Let us turn together in the word of
God to the book of Hebrews chapter 12.
Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about, with
so great a cloud of witnesses, let us
lay aside every weight and the sin which
does so easily, so easily beset us, and
let us run with patience the race that
is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the
author and finisher of our faith, who for
the joy that was set before him endured
the cross, despising the shame and the set
-down at the right hand of the throne
of God.
For consider him that endured such contradiction of
sinners against himself, lest ye be weary and
faint in your minds.
Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving
against sin, and ye have forgotten the exhortation
which speaketh unto you, as unto sons my
son despised not thou the chastening of the
Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of
him.
For whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you
as with sons.
For what son is he whom the Father
chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, of which
all are partakers, then ye are bastards and
not sons.
Furthermore, we have our fathers of our flesh
who corrected us, and we gave them reverence.
Shall we not much rather be in subjection
unto the Father of spirits and live?
For they verily for a few days chastened
us after their own pleasure, but he for
our profit, that we might be partakers of
his holiness.
Now no chastening or discipline for the present
seemeth to be joyous, but grievous.
Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them who are exercised by it.
Wherefore, lift up the hands which hang down,
and the feeble knees.
Make straight paths for your feet, lest that
which is lame be turned out of the
way, but let it rather be healed.
Follow peace with all men, and holiness without
which no man shall see the Lord.
Looking diligently, lest any man fail of the
grace of God, lest any root of bitterness
springing up trouble you, and by it many
be defiled.
Let us pray.
Lord, we just believe you have brought us
here for celebration, but also for renewal of
vision, also for commitment of our lives to
you, and to what you want to do
in these coming years.
We're excited about what you're doing, and oh
God, as the walls are going down in
East Berlin tonight, so the walls, we believe,
are going to go down in our own
hearts, and in the hearts of your people,
that there may come in a new tidal
wave of blessing, and reality, and renewal, and
a movement of your Holy Spirit that will
change the course of history.
For we pray this now in Jesus' name.
Amen.
I'm sure all of us are aware of
what is happening in Berlin.
Perhaps it's not as real to you as
it is to some of us who have
walked along that wall many times.
Operation Mobilization has been committed for many years
to the evangelization of Berlin.
It was one of the largest targets of
Love Europe this summer, and many came to
Christ.
It's the base for our work among Turks,
and our people who work among Turks live
along the wall.
When I go to visit them, I've taken
my old converted coach and parked it next
to the wall.
And many times I'd go for my morning
quiet time walking along that wall.
If you've never been there and never walked
along it, you cannot grasp the awesomeness of
it, the sadness of it.
So many have lost their lives because of
the wall and the policy connected with the
wall.
And these are great days of rejoicing.
Not in a naive way, because we know
there will be new battles, there will be
new struggles.
We know that as they leave East Germany
and go to West Germany and spend those
West German marks and buy new trinkets, that
they will not find reality.
One of the most outstanding conversions in the
history of Operation Mobilization is a woman named
Christa.
My daughter, now 24, is named after her.
Born in Lee, Lancashire.
Christa escaped East Germany and came to West
Germany looking for freedom more than 30 years
ago.
She then went to London and looked for
freedom there.
She went to Paris and looked for freedom
there.
She learned two or three languages.
She went to Italy and then ended up
in Madrid, Spain, where I was living when
I first came to Europe.
And it was through our ministry there in
a book by Billy Graham that Christa found
Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and
is one of those persons that from her
conversion to this day, some 28 years later,
she has been in Operation Mobilization.
Most of that time serving Jesus Christ in
the land of India.
She even chose to go through Bible college
in India.
Ended up marrying Ray Eicher, a young man
born in India who is still one of
the major leaders of the work there.
As the wall goes down, new walls may
go up.
Greater walls of materialism.
Greater walls of immorality.
As I believe West Germany is more immoral
than East Germany.
Other walls will go up as they are
shattered by the disappointment that often faces people
when they go from a communist country and
that brand of capitalism to a capitalistic country
and our brand of capitalism.
So I hope this is a day of
rejoicing, but not in a naive way, so
that that rejoicing will lead to prayer, so
that rejoicing will lead to the greatest evangelistic
thrust ever among the German people, so that
that rejoicing will lead to us somehow releasing
finance for more literature.
My son told me on the phone just
a few hours ago that he heard the
Bulgarian leader has also stepped down, and Bulgaria
is a more fanatic country than East Germany.
It does seem that we are in the
midst of the greatest changes in Europe since
the war.
I hope we will take advantage of this
as the body of Jesus Christ.
We should never see a ministry, even on
its hundredth anniversary, in isolation.
That's why it's so good that people have
come from other fellowships.
For this church is part of the church
universal.
All believers throughout the world, most of whom
are involved in a local expression of the
church.
And this is exciting.
As I thought of what I should share
on, I wrote down six words.
And if you can write down these six
words, it would encourage me, because I believe
that often we go to meetings, we hear
messages, and two weeks later we don't remember
anything what we heard.
Whereas the book of Timothy says that when
we receive something, we should then give it
on to others, who will give it to
others.
And to make it simple to remember this
anniversary celebration, instead of giving you a long
outline, I'm just going to give you six
words.
Now, I'd like to give you ten words,
one for each decade that this ministry has
been going on, but that might get a
little bit long.
I want especially those from Elmwood to get
good sleep, so you can be back this
morning, and I'm sure that's true of other
ministries as well.
I want to keep in mind this passage
of Scripture, that we're running a race.
We're looking on to Jesus, and the key
of everything in our Christian life is keeping
our eyes on Jesus.
Walking in the Spirit, not fulfilling the lust
of the flesh.
One of the most heartbreaking things so often
among God's people today, is the number who
are discouraged.
I'm not talking about being tempted to be
discouraged, I have that almost every day.
I'm talking about living in discouragement.
That's not God's plan, that's never God's plan.
Even if you have to have a fist
fight with discouragement, twenty times in one day,
it's not God's plan for you to surrender,
and to begin to live in that cul
-de-sac of discouragement.
And I find myself often ministering from Hebrews
12, on the subject of discouragement.
But that will have to be for another
time.
Six words I want to leave with you,
for this great anniversary celebration.
The first one I'm sure you can guess.
Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving, this is a time of Thanksgiving.
The Book of Psalms emphasizes Thanksgiving.
The New Testament emphasizes Thanksgiving.
There's a verse in Thessalonians, which I've been
studying a lot lately, and started a series
with my own team, Friday morning, from that
great book.
It says, And all things give thanks, for
this is the will of God.
Now probably 98% of us know that
this church has been going through some difficult
and painful periods.
You don't need to hide this, we don't
play little games, little religious games.
And yet, if we follow God's way, we
must give thanksgiving, and give thanks, even in
the midst of this crisis.
Which is not over, because we weep with
those that weep, we rejoice with those that
are rejoicing.
If there's someone still weeping because of this
crisis, whoever, wherever, then there's part of us
that's still weeping.
I live in a perpetual series of crises.
I have to weep with that woman, and
one of my workers, who probably was murdered
last week.
We hope not.
We may have another Terry wait, and end
up waiting many years, never knowing whether he
is dead or he is alive.
Billy Graham, my own spiritual father, said, If
you have not yet learned how to handle
raw, ugly, hard, vicious sadness in your life,
then you are a baby Christian.
You're not yet grown up.
In fact, I would say you have not
yet entered the real world.
Just look at the last war.
Just look at the war before that.
The war to end all wars.
Just look at the Falklands.
Just look at Iran and Iraq.
Just look at what's happening right now in
Campuchia.
Just look at what's happening right now in
Beirut, in Israel.
In 100 other places we have raw, ugly,
sad, terrible, hellish things happening in this world.
When are we as God's people going to
come out of our fantasy land of little
clichés, and face the world as it really
is, and be soldiers of Jesus Christ?
Until we do that, we will be spiritual
wimps.
Do you know that term?
You watch way too much American television in
this country, I can assure you.
Some of it should be banned.
Maybe I can lead a new organization for
the banning of American television.
It would be good since I'm a Yank
by birth.
Maybe you don't know what a wimp is.
But sometimes we are, as God's people, so
quick to start murmuring, so quick to collapse
in the race, so quick to feel overwhelmed,
so quick to feel that God isn't really
hearing our prayers, or my husband doesn't really
love me as much as he used to,
or the dog is not behaving right, or
the roof leaks, or I can't get hot
water from the tap.
I remember one girl that came on OM
just broke down weeping because she had never
washed her hair in cold water her entire
life.
She forgot to read the section in the
OM manual about enduring hardness as a good
soldierette of Jesus Christ.
Oh my, oh my.
How out of line, how out of line
much of our present behavior in our churches
is with what we find in the Word
of God.
What we find in men like the Apostle
Paul, whose heart was broken a hundred times.
What we find in men like Hudson Taylor,
who did such a phenomenal job in evangelizing
China.
And we think of the growth of the
church through the death and destruction, the quote,
unanswered prayer, and privation and death of the
cultural revolution.
Hudson Taylor once said, China is not to
be won for Christ by self-seeking, ease
-loving men and women.
Those not prepared for labor, denial, and many
discouragements will be poor helpers in the work.
In short, the men and women we need
are those who will put Jesus, China, and
soul first and foremost in everything.
And at all times, life itself must be
secondary.
Their price is far above rubies.
Let us rejoice in the midst of the
battle.
Let us rejoice in the midst of the
heartaches.
There's a beautiful word in Corinthians that says
of a true disciple of Jesus Christ that
he or she is sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
One of the great messages I've heard from
a British preacher was when I went to
the funeral of one of my first Manchester
friends, who was the chairman of our OM
board for many years, Norman Alexander.
And the great preacher at that funeral spoke
about the validity of sorrow.
Somehow it ministered to me in a special
way.
When my mother died a year ago, that
was Canon James Eyre who gave that message,
when my mother died a year ago, those
words were very, very real to me.
A Christian knows the reality of paradox, that
we can be sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
Because we rejoice at this anniversary doesn't mean
we're happy about everything we have done.
Doesn't mean that we are brushing lightly over
sin or failure or problems or unbelief.
But it means that ultimately at the end
of the day as we battle through all
the enemies trying to do, we come out
God's praising people.
I have a great problem staying in operational
mobilizations.
It's way too big for me.
I like things small and personal.
This is a good side, this church.
Now I have 1,800 full-time workers.
I don't even know who they are.
I don't even know where they are.
And some of them when I pray with
them, I like to punch them in the
nose because they seem so dead some of
them.
And we open the opportunity for people to
pray or we say we're going to have
a time of thanksgiving.
The same brother gives thanks and did it
the last time we had this kind of
a meeting.
And a few others give thanks.
And then I give an exhortation and a
few more give thanks.
I remember in a great revival in a
great church in India that when they opened
the door for the congregation to pray and
give thanks, it was just, it was impossible
to stop them.
One after another, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,
boom, like popcorn.
People were just jumping up and praising the
Lord.
I remember Bhat Singh who led that particular
meeting having to exhort the men to please
be quiet for a while.
It's always good for the men.
And let the women lift their hearts in
praise and thanksgiving.
And they did.
And then the men couldn't get back in.
Edgewise.
Thanksgiving is also such a cure.
Tozer called it the great cure for cynicism.
Are any of you my age?
Any of you my age?
This is the age of cynicism.
Anybody can guess my age without previous hints
or knowledge.
You can legitimately guess it.
You can get a free book.
This will keep you awake to the end
of the meeting at least.
But really, cynicism so easily comes in, somebody
like me.
I was a bit cynical this morning, spending
a couple of hours dumping endless letters on
my secretary.
And they were making noise outside.
My house is a place that changes tires,
but they sounded like the whole place was
exploding.
And they were revving the engine, revving the
engine, making all this noise.
And I said, he's a jerk.
My secretary laughed because she knows that I
rebuked her once for calling somebody a jerk
or something similar to that.
Forgive my slang.
Thanksgiving is a great cure.
Great cure for a negative spirit.
It's a great cure for cynicism.
It's a great cure often for discouragement.
When I'm feeling discouraged, I often just start
praising the Lord.
I turn my eyes off the problem.
Turn my eyes off the headache.
Some people who have gone through great traumatic
experiences never come out of those experiences because
they keep replaying the film.
They keep replaying the film.
If you've had some horrendous, terrible thing in
your life, why are you going to go
to a cinema and keep watching that same
film?
We're supposed to, and I'm going to talk
about this a little later, develop a disciplined
mind so that we can choose.
Excuse me, we can choose by God's power,
by God's help, by God's grace, what we
are going to think of.
That's why Philippians 4.8 is such an
important, beautiful scripture for every believer.
Let's just read it, lest I misquote it.
Philippians chapter 2.
Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians.
Chapter 4, verse 8.
Finally, my brethren, whatever things are true, whatever
things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever
things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever
things are of good report, if there be
any virtue, if there be any praise, think
of these things.
Isn't that beautiful?
That's the cure for the negative spirit.
The second word that's on my heart for
this great celebration is the word vision.
God wants to increase our vision this weekend.
To come to our hundredth year as a
fellowship is not the end.
God forbid.
This is the beginning.
The history of this fellowship and church and
mission seems to indicate that for some years
it was either stuck in neutral, reverse, or
drifting.
We'll not analyze that tonight.
But it's clear that this church now is
in high gear for God.
It's a fast lane operation.
It's based on the word of God.
It's been proven and tested and is still
going.
And I have a great spirit of expectation
as to what God wants to do here.
Vision.
For every big vision we have, we don't
lack big vision in Operation Mobilization, I can
assure you.
We got too many of them.
I don't know whether my leaders are staying
up late drinking too much coffee or what,
but we seem to have too many visions.
For every big vision we have in Operation
Mobilization, and I gave a message on this
recently to our leaders, we need hundreds of
people who have little vision.
Little visions that will help complete the big
vision.
That's so important.
In fact, when too many people in a
church have huge visions and they're all different,
often the church splits because they can't handle
it.
This man wants to start a great rescue
operation for prostitutes.
This one over here wants to reach the
rich and the upper crust.
This person feels the main thrust must be
to the children.
This one comes along and says the main
thrust must be reaching the rest of the
world, we should all go overseas.
Someone else comes along and feels that we
must get into justice and righteousness and enter
the political arena.
Another character has a big vision for shaking
the whole of Manchester for Jesus Christ and
wants to launch hundreds of buses and banana
carts down the streets of Manchester selling gospel
literature.
The place will go crazy.
That's why a movement like Operation Mobilization, they
get one George Burwell, that's it.
He alone is enough to drive them almost
completely crazy.
Someone now thinks I'm going to get a
submarine for evangelism in depth.
Someone else thought I should get a gospel
train.
Someone else wondered when I was going to
buy a jumbo jet for Jesus.
People have some idea that I'm this great
man of faith.
When I want another ship, I just wander
down to the ocean, raise my hand in
the name of Jesus, and another ship just
pops up, pulls in, and we load on
the crew and sail off to reach the
world for Christ.
Brothers and sisters, this book will indicate that
it is not quite like that.
Praise God for His small people, His unnoticed
people, His ordinary people, who may not be
able to preach publicly, who may not sound
like they're tearing the walls of satanic territory
down when they pray, who may be even
a little shy or a little quiet, but
they've got a vision, a vision for prayer,
a vision for serving others, a vision perhaps
for new ways to find money for the
work of God, a vision for networking and
spreading information out about the work of God.
One of the first new songs I ever
learned when I came to Britain was in
Birmingham.
I was there two weeks ago at a
great youth rally.
It's amazing, the wall between Birmingham and Manchester.
It's incredible.
Might as well be two separate nations.
But one of the songs I learned when
I first came to Britain, I guess 27
years ago, was, There's a work for Jesus
ready at your hand.
That's an old one, isn't it?
I bet they sang that one maybe a
hundred years ago right here at the Mission.
But it's so true.
There's a work for everybody.
And maybe in God's providence, during this time
when you don't have a main senior, as
we say in America, ministering pastor, maybe this
is a time when God's going to do
a new thing, a special thing, and teach
more about corporate ministry, more gifts from a
wider range of people are going to come
to the fore, because no church that accomplishes
great things for God can ever be a
one-man show.
And too many people are putting their gifts
under a bushel basket.
Too many people think someone else is supposed
to have the vision.
Someone else is supposed to do this.
Like this fellow who got the missionary vision,
so-called, and said, Lord, here I am,
send my sister.
That's not how it works.
Let's ask God for a renewed vision this
weekend.
Let's ask God for new ways that we
can make an impact on a secular, humanistic
society.
Some people believe the greatest opposition to the
gospel is communism.
They've got a lot of doubts right now.
Others believe it's Islam, and there's a lot
of strong points.
But I believe the greatest opposition to the
gospel is still old-fashioned unbelief.
Old-fashioned unbelief, and in many of its
different forms.
It may come in the form of a
cult.
It may come in the form of humanism.
It may come in the form of secularism.
It may come as atheism.
We have plenty of atheists in Great Britain.
And they're influencing television.
They're influencing the media.
They're influencing the literature we read.
We don't need Islam and communism to get
us in big trouble in Britain.
We're already in big trouble.
I believe we need new, contextualized, radical ways
to make an impact for the gospel of
Jesus Christ in this nation and that will
influence the whole world.
The third word, I'm sure you might also
guess that it would come in somewhere, and
that's the word action.
Thanksgiving, vision.
You can reverse the order if you want.
Thirdly, action.
The book of James says, let's not be
hearers of the word only, but doers.
Isn't it wonderful to meet people of action?
People that get things done for God.
One of my favorite characters is Arthur Blessett.
What an amazing person that God has so
wonderfully used.
Another one of my favorite persons is Brother
Andrew.
Going against the time, starting and leading one
of the most phenomenal, unusual missions of all
times.
I count it a privilege to be part
of a fellowship where as far as I
know, every man and woman in O.M.
is a person of action.
If you're not a doer, you just can't
come on Operation Mobilization.
It's what it's all about.
Yes, we pray, we study the word of
God, and then we move.
This summer, 7,000 people came to Offenburg,
Germany.
5,000 moved out in evangelism.
Hundreds upon hundreds profess faith in Jesus Christ.
That same action is possible on the local
basis.
What a thrill to see people going out
door to door in their own area or
going into the streets or using the telephone
or opening their own home to bring in
visitors and guests.
There's not one way to evangelize.
There are dozens of different ways.
And I just believe one of the great
areas where we need to renew our commitment
tonight is the area of evangelism.
It's hard, it's tough, it's disappointing.
Do not allow any disappointment in our church,
any disappointment in our life.
I have had many slow us down in
our work for Jesus Christ.
The fourth word that's on my heart is
the most unpleasant of the six.
There has to be at least one unpleasant
word among the six.
The others are all relatively pleasant.
Thanksgiving, vision, action.
But the fourth word is discipline.
Discipline.
Isn't this the problem so often?
The emphasis on discipline in Operation Mobilization has
been the greatest factor by God's grace and
mercy and the work of the Holy Spirit
to keep us moving forward now 33 years
as a movement.
It's not very long compared to this fellowship.
But in those 33 years we have given
the gospel to 400 million people face to
face.
We have graduated 50,000 workers through our
training program short or long out into the
harvest field.
Discipline is often the missing link in the
average church.
Even many of the new churches born in
the last 20 years in Great Britain are
in serious trouble because they didn't realize the
importance of discipline.
They thought if we get this blessing and
we get this particular doctrine and we get
this particular emphasis we're just going to go
and we're going to change the whole course
of Great Britain.
People had so-called prophecies about that.
10, 15, 20 years ago!
That God was giving him the keys to
the British government, whatever that means.
A lot of it comes and goes.
It's like hot air.
Somebody said of an American politician when they
were criticizing him that he had a lot
of wind in the mouth but nothing in
the sails.
I thought it was a good expression, especially
if you're a sailor.
Brothers and sisters, we are deceived.
We are deceived.
If we can only acknowledge that.
I've had to acknowledge deception in my own
marriage, in the way I treated my wife,
the way I worked with my family.
Perhaps the greatest encouragement I've had in many
months was such a beautiful and powerful letter
from my own son who lives, at least
temporarily, in the United States though he works
for a big British accounting firm.
And as I look back over my life
I know there were areas where I was
blind or I was a bit deceived.
This doesn't mean God wasn't using me.
That was the problem.
God seemed to be using me so much
I didn't stop enough to really examine and
try to improve in areas where I was
a little weak.
I thank God eventually some people told me.
One bold woman finally came to me.
I remember it was 1977, the same year
we got Dulos.
It was the same week we made the
decision to buy Dulos, our second ship.
She took me in a room aside and
she really let go.
How are you men taking it from the
women?
That's a real test of your spirituality.
We got a lot of secret chauvinism among
God's people today.
It's so thick that some men don't even
know what it means.
But the truth is that in the Church
of Jesus Christ we need the women equally,
absolutely equally as much as we need the
men.
And if you can show me any other
scripture I will give you 5,000 free
books.
I didn't say they were the same because
that would be extremely unbiblical.
Not only that, it would be downright weird.
May God cause us to understand we can
be converted, we can be filled with the
Holy Spirit, we can be blessed at Keswick,
we can be kicked at Operation Mobilizations Love
Europe, but if we don't return to our
church, to our home, or to wherever we're
going and put into practice a disciplined life
in which we deny self each day, take
up the cross and follow Christ each day,
in which we buffet our body, as Paul
said, he buffeted his body and brought it
into subjection so that after preaching to others
he would not be a castaway.
And when we see some of the messes
taking place among Christian workers across the world
in 95% of the cases, it's because
when they were young Christians they never understood
the cross, they never understood the disciplined life,
they never understood in depth how to say
no to self and the self-life and
all of its squirmy, ugly little ways and
yes to the cross and its power to
destroy the self-life.
It doesn't mean perfection, it means reality.
It involves our eating, it involves how we
spend money, it involves the mind, as Lloyd
-Jones so emphasized in his writing, it truly
involves the tongue.
It will mean that we will have to
often go to people which is the toughest
discipline of all and say, I am sorry,
I have sinned against you and receive the
grace that sinners receive when they bend before
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the fifth word is perhaps the most
motivating, exciting word and that's the word love.
All the other things we can talk about,
thanksgiving, vision, action, discipline, world evangelism, total commitment
to Lordship of Christ, great messages that I'm
regularly speaking about and one of the reasons
I bring all these tapes is I just
love to get more messages into the hands
of God's people.
Most of the time when I sell these
tapes like to students at Moreland's Bible College
a couple of days ago and sell books,
I almost lose money every time they buy
one.
I just have such a desire to get
the word out.
But this fifth word is the word love.
1 Corinthians 13 is one of the passages
I read the most and I hope you
do as well.
It's love that has again and again kept
me from ugly extremism though I've still had
some failure.
When I've been very strong and moving in
a particular direction and upset about something, somebody's
walked on one of my favorite convictions, it's
love that again and again brings me back
into balance.
It's love, the power of the Holy Spirit
a major controlling factor in your life.
I hope it is for all of us.
It's the only way.
Love.
Read that word in Galatians, the fruit of
the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering,
gentleness, goodness, thankfulness, meekness, temperance.
Against such there is no law.
Every time I found a book on love
when I was a young Christian, I read
it.
Eugenia Price's book, Make Love Your Aim, another
brilliant message by a woman.
Henry Drummond's book, the greatest greatest book of
all.
I forget the title.
Just a little book all about love.
Theodore F., the great founder of Back to
the Bible Broadcast.
Love is the answer.
I made everybody come on OM read it.
I went through the whole of the New
Testament.
I marked every single verse on the subject
of love.
This was when I was in a secular
university, sort of a little religious overtone.
Before I ever went to Bible college and
theological college, I went through the whole New
Testament.
I marked every verse on the subject of
love without a concordance.
It revolutionized my life.
A character like me is still taking place.
It's still my greatest area of failure.
It may not happen so much.
It may be more difficult to measure because
it's subtle.
As we get my age, and we've been
in the work of God a long time,
our sins are more subtle.
People don't even see them.
But when we get to the end of
the day and we bow our head before
God and we say, Lord, how did I
do today?
We see them.
In fact, many a man of God has
expressed that the closer he became to Jesus
Christ, the more ugly he saw his self
-life and his own life.
Read the story of David Brainerd.
Read Murray Machen.
Don't only read new books.
Lay this little gospel diet book that somebody
just written for the average evangelical.
Read some of these old writings by A
.W. Tozer.
Read Murray Machen.
Read some of the great Puritans.
And you'll discover men that knew God.
They weren't perfect.
And when biographies were written back then, they
put stuff under the carpet, and that's always
very sad.
But they have something that we certainly need
today.
We may have something today that they could
have used a little more of back then.
That seems to be the way history is.
And my final word is the word forgiveness.
I love it.
Forgiveness.
I'm reading a new book right now on
forgiveness.
Well, I have to be truthful.
I'm reading one book on forgiveness.
I've just got another book on forgiveness that
I want to talk about for a moment.
And the only thing I've read is the
cover.
But people have told me about it over
the phone.
And so I ordered, by faith, I ordered
a hundred copies.
The whole book is about forgiving people that
have hurt you, that you feel unable to
forgive, even though you pronounce it with your
lips, emotionally, you don't change.
Since I was last with you, I have
counseled and prayed with probably a couple hundred
people.
My meetings in North America, over 1,000
stood, thanking for praying, to recommit their lives
to Jesus Christ.
Many of them came up afterward for prayer
and counsel.
The one I remember the most was a
young woman who came to me and shared
something she never told a living soul.
She said, My father has raped me and
forced me to abort the child.
And my mother doesn't know.
And I have to go back to talk
to my father this weekend.
Can I forgive him?
Only in the supernatural power of Christ that
we represent here tonight would that young woman
wanting to go into the ministry be able
to go back to her father and say,
I forgive you.
And probably, it will be many, many, many
years before emotionally she will be able to
receive and enjoy the full impact of that
forgiveness.
In many ways, next to the name of
Jesus Christ and the names of God, the
greatest word in the Bible is forgiveness.
And yet so many of God's people harbor
roots of bitterness against those who have hurt
them.
So many of God's people seem to carry
little bits of dirt in their pocket to
use when necessary against someone for some reason
or other.
I don't believe the challenge of forgiveness is
some little black and white picture that you're
going to cross over because you've heard a
challenge about it tonight.
It's something that you will agonize about.
It's something that you will have to read
about.
You will have to study about.
The brother who first recommended this new book
to me is someone who has wrestled with
unforgiveness and something similar in his heart for
several years, several years.
And now, only now, through counsel, discussion, and
open sharing is that therapy taking place that
is bringing that healing, that inner healing that
often so many of us need, so many
of us need.
I know in my own life as a
young Christian, and I think I had some
advantages because I never had a supreme mega
hurt in my childhood.
So don't compare me with yourself.
We're all different.
When I think of what some of the
young people who come on OM today have
gone through before they get to us, I
can't believe it.
A girl came to me years ago.
She said, I've been raped 20 times by
my grandfather.
This is an area where Christians are incredibly
naive.
Statistics will show that incest, that sexual activity
within the family, immorality within the family is
on the increase and it is hitting Christians
because Christians are often trying to live in
purity.
They may even have unrealistic views about impurity.
And a lot of what they may think
is victory, in fact, is repression.
And so they would never go with a
prostitute.
They would never get into pornography.
They would never do this or do that.
And so they have a lot repressed.
And in a weak moment of depression and
confusion, it gets spilt out upon a family
member.
And the pain is awesome.
There is now a whole book just published
about incest among God's people.
What is the answer?
Of course, discipline, victory, purity, the Lordship of
Christ, everything the Bible stands for is part
of God's provision to enable us to stand
against all temptations that come.
For Ephesians chapter 6 says we have a
shield through the faith wherewith we can stop
all the fiery darts.
But when sin does come in, when failure
of whatever form does come in, there is
forgiveness.
And with forgiveness there is restoration.
It may take time, but it's there as
one of the greatest promises in the Word
of God.
And so when we see a sister fall,
a brother fall, or when we ourselves fall,
we know, though there may be discipline, though
things may have to change, though there has
to be practical application, we know it's not
the end of the road.
I don't know what trouble, what difficulty you
may be wrestling with, what failure may be
lurking over your shoulder from 1989 as we
go into 1990, but I know whatever it
is, when it goes under the blood of
Jesus Christ, it is gone.
It is cleansed.
It is finished.
It is as if it never happened as
far as God is concerned.
Though you may have to wrestle with the
consequences of that sin to some degree, the
rest of your life.
Forgiveness is the great word I want to
close with on this special anniversary celebration.
As He has forgiven us in Jesus Christ,
so we forgive one another.
Could it be that even churches hold things
against other churches because of past experiences, because
of miscommunications, because of past hurts, and where
there could be greater unity in working together,
it doesn't happen because something is there that
has not been forgiven.
Something like the Berlin Wall is there between
us and them.
And it just doesn't come down that easy.
May it come down at this 100th anniversary
celebration for the glory of God, for the
King of Kings, and for the extension of
the Gospel throughout the world.
Let us pray.
Our God and Father, we thank You for
this special event that we are able to
have together.
We thank You, Lord, again, for what You
have done these 100 years through heartache and
sorrow, through times of victory and times of
defeat.
And Lord, we thank You for these six
dynamic Biblical principles that are written through the
pages of Your Word.
And we pray, O God, with a spirit
of thanksgiving, that our vision may increase, and
that we may be the men and women
of action so that in a disciplined and
loving way we may take the Gospel to
the ends of the earth.
And, O God, when we fail and when
we sin, we will receive Your forgiveness and
Your cleansing through Calvary.
And when others sin and when others fail,
we will extend to them that forgiveness and
that love for Your glory and for Your
kingdom.
We thank You for this great reality.
In Jesus' name, amen.