And tonight's message is Bearing the Cross.
If any man would come after me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross
and follow me.
This has been a kind of a spiritual
adventure for me because something is being worked
even as I speak.
So I'm waiting myself to hear what's going
to be the summation of these nights.
Shall we join our hearts together for it?
Pray the Lord's blessing.
Hallelujah.
Thank you for that precious statement, Lord, which
we read in Spurgeon, that only he who
died on the cross is really able to
speak about it.
And so much as it's possible, Lord, in
the wonder and glory of a holy God
speaking out of earthen vessels, let it be
so tonight, Jesus standing and sharing out of
his own heart with his own people the
final thoughts and sentiments that he would express
in these nights.
Gracious God, may I just be beside myself,
may it be utterly transparent, simple, pure, expression
of the Lord from heaven, bearing some of
the dear things that pertain to the holy
cross for our own lives as we seek
to follow you.
Bless this night, Lord, and fulfill all your
intention for it.
To you be all glory and honor and
praise and acknowledgment, now and this night and
forever.
In Yeshua's holy name we pray.
Amen.
I quoted Spurgeon in my prayer, and I
want to quote him in my opening remark.
He writes, Jesus does not suffer so as
to exclude your suffering.
He bears a cross not that you may
escape it, but that you may endure it.
And I think one of the libels against
the cross in these days, against the gospel
of the cross, is the idea that suffering
for the believer is negated, it's unnecessary.
It seems to me it's always expressed by
those who equate godliness with gain, and it's
usually stated in the following way.
Quote, Jesus took all the suffering upon himself
that we might be free of it and
enjoy all the benefits for which he died
for us.
Well, in a certain sense, and in a
great sense, that's true.
All that he worked in his suffering and
death for our atonement cannot be duplicated or
added by any suffering on our part.
But there's an area of redemptive suffering which
we are called to fill, which needs to
be mentioned.
The implicit and unspoken assumption is that those
who make mention of the suffering of the
present time are somehow masochistic.
I don't know if you know what that
means.
Those who take delight in suffering.
There's something sickly about those who have taken
upon themselves the theme of suffering.
Perhaps they're psychologically bent, that somehow they may
even be enemies of the true gospel, keeping
God's people from the benefit and enjoyment that
is due them.
And while it's true that there's nothing that
we can add to the sufferings of Christ
to an already perfect and accomplished atonement, it
would constitute almost a criminal neglect not to
refer God's people to the many references to
a suffering required of them as the body
of Christ that needs to be filled up.
That which is behind of the afflictions of
Christ for his body's sake, which is the
church.
You may want to make a note of
some of the scriptures that I'm now going
to read.
And this isn't exhaustive, but it'll give you
some of the pertinent statements of God that
pertain to a suffering that needs to be
filled up for his body's sake, which is
the church.
That scripture is Colossians 1, 24.
1 Peter 2, 21.
Even here unto were you called, because Christ
also suffered for us, leaving us an example
that you should follow his steps.
1 Peter 5, 10.
But the God of all grace who hath
called us unto his eternal glory by Christ
Jesus, after that you have suffered a while,
make you perfect.
Romans 8, 17.
Joint heirs with Christ, if so be that
we suffer with him, that we may also
be glorified together.
Philippians 1, 29.
For unto you is given in the behalf
of Christ not only to believe on him,
but also to suffer for his sake.
2 Timothy 2, 11 and 12.
It is a faithful saying, for if we
be dead with him, we shall also live
with him.
If we suffer, we shall also reign with
him.
2 Timothy 3, 12.
Yea, and all that live godly in Christ
Jesus shall suffer persecution.
Philippians 3, 10.
That I may know him in the power
of his resurrection and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being made conformable to his death.
The last, 1 Peter 4, 13.
But rejoice in so much as you are
partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory
shall be revealed, you may be glad also
with exceeding joy.
In a certain way it would be possible
for the Lord to rebuke this generation as
he rebuked his own disciples.
Slow of heart, fools not to believe all
that the prophets have written.
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things
and then to enter into his glory?
And he said unto them, Thus it is
written, and thus behooved Christ to suffer and
to rise from the dead on the third
day.
There's a certain corresponding attitude today between the
disciples of that day and our own.
They coveted the glory of the kingdom of
Israel that was to be restored, but they
were blind to a necessity for a suffering
that preceded the glory.
They forgot that there's a must, that there's
an ought, that there's something that behooved the
Messiah that behooves them also.
And I think that a like kind of
disposition is to be found in the rapturists
of our own generation who have an eye
to the glory of God and to the
establishing of his kingdom, but have omitted any
necessity for suffering and trial in entering into
that glory.
And I wonder if this is not that
fleeing from the scandal of the cross of
which the first disciples were guilty, the avoidance
of the implication of the cross of suffering
for us who believe.
I think what it reveals is a failure
to understand, to apprehend a clash of kingdoms,
that somehow if we could perceive this, we
would know that inevitably there has got to
be a measure of friction, of trial, of
struggle for those who represent the kingdom of
heaven in a world that is inhospitable to
God.
And the strange thing is that we are
not sufficiently separated from the world to understand
in the way that we should that the
world is at enmity with God.
It's the very avoidance of the cross that
has kept us from the separation from the
world that would have given us to understand
that those who are in the world, though
not of it, must of necessity suffer a
certain measure.
Paul said it's the cross that separated him
from the world and the world from him.
There's a precious book that's available on the
bookstands.
I hope you'll not miss it.
It's a great bargain.
Love not the world by Watchman Nee.
In it he just brings together all of
the scriptures that pertain of the hostility of
the world against God.
He speaks of the things that are opposed
to God that are in the world, the
spirit of the world, the wisdom of the
world, the fashion of this world, the corruption
that is in the world, the defilements of
the world, all that is in the world,
the world, the world, the world.
He paints a picture, which we need desperately
to see, of a system which is utterly
opposed to God in spirit and content and
in every way, though in many features it
is very beguiling and attractive.
It has even an aspect of religion.
It has culture.
It has an ethic, morality.
It has things that appear good.
I think we need to ponder the rebuke
that Jesus gave Peter.
When asked if Peter was the first to
describe that Jesus was the Christ, the Son
of God, it says from that time forth
Jesus began to teach the disciples that he
must go to Jerusalem and there be apprehended
by men and suffer and die and rise
again in the third day.
Then it says that Peter took him and
rebuked him and said, Lord, let this be
far from you.
On the face of it, it's a beguiling
statement and it seems to suggest something that
is sympathetic and warm and humane and indeed
the world would applaud that kind of sentiment.
Yet how many of us have understood the
severe rebuke that Jesus gave Peter?
Get thee behind me, Satan, for you savor
of the things which be not of God
but of men.
He said that of a sentiment that was
well intending, of some kind of expression of
concern of a disciple for his master and
yet he saw right through the deceptive aspect
of that sentiment and saw what was at
its heart.
It had its origin not with men but
in hell.
It was the wisdom of Satan.
It's something that appears to be good but
is inimical and opposed to the kingdom of
God and there wouldn't be a one of
us sitting here tonight if Jesus had responded
to that counsel.
How many of us have pondered the radical
implication of what that says?
Get thee behind me, Satan, for you savor
not of the things which be of God
but of men.
Evidently in the simplicity of Jesus, he equates
the things which be of men with the
things which be of Satan.
We need to let that settle into our
hearing because natural man is always the instrument
by which satanic things are brought into being
in the collision between kingdoms.
And I praise God for one who has
seen so deeply into the matter as this
precious saint and that we need to be
reminded that there are kingdoms in collision especially
as it is our generation that is going
to see the end of this age.
If this conflict has in some degree been
cloaked, if it has been muffled, if religion
has been used as a kind of a
sanctifying effect for society, if it has been
used to open and initiate the sessions of
Congress, if the world has somehow tolerated it,
we are going to find that increasingly diminishing
and an increasing bitterness rise up in the
world against the children of God.
In the favorite journal of intellectuals, one which
I used myself to read in times past,
the Saturday Review of Literature, in an issue
only a few months old, the cover story
was dedicated to the evangelicals in America, the
threat of the evangelicals to American society.
The cover picture showed believers with their hands
in the air and it was not a
complimentary depiction.
Interesting that the article was written by the
son of a Baptist minister and in it
he tries to show the danger that is
growing with the resurgence of evangelical life in
America and especially in the charismatic movement.
He sees it as a danger and a
threat for all that is rational, all that
is orderly, all that civilization has applauded as
right and good.
When I read that article, something stole into
my spirit as if it were a handwriting
on the wall and it wasn't long before
I found that that article was reflected and
re-echoed by journalists and newspapers and those
that are active in our culture have been
released by it also to begin to speak
the same themes.
There are kingdoms in collision and we have
not ourselves the radical understanding of this fact
which would prepare us for the friction, the
conflict, the trial and the suffering that must
inevitably follow.
Those who live godly lives in Christ will
suffer persecution.
And one of the earliest remarks that a
Jewish colleague made to me as a young
believer just back from Jerusalem stunned into the
kingdom of God though I was not seeking
Him.
Taking my place again in the teaching profession
and sharing what little understanding I had with
my Jewish colleagues.
I remember one time in the faculty dining
room as we were eating and I was
at that time strangely silent.
The Jewish woman who was opposite me became
restless and edgy waiting for me to say
something.
And I didn't.
And finally she couldn't contain herself longer.
A woman who lived on pills to put
her to sleep, pills to wake her up
twice a week at the psychiatrist's in a
perpetual living death steeped in the spirit of
the world looked up at me and said
even when you're silent you're a living accusation.
I've never forgotten that statement and I expect
that the world is going to be speaking
things like that increasingly but
it will not if the world is too
much with us.
It needs to say something of the glory
of the kingdom of heaven the heavenly graces
of God in God's people here on earth
and it will incite the anger and the
resentment, the irritation and worse of those who
are steeped in this present world.
The only thing that will bring us to
this heavenly place is the cross itself by
which the world is separated unto me and
I unto the world.
I don't know what's happening to me and
maybe there's a corresponding thing that's happening with
you but I find myself increasingly indifferent to
what I'm wearing where I am, how I'm
traveling how I arrive, how I get to
my next destination what's to eat or not
eat what is the state of our physical
security I haven't calculated these things but as
the cross is being worked into my spirit
and life I find somehow that the world
is growing strangely dim and so I anticipate
and suspect that God is working the same
kind of things in his people because it's
an unhappy thing to find those who palpitate
over the things that are to be found
in the world one of the beautiful things
that Washman says in this book love not
the world nor the things that are in
the world for it's the things that will
inevitably bring you to the spirit of the
world itself the thing may be harmless in
itself but you can be assured that the
spirit which is in the thing will be
like an invisible cord to bring you to
that wellspring which is the world itself which
world lieth in the wicked one the whole
world lieth in the wicked one we need
to be reminded of these things and to
find our refuge and safety against it at
the cross quoting this German theologian who has
inspired me greatly in this thing he writes
Jesus did not suffer passively from the world
in which he lived but incited it against
himself by his message and the life he
lived the suffering of Jesus was not an
accident it was inexorable suffering it was suffering
that had to come because of the nature
of the man the character of his life
the way he walked and the things he
spoke suffering was the necessary consequence and I
think that we who are called to walk
as he walked need to know also that
if our character shall resemble his character and
our nature his nature and our message his
message what then must we expect from a
world that treated him so Jesus did not
suffer passively from the world in which he
lived but incited it against himself by his
message and the life he lived this is
not some kind of sickly passive resignation that's
to be found in eastern religions but the
logic of those who will take up the
same cross go ye into all the world
and preach the gospel to every creature to
represent God in the earth and to take
up his message and actively follow him is
to invite the fellowship of the sufferings maybe
I can speak this with a certain conviction
and reality because to a degree I'm on
the front line of this encounter with the
world in my relationship with my own Jewish
people will you not think me anti-semitic
if I say that the spirit of the
world is to be found most profoundly with
them they indeed have been the architects of
the modern world and have given it its
incisive spirit and its content if you remove
the three greatest Jewish geniuses of the 20th
century there's not a way that you can
recognize our age Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and
Albert Einstein and the great irony is and
the melancholy that more of us have been
affected by these men than we realize more
of us who call ourselves Christians and are
sincere are raising our children in the light
of Sigmund Freud than in light of the
scripture and perhaps more devastating than the atom
bomb which the physics of Albert Einstein made
possible was the theory of relativity that was
applied not just to the realm of physics
but to our life which is to say
that there's no such thing as absolute truth
and that everything is relative I'll tell you
that that has done more harm and has
been more destructive of life in earth than
the bomb itself I'm not saying that these
men are consciously malicious I'm saying that because
they are separated from the spirit which is
of God they are eminently involved in the
spirit which is of the world and I'll
quote you another Jew who said in 1st
Corinthians when we have not the spirit of
the world we have the spirit of God
and if I can add a postscript I
would say that we have the spirit of
God to the proportion that the spirit of
the world is not with us I'm not
talking now about hair and lipstick and hemlines
but our attitudes and our way in bringing
up our children the various things that we
don't think to consider and for which we
will never be faulted because it conforms so
much to our American civilization and is approved
and applauded by many as good but if
Jesus were here to say it he would
say of it the same that he said
to Peter it saves us of the things
which be not of God but are of
men its origin is satanic and God would
have us more severely to come to a
place of separation from the spirit of the
world apostolic suffering and death cannot be attributed
to the suffering and death of men in
general the poverty and suffering of Christ are
experienced and understood only by participation in his
mission and in the task that he carried
out I've seen the most civil Jews precious,
refined people who would never dream ever to
raise their voices with their wives and are
willing to discuss any number of questions with
perfect equanimity and poise until the challenge of
the kingdom is pressed upon their consciousness and
I've seen these masks of civility taken away
and Keith dared upon me in bringing this
message to them I'm saying that not so
much to acquaint you with the response of
Jews when the power of the gospel is
presented to them but I say it to
prepare you for what shall be also the
response of the world when the same mission
and the same message is brought in the
same power and the character of Jesus men
are going to gnash their teeth and the
fact that we have not experienced it is
itself some indication of the anemic quality of
our life and our evangelism the crucified Christ
this writer goes on to say becomes a
present reality in the experience of fellowship with
Christ on the part of those who follow
him the call to follow him is associated
with his proclamation of suffering and he began
to teach them that the Son of Man
must suffer many things and be rejected and
be killed how many of us have answered
with Peter in our spirit let this be
far from us because though we may not
see it the Lord saw accurately that this
statement was not only an expression of sentiment
it was an expression of self-loving it
was an expression of self-protection let this
be far from you, Lord really says in
its deepest sense let this be far from
me also children, there's an ought there's a
must it was so for him and it
must be so for us also if we
somehow sidestep this belief can become for us
merely a matter of giving credence to doctrines
and carrying out ceremonies if this is our
fundamental condition the addition of charismatic aspect to
our life becomes a kind of outward adornment
and contradicts the very purpose for which the
graces of the Spirit are given and you
shall be witnesses unto me and I know
and understand that the word witness means martyr
one of the most precious testimonies that I
have ever heard for the baptism of the
Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues is given
by the wife of Richard Wombrand who like
her husband suffered many years in communist prisons
and she describes an episode in the book
called The Pastor's Wife in which he was
put in a box lined with spikes in
which almost every victim who was placed there
went berserk she would not break under their
grilling she was a woman of enormous conviction
of tremendous character she did not give them
any information nothing that they could say or
do could intimidate her and their last resort
was to place her in this infamous box
too short to stand erect too narrow to
lean and if you become faint and you
begin to move towards the sides you become
impaled on these spikes the very blackness and
the suffocation of that box was enough to
drive men insane and she describes how she
began to quote scripture she sung hymns and
little by little her capacity to do that
left her she was struggling desperately to clutch
to something that would connect to the God
and to keep her sanity until she came
to a place where in the panic, the
terror the confinement, the asphyxiation, the heat she
began to go and in that last desperate
moment when her sanity was about to leave
her she heard something work up from her
spirit and come out through her mouth she
was praising God in other tongues and she
said, that saved me may I speak, I
know as what if there is something vestigial
in me as a Jew if my name
cast by some happenstance does indeed speak of
the Kohen Sadat the priest of God may
I say that my jealousy is for the
purity and the holiness of the spiritual gifts
of God not given as an adornment not
given as something to spice up our denominations
or to awaken sleeping churches so much as
a grace of God for us who are
called to fill up the sufferings that remain
for the body, the church sink and my
prayer for us who have delighted in these
days and exulted in the liberality of God
that he's made available to us by his
spirit shall also be able to rejoice and
to praise him by that spirit not only
in the comfortable circumstances which we've enjoyed in
these days but also in the lonely, solitary
places of suffering to which our message, our
character and our following of him and bearing
the cross will bring us one of the
most precious texts it was the first message
that God ever gave me and I love
it with a passion and were I the
darkest atheist and the whole Bible had somehow
been scorched and there was but one fragment
left that is to be found in the
book of Acts in the 16th chapter that
one fragment and that one verse would have
saved me you know the circumstance when men
were obedient to the vision of the Holy
Spirit and they left the place in which
their ministry was successful how many of us
are that close to the cross that God
can separate us from our success and he
led them to a pagan place called Europe
in which the gospel had never before been
proclaimed and there in the unfolding of the
purposes of God in the saving of a
woman, Lydia, who was the seller of purple
where they went out of the city on
the Shabbat contradicting every evangelical principle that we
consider right they went not where the action
is but out of the city and there
God brought them to the one whom he
intended upon whom his eye had fallen rolling
to and fro over the face of the
earth and she was baptized and shortly after
a demoniacal woman following after Paul and Silas
cried out these men be the servants of
the most high God and show unto us
the way of salvation and this said she
many days interesting how the demon spirits are
far more quick to understand the servants of
God often times than God's people and said
Paul being green turned and commanded the spirit
to come out of her and it came
out in that very hour and men who
had exploited that woman and made of her
a piece of merchandise in her demonic gifts
seeing that their hope of gain was lost
brought Paul and Silas to the marketplace before
the rulers and the magistrates oh I tell
you it's a classic text because it shows
all of the ingredients of the things that
we shall experience when you touch this world
system by the power of the Holy Spirit
you can be assured that you shall again
be brought before the magistrates and rulers in
the marketplace there is an iron connection between
marketplace and rulers and when you shake this
world system based on gain, lust, ambition power,
wealth comfort, convenience you're going to find yourself
like them stripped and subjected to many strokes
and then we come to this beautiful part
Paul and Silas finding themselves in the lower
dungeon bound in manacles and it says at
midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises
unto God oh hallelujah Paul and Silas prayed
and sang praises unto God may I tell
you what our utterance will be if we
have not been true disciples of the cross
we'll be beating our chest we'll be moaning
and whining Lord why did this happen?
I thought to follow the heavenly vision what
am I doing here?
my back is hanging in ribbons I've been
publicly humiliated and disgraced stripped naked suffered these
blows cast into this stinking cell the scurrying
of rats and the stink of human feces
and urine and vermin the moaning of prisoners
how did I fail you?
when did I miss it?
at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang
praises unto God and the next verse says
and the prisoners heard them I'm just a
young one in this and in fact I
marvel that somehow I'm sharing the same platform
with Derek but I have a sneaky suspicion
that there's a powerful theme that we've not
understood that has to do with the shout
of that centurion and those who stood with
him at the base of the cross when
they saw this Jesus it is suffering and
agony yielding up the ghost to cry out
as the earth was darkened and the earth
shook and the dead came up out of
their graves and the stones split and the
veil of the temple was rent in two
that this centurion schooled in the culture of
Rome in pageantry and pomp in men who
were divinized as gods who were carnal, filthy,
lecherous beings who wore olive leaf laurels unlike
the spiny cross of Jesus saw in that
woe-begone and pathetic figure in his death
that this was the Son of God there's
something about the nature of suffering that reveals
truth in a way that nothing else can
and ultimate suffering reveals ultimate truth and the
prisoners heard them how often have we come
back from our evangelistic activities and our gore
-knockings to throw ourselves blamely on the bed
in exhaustion and despair and say, oh, what
does it take how often have I experienced
that with my own mother 14 years still
unwilling to believe what is it going to
take to reveal God's truth I think it's
going to take another body impaled on a
cross of suffering not some sickly masochistic thing
but a redemptive suffering filling up the sufferings
that remain but a world that has somehow
not been able to understand an incarnate God
who came down from heaven naked to live
a life of rejection on earth and to
leave it naked and to suffer excruciating things
for the redemption of men will glimpse the
reality and the truth of that in the
suffering of the body of Christ for them
I wonder if Corrie ten Boom is only
a symbolic prefiguring of something that God is
going to require from the body of Christ
for the Jewish people in the last days
when to be identified with Jews who shall
again become a scandal and an offense in
the world is to bring upon yourself their
suffering also how many of us will stand
with them how many of us will be
impaled on a cross for them even that
same people who have resisted our message and
will not hear us the same ones that
will contend with us the same ones that
will accuse us of trying to make Christians
out of them and make them to forsake
being Jews I have been told by my
own people that I am worse than Hitler
for Hitler they said only sought to destroy
our bodies and you seek to destroy our
souls how many times have I stood at
the center of a whirlwind at a Columbia
University encounter or some such place and have
just stood there finally receiving the indignation and
the abuse, the anger that has been for
two thousand years pent up in Jewish life
knowing that it would be vain to seek
to answer them to tell them that I
don't represent institutional Christianity that I am not
a representative of the Spanish Inquisition that somehow
the pogroms and the holocaust of World War
II is not the result of Christians there
is no way that I could begin to
explain these things but only to stand there
and to receive their verbal abuse and indignation
and once that it is spit out then
comes the first opportunity to begin to speak
to them the things that pertain to less
I'm wanting to see the veil rent I
want to see the rocks of hard human
hearts split I want to see the earthquake
and the graves give up their dead that
they might enter the holy city and I
don't think anything less than something that bears
a similitude to that first body of Christ
hanging on the cross in redemptive suffering is
going to do it at midnight Paul and
Silas prayed and sang praises unto God and
the prisoners heard them suddenly there was a
great earthquake and the doors burst out of
their jams and the manacles fell loose and
everyone was freed and the prison keeper thinking
that the prisoners had fled sought to kill
himself but Paul cried out do yourself no
harm we're still here and he calling for
a light trembling fell down before them and
cried out sirs what must I do to
be saved I think one of the things
that has shown our immaturity which is to
say our flight from the cross is our
glib anxiousness to give answers to men who
have not yet asked the right questions we
would do far better to produce the question
than the answers that are yet meaningless to
men all our bumper stickers all of that
kind of icky stuff that falls so short
of these glorious apostolic models need to be
rectified at the cross of Christ Jesus the
body of Christ was born in Philippi because
two men were obedient unto the heavenly vision
unto unspeakable humiliation and suffering and the prisoners
heard them dear precious friend Ern Baxter said
when God's people find the paradox of joy
in suffering they'll sing at midnight may I
just say that I anticipate that there's going
to come a midnight for the people of
God there's going to be a dark hour
that's to come over the earth from which
we ourselves shall not be exempt when God's
people shall learn the paradox of joy in
suffering they'll sing at midnight and the prisoners
will hear them truly this was the Son
of God there's a cry that will come
from those who will witness a certain quality
of life demonstrated in suffering by those who
have willingly taken up the cross we've introduced
the cross we spoke of the cross last
night as encountering it we've spoken of it
tonight as bearing it if any man would
come after me let him deny himself and
take up his cross and follow me A
.W. Tozer said that any man who ever
took up a cross in that generation was
never seen from again you didn't bear it
all your life long you carried it up
to a hill of shame and there you
were finished and you were done with know
of the precious deliverance that has been experienced
today may I say that in my opinion
the final, the total and the ultimate deliverance
is that which comes at the cross it's
the place where flesh and self and the
natural man who says let it be far
from you finds his end where those who
say though all the world deny you, yet
will I deny you never and thus said
they all find their end cross is the
place of death it's total separation not just
from things that are patently evil in our
lives things that are a bad temper things
that we want to have removed but the
whole of the natural man who even wants
to seek to serve God religiously and will
fail every time in dark boxes in dungeons
in midnight hours the key to praising God
at midnight is the knowledge of the cross
of Christ Jesus in truth is there any
man who would follow him and will deny
himself one of the most powerful factors for
the perpetuation of self is the opportunities given
it even in religious life and if self
will not have opportunity in playboy magazine or
in the reading of philosophy or in culture
or art it will seek desperately for the
last opportunity even to be found in religion
but it will in the end always fail
in the moment of crisis the cross is
the place of refuge let's
go ahead how
I love Spurgeon and the rich understanding he
had of the cross in which Paul gloried
he writes, I've taken up my standing and
will never quit it our crucified Christ has
taken such possession of my entire nature spirit,
soul and body that I am henceforth beyond
the reach of opposing arguments brothers, sisters, will
you enlist under the conquering banner of the
cross once rolled in the dust and stained
in blood it now leads on the armies
of the Lord to victory O that all
ministers would preach the true doctrine of the
cross O that all Christian people would live
under the influence of it and we should
then see brighter days in these unto the
crucified be glory forever and ever precious crucified
Christ thank you Lord for sharing with us
what you have in these sessions mighty God
we acknowledge that we are but novices in
understanding thank you for the gracious, the sweet
way in which you have unfolded this theme
through these nights Lord because you know that
we are cowards you know that we shrink
from pain you know that we have been
schooled in a world which emphasizes pleasure and
gratification and opposes suffering so we thank you
Lord for raising up this standard again and
for inviting us not only to understand but
to share and to be bearers of your
cross and that to the degree that we
share your nature and your character and bear
your message we must surely suffer on it
so I just feel precious God that speaking
of these days to these precious children of
yours and thank you for the full all
presentation of the gospel that has pleased you
to give them throughout these days feel this
now if we have shrunk in any measure
from coming to your cross may we not
withhold ourselves if any man would come after
me in Jesus holy name we pray Amen