I just want to dwell on that You
are dead and your life is hid with
Christ in God When Christ who is our
life shall appear So can I ask the
question that we need to ask ourselves and
frequently check Is Christ our life?
When Christ who is our life shall appear
Is that automatic?
Is that mechanical?
Is that fixed?
Or does it need a continual affirmation by
faith?
A continual denial of condescending to the natural
And we can say Christ is our life
You know I'm gambling on that tonight I
don't know how this is sounding, how it's
going over How did you get this theme
today Cass?
The same way I got the theme yesterday
or at any other time A quickening, something
out of the life that is of such
a kind that no other subject is to
be contemplated Have you ever experienced that?
That unless you attend to the thing that
has been quickened any other alternative is stone
cold dead I don't care how biblical it
is, how right it is, how appropriate it
is It's dead You've got to be where
the life is And that's why Watchman Lee
could not knock on the door The life
went out of his arm It was not
time He was correct, he could have brought
a necessary counsel to bless But evidently the
working of God was not to be impaired
or interfered by the well-meaning intention of
a minister He had to desist And he's
a man who could be led by the
light We need to have such a proximity
to that life that we're not being quickened,
we don't act We know where his life
is and that's the thing to which we
yield and give ourselves interest which I assume
I'm doing tonight Once you become keen to
understand the issue you'll see the frequency that
it's before you You mustn't discard it because
it's not some major issue To defer to
your life rather than the life of God
is a major decision There's no such thing
as major or minor or greater or lesser
in the issues of the kingdom Every issue
is a major issue It's always an issue
of significance There's no such thing as small
The whole life now is charged with a
significance of an importance that we had not
before seen where we cannot lean back and
rest upon our haunches because well, this is
not some big issue of ministry this is
just how I answer this brother what I
do with my wife, what about this situation
No, every act is consequential We've got to
grow in this, we've got to abide, dwell
and recognize no thing small So here I'm
paying a thousand dollars to attend a single
banquet of Commentary Magazine, the leading Jewish conservative
publication in New York and in the world
because I'm out for Norman Port-Horwitz's soul
and know that if I meet him, I'll
meet him on background and sure enough we
came to the banquet two years ago and
he's meeting people at the door and I
gave him my name and he said Oh,
he said you're the evangelist I'm too old
to be evangelized What would you say just
then where your thousand dollar investment is up
for grabs in your response in a single
moment over a man who's your age a
Jewish man who is brilliant and enjoys world
prestige and yet does not know Christ and
has even written a book on the prophets
in which he acknowledges that it is very
difficult to avoid the Christological implications of Isaiah
53 but he's found a way to do
so I covered the man's soul I'm paying
a thousand dollars for one banquet just to
come in touch with him meets me at
the door, takes me by surprise because I'd
given an earlier publication so when he heard
the name he remembered and makes the wisecrack,
I'm too old to be evangelized What do
you say in a moment like that when
you'll not have another moment in fact that
was the only moment there was no other
further contact with him that night and so
I heard myself saying all the more reason
you're too old to be evangelized all the
more reason to be evangelized Did that affect
him?
I have no idea It would take one
issue out of me in an unforeseen moment
when those moments are the issue of eternity
Who's sufficient for these things?
Isn't that what Paul says?
Who's sufficient?
A word, a gesture, an act at a
single moment can have such remarkable consequence for
time and for eternity Who has the wisdom,
who has the knowledge to proceed?
Are you mindful that every question every moment
is of eternity?
Are you living in the consciousness of eternity?
That however trite, however seemingly innocuous and ordinary
the exchange might be or the occasion or
the moment eternity is that It may be
a last occasion, a last witness an eternity
without God the eternal shame, the mortification the
anguish of soul that Jesus spoke about is
being decided by affected by what is spoken
by you in that one moment?
What happened when you opened up those meetings
at the University of Illinois the first time
you ever had university outreach years ago and
they had stickers all over the campus Kansas
coming, as one word and the meeting began
at the student union building and they prayed
with me the little inviting Christian body and
then I was sent up to the microphone
and they stood back, and there I was
all by my lonesome in a crowded student
union building that was like the Colosseum where
they came for sport to mock this Jewish
freak who was coming to preach the gospel
at one of the outstanding universities of America
and so I don't know what I shared
and when I finished I opened for questions
and answers and there was that guy in
the back of the room I knew he
was trouble and the moment I saw him,
he's waiting for his opportunity his hand went
up Mr. Kassi said Do you believe in
hell?
How old was I?
4, 5, 6, 7 years old I had
never really contemplated the subject but here was
the issue before me so I took a
deep breath opened my mouth and the Lord
said something like It behooves you to understand
that no one has spoken more prolifically on
this subject who warned that hell would be
an eternal anguish of soul a fire that
could not be quenched It behooves you to
heed an answer to a question that was
asked mischievously in order to embarrass his servant
lest you find yourself standing before him more
quickly than you think and suffer that consequence
I'll tell you that what I spoke was
much more eloquent than what I'm now saying
and it came forth like a and I
watched this guy wither he shriveled he shriveled
up and blew away and the Lord began
seven days of day and night meetings at
the University of Illinois that included the leading
Jewish fraternity house where I debated the professor
of philosophy over steak dinner where I turned
from the table not to eat and when
the meeting began he made his statement and
in five minutes after I opened my mouth
the man slipped out the door with his
tail between his legs and we went out
till two o'clock in the morning blessing
those Jewish students that were toppling over under
my prayer it was a visitation of the
most the man who's the head of the
French work of youth with a mission Tom
Bloomer a lot of you guys have heard
these things before was a Vietnam vet on
drugs at the University of Illinois and staggered
into one of the meetings and sank to
the floor and listened and when I finished
I opened for questions and these students began
to wisely challenge me he got up and
said, what are you men doing?
he says, don't you know that God is
in this place he got saved and today
I would say he's among the half dozen
most significant figures and the greatest Protestant mission
movement in the world today and if ever
we will have access to that movement through
our perspective which up till now has not
succeeded through Lorne Cunningham it may come through
Tom Bloomer I just saw him on my
last trip he said, you know it's 31
years what saved him?
what arrested him?
that other students found objectionable and lashed out
at me in contempt and he said, God
is in this place broke and wept and
came to the Lord out of his drugs
and has risen to the place the power,
the life of God if you're gifted or
intellectually able you have more to overcome in
entering into that life because your gift is
always wanting expression your intelligence is always seeking
to be expressed much more difficult to his
attention not that God who gave that intellect
is intending that it be permanently forsaken but
that it be activated by his life in
the moment of his choosing and not when
you're wanting to be clever there's a difference
when it's the life that animates your intelligence
or whether you are employing it as if
it's your own baby at will and are
you willing to look stupid?
and be without answer until are you willing
to bear the death for the life because
when his life is revealed it's revealed unto
glory so Lord this is the heart of
Paul this is the genius of Paul there's
no way to understand Paul the greatness of
his life his contribution, his doctrine his courage,
his example the way that he was a
nursemaid, he was a mother he wept, he
prevailed fierce with his own people, jealous thank
you my God what he was to the
church, what he was to the Jew with
everything issued out of the abundance of your
life and so my God, he's a prototype,
a model not just to admire at a
different distance but to emulate, this is the
paradigm of apostolicity this is the genius of
it the crucified life for me to live
as Christ this is my life so Lord,
so much as this was your thought tonight
and your life was in its expression let
nothing of it return to void and these
precious children whom you've assembled of whom the
world is not worthy darling in every way
admirable and yet to a greater degree than
we have known and realized still living, still
serving out of human intelligence, out of human
ability and impressively but not gloriously so Lord
we're asking a surrender of that ability that
good thing that so imperils the perfect which
is your life that they would be willing
to be dead and hid with Christ and
God until your life is fulfilled bless these
children Lord there's enough potential in this room
and the churches and fellowships and nations represented
to be so impactful in the world if
only they would return to their places as
the sons and daughters of the resurrection who
say with complete confidence with Paul for me
to live as Christ so come my God
show us to what degree our life is
not God yet our own and our willingness
to forfeit the acceptable, trustworthy thing tested in
order to risk what is hidden and can
only be revealed after the will we bless
you for the privilege of this life and
you could only have come to us out
of the union with you in death and
burial in the water of baptism forsaking that
forsakes any prospect of this realization so we're
happy my God that this was the very
day in which you performed and acted it
out before us and then bring as a
capstone this elaboration of what that baptism now
permits of a life changing kind as it
will come to Australia for the hunter-hunt
communities and the various things for the lives
of those who entered and joined you in
death and burial today we bless you oh
precious God put this in our hearts declare
a death sentence make it clear once and
for all Lord I'm finished it's not your
hang-ups and your defects that he's waiting
for, it's your virtues it's not your worst
that needs to be brought to death, it's
your best the thing in which your identity
is established and you want most to be
recognized and to succeed, that's the thing that
is the final impediment to the operation of
this life waiting for the death of the
good thing even the thing given of God
because it's given not to be retained but
to be forsaken are you willing to give
up your virtues the thing that you've spent
a lifetime cultivating and nurturing and for which
you've been complimented that if that's taken and
brought to death who are you and what
are you that's the death, give him that
and he's got you to deny that is
as much an antichrist expression as to deny
the eschatological fulfillment of that it's the same
phenomenon the incarnation of life in us resisting,
rejecting and opposing that is the same as
opposing his final expression so it is the
spirit of antichrist that despises the life and
doesn't want to seem manifest now through the
saints or manifest in him in his coming
is at heart the same issue so our
every act now of giving expression to his
life is the affirmation of his coming and
nowhere resisted more powerfully than within Christendom itself,
and all false religions are some form of
human attempts at a seeming equivalent, but the
real issue is the issue of the cross,
his death and our privilege to enter it
through the waters of baptism that's why this
sabbath is the ultimate measure of this reality
not because we're following a synagogue pattern which
is itself an aberration but at the heart
of sabbath is ceasing from yourself seeking your
own pleasure, doing your own thing and what
if on a particular shabbat you would have
thought religiously that you should be doing this
or something appropriate to the occasion and the
lord says go out and play ball go
out and have a blast go out and
have a picnic, but lord that offends my
whole religious sensibility, I was just getting into
the proper religious mood, and your requirement that
satisfies you is contrary to what I would
have imagined appropriate your obedience is the fulfillment
of that sabbath we mustn't limit the holy
one by our religious propensity because he will
go out of his way often to contradict
it, because it itself is so formidable in
the opposition to his life, though ostensibly it
seems to be in his honor so come
into that precious rest that wonderful unselfconsciousness that
chamber speaks about in today's selection of my
utmost first pious, believe that what's in your
heart is his will and don't be in
conflict and waiting for confirmation for the lord
to confirm himself you're dead to yourself you
have no life unto yourself and you have
a disposition for discipline believe that that's him,
and if it's not he'll be quick to
check, and until he will, do it it's
a wonderful freedom from religious self-consciousness debating
should I, shouldn't I, is it god, is
it not if it's in your heart, and
your life is christ, it is god okay
so we bless the lord, thank him for
tonight, and that because it issued out of
his life, it will now return to him
void and where we need it, as they
hammer upon the rock where our our self
-esteem, our identity is rooted so much yet
out of our own natural life and ability
and we're loath to relinquish God of course,
what will be the alternative if his life
is not revealed that we'll be willing for
the suffering of the death out of which
the life comes so lord we make that
a prayer thank you lord, let your word
be as a hammer upon the rock, you
know the death of this intractable self-life
all the more powerful when it becomes religious,
and yet even more powerful than that when
it becomes spiritual and impressive and with all
the less reason to forsake it, we want
to succeed on that basis, and serve you
on that basis, and it's enough to keep
us from the expressions of your life that
eclipses anything that could have come out of
any human virtue of our own so my
god, this is a radical faith, and how
dare we take the word apostle to our
lips, or apostolic fellowship apostolic reality, apostolic witness,
if it is not out of this life
come and show us my god, where we
have fallen short of it, fallen short of
the glory because of a greater concern for
our own esteem our own acceptance, so we
bless you lord, for the provision that you've
made, not a bed of nails of self
-denial that's phony, but the cross, the power
of death that you experienced in full that
we in union with you in baptism, can
die to that very thing that doesn't want
to give up the ghost, and therefore be
raised with you to a newness of life
that is altogether other so this is the
heart of the heart of the heart of
the heart of the mystery of the gospel
of the faith and we ask my god
that it might be an appropriation tonight, in
a depth of reality that eclipsed anything we
have previously understood and for which we have
been willing we bless you lord my god
in your jealousy for us, in what you
have made available for us through your suffering
unto death nothing less would have saved us
my god from the depths of this human
and intractable thing so we bless you you
are a great god, you have emancipated us
and given us a realm of union with
yourself thank you lord come, let these children
taste of it and be spoiled not in
the great moments, but in the ordinary moments
that you are there in resurrection enablement, and
grace and sweetness of spirit, and wisdom and
all the fullness of the godhead bodily in
any situation that comes up if we would
but trust and your life would be revealed
so we thank you lord, put a seal
on this night that it would not be
an exaggeration to say yes, everything till now
was preparation for this and put a seal
on it that it shall not dissipate away
where to proceed from this?
we don't even know but god who has
brought us this far will continue he is
the alpha and the omega of our believing
and so we bless you lord, what love
toward us what jealousy so insistent lord thank
you for what is ultimate thank you my
god we receive your jealousy we bless you
for the provision thank you my god be
glorified in the church by christ jesus world
without end from all nations in thy precious
name