Revelation chapter 3.
I've spoken on a lot of different subjects
over the years and so I'm always looking
for some new subject to develop a message
on or some thoughts about.
And yesterday, just right out of the blue,
I think I was listening to a Tozer
tape.
Somewhere I heard the word apathy, a word
I haven't used so much, and it just
triggered my prayers and my thinking.
And I realized I had never spoken on
the subject of the danger of spiritual apathy.
We find a lot of apathetic people in
the churches.
I certainly have preached quite often messages to
try to stir them, but I don't think
I've ever given a message on what are
the dangers when people just continue in lukewarmness.
They continue to be apathetic year after year.
And I just got these few thoughts, I
hope they're from the Lord, and I'd like
us to think about them together.
Because probably one of the temptations you're going
to have during your time on OM is
to become apathetic.
You certainly will get it when you leave.
And being in any kind of training movement
or evangelistic movement does not guarantee that you
will not become lukewarm and apathetic down the
road.
The scripture I want to read, which I
have preached on many times, is Revelation chapter
3, verse 14.
Revelation chapter 3, verse 14.
I counsel thee to buy of me gold
tried in the fire, that thou mayest be
rich, and white raiment, that thou mayest be
clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness
do not appear.
Anoint thine eyes with salve, that thou mayest
see.
As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten.
Be zealous, therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice and open
the door, I will come in him and
sup with him, and he with me.
To him that overcometh will I grant to
sit with me in my throne, as I
am also overcame, and am sat down with
my Father in his throne.
He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit saith unto the churches."
Let's just pray again.
Father, help us to hear what you have
to say to us this morning.
We need a word from you so easily
we can just get caught up with the
work.
A lot of it is routine, and a
lot of times we realize we're going against
the tide, against the tide of our society,
against the tide of the tendency toward spiritual
apathy.
And we want to be those spiritual fish,
so to speak, that can swim upstream.
Help us, Lord, to not only get something
for ourselves this morning, but something that we
can give to others.
As wherever we go, we face apathetic Christians,
and we want to be a blessing.
We want to be able to give people
the right book that might just turn the
tide.
We want to maybe pass on the right
cassette tape.
Guide us, we pray, in Jesus' name.
Amen.
A few weeks ago, I was fellowshipping with
Glenn Garner back from Turkey, finding it an
enormous challenge to try to adjust to life
in America.
I had not even been asked to give
his testimony or report about Turkey in his
home church, one of the biggest, most alive
churches in the area.
Talk about discouragement.
And we were sitting along a beautiful stream
in Oregon, talking and fellowshipping, and suddenly we
saw these fish jumping in the water.
I don't know if you've ever seen fish
jump three, four feet out of the water.
If you've been born and reared in London,
you probably have not had this experience.
This was in Oregon, and these fish were
salmon trying to go upstream.
I remember being there at this very spot
before and finding a lot of dead salmon.
Apparently, they try to get back to where
they came from originally, and some of them
don't make it, and they die after they
give birth.
So this time, there were, I didn't see
any dead fish around, but these live ones
were trying to get up a waterfall.
It's one thing to, you know, swim up
the river.
It's another thing for a fish to leap
up a waterfall.
Well, the ones we were watching didn't seem
to make it, but that may have been
our lack of understanding about what happens after
they fall back in the water.
But what a spiritual illustration that, in the
Christian life, how vividly I saw this in
Austria and Belgium.
It's upstream.
It's against the tide.
And maybe some of you, you thought that
coming on OM, you were going to get
with the tide, right?
This is a spiritual movement, and somehow you're
going to get with the tide, and even
though you're just a spiritual minnow, you thought
you'd get with some of these big fish,
and you get with the tide, and you're
going to really go places.
And you've had nothing but waterfalls since the
day you came in, and you haven't got
up one yet.
You feel that somewhat you're just all wet.
You may feel OM's all wet.
Truly, living the Christian life is going against
the tide.
And though I would think generally, when we're
with other believers, we're with a fellowship like
OM, there is terrific advantage.
We are still against the tide.
Now, the day that you leave a movement
like OM, and you go home, much will
depend on that local home fellowship.
If you get with a fellowship that understands
you, and loves you, and somehow believe in
what you've been doing, and they're going places,
you'll probably find that's a great advantage, and
will be an enormous help to you.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
But many people are not finding that, for
various reasons that I haven't got time to
go into.
And so they soon find that they become
discouraged or apathetic.
I've spoken about dealing with discouragement perhaps too
many times, but this morning I want to
share not just on the subject of apathy,
but what are the dangers of continuing in
spiritual apathy.
And I've only started to think this through,
and some of you can even write me
a note and add to these thoughts before
I perhaps give it in some other meeting.
I've just written down five dangers that I
see if we continue in apathy, we continue
in lukewarmness.
And that's whether we're in OM, or whether
we're somewhere else.
The first thing I've written down is that
you tend to develop deadly habits.
You become accustomed to apathy.
I think many of the men of God
that I have read about, and I've been
listening to a lot of tapes by Tozer
lately, have never become accustomed to apathy.
They never tolerated it.
They never allowed it.
I'm sure they were tempted, but they never
developed the ability to be at home in
apathy.
And they battled their way out of it.
So the longer we continue in spiritual apathy,
the greater the danger that this, how can
you say it, will become a habit.
I remember a message years ago by Billy
Graham, and he pointed out that basically our
life is a series and combination of and
how I have seen this, because I've got
some bad habits that I've been trying to
break, and they're not breaking.
And I developed some of these habits when
I was your age, younger ones here, and
they are not easy to break.
I even took, for example, driving lessons from
the professional driving teachers, and managed to pass
the test after two failures, because I had
these bad driving habits, and I still have
some of those habits, even though for the
test I managed to get mega motivated, and
for those 20 minutes drove properly.
I mean after two failures, and I had
a thousand people praying for me, there was
some hope.
So continuing in apathy is going to develop
some deadly habits which could eventually lead to
the person's complete spiritual wipeout.
Why some people get an apathy for a
few weeks and get wiped out, and others
seem to be able to live in apathy
for years, and actually life is all right.
Don't think that because you're away from the
Lord, or you're in spiritual apathy, that everything
is going to go wrong.
Actually, for a while everything might go right.
Again, I remember Redpath preaching a message at
Keswick, sharing how you get tempted to quit,
and in the message he said, you know,
if you quit, you'll probably really feel great
for a while, because the pressure will be
off.
And when you're moving in evangelism, and you're
moving in commitment, the pressure's on, and of
course you'll feel great when that pressure's off,
at least for a short time.
I have heard, by the way, that Alan
Redpath is very ill.
We certainly would like to be praying for
him and his wife.
Secondly, the second danger of continuing in spiritual
apathy is that you open yourself up to
enemy tactics.
We all know the verse, Satan is a
roaring lion, seeketh whom he may devour.
We know the verse that Satan even can
come as an angel of light, and that
we're not to be ignorant of his devices.
And I am convinced that in my own
life, even one day of apathy, which I've
never had, that I know of, I've certainly
had hours, and had to battle my way
with every inch of spiritual fight back to
the cross in repentance.
I have other sins and difficulties in my
Christian life that I don't think we could
be classified as apathy.
But I know that if I become apathetic,
I give up the fight, those other weaknesses
that I have, they'll just perhaps destroy me.
And we're all different in temperament.
Some people get destroyed slowly.
Probably I'm the kind of temperament, that's what
the book says, that one day you will
see me here preaching, and the next day
it'll be all over.
And you'll just read about it in the
paper.
If you don't think that can happen to
George Berwick, you are spiritually naive, because there's
been men far greater than I, that I
couldn't even tie their shoelace, but they've wiped
out in spiritual warfare.
So I believe the safest thing, especially for
characters like me, is to just not tolerate
lukewarmness or apathy, and to repent quickly, and
to try to find the source of the
difficulty, and to not trust my emotions.
My emotions would definitely lead me to the
school further downstream of the lukewarm water, swimming
around, but we cannot afford that.
Number three, the third danger of spiritual apathy,
is that your heart gets hardened.
Again, I can't speak from experience, but I
can speak from counseling people, that after people
are apathetic for so long, they are no
longer responsive to spiritual challenges.
Many, many young people are in that camp.
Many of the teenagers reared in our churches,
and that's so many messages, and so many
Christian camps, and so many Christian films.
And as you go, and you work among
them, you minister with them, you discover they
have almost no hunger for God.
I remember about a year or two ago,
I spoke here, of why people are not
hungry for God.
I remember, because I have a twinge of
guilt, that Mike Wheat asked me for a
copy of it, or the notes, and I'm
not sure if I ever got a sentence
to him, because he was convinced that this
was certainly a big problem today, that people
don't seem to be hungry for God.
What's the, how can people even relate to
somebody like A.W. Tozer?
So hungry for God, naturally he's going to
grow.
Naturally he's going to go on, because he's
hungry for God.
When you're hungry, you find food.
And today, it seems that among many young
people, and some older people as well, of
course, there's no hunger for God.
There's no appetite for spiritual things.
If you give someone a book like True
Discipleship, who's not hungry for God, he's not
even going to read it.
And many young people don't read any spiritual
books whatsoever.
And I believe this is a danger for
us as mature Christians, that if we harden
our heart, or that if we live in
apathy for a while, we become accustomed to
that.
We become accustomed to a low level.
We may still be in church.
We may still give the occasional spiritual grunt,
or sing a chorus with even a degree
of life.
I mean, unconverted people come to our meetings
and sing these choruses, and they enjoy it.
But generally, that isn't going to carry us
down the main highway of spiritual life.
We're given warnings in the Word of God
about hardening our hearts.
I think of also that verse in the
Old Testament where it says, see, He gave
them the desire of their heart.
In this case, they seemingly wanted the wrong
thing.
And He sent leanness to His soul.
Remember that verse?
What a verse.
Sometimes, even as Christians, we can desire the
wrong thing, and God may even allow us
to eventually get that wrong thing.
But with it, there's spiritual compromise.
There's spiritual leanness.
Fourthly, it hurts.
Apathy hurts and hinders other people.
It spreads, doesn't it?
Of course, a person who is strong in
spirit and strong with the Lord, as he
comes across spiritual apathy, just like the fish
going upstream, he manages to keep on going.
But I can tell you, even strong-minded,
committed people, I hope I'm, I guess I'm
in that camp.
I hope so, at least strong-minded people.
Others tell me so.
Committed, I hope so.
But even we find sometimes ourselves being overwhelmed
and very discouraged, needing so much apathy.
And I can tell you, the apathy at
times in Operation Mobilization by the middle of
March, in some years, has been just overwhelming
to me.
And it's almost at times caused me just,
just to give up.
There is more apathy in OM than we
are willing to admit.
And because we don't want to be judgmental,
we often don't find it.
Because we want to believe the best.
We're not, you know, some kind of KGB
trying to figure out who's on fire for
the Lord.
There's a lot of freedom in OM.
I don't think we keep track of people's
quiet time.
Have you been asked to give a report
about your quiet time, to fill out a
chart?
I remember when I was a student at
Moody Bible Institute, I, you know, we had
to go and fill out a little thing
on the wall about how many people we
witnessed to, and how much evangelism.
I think they threw that out.
I know there was a protest against it.
Maybe they've got something in its place since
then.
But we don't want to be judgmental.
We don't want to, in one sense, put
our nose in other people's affairs.
We want to believe the best.
A recent report, according to a book I
read last week, shows that the average minister
in America prays 22 minutes.
22 minutes.
That counts worship, prayer, intercession, you know, the
whole package.
Then we wonder why the Church is seemingly
a little bit lame in some situations.
Yes, apathy does spread.
The apathy that one person may have can
be very hurtful to others.
I think of the people who are our
prayer partners.
I think of how some of them really
do love us and pray for us, and
the awesome news it will be for them
if we do get knocked out of the
Bible.
If somehow they don't hear from us a
long time, and then they meet somebody and
they said, oh yeah, oh yeah, oh, he's
not living for Jesus anymore.
What?
I'm his prayer partner.
I wondered why I haven't heard from him.
That happens.
Praise the Lord, I don't think it happens
too much.
More often people leave Christian work, as it's
called, and because of that decide not to
send a prayer letter anymore.
And so the people lose track, and they
just figure, well, he's not in Christian work,
but he must be doing all right.
I think people who are not in Christian
work should pray about sending out a prayer
letter.
I think they need prayer just as much
as those of us who are out here
and supposedly in Christian work.
Maybe they can only send it once a
year.
It could be a Christmas letter.
I get Christmas letters from people who are
in sort of secular employment.
They give a little news, and it helps
me to pray for them.
So our apathy will spread.
Our apathy will hurt others.
It will hinder others, and that's the last
thing in our hearts I think we want
to do.
And then lastly, apathy is actually opposition to
God.
It's throwing aside the promises of God.
It is far more of a sin than
we are willing to admit, and that's why
this passage in Revelation chapter 3 is one
of the strongest passages in the Word of
God.
Be ye hot, or be ye cold.
If you are lukewarm, I will spew you
out of my mouth.
I haven't heard many of the modern preachers
of our day speak on this passage.
Maybe they have found some interpretation, some study
that's not valid.
The old messages we get from Redpath and
from Ravenhill and from other speakers at Keswick
on Revelation chapter 3.
I think I spoke on it perhaps once
at the Keswick Convention, maybe even in one
of the STL books.
Apathy really is an abomination to God.
Now that's a mystery to me because God
seems to tolerate an awful lot of apathy
among people in His churches, and I think
that is because God is so merciful.
He is so loving.
There are things that we do probably this
day that will displease God, but His love
toward us is so great because He is
our Father.
And I've met many men of God whose
children are astray and they're in apathy, but
the Father's love, the Mother's love still reaches
out to them.
They're not happy about what they're doing.
It's hurtful.
It may be breaking their heart, but they're
still merciful.
They're still loving.
They're still reaching out, and that's sometimes been
what God has used to bring them back.
So don't presume that because God isn't hitting
you on the head that all is well.
If there's apathy, if there's lukewarmness, we know
there's many ways to define that.
Lack of zeal, lack of love for the
Lord, which would be expressed in our work,
in our worship.
Lack of reality and desire to witness.
Eventually, the lack of even being convicted about
your sins.
Once you were convicted for your lack of
evangelistic zeal, now you learn to live with
it.
Once you were convicted about missing your quiet
time or not being involved in the prayer
life of the church or the team, now
you're learning to live with it.
Apathy is, how should you say it, it's
taking its toll in your own life, and
it's a far greater sin, a far greater
affront to God than I think most of
us are willing to admit.
Be ye hot or be ye cold.
If you're lukewarm, I will spew you out
of my mouth.
Yes, apathy, obviously, and I know if I
took time to study this, I could come
up with another five or ten points, but
let's declare war against apathy.
Let's not blame it on the church, let's
not blame it on OM, let's not blame
it on our department head or our leader
who we feel maybe doesn't understand this enough,
or our wife who may be doing this,
or our prayer partners that haven't written us
lately, or our donors who are no longer
donating, or our churches that don't seem to
be praying.
We don't have any excuse, and one of
the dangers of Christian work is there's always,
in Christian work, someone else to blame, because
there's always something going wrong.
And I'll tell you, if STL and OM
has been a disappointment to you, I'm very
sorry.
I apologize on behalf of the board of
directors, I apologize on behalf of the general
council or the area leaders, and that disappointment
could be, in God's timing, His appointment for
you to learn to swim upstream.
Because if you come here, and it's all
easy, and it's all blessing, and the relationships,
and the fellowships, and living together, and evangelism,
just one great onslaught of spiritual flood, and
then you leave here and you go home,
and everything's just the reverse, it's against the
tide, it's uphill, people don't understand you, they
don't appreciate you, they think you're extreme, then
where will you be?
You'll probably be like those salmon I met,
lying somewhere on the shore, spiritually dead.
Let's learn to swim upstream, and if you're
finding Bromley and UK and STL and ICT
a little upstream, well that's no excuse for
any sin on our part, and we're gonna
work day and night to try to make
this whole work better for His glory and
for His honor.
But if you find that somehow the tide
is a little bit against you, a little
bit of disappointment, take advantage of that, because
the tide is probably going to be tougher
in the future.
Let's pray again.
Father, we just think of so many dear
ones that we know who are in spiritual
apathy, spiritually warmness, some that don't even bother
to go to church, they've heard it all,
or maybe they've been conned into thinking that
it's not the truth.
And Lord, as we see, as we've seen
this morning, just some of the dangers of
spiritual apathy.
We just want to run into your arms
for a spiritual refill.
We just want to turn away from even
a square millimeter of lukewarmness that may enter
our souls, maybe from other people's apathy.
We want to run this race with our
eyes upon you, and we want to lay
aside every sin, every sin or even weight,
even a weight that may be hindering us.
And Lord, as we look across this great
spiritual invasion of OM across the world, we
pray for revival.
We pray that people will turn and be
refilled with your Holy Spirit.
We pray for spiritual diligence where people will
deny self each day and move forward by
faith, even if it's against the tide.
Lord, you know our hearts.
You know our needs.
You know my own situation, the increased pressure
that's come since my mother's death, since buying
this new ship and already having trouble with
it.
And we thank you that you can meet
us in the midst of the times of
pressure.
You can meet with us and minister to
us.
I just thank you for these tapes of
A.W. Toza that I've been able to
listen to these days, even on the road
in Austria.
Just thank you that you've accepted my repentance
of sin, and I just thank you for
your great mercy, your great love that's so
incredibly patient with us.
But Lord, we don't want to, in a
sense, see this love and this grace and
this mercy, forgiveness, and then just throw it
to one side and just go on pretending
almost that it doesn't exist.
Strengthen us for the work.
Meet with those leaders who are having special
sessions right now.
Guide us through a lot of activities, a
lot of meetings this weekend, that we may
speak in the power and the authority of
the Holy Spirit, that we may see many
more apathetic people, apathetic about world missions, apathetic
about the hungry, the suffering, the dying, the
wars that are going on.
May many be aroused this weekend.
May many be aroused through these books we're
distributing.
May we go the extra mile in getting
some of these books that bring revival and
destroy apathy into the hands of people across
this nation.
But, oh Lord, we know that somehow there
has to be the move of the Holy
Spirit in answer to prayer, that the pages
of these books may become like spiritual knives
into the hearts of people.
Grant us grace to do all of this
heartily, with all of our hearts, as unto
you.
In Jesus' name, amen.