July 1975, at a Bible school and holiday
camp in Padua, and the subject is reality
in the life of the Apostle Paul.
Father, we do commit ourselves to you now
as we look into your holy word.
We don't really know one another that well,
in some ways I'm a stranger, but Lord
we are known of you, and we are
gathered here in your name, and our prayer
together is that the speaker may be hid
behind the cross, and that your Son, the
Lord Jesus, may be lifted up.
We thank you for the privilege of just
having a spiritual feast and looking into your
word, but we know it may not be
all blessing, for we know that oftentimes the
blessing must be preceded by the breaking.
We know that your word is like a
two-edged sword, piercing even into the subconscious,
into the depth, into the marrow, into the
very inner man, cutting, exposing, that reality may
come.
We thank you now for this time together,
and we praise you, and worship you, and
commit our hearts to you.
Thank you Lord for giving me the strength
of voice, and thank you Lord for above
all else, your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ,
who died that we may be free, that
we may live, that we may be forgiven,
that we may know your reality.
In Jesus' name, amen.
We're going to be studying together in the
word of God the subject of reality, and
especially reality in the life of the Apostle
Paul, or is demonstrated in the life of
the Apostle Paul.
There's a lot of material.
We could spend two or three mornings just
giving you background and never even get into
the meat.
So I'm not going to give you too
much background, but go right into the heart
of the subject and look at some of
the scriptures that speak about Paul and give
us an inside view of his life.
There are very few men in the whole
of scripture that we know as much about
as the Apostle Paul.
There are very few men in scripture that
have shared from their own heart something about
their own lives, their own background, their own
history.
We don't have very much about the Lord
Jesus in his early years, to say the
least.
And of course, a good part of the
New Testament, God chose to bring it through
the Apostle Paul, the human instrument.
I don't think we need to be convinced
in this kind of gathering about the significance
of the life of Paul, of the importance
of the epistles of Paul, but sometimes we
need to just remind ourselves and say some
things in the way of remembrance.
It's not easy to speak to a group
like this in that we have a very
wide range of age levels, from teenagers right
on to some of you who have gone
on to the senior citizen stage.
That's what they call them in the States.
I don't know what you call the people
over here when they get a little older,
but they call them senior citizens.
They are now a great new protest movement.
They're marching, demonstrating, demanding rights, tremendous parades through
the streets of the cities with hundreds and
thousands of older people demanding their rights and
wanting to take over the country and whatnot,
joining the black power movement and the women's
lib and, of course, everybody's got to get
in on the thing these days.
So we have senior citizens and we have
some who are not even of voting age,
and then you have people of many different
ages.
Not only that, there are people here from
many backgrounds, and Christians have prejudices.
Christians have prejudices.
I have hardly ever met a Christian who
did not have prejudices and biases, and we
sit here in a meeting and someone raises
his hand and says, oh, the Pentecostals are
here.
And someone puts their hat on during the
morning break and says, oh, the Brethren are
here.
And we get our little mentalities of who's
who and what's what.
It's getting more confusing than ever these days,
so you better stop trying to guess who's
who because really you can't tell anymore.
But we have our prejudices.
And I know, as someone who's been now
speaking for 20 years, that I can say
just one thing that may not be quite
right and people can switch me off.
Now, I don't mind actually being switched off.
I don't blame you in some ways for
switching me off, but don't switch God off.
And don't let some little thing I say,
I've never spoken hardly once without saying something
stupid.
That's part of my whole lifestyle.
But don't let some little thing I say
that may not be biblical or maybe just
wasted words, straw, keep you from the wheat
and from what God wants to give us
from his word.
The scripture I want to read for our
first session this morning is a very powerful
scripture in 1 Corinthians chapter 4.
1 Corinthians chapter 4.
We'll start at verse 9.
For I think that God hath set forth
us, the apostles, last, as it were, appointed
to death.
For we are made a spectacle unto the
world and to angels and to men.
We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye
are wise in Christ.
We are weak, but ye are strong.
Ye are horrible, but we are despised.
Even under this present hour we both hunger
and thirst and are naked and are buffeted,
have no certain dwelling place.
And later, working with our own hands, being
reviled, we bless.
Being persecuted, we endure it.
Being defamed, we entreat we are made as
a filth of the world and are the
offscouring of all things unto this day.
I write not these things to shame you,
but as my beloved sons I warn you,
though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ,
yet have ye not many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus I have begotten you
through the gospel.
And here's the key text.
Wherefore, I beseech you, be ye followers of
me.
For this cause have I sent unto you
Timothy, who is my beloved son and faithful
in the Lord, who shall bring you into
remembrance of my ways which are in Christ,
as I teach everywhere in every church.
Now some are puffed up as though I
would not come to you, but I will
come to you shortly, if the Lord will,
and will know not the speech of them
who are puffed up, but the power.
The second key verse.
For the kingdom of God is not in
word, but in power.
What will ye?
Shall I come unto you with a rod,
or in love and in the spirit of
meekness?
I have pondered this scripture dozens and dozens,
perhaps hundreds of times.
It has perplexed me, it has challenged me,
it has driven me to my knees again
and again.
The most perplexing part of this scripture is
verse 16, where Paul says to the Corinthian
believers, Wherefore, I beseech you, be ye followers
of me.
Do you realize the implication of this?
I have a name that I try to
give to the kind of Bible study that
I engage in.
It's called dynamic Bible study.
I use that simply to try to indicate
that whenever I am teaching the word of
God, I am teaching for action.
I'm not here giving you something that I
believe you can choose.
You may choose or not choose some little
side issue that I mention.
But I believe when we go into the
word of God, it has tremendous authority.
I believe we must not play with it,
and I believe if we are to have
God's blessing, and if we are to walk
in God's path, we must respond.
I don't believe any of us are here
by coincidence.
I think most of you know that God
had to intervene to bring me here.
A doctor told me one month before I
could speak, and that was only three weeks
or less than three weeks ago.
And I believe God has intervened to give
me the privilege of being here, and I
believe God, above all else, is looking for
obedience.
There will never be a substitute for obedience.
Any crisis experience, any special blessing, anything that
God gives you, and He gives us much,
is never a substitute for obedience.
Jesus Christ said, If you love me, keep
my commandments.
We are free will beings.
We have a will.
If we had no will, we could never
say that we were created in the image
of God.
Absolutely ludicrous.
God has given us a will, and we
have the privilege as believers of responding.
So many Christians have come to me and
have written to me, and they've said, Each
summer I go to a summer camp.
Each summer I go to Keswick.
Each summer I go to Filey, or I
go here or there, and I recommit my
life, and I have a tremendous blessing.
I have a mountaintop experience, and each winter
I backslide.
One young man told me he'd been doing
that for ten years.
A young man from Birmingham.
For ten years he recommitted his life in
the summer camps.
His parents always sent him to the summer
camps, and each Christmas he would backslide.
Usually he'd be backslidden by October.
This is not our purpose for this kind
of Bible study.
This, I'm sure, is not the burden of
the organizers of this camp.
I believe it is a privilege, the privilege
of the Christian to live 365 days a
year committed to Jesus Christ.
A lot of people in the church today
give the idea that backsliding is sort of
a normal part of a Christian life.
You know, we're all going to backslide a
bit.
You know, we're all going to have dry
months, and months in which we don't have
our quiet time, and months in which, you
know, we don't witness, and months in which
we're behaving like miniature lions around the house.
It's a lie of the devil.
I want to actually start my sessions by
giving a little bit of my own testimony,
because I think it will help you understand
me.
I know when I'm listening to a speaker,
I sort of have a little interest to
know a little bit about this person.
So why he is speaking so strongly?
Why he is so dogmatic on certain points?
I don't think you will find too many
things that I say something that you will
want to argue over.
I've never had many people take an argument
with me.
My theology is very basic.
I avoid a lot of the controversial sort
of theological issues that people are arguing over
these days.
And I go past that to basic things,
but very significant things that most people know
are all too true.
And yet, somehow, it's not a functioning reality
in their life.
If it wasn't for verse 16, I don't
think I would be bringing this series.
Because the tendency is to relegate the Apostle
Paul to the flannel grass for the children's
Sunday school hour.
You know, Paul going over the wall in
a basket, Paul praying at midnight.
Isn't this wonderful for the kiddies?
So exciting, a life of the Apostle Paul.
Let's have a film strip on the life
of the Apostle Paul.
And Paul today, I believe, practically speaking, is
relegated to mythology.
Practically speaking.
Theoretically and theologically, Paul, of course, is a
great churchman, he's a great missionary, he's a
great theologian.
We all believe in Paul.
But how much does it mean on a
practical level?
I think we have put Paul almost into
the area of myth.
Or we think Paul was an unusual person,
very specially chosen of God, and we just
don't expect this kind of person anymore.
Now Paul here is writing to the Corinthian
church.
He is not writing to a little super
-dedicated group of people with a China inland
mission in the middle of China.
He is writing to the Corinthian church.
And you all know the background of the
Corinthian church.
They have little habits like going to bed
and having sex relations with their mother-in
-laws and other things that really weren't quite
appropriate in church life.
In other words, they were really a mixed
up and messed up church, a carnal church.
So if Paul could write some of these
strong words to the Corinthians in their condition,
giving them such a high standard, describing his
own life as we have read right here,
and then saying, being followers of me, then
I believe we must be able to say
that these writings of Paul are very appropriate
for us as well.
This standard of Paul is not something for
just a few special spiritual people out in
the middle of India.
This is down-to-earth basic teaching for
all believers.
For all believers.
The world is never going to be evangelized
by Operation Mobilization.
The world is never going to be evangelized
by all the so-called full-time missionary
movements put together.
The world is only going to be evangelized
as the man in the pew, Joe Ordinary,
Susie Normal, the average man in the pew
and in the home, begins to see that
he is chosen of God.
A lot of people write to me and
they have difficulty.
In fact, I was answering a letter last
night about the calling.
We are all called.
Isn't that wonderful?
We are called into his likeness.
We are called to be kings, priests, pilgrims.
When you make a list of all that
we are as Christians, it's just overwhelming.
And you're looking at a missionary so-called
that's never had a missionary call.
I have to apologize for that.
I've been on the mission field for 17
years, but I haven't had a missionary call.
Not the way a lot of people are
looking for.
The electric bolt, dream in the night type
of thing.
I can give a call to these young
people, go down into this dormitory about 2
or 3 at night when they finally get
to sleep, and get on my color slides,
a little music, a little Turkish music in
the background, color slides, and they're sort of
half awake, and suddenly they wake up and
there's a picture of a mosque and they
hear this music coming through.
The next day I talk on Turkey 3
or 4.
Call to Turkey.
Now we laugh, but some of the young
people who have come to me to share
the way they got their quote missionary call,
it was that.
Similar type of emotional thing.
The only problem is, is that when finally
they get out there at the foot of
the mosque and begin to witness to Muslims,
they discover they don't have what it takes.
And I believe more important than just some
kind of a call, well I'm not against
that, I never despise any experience any man
has, is training.
Training.
And also using the God-given brains and
minds that we have, and the human mind
is a phenomenal thing, to seek the word
of God and to discover the will of
God and to see what our gifts are.
But in the sense of witness, in the
sense of witness, we are all called.
We are all called.
In the sense of the major issues of
the Christian faith, prayer, witness, love, fellowship, the
real, heavy, basic issues, we are all called.
We are all called.
And the Apostle Paul teaches, we see especially
in Philippians 1.29, and I'm happy to
see some of you taking notes because the
human mind has a great ability to forget,
but in Philippians 1.29 it says we
have not only been called to believe on
him, but also to suffer for his sake.
You cannot say the word or name Paul
without saying the name or word suffering.
It has been given unto you not only
to believe, but to suffer.
And Paul is describing here some of his
suffering.
He even says that he's a fool for
Christ's sake.
He's hungry and he's thirsty and he's naked
and he's buffeted.
He has no certain dwelling place.
He labors working with his own hands.
He's defamed.
These are powerful words.
These are heavy words.
And we would just shrink back.
We would say, well, this is not my
cup of tea.
This is not my thing.
And then Paul comes zooming in on us
and says, be ye followers of me.
I tried to run away from that.
The life of discipleship, the life of suffering,
the life of choosing the hard road, the
life of taking up the cross and following
Christ, I want to tell you right now,
it's not my thing.
And if you knew my background, you'd know.
It's still not my thing.
People get the idea that leaders of movements
like Operation Mobilization, we've got an aesthetic twitch.
We've got an itch to work 17 hours
a day.
We're all a bit neurotic.
We hate any kind of fun.
But you know, often this is not the
case at all.
It's just that we have come to discover
that we are bought with a price.
We have come to discover it no longer
matters what we want to do.
It no longer matters whether I like hot
climates or not.
Actually, I can't stand hot climates.
I've lived in India half of my life
almost for the last ten years.
It doesn't matter whether I like hot food
that causes smoke to come out of my
ears when I eat it, like the food
I have in India.
It doesn't matter whether I get seasick or
not.
Actually, I get seasick in my life even
more.
God told us to spend the last some
years half the year on a ship, day
after day with your stomach going around.
And in your heart, in yourself, you say,
I'm never going on a ship again.
I'm going to sail sailboats around my bathtub,
but I'm not going to go on any
ship.
But as you go back to the Word
of God, you realize it doesn't matter what
I sort of feel.
Not that God doesn't care.
Of course He does.
And so Paul is probably the greatest in
Scripture to cut across our natural ways, to
cut across our natural love of ease, our
natural drift, and say, follow me.
You've been called to suffer.
Now with those words of introduction, I'd like
to give you just a little background on
my own testimony.
I was not reared in a Christian home.
I have a rather interesting family tree.
My grandfather was from the Netherlands.
He was an atheist.
And he, with my father, went over to
the United States.
My other grandfather was from Glasgow.
He was an alcoholic.
And I'm not sure when he ever got
over to the States or how he got
there.
He divorced my grandmother, and that was one
big mess.
And I was reared in a sort of
normal, middle-class home.
My father wasn't an atheist, theologically, but practically
speaking, he might as well have been.
We didn't know Christ in our home.
Christ was not exalted.
And yet at the same time, my parents
provided me a relatively, relatively stable home.
And I'm thankful for the way God used
them even before they knew Jesus Christ in
a personal way.
But in one way, the key thing in
my whole life is one dear elderly lady
who prayed for me.
She prayed for me for three years.
She'd been praying for the high school that
I attended when I was about 14, started
attending when I was about 14.
She'd been praying for that high school for
about 15 years.
If there's any human founder of Operation Mobilization,
I believe it's this woman.
Not only was she praying that people would
be converted to Christ in that school, but
she was praying that from that school, this
is an ungodly high school, this isn't a
Bible school, that people would go all over
the world declaring the gospel.
She was a missionary, if you can use
it in a good sense, fanatic.
Missions, missions, world evangelism.
Yet she was involved locally.
She had child evangelism classes in her house.
She was involved in this, involved in that.
And more than all that, she knew God.
Ultimately, that's discipleship.
Discipleship is knowing God.
Discipleship is not a matter of doing this
or doing that or going here or going
there.
That may be involved in it, but first
of all, discipleship is knowing God and therefore,
first of all, the marks of a disciple
or can I even say the mark of
a disciple is hunger for God.
You may not feel you're a great disciple.
You may not think you're a great first
century witness in the 20th century.
You may not feel you're a great man
of prayer, but I want to ask you,
are you hungry for God?
Is there some hunger in your heart?
I believe so.
I believe that's why you've come to a
holiday like this rather than something in which
you just spend the entire day ministering to
your own particular physical or emotional needs because
you're concerned about your spiritual life.
There's a hunger.
You may not feel you're as hungry for
God as you should be.
You may be perplexed.
You may feel guilty about the lack of
hunger you have for the Lord.
Don't.
Feed the little hunger you do have and
God may increase your appetite.
You know, we're all different.
We're all different.
We're not all A.W. Tozer's.
We're not all Andrew Murray's.
We're not all St. Francis Zisi.
I believe man is made in such a
way that different men have a different capacity
for God.
I don't know if you've ever worked among
real sort of straightforward working class people.
I don't believe in classes, but just for
the sake of communication.
The man who, if he doesn't know Christ,
goes from his job to the pub to
the telly to the football to the job
to the pub to the telly to the
football.
And if you talk to him, he can't
even talk sensibly about too many issues.
His world is very, very much locked into
a small frame of mind.
Now I don't believe someone, when he gets
converted in that environment, is within a few
weeks going to become a Tozer or a
Martyn Lloyd-Jones or an Andrew Murray.
He may never understand Watchman's Encyclopedia on Spiritual
Life.
But I want to tell you, some of
the most beautiful believers I know are very
basically simple people who can't get through the
third chapter of some of these books, but
they're hungry for God.
They're hungry for God.
Don't judge people outwardly.
Man looks at the outward appearance, but God
looks at the heart.
Don't judge a man outwardly.
And with that, don't judge a man by
his vocabulary.
Some of the most beautiful Christians I know
in Asia don't have any spiritual vocabulary.
They're illiterate.
But sure, they know something of the Bible
as they've had it taught by their local
pastor, but they've never converted in older years,
been able to read the Word of God,
and yet they walk in a simple, beautiful
way before the Lord Jesus Christ.
Isn't that thrilling?
People converted back in the jungles of New
Guinea, walking in the fullness of the Holy
Spirit, never read a book on the Holy
Spirit.
How can it be?
Never read the Bible.
Can it be?
They've heard the Word of God preached, of
course, so the Word of God has been
active.
And it's thrilling.
You know, one of Hudson Taylor's key principles,
I'm not sure if it's brought out in
this book, but I know in his earlier
books, was simplicity.
Simplicity.
And I think it's very important as we
attempt to reach a lost world of very,
very different people compared to the last generation
that we sometimes say, keep it simple.
And it's beautiful how God can work through
simplicity.
Anyway, this lady who prayed for me was
a very simple woman.
There was nothing complex about her.
She knew God.
She knew how to pray and she believed
God answered prayer.
She wasn't famous.
She never will be famous.
And she prayed for 15 years for that
school.
She prayed for me for three years.
And during that time, she sent me a
Gospel of John through the post, the mail.
And I began to read this and it
began to speak to my own heart.
I was getting more and more entangled with
the world and I'm not interested in going
into the details, but basically I lived for
money, I lived for girls, I lived for
pleasure, I lived for myself.
The greatest sin of man is selfishness and
that's why it's so hideous when it keeps
popping its neck up after we're converted.
And I'm sorry to say that the greatest
battle I had before I was converted was
selfishness and the greatest battle I have today
is selfishness.
But I have a power within me now,
the Lord Jesus Christ, that can slap this
selfishness in the face and that can cut
it down and put it where it belongs
under the blood of Jesus.
His gate is already there.
And my calling is to live daily in
the light of what already has taken place
through Calvary.
When I read this Gospel of John it
spoke to my heart, but it was so
contrary to my lifestyle that for three years
nothing happened.
I was very stubborn.
We Dutch are known to be extremely stubborn.
My grandfather came from an area of Holland
called Friesland where the Germans and the Dutch
say the most stubborn people in the entire
world come from.
The Frieslanders.
And so I just kept living my own
way, getting involved in various things.
I went into business when I was about
12.
I had three businesses by 16.
And I could get money out of your
wallet whether you wanted it or not.
I learned to gamble.
I remember going to Boy Scout camp and
I don't know what I would have ever
done if I came to a camp like
this back in those days and how we
all need to have patience with our younger
people.
But I remember going to Boy Scout camp
and the main thing I did was gamble.
I felt a little guilty about it.
I had a little bit of ethical teaching
because my parents had sent me off to
church once in a while.
It was a church that didn't preach the
Gospel.
The greatest menace to the spread of the
Gospel in the world today are so many
thousands of churches today where the Gospel of
Jesus Christ is never preached.
There's no message of regeneration, no message of
the new birth.
They allow sin to take them into a
penal spin.
They allow sin to depress them and they
get caught into the quagmire of self-pity.
You see, we move on to a certain
position spiritually and then we fail and we
can't face that failure.
And so it drives us into self-pity.
Why did I do that?
What went wrong?
And down we go into the mire of
self-pity, into the mire of depression, into
the mire of discouragement instead of realizing that
reality includes knowing what to do when you
sin.
Knowing what to do when you sin.
There's two aspects of the victorious life, the
V of the victorious life.
Now, there's many, many ways to describe the
victorious life.
I have no one way.
I agree with Billy Graham who says, I
don't care how you get it, just get
it.
And I would add, let's see it.
Let's see it.
But in one sense, there are two aspects
to the victorious life in that one, I
think we all agree on this, is our
goal is perfection.
We are perfect in Christ.
And our goal now is to see that
a practical reality.
Holiness, whatever you want to call it.
The other aspect of the V of reality
and of victory is knowing what to do
when we do sin.
Knowing what to do when we do fall
flat on our face.
And if as a young believer God hadn't
showed me from His Word that even when
I sinned, He still loved me.
Even when I sinned, He was still there.
Even when I sinned, His arms were around
me.
I would have never, never made it past
the third year.
And it's so important to understand the grace
of God toward us as sinners.
It's not cheap grace.
It's not an excuse for just going on
and on in your sin.
If you can do that, then something is
seriously wrong.
But it is, as one man said, G
-R-A-C-E, God's riches at Christ's
expense.
Grace.
And you can't talk about the life of
Paul as we're going to do without thinking
on the word grace.
They almost come together.
Paul is accused of being the founder of
the theology of grace.
Jesus taught the law and grace, and Paul
only taught grace, the critics say.
Not true.
But oh, what a wonderful thing it is
to know Jesus Christ personally.
And you know one of the dangers as
we grow older in the Lord?
I'm probably young in the Lord compared to
some of you, only twenty.
But as we grow older in the Lord,
there's a danger of taking lightly our salvation.
A.W. Closer says sometimes we belittle our
salvation in order to hard sell a second
blessing package.
Now, I'm not going to get into arguments
about the second blessing or the third blessing
or any other blessing.
But whatever else you believe comes after conversion,
don't belittle conversion.
I tell you, that is a great danger.
I think personally some people who later on
in their life think they come into a
second blessing, they didn't see anything in their
Christian life before that, and then they come
into some kind of second blessing.
Personally, my own conviction is sometimes they've only
just been saved.
Because what kind of salvation do we have
when people say I was saved but nothing
happened?
I don't read about that in my Bible.
Well, I was saved twenty years ago but
nothing happened until last year.
Wait a minute.
Now, I know that is possible, but it
is certainly not the general rule.
Salvation is a revolutionary experience.
When a man is saved, when a man
is born again, things happen.
They don't all happen at once.
And to me, the miracle of salvation must
be followed by the miracle of spiritual growth.
And this also we're going to see very,
very clearly emphasized as we study the life
of Paul.
Spiritual growth.
The importance of spiritual growth.
Because it was the Apostle Paul who said,
I buffet my body and bring it into
subjection, lest after preaching to others I should
become a reprobate.
So many times as we study Paul we
just see all kinds of paradoxes.
One minute he's talking about being crucified with
Christ, and it all seems to be just
totally hinged on Christ, and there's nothing we
can do but just acknowledge that we are
Christ, and the next moment he's saying, I
buffet my body and bring it into subjection,
lest after preaching to others I become a
reprobate.
Of course, spiritual balance is one of the
most important things we're going to see in
the life of Paul.
Well, by God's grace, I was converted March
5, 1955.
I began to witness and live for Christ
March 5, 1955.
And by God's grace, and I don't say
this in any way as a boast, I
say it as a testimony of the grace
of God, that the devil may be nailed
as a liar when he tries to tell
us we all have to backslide.
And by God's grace, every single day, 365
days, these 20 years, I have walked with
Jesus Christ.
Oh, there have been the moments of depression,
there's been the moments of soul agony, but
there's always been the blood, there's always been
the cross, there's always been the Lord Jesus
reaching down to such a worm as I.
And I say that for you young people,
because I believe with all my heart every
day you give to the devil in one
sense, you're going to be unhappy for.
You only have one life.
Sometimes people see me now, I'm an old
man at 37.
That's what you think in O.M., you
know.
I used to say, boy, when a guy's
30, shoot, he's finished.
When I was 17.
We keep moving the age limit each year,
keep me in the movement.
Actually, Captain Paget is 73 and we praise
God for him.
The captain of our ship.
We discovered God's not interested in age.
But I just believe with all my heart
that when you're a teenager, it's the time
to begin to live for Christ.
I think one of the greatest mission fields
I had was in my own high school.
I went back right after my conversion, I
only had one more year.
One more year in high school.
And what God did before the Lord was
done in that high school at the end
of the year or a year and a
half, almost 200 had come to Jesus Christ.
I was one of them.
The principal couldn't stop me.
I was in the high school.
And God moved.
And you have a tremendous mission field in
your, what you'd call a grammar school.
And then I went to college.
I didn't stay there long as I felt
led to go to Moody Bible Institute and
get out to the mission field as soon
as possible.
But you'll never have the same mission field
the way you have it right now in
high school or in college.
Buy up every day.
Buy up every minute.
Be a spiritual revolutionary.
Set your sails to follow the Apostle Paul
in this kind of lifestyle that we're going
to be talking about during these days together.
And you'll never regret it.
I praise God for all the precious souls
He gave me that came to Himself in
those first few years.
I've never, I don't think, led as many
teenagers to Christ as in those first few
years.
And you have a mission field right where
you are as a young person.
Perhaps later on in another one of the
times together I can share a little bit
of what happened.
It's after two years being a Christian I
went into Mexico and the work was born
in Mexico and two years later I was
in Spain and the work was born there.
And the next year I came to England
and God caused this thing to explode in
the British Isles so that within three months
He mobilized 90 young people to cross the
English Channel in 1962.
Sixty-three, nine hundred British young people joined
with us.
By then it had spread almost all the
way to India.
People said it would just die out.
They said, it's fly by night, it's flash
in a pan.
Some of you know the tremendous criticism that
was leveled at this work in the early
days.
Every kind of wild story you could ever
think of.
But God gave us the grace to see
that this criticism was one of the greatest
blessings in disguise.
You don't learn anything from people patting you
on your back telling you, oh what a
great fellow you are.
All you get is a fat head.
But you can learn from your critics.
And we saw that some of this criticism
was valid.
You know the communists teach.
I was reading some time ago a book
on communist insurrection in South America.
The communists teach that every failure is a
springboard to success.
Some of us with our failures should be
doing quite well by now.
But somehow we as Christians have lost that
mentality.
And we become cynical and we become sort
of semi-sterile and we become sort of
lethargic.
Reminds me of this story of this young
American who came over from one of the
Southern Baptist churches to England.
And of course he didn't know where to
go to church and he thought he'd go
to the Church of England.
And he went in and they were of
course going through the liturgy.
And he was quite amused by this.
He'd never seen anything like this in a
Southern Baptist church back at home.
And as he walked out he said to
the vicar at the door he said, Boy
I sure do like your lethargy here in
this church.
Well sometimes the liturgy does lead to lethargy
but there is a great difference.
But how lethargy, the spirit of softness and
laziness, how it creeps in.
How quickly God's people seem to grow cold
and worse than growing cold grow lukewarm.
No longer are their hearts stirred for souls.
No longer is there the burden to pray.
No longer is there the passion that once
roared in their hearts.
My great concern even in these days together
as I've already expressed is not that just
we can fill our heads with great truth
from God's word and from what God is
doing but that in these days our hearts
would be stirred.
That the flame of God would roar and
Holy Ghost revival upon us.
And I'd be the last one to want
to self-start some kind of a show
because I believe that the Holy Spirit works
deeply in our hearts and these days the
effect will be seen six months from now
and by God's grace six years from now.
The Apostle Paul's life is of course the
example of that as he ran his life
to the very, very end.
Notice this verse 20 just to spend a
little more time in this passage.
I'm going to try to limit each one
of my lectures to one hour so it
will depend to some degree on when you
get in here and get started.
But I want us to look at verse
20 for this is very, very important.
For the kingdom of God is not in
word but in power.
Now this is very important and again we
need the spiritual balance.
We get some people the moment you say
the word power they think of healings, they
think of signs, wonders and miracles and of
course I believe God can heal, I believe
God can do great things.
I've seen it with my own eyes.
But that's not what it's talking about here
primarily because this scripture must be taken in
its context and Paul has not just finished
talking about his great successes.
Paul has just described his suffering and if
only Christians could see it they would be
saved from a lot of confusion.
The primary power that God speaks about in
his word is the power that produces morality,
ethic, reality, perseverance, character.
You study it in its context.
Paul has just talked about being laboring, he's
talked about being persecuted, being defamed, he's talked
about being the off-scouring, he's talked about
having to work that doesn't sound very spiritual.
Most of us can figure and see how
God can be with us here in this
place.
I love the woods.
I had my quiet time this morning in
the tree hut.
I love the woods.
I'm a bird watcher, I saw ten species
this morning and I feel so close to
God in the woods.
But you know if I had to work
probably in some of the places some of
you have to work in I may not
find it so easy.
But I believe one of God's greatest plans
for us is to take us more and
more into the inner sanctuary of spiritual reality
so that we not only sense God in
the woods, we can sense God in the
factory floor.
We can sense God in the midst of
some job where half the people need to
have their mouths washed out with soap.
And all the blasphemy and cursing you have
to listen through all day long.
That is harder.
And I come here not as some great
missionary looking down on you poor layman that
you're going to get with it.
I come here, believe me, realizing that if
I had some of the jobs that some
of you have I'd probably be away from
the Lord.
And I know that it's tougher in many
ways to live for Jesus Christ in the
middle of Swansea or Birmingham or Manchester than
it is to live for Jesus Christ carrying
a hundred or a thousand tracks on my
back over the back hills of Nepal.
The fact of the matter is wherever the
devil is there's going to be a battle
whether it's Nepal or Birmingham.
We're all in this together.
But it is harder sometimes to sense the
Lord in the middle of the kitchen when
the children have just broken the cookie jar
or the biscuit jar and when the tea
has been spilled and when your husband has
not appreciated your meal and has bowled you
out because the egg was one degree too
hard and the phone is ringing and you
can't get your favorite news program on the
radio because the battery has just died or
some other major crisis.
And my burden is not that we'll just
know the power of God here fellowshipping and
singing together but we'll know the power of
God in the routine in the mundane of
what we have to do back where we
are.
The kingdom of God is in power not
in word.
And let's not think of that power firstly
as something spectacular.
Let's not think of that power firstly as
something that happens when Billy Graham comes to
town or when we have a readout meeting
and we all get excited through singing the
choruses.
But that power first of all is going
to give you the character the moral drive
the ethical reality that makes you a consistent
follower of Jesus Christ.
We have so many inconsistent Christians who are
up and down So many Christians today go
the exact opposite of what Paul teaches and
live by feelings.
Sometimes they feel so saved and they're praising
the Lord.
Next time they're down in the valley.
I believe it is more significant to praise
the Lord when you're feeling down and you're
feeling miserable and everything's gone wrong and nobody
understands you and no one loves you even
your husband can't figure you out.
It's more significant to praise God than it
is to praise the Lord when you're walking
through the woods and the birds are singing
and you can forget about all your troubles
at least for a few minutes.
It's much more meaningful I believe to the
living God.
A.W. Tozer said something about feelings that
I'd like to read to you.
I write quotations down in my little book
here and then I usually go and proceed
to lose the book but I lost this
in Swansea it got sent back to me.
Feeling is the play of emotion over the
will.
A kind of musical accompaniment to the business
of living.
And while it is indeed most enjoyable to
have the band play as we march to
Zion it is by no means indispensable.
We can work and walk without music and
if we have true faith we can walk
with God without feeling.
There are times, beloved, when we have to
take a stand turning our back on feeling
or on no feeling and believe God.
This is the kind of faith Paul demonstrated.
He didn't feel like being buffeted, whipped.
He didn't feel like going without food any
more than you or I do.
He didn't feel like going through these things
he went through but he took his stand
on his knowledge of God and he marched
both with the music and without the music.
At conferences like this is often lots of
music not just in the literal sense with
the piano and all the rest but in
other ways something about being in an environment
like this that is refreshing to most people.
The living God is still going to be
with us long after we leave here.
We can march without the band though we're
more than happy if the band is there
as we march forward for our Lord Jesus
Christ.
The kingdom of God is not in word
but in power.
A.W. Tozer said we become professional at
the game of words.
This so concerns me.
I'd like to speak at greater length about
this but I believe that we have pronounced
so many of the great Christian words so
much without living them that many of these
words are meaningless.
Many of the great Christian words today dedication,
commitment consecration discipleship sacrifice so many words what
do they mean?
I can tell you in the United States
and I think you need to understand that
I'm an immigrant to this country I'm not
an American here on a tour.
I've lived here now for 13 years I've
traveled more in Great Britain than the most
British people I've ever met and though I
can't speak the language I'm working on that
and this is really where I consider home.
This is my home.
I've never been back to the States except
in three or four weeks preaching tour but
in the States I think even more than
here though you're catching up quick we play
the game of words dedication here's a man
he's making 25,000 pounds a year in
Christian work he's living in a ten room
house he's got two cars he's got to
get rid of one because he's almost a
year old and he's got a yacht and
he gets up and preaches on commitment forsaking
all following Christ taking up the cross.
Something has got wrong the definitions have somehow
slipped this is why we have to go
back to men like Paul in another place
Tozer says we have measured ourselves by ourselves
you know, one another for so long there
are no longer any higher plateaus in the
things of the Spirit and isn't this a
danger you know, we look at the fellow
down here we always think the other man
is materialistic never else even if our car
is only one month older than his our
house is one room less or, you know
some little thing we always think boy, you
know poor brother we're going to have to
pray for brother so-and-so he seems
to be getting caught up in the things
of the world it's always the other man
it's never Lord my own heart because we
know that the poor man living in his
garage can be just as materialistic in instinct
as a millionaire up on a hill materialism
is no respecter of persons it's a very
subtle and a very tricky thing the kingdom
of God is not in word what do
these words mean to us?
sacrifice the crucified life the Spirit-filled life
dedicated and I believe God's concern is that
these things go out of the realm of
words into the realm of power and of
course that must firstly be the power to
live this way and you know when God
has a man who's living this way who's
demonstrating this kind of consistency then the second
stage of power can be added in the
realm of supernatural happenings and souls being saved
and breakthroughs and answer to prayer and so
many other things that can take place in
Christian work it sort of reminds me of
these rockets they keep sending off to outer
space and if any of you watch the
rocket take off I don't have a television
but the lady upstairs asked me to come
up my wife to come up and see
the Americans go into space so I thought
maybe I'd better do this maybe some spiritual
lesson so I went up and watched this
launch off from Florida and as I think
of that there are a lot of interesting
comparisons that in our own life this first
stage of power is in a sense to
get us away from the world and into
real living into orbit spiritually speaking and then
the second stages of power are to do
all the wonderful things these men up in
the middle of space shaking hands with one
another and doing every crazy thing you can
think of the kingdom of God is not
in word but in power take this passage
of Scripture in your free moments and re
-read it as we go into our next
three sessions we're going to look at far
more Scriptures than we looked at this morning
as I try to just give you a
little background and try to get a little
bit on your wavelength and share a little
bit of my own heart's experience but we're
going to go into a lot of related
passages we're going to see the Thessalonian church
here's a brand new young church where Paul
could only stay for a short time then
he had to leave and yet they became
a New Testament church an example church in
a matter of months and we're going to
see the secret the secret of the Thessalonian
church interesting, our brother was led to read
that Scripture this morning one of the main
Scriptures I want to deal with and we're
going to see the Apostle Paul as a
missionary one of the things we're going to
see is how balanced this man is most
people tend to think of Paul as the
outgoing, aggressive hard-hitting type the men who
study temperaments call him a choleric temperament many
of you have read Spirit Controlled Temperament by
Tim LaHaye an amazing book or you've read
Mr. Hallowsby's book on temperaments you know that
some Christians have divided people into four different
temperaments just as a way of understanding people
why are some so fast and others slow
some so outgoing and some seemingly so reserved
and there are different kinds of people and
many of us in our work have found
it a great help to understand people and
we don't judge them so quickly but he
and his writings and most people who understand
temperaments would agree that Paul was basically a
choleric temperament perfect for killing Christians ideal temperament
for killing Christians and yet we see when
the Holy Spirit fills Paul just what a
spirit-filled choleric can do and the balance
that here's the man going over the wall
in the basket here's the man praising God
at midnight in jail here's the man who
said for the space of three years he
ceased not to warn people to stop warning
people night and day with tears here's this
man just go, go, go, go right across
the known world of his day we find
him as a nursing mother among the Christians
in Thessalonica that's what it says a nursing
mother and we see the gentleness of Paul
and the meekness of Paul and it's beautiful
and all of us need spiritual balance some
of us tend to be outgoing and aggressive
charging down the road others seem to be
so reserved and quiet and apparently gentle but
when God's spirit moves in and the power
that we've been talking about it brings that
perfect spiritual balance and that's my goal and
I tell you I'm a long way from
it and I come here believe me as
a learner hungry and thirsty for God and
hungry and thirsty for spiritual balance and spiritual
maturity which I know I'm lacking in many,
many areas and even here in these days
if you see something in my life that
is not like Jesus Christ oh how grateful
I'd be if you'd come up in a
loving way not too rough because you may
discover that I'm not as broken as you
thought but if you come in a loving
way and say, Brother really, don't you think
that in this area you could be a
little more Christ-like I won't be able
to be among you as much as I
would like I have about three or four
hundred letters that need to get answered that's
why I agreed only to come here if
I could bring my secretary in my office
I have another secretary in Bromley that I'm
keeping busy this whole week though I am
going to be giving some time especially to
my children and I hope to have some
time for individual fellowship with some of you
but I won't be able to be among
you perhaps as much as I would like
I have one thousand seven hundred young people
who I am in some way small way
perhaps responsible for before the Lord and feel
I must spend much time in prayer for
them and corresponding with their leaders and handling
a lot of other people problems our business
in O.M. is people and in the
summer we have two or three times as
many people as we have normally but let
us believe that God in these days to
come will take us deeper into his word
that we may go from here knowing that
the kingdom of God is not inward but
in power let us pray our God and
Father we thank you for this first time
we have had together this morning just to
somehow get started we thank you for this
tremendous passage of scripture we thank you for
the reality and the life of the Apostle
Paul and when he says that we are
to be followers of him we know even
as he is of Christ this is what
we want deliver us from our defensiveness deliver
us from our excuses deliver us from rationalization
deliver us from operation escape that we may
face truth head on and decide to obey
whatever the cost wherever it leads us whatever
areas we have to repent about whatever things
we have to put right that we may
in a deeper way appropriate your grace we
thank you that the Christian life is grace
we thank you that you love us as
much when we have fallen flat on our
faces as when we are running along so
many miles an hour and we just praise
you we thank you that we don't have
to feel guilty about a little time of
recreation or relaxation but we pray that these
times may be true times of getting our
spiritual batteries stored and our physical bodies stored
restored and our minds restored that when we
leave this place we may be disciples and
we may be soldiers and we may be
on the attack that we may be the
kind of men and women you would want
us to be for the glory of your
name through Jesus Christ our Lord Amen