that's no good at all.
That's like taking all the lights out of
the tabernacle here and putting them all in
one room and say let's have them all
together, leave every other place in darkness.
This is not what God does.
He doesn't collect the salt, he distributes the
salt.
He doesn't collect the lights, he distributes the
light.
They were building a church in Scotland years
ago, I'm told, and they had got everything
designed and when the building was in good
shape and the carpenters had been working, the
architect came in and said now give me
the final plan on the windows.
You've got a dozen windows here, what are
you going to do?
And somebody said now I think it would
be nice to have some stained glass windows.
Let's have pictures of the saints in the
windows.
There's a little old Scot's body there sweeping
the floor and she nudged the architect and
said wouldn't it be better to have the
saints in the pews?
Well I think it's better to have them
in the pews rather than have them in
the windows.
They're not much good in the window.
There's a very famous picture, I think it's
in Spain, Raphael's amazing picture of the miraculous
draft of fishes.
Now it is a very beautiful picture and
I guess today it's worth billions, millions and
millions of dollars.
It's the only one of its kind.
And after Raphael had finished the picture, for
years it became a mecca.
All the artists went there and almost bowed
down and said what a picture.
Oh look at the proportions, look at the
colors.
And they got drunk in ecstasy over the
wonders of the picture.
And then one day a rough Englishman by
the name of Ruskin, some of you have
read his writings, and Ruskin went along and
criticized the picture.
And people said isn't it amazing?
He said it's nonsense.
What do you mean it's nonsense?
That's the most perfect picture in the world.
Is it?
Well he said where did the miraculous draft
of fishes take place?
Well anybody knows that, on the Sea of
Galilee.
Well why has he got the dome of
Saint Peter's in the background?
That's a good long way from the Sea
of Galilee.
How many men were in the boat when
the miraculous draft of fishes took place?
Seven.
He's got eleven in the picture.
Who's that fellow leaning over the, over the
boat with long lace, beautiful lace cuffs and
a lace collar around his neck?
So gorgeous.
Crochet work of the finest.
Who is that man pulling in sticky fishernets
with lace cuffs and lace around his neck?
Oh that's Peter.
Peter fishing with a lace collar on?
You make one for your husband next time
he goes fishing and see how that works.
But you see Peter is a saint and
therefore he must have special garments.
Oh no, no, no, no.
Cloistered virtues are no good.
I like this story about Peter because Peter
was so very, you know that Jesus spoke
to Peter not only more than he spoke
to any one of the other disciples, but
more than he spoke to the whole bunch
of disciples put together.
And conversely Peter spoke more to Jesus not
only than any other single disciple, but more
than all the other disciples.
He always had a ready answer.
Boy he was primed every time.
And this man Peter has become an apostle.
He has graduated to some degree though there
is no final graduation this side of eternity
let's face it.
Jesus Christ is the, is the bread of
life but he's the hunger as well.
He supplies the hunger in me and he
supplies the satisfaction.
Peter an apostle of Jesus is writing to
the strangers here scattered abroad through Pontus and
Galatia and Cappadocia and right down right down
to Zachary this morning.
And then let's skip over to verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead.
We mentioned this the other night the resurrection
of Jesus tied into our resurrection because I
live ye shall live also.
But then he says the resurrection is this
to an inheritance.
Remember the story of the long-term missionary
coming into New York I think on the
same boat as Eisner was it?
And when the boat docked there was a
red carpet and a message came over the
intercom nobody leaves the boat until Eisner leaves.
This is a very special occasion and the
mayor of New York and the representative of
the president of the United States was there
the red carpet was rolled out the band
played TV was there the cameras everything the
press all wanting to see Eisner get off
the boat which is all right.
And the missionary leaned over and looked and
he'd been spreading it out in Africa for
about 20 years and the old devil said
to him there you are you see what
you get when you go serve your country
that man's going to get a pension and
he's going to live in a mansion and
he's going to have it easy and you
don't have a pension you don't have a
mansion and you know what when you get
off the boat nobody's going to flash a
picture and no band is going to play
and you're not going to get any appreciation
at all you're going to get off and
get lost in the millions of New York
which isn't worth it.
And he began to feel a bit of
that disease which is worse than cancer self
-pity and then he said the lord said
to him son you're not home yet you're
not home yet.
Mr Bunyan said when his pilgrim died the
trumpet sounded for him on the other side.
You and I through Christ have an inheritance
and and he says three things about it
here to an inheritance incorruptible it's beyond the
reach of death it's incorruptible undefiled it's beyond
the reach of sin and that saved us
not away it's beyond the reach of time.
And if you were really primed up you'd
have said hallelujah but I'll forgive you.
This is the inheritance you're going to receive
if you're truly born again an inheritance incorruptible
beyond the reach of death undefiled beyond the
reach of sin that saved us not away
reserved in heaven for you.
I remember flying into Chicago in 1952 and
a very distinguished American artist met me there
he was excited he said my my wife
and I have been to England three times
today and I said wow that's good going.
Well he said I mean on TV we
watch the queen get crowned.
And he said uh then his wife said
at dinner if you had been in England
brother Ravenhill would you have been at the
coronation?
I said no my name is Ravenhill not
Churchill.
And uh so she said uh wouldn't it
be wonderful to be at a coronation like
that?
Do you think you could have got into
it?
No I couldn't have got in.
There were 3,300 feet in the cathedral.
We lived in an old house in Ireland
my wife and I before we came to
the states an old house 300 years old
beautiful old house and across the fields there
was a castle a young man by the
name of Lord Belmore lived in it he's
a fellow about 35 real distinguished aristocrat and
we went in the castle one day and
there in his libraries great beautiful library he
had two chairs beautiful chairs and they had
a design in the back er Elizabeth Rex
and a little tab on the corner that
said on one Lord Belmore and on the
other lady Belmore and he had been to
the coronation and he was privileged along with
others to buy the seat that he had
sat on at the coronation and bring it
home as an heirloom and pass it on
to his children now if I had said
I want to see the coronation of the
queen they would have got a register and
had a look and said I'm sorry but
Ravenhill isn't listed here so you you you
can't come in and just look there you
see all those 3,300 seats they've all
got a tag on them Lord Belmore Lady
Belmore Lord Sir Winston Churchill Lady Churchill and
all the others there's no place reserved for
you oh she said I I see now
so you couldn't have gone in I said
no I guess you're really sorry you didn't
see the queen crown not a bit interested
well look at all the pageantry and the
pomp and the color and the show you
know pomp and circumstance I said to her
Mrs Chase I'm going to a coronation soon
that will make the queen's coronation look like
the kitchen sink and I want to tell
you something I've got a seat reserved reserved
in heaven for you who are kept by
the power of God through faith and to
salvation ready to be revealed in the last
day and then it changes the temper a
little bit and it says though now for
a season oh oh oh dear there's always
a fly in the ointment ye greatly rejoice
hey that doesn't make sense you make rejoice
though now for a season you're in heaviness
hey you don't rejoice when you're in heaviness
do you no not like not unless you're
in victory if you get into heaviness you
don't rejoice you just ring the pastor but
uh if you're really living where the Lord
wants you you you greatly rejoice though now
for a season somebody said to an old
colored lady what's your favorite what's your favorite
scripture she said it came to pass and
the pastor wasn't very well educated he was
only a phd and and uh so he
said to the old colored lady now I
don't understand that it came to pass what
came to pass oh pastor she says you
know that trouble that came in my life
it came to pass pretty smart you better
be black skinned and be informed by the
lord than be a white phd and know
nothing anyhow so uh excuse me you phds
that uh you see she said it came
to pass let's build three tabernacles wait wait
a minute peter this is this is the
peter that wanted to do it remember oh
peter this only came to pass you know
the most tricky thing that any of us
have and i don't care whether you live
in a ghetto or you live in a
palace the most tricky thing that any of
us have anywhere anytime is feelings you get
out of bed and you don't feel good
fellow came to the altar one night a
friend of mine went to pray with him
and said what's wrong are you saved he
said yes what do you come for i
don't feel safe well he said i'll pray
for you and then you pray for me
i've had a bad day too feelings oh
feelings are so treacherous sometimes you feel you're
on top of the world and sometimes you
feel the world and everything else is on
top of you though now for a season
huh yeah they're now for a season if
need be you are in heaviness through through
what temptations no no no no no through
manifold temptations when temptations come like waves of
the sea falling over each other now this
is an area we could stay in for
a week it's all right to stand in
a nice audience like this and sing i
need thee every hour temptations lose their power
when now at night oh yes because you're
feeling real good you're at a conference but
what about tomorrow when you have no emotion
and what about tomorrow when there's nobody at
the side of you and what about tomorrow
when you you're buffeted from the moment you
get up till you go to bed what
about it then now temptations oh this is
a vast field there are temptations to the
body there are temptations to the spirit there
are temptations to the mind there are temptations
to you you know what i did when
i was a little boy you know my
besetting sin my besetting sin when a little
boy i used to steal jelly my mother
used to make it we'd gather fruit around
the hedges in in england there and or
she'd buy it sometimes if she had to
but otherwise we we we would collect the
berries and my mother would make fruit and
i knew where she put it and when
she went out i'd take a chair and
i'd stand on it and i'd reach for
a jar of jelly and and i'd take
the lid off and get a spoon and
whoop i get a good big spoonful and
boy then i'd smooth it out never wash
the spoon why i didn't care about that
i just smooth the jelly out and put
the cover on like that and put it
away and i always put it right at
the back of the shelf so my mother
wouldn't find that she'd an awful habit of
going right to the back of the shelf
the first time because she put the new
ones at the front and thought the back
ones would get dry and after day two
she would say len yes ma'am i'm
very busy oh i can wait till you're
through as soon as you're through you come
and see me well i'm going to be
quite a while that's all right then it
doesn't matter any time between now and supper
time and i'd go in and i'd see
the jelly my dad was an old-fashioned
methodist he believed in the laying on of
hands and boy he could lay them on
but you know i i kind of figured
it was worthwhile getting leathered to get a
good spoonful of jelly now and again and
you know i wouldn't even cry i wouldn't
give him the satisfaction of thinking he was
beating me i'd just bite my lip and
stay there and be a real english bulldog
and and i would get walloped for uh
for taking jelly i'll teach you he said
but it took him a year or two
to do it my wife and i stayed
in a lovely home recently and they had
a lot of jelly and i want to
report victory i never stole it one week
didn't steal jelly one day out of 10
days in that lovely home every jar was
in i never stole jelly honestly i didn't
because my temptation as a little boy was
jelly it isn't that temptation now we could
never exhaust this field but again i remind
you that there are temptations and they're very
real and they change the temptations to older
men are the temptations to youth and youth
to older men and there are temptations on
different levels some of the flesh some of
the spirit some of the mind some to
doubt oh this is a vast area but
but he says here and it's certainly true
that you may be in heaviness because of
manifold temptation now i believe that satan can
come and tempt you and give up on
you because you don't fall and then he
switches what does the next verse say that
the trial of your faith oh this is
altogether different hey i i can take what
this man says because you see the man
that wrote it was a man who was
in trouble once he was going down the
street turned around the corner bumped into jesus
and jesus says uh hi peter and he
says good morning lord i'm peter i want
to tell you something when you get down
the street there satan's gonna get hold of
you and boy he's gonna shake the very
life out of you nearly now peter keep
your chin up i've prayed for you so
long peter that doesn't sound very practical does
it why didn't jesus say peter now you
know with my foreknowledge satan's waiting there in
ambush and he was going to jump on
you and i caught him and i said
what are you doing here satan i'm going
to jump on peter well go back to
hell where you belong to and leave my
child alone will that be more practical no
you run and let and wrestle and have
a tremendous experience with satan it'll do your
world would you believe that will employ satan
to make you a saint after all you
have every right to tell god you want
to be a saint but you've no right
to tell him how to make you a
saint that makes all the difference and if
you want to tell him you want to
be a saint well watch there's going to
be a switch the temptation may fade and
then there's a trial of your faith satan
pardon me satan have desired thee to assist
thee as weep but i have prayed for
thee what that your health doesn't your business
doesn't fail no that your faith doesn't fail
after all if you lose your faith you've
lost everything it's the shield of faith and
if you lose your shield then the enemy
can shoot his fiery darts you know i
hear people say sometimes you know what the
devil said to me this morning you know
i seriously doubt the devil even knows most
of us are alive anyhow but it's nice
to be conceited sometimes and uh and you
know not once in his amazing lifetime does
paul ever say that satan spoke to him
notice that the voice of satan is only
heard three times in the whole of the
word of god as far as i remember
the first time when satan accused god before
man hath god said the second time when
he accused man before god oh yes well
that's all right i uh uh satan says
i understand why job is so pious but
you see job's piety is tied up with
this prosperity uh lord you stretch forth your
hand and the lord says i don't have
time you go straight forth your hand and
job went to bed a multi-millionaire and
he woke up without a dime the first
time oh oh well well i'll tell you
what to do as satan says look there
is job and you've put a big hedge
around him like that and i can't get
through that hedge i don't know about the
law in america but i know about the
law in england if a policeman comes to
my door and wants to search the house
i say look you can come up to
the doorstep but you can't come in the
house till you get a permit you've got
to go back to the government and bring
a signed permit an affidavit if you like
and you've got to present that to me
before you can come in and search my
home now look there's only one of two
ways to live as far as i'm concerned
in the old testament like jacob sitting under
a tree shaking the tears out of his
beard because he had one two three troubles
and then you say to him jacob what's
your trouble he says oh trouble you know
i've had three troubles they're killing me what's
your philosophy of life my philosophy of life
all things are against me he'd had three
troubles and all things were against me here's
a man lying in prison and i say
to him excuse me sir but uh i
just want to shake your hand and say
what a wonderful man you are and he
said well that's not true either but um
you've been in this what was that oh
that's a rat uh the water runs down
the prison cell no facilities they feed him
like a dog and he gets up a
bit bent and he says excuse me i'm
a little stiff i've been here so long
notice his face is pleated one of his
eyes is more baggy than the other after
all he'd been shipwrecked pickled in the in
the uh mediterranean sea for 36 hours and
he had been uh lashed 195 times and
uh once he was stoned and thrice he
suffered shipwrecked and he'd been in a night
and a day in the deep in perils
of his own countrymen in perils of the
deep in fastings in weariness in tribulation in
distress in peril in famine in nakedness thought
that is all this little man has had
and then he says well hallelujah i say
uh hallelujah for what oh you didn't hear
the news i say no i didn't hear
the news you didn't you didn't hear the
good news no i didn't oh glory to
god he says they're going to chop my
head off tomorrow uh did you say good
news why he says sure i've been waiting
for this for nearly 40 years you know
they're going to chop my head off tomorrow
and as soon as it goes off i'll
be absent from the body present with the
lot hey but look at all the trouble
you've been through you've been in prison more
often than you've been in palaces you've had
more riots than revivals you've been beaten your
back is like a plowed field i notice
your eyes are a bit lopsided and you've
hardly any teeth they knocked them out and
they dragged you by the feet out of
lystra this is must be what the brother
was talking about yesterday the afflictions i don't
know but anyhow uh and i say what's
your philosophy of life you say the same
as jacob all things are against me oh
sir no he said i never dare insult
god like that all things are against me
all things work together for good to them
that love god now either you live in
that street or you live in that street
you take away that defense and let me
hit that man and you know what he'll
do as soon as he loses his millions
he'll curse you to your face and the
lord says satan i never take notice from
you but i'll tell you what i will
do i won't take the fence away like
that but what i will do i'll pull
the fence in a little bit nearer to
job and you can destroy everything outside of
the fence and so lucifer comes down and
takes everything he has he goes to bed
a millionaire he wakes up bankrupt and the
lord says well how are you getting on
with job did he did he squeal no
no he said uh he just said well
it's all right the lord knows what he's
doing uh will you take the fence away
and let me hit him and he says
no but i'll pull the fence in a
bit nearer and you can destroy what's around
the fence the first time he destroyed he
took all his possessions and he was bankrupt
the second time he came he killed his
seven sons and seven daughters and job went
to 14 funerals in one day and that's
a pretty good load the first stock was
bankruptcy the second stroke was bereavement well i
i was very busy running the universe what
did he say did he curse me no
no no lord he didn't curse you tell
me just what he said he looked up
into heaven and he said the lord gave
him the devil took it all away no
oh i must have read the amplified uh
what what does it say amen the lord
gave and the lord has taken away oh
when everything's got you see god has blessed
me he's blessed me he's blessed me he's
blessed me me selfish little me he has
really blessed me he's letting his own children
starve to death in china and his little
children starve to death in russia and in
parts of germany and in parts of spain
but me he has blessed to make me
a envy of what you have because the
more you have the more responsibility at the
judgment but you see my friend this so
often when we're getting blessed we say the
lord blessed me and soon as adversity comes
we blame the devil oh no no no
no come on are you are you a
football for the devil to kick that way
if he wants are you a dead leaf
for the winds of adversity to kick that
way if you want i was preaching in
a street in ireland after a saturday night
meeting we we got the village boys there
and an old methodist preacher said to me
would you would you come and drink some
tea at my house and eat some cakes
well if it's free i usually go so
i went along and when i got there
his wife showed me this beautiful big old
house it was loaded with antiques and all
kinds of lovely things and she said you
know my husband's a bit of an oddball
well i i frankly i've just formed that
opinion of her that she said my husband's
an oddball he looks through telescopes all the
night and he looks through microscopes all the
day well i didn't ask her when he
slept but it was interesting and uh while
we were eating he said to me brother
amy did you ever look through the eye
of a fly well i've been asked some
stupid questions but i i thought i thought
that was about the king of the bunch
did i ever look through the eye of
a fly and i said no i never
did for the simple reason i've never been
a fly would you like to look through
the eye of a fly i said i
sure would he got his microscope and he
got a piece of glass with a little
dot on it about as big as the
end of that pencil and i said what's
it's the eye of a fly put it
under the microscope turn the knobs i turned
it what can you see i said i
don't know tapioca pudding uh frog spawns soap
bubbles hundreds of bubbles put your watch underneath
i put my watch underneath it was 25
minutes before six oh oh i said now
i can see about 350 watches well a
good guess actually 500 the eye of a
fly which is again as big as the
fine point of a pencil has 500 different
lenses on it and every lens is set
at a slightly different angle every one of
those not two of them alike and in
case you've forgotten a fly has got two
eyes and you think you're smart you're gonna
catch the fly the silly thing can see
you coming a thousand different ways no wonder
you can't catch it i said is that
really true he said mr ravenhill that the
slant of every one of those little lenses
on the eye of the fly there are
500 of them they're all set at a
different angle and i said praise the lord
he said what for the eye of a
fly i said no but you think god
who designs the eye of a fly that
a boy may kill or a bird may
jump on it and eat it up are
you going to suggest he designs the eye
of the fly and he doesn't decide my
life that my life is happenstance and chance
he redeemed your personality then he might fashion
it and conform it to the image of
his son and it's his business how he
does it the first stroke was bankruptcy the
second stroke was bereavement the lord gave and
the lord has taken away not the devil
and then the third one and the lord
says you satan says you take that thing
away and let me hit him and he'll
and the lord says go on now i've
been tempering him you know i've been preparing
the sheep he's been shorn a little now
you can go skin him if you want
and so satan comes the last time and
what did he do well he can't hit
his material things he's bankrupt he can't hit
his family he's buried them all and here's
satan upon me here's job sitting in his
house now he he gets the last stroke
bereavement bankruptcy bereavement boils he can't sit down
he can't stand up there he is sitting
on his ash heap you think the devil
would have taken his nagging wife but he
needed more tribulation and so uh the lord
had left her behind as well and uh
and he gets it rough from his wife
she said i know what's wrong with you
and there he sits on his ash heap
as black as you can look in any
direction look outside all my buildings have gone
my crops have gone the sabians took my
crop somebody else stole my camel somebody else
stole my i got nothing and look there
i can see now those 14 graves boy
that's rough too and look at my poor
old body sagging under the weight of these
boils there's a little fella called billed at
a shoe height he wasn't so big he's
only a shoe height and the little fella's
there in the corner and he points the
finger of scorn and says why don't you
curse god and die and that really got
job and he jumped up and faced his
bankruptcy and his bereavement and his boils and
he put his hands up he says look
things are pretty bad right now i can't
see any hope anywhere and what he's saying
is this you've got me walled in but
you can't roof me in you may have
as it says in what two corinthians 4
8 there we're trouble on every side and
yet not this we're persecuted for and not
forsaken as mother as not muffet jb phillips
says we're not down but we're not knocked
out and that may be knocked down in
a fight and get up and win the
fight we're knocked down but we're not knocked
out and so job gets up and he
looks at all the bankruptcy and all the
boils and all the bereavement and all the
blackness and all the despair and he sings
his hallelujah chorus and he says well things
are pretty bad but listen i want to
tell you world and flesh and devil i
want to tell you something then if it
gets worse than this and even the worms
destroy my body yet in my flesh shall
i see god i know that my redeemer
lives you can destroy everything outside you cannot
destroy one thing inside the devil can't get
inside of me and destroy my faith or
my hope now by the faith and hope
and love these three the trial of your
faith being much more precious than gold after
all there are only three things we're going
to take out of time into eternity you're
not taking a cadillac and your yacht and
all the pretty things you wear and there
are only three things you're not going to
take tongues into heaven we won't need them
the tune was written by a man called
laurel mason they were both member laurel mason
was the organist in the church and we
sang that that lovely that lovely hymn my
faith looks up to thee and i like
the second stanza that says may thy rich
grace impart strength to my fainting heart my
zeal inspire as thou hast died for me
so may my love to thee pure warm
and changeless be a living fire my circumstances
may change my world may break up i
may have temptation it may not work and
satan brings pressure and trial and trial and
trial and even more trial and he isn't
touching that man over there and that rather
kind of makes you squirm why doesn't god
level it all out to no no no
he doesn't do that it's your faith and
he can't test your faith through that man
he tests your faith through you those vows
you made this week are going to be
tested before very long i mean they're the
same two words but it just depends which
way you to you you shift them now
what's the difference between evil thoughts and a
world of difference evil thoughts come out of
an evil heart thoughts of evil come from
satan well you say that's as clear as
mud uh how do i know whether they're
from inside or outside well if they're from
the inside you'll meditate on them and get
a lot of satisfaction out of them but
if they're from the outside when satan comes
you'll brush him off and say oh now
come on i i've got victory over that
i'm past that already and then it says
a little further in the chapter if you
read it it's a wonderful epistle it talks
about having faults most of us have them
some don't but most of us have them
and it says that uh we're going to
be uh sometimes get in trouble because of
our fault and sometimes we're going to be
accused wrongly now you shouldn't sit down and
cry because somebody accuses you of something unless
it's true went upstairs bathed shaved came down
wife was still busy said well there is
my yes i'm bringing it right now and
he said uh about my shoes well i
didn't see your shoes i left them here
in front of the fire we have open
fires we don't have all the creature comforts
you have you know switching a little diet
and he left them in front of the
open fire and little mary came in and
thought well adult people are so stupid those
shoes are wringing wet my daddy thinks they're
gonna drive out he's crazy so she opened
the oven door and put them in the
oven to dry while daddy went and shaved
and she came in smiling and he said
did you see my shoes yeah have you
hidden them didn't hide them daddy what did
you do well daddy she said and she
opened the oven door and there were the
shoes and they were dry it was only
a case of who they'd fit the toes
were turned up this way the heels were
turned that way and they were a mess
and he got that pair of dry shoes
up what do you think he did took
the little girl put her over his knee
and really beat her up no no no
no no no she wasn't faultless but she
was blameless she got no motive that was
evil she didn't say i'll keep my daddy
from church her motive was the best in
the world but she did the right thing
the wrong way and sometimes our motives are
very pure but sometimes we stumble over something
we've got faults there's a story on record
of mr wesley that that that he used
to say that he feared neither men the
devils and you know that man i think
proved in his history that he didn't he
went through tribulation and yet somebody said one
man said he was the most hilarious christian
joy of the lord was always on him
though he suffered so much he rode more
turnpikes than i suppose any man in history
he may not have ridden more miles but
anyhow on paid turnpikes i think bishop asbury
out rode him but not on turnpikes where
you have to pay but never once in
all the 50 years he rode horseback never
once was he molested by one of those
notorious highway men the lord guarded him as
i tell you again he spent all his
time all his energy in promoting the things
of god promoting the message of holiness urging
people to get into a good state of
spiritual health and live the life of victory
for the lord jesus and as he which
have called you is holy don't let anybody
put the scarecrow in the field there's no
such thing as sinless perfection but there is
a better state of grace than many of
us are living in and so let's go
on and possess our possessions thank you