The Lord has laid upon my heart tonight
a text in the Old Testament, Exodus chapter
20, verses 2 and 3.
I am the Lord thy God, which brought
thee out of the land of bondage, out
of Egypt.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
It's a trite saying but nevertheless true to
say that we live in a world in
revolt.
In the past four years I have been
going round it till I'm almost giddy, almost
non-stop, continually, in many different countries and
everywhere the order of the day is rioting,
street marches, protests, revolution in every country in
the world.
This is what we face just now and
for a Christian I think it is the
most exciting day in which to be alive.
I'm so glad I know the Lord Jesus
tonight.
I'm so sorry for people who don't.
But my great concern is that somehow we
all might be stabbed awake in our conscience
right now to understand that the message of
the living Christ is the only answer to
the problems of men today.
Thank God our message never needs altering, never
needs watering down.
The same old truth, the same old wonderful
story presented perhaps with a different emphasis in
different ways is the message, not a message,
but the message for the salvation of men
in these tremendous days.
I don't think there's ever in history been
a generation which has had so much but
has grumbled so constantly and has sought so
persistently to have more and more of what
they already have.
It's an amazing world really, a society which
is clever enough, brilliant enough to relay live
on by satellite through on television the British
Lions' rugger match in New Zealand.
The day before yesterday, disaster for us, but
nevertheless to be able to do that is
a tremendous accomplishment.
To land men on the moon, wonderful, but
at the same time to meet racial animosity
with revolution, assassination and tyranny, to try and
settle our problems by strikes and lockouts.
I believe there's a sinister force at work
in this country determined to pull us down,
and unless the Christian church wakes up they'll
be successful.
There's no answer, it's so sinister and so
subtle.
I heard on the television, I won't say
where, but near my own home which is
in northern Lancashire, and I usually see the
television from a particular city in that area,
say no more than that, but in this
area I heard a man say on TV
during the electricity strike, all that we want
to do is to cause the most amount
of suffering we can to the greatest number
of people in the shortest possible time.
And there's a spirit abroad in our country
and in the world which threatens our very
existence.
And we Christians must wake up to this,
for we live in a country, in a
civilization which has gone crazy.
The only hope for peace in the mind
of many people, the United Nations has been
reduced to total impotence in the Holy Land
and in Vietnam.
In universities which insist to assert their role
to be the critical centre of society, the
moral vacuum that exists has completely eliminated the
Word of God and the Law of God
and the Ten Commandments.
Drop, dope, drugs, addiction.
Of course we Christians love to get together
and lament it all, and enjoy speaking about
it indeed, and link it with eschatology, our
hope that the Lord will soon come again,
but we don't do anything more about it,
and we don't want to get involved, we
don't want to get our feet wet, we
don't go to face this situation, we want
to live in our cosy little huddle.
The sin of our age one day I
feel might well be the blindness and heartlessness
of Christian people who leave others way out
there just because we don't know what to
do about them.
We go to meetings, come to Keswick, good
thing to do, do a bit of evangelism,
but we don't do anything more, we don't
get involved where people are, where the action
is.
My dear friend, I'm absolutely sure of this,
that we are finished, absolutely finished, if this
generation doesn't seek the Will of God afresh
in society today, and get to know God's
restoring purpose in Jesus Christ our Lord, which
is expressed for us in the words of
the first commandment, I am the Lord thy
God, thou shalt have no other God before
me.
There's a madness in the world which God
wants to deal with, and because you and
I are in the world, He wants to
begin with us.
I believe the hour has come for a
Christian revolution, not revival only, but revolution, a
sheer down-to-earth revolt against the popular,
happy-go-lucky, easy-going Christianity, which costs
us literally nothing, which can be as like
the world as anything else, and which gets
nowhere, cuts nowhere, and leaves people totally unmoved.
Oh, for a Christian revolution to take place
this week, in our hearts, that's what Paul
said the Christian is.
If any man be in Christ, he's a
new creature, a totally different kind of person
inside, hasn't put on a Sunday suit, hasn't
just simply got a few new habits and
dropped a few old ones, he's totally different
inside, something's happened to him, he's revolted from
an old master of the and is under
the sovereignty of Jesus Christ the Lord.
He's taken part in a Christian revolution.
Now this is our theme tonight, this first
commandment which demands a revolt from all other
gods.
I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt
have no other gods before me.
Before I go any further, it might be,
well, I don't hope, I don't think necessary,
but it may be, just to say a
word, to dispose of one line of thinking
that you, may be yours, when you turn
to a passage in a text like this.
Some people might say, oh, this is only
for the Jew, this is purely national, this
is dispensational, it hasn't anything to do with
his age, no, my dear friend, I believe
that is not only highly dangerous, but totally
unscriptural.
Let me just put three passages from the
word aside together and read them to you.
Here they are, Deuteronomy 8 and verse 2,
thou shalt remember all the way which the
Lord thy God led thee, these forty years
in the wilderness, to humble thee, to prove
thee, to know what was in thy heart,
whether thou would keep his commandments or no.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to
hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou
knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that
he might make thee know that man does
not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God.
Matthew chapter 4 and verse 4, Jesus answered
and said, it is written, men shall not
live by bread alone, but by every word
that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
Matthew 5 and verse 17, Jesus says, think
not that I am come to destroy the
law or the prophets, I am not come
to destroy but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, till heaven
and earth pass, one jot or tittle shall
in no wise pass from the law, till
all these be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least
commandments and teach men so, he shall be
called the least in the kingdom of heaven.
But whosoever shall do and teach them, the
same shall be called great in the kingdom
of heaven.
For I say unto you that except your
righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter
into the kingdom of heaven.
Now what do these verses teach?
Just this, that my life and yours are
only perfectly conditioned, can only achieve their maximum
potential when they are governed by every word
that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
The law that God gave to the Hebrew
people was directed to the end of expressing
His intention for their happiness and their holiness
and for ours too.
And to show to us that a man
can only be happy if he's living by
every word that proceeds out of the mouth
of God and with unquestioning obedience to it
all.
The Lord Jesus lived constantly without exception by
the words which proceeded out of the mouth
of God.
One enormous day, one tremendous day, He died
on a cross outside a city wall.
He bore the penalty of our disobedience.
He took the rebel's place.
He died for rebels like you and me.
In my place and yours condemned He stood,
sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah!
What a Savior!
In His resurrection He took His life again.
Because of His obedience it was absolutely impossible
for Him to stay dead.
Couldn't stay dead.
He was dead but He couldn't stay dead
because He had obeyed God perfectly.
I lay down my life and I take
it again.
No man taketh it from me.
I have power to lay it down and
power to take it again.
This was a terrific, tremendous, omnipotent word of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
He took it again in order that He
may communicate to each one of us that
life He lived of obedience.
So that when I'm saved and born again
of His Spirit, I'm immediately indwelt by the
Holy Ghost whose natural thing is to obey
God all the time.
God in me obeys God in heaven.
God in me delights to love the Lord
Jesus.
And this, this is a wonderful transformation that
takes place when a man is born again.
Paul describes it in the words of Romans
8.
What the law couldn't do and it was
weak through the flesh.
God sending His own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin
in the flesh.
That the righteousness of the law might be
fulfilled not by us but in us.
Who walk not after the flesh but after
the Spirit.
Listen my friend, if you think the gospel
is an easy way out.
If you think it's old hat.
If you think it's irrelevant.
If you think it's a nice smooth, easy,
tricky, psychological way of escape from reality.
It's not.
We haven't come to Keswick to escape from
reality.
We've come here to face it.
Come to be apart for a while that
we may face reality and go back empowered
to change lives in the power of Jesus
Himself.
The gospel is not an easy way of
escape from the law.
It is God's plan to fulfill God's law
in my life.
A redeemed man, redeemed by the blood of
Christ.
And the new life of the Holy Spirit
in me when I'm born again must be
regulated by the Ten Commandments.
It's not a further knowledge of truth that
I need to know at Keswick.
It's sheer down-to-earth obedience of what
I already know.
That's what God is after.
And it's a consistent teaching of the Bible
that man can only fulfill the possibilities of
life if he's living by the word which
proceeds from the mouth of God.
We're not only born for time but for
eternity.
And the trouble is that so many of
us live down here as though we're going
to live down here forever.
The day we sow, tomorrow we reap.
And the reaping depends on the sowing.
And if the ultimate end of our lives
is to be absolute harmony with the will
of God, then we must live by every
word that proceeds out of His mouth.
If you live without any reference to God's
law and hope one day you'll make it
somehow or other to heaven, then if I
may say so respectfully, you are foolish in
the extreme.
Here then, in these Ten Commandments are the
words of God uttered for the government of
a people whose glory lay in the fact
of their absolute obedience to the Lord, and
whose shame would lie in their constant revolt
against His authority.
And they speak to us today with renewed
force in this permissive age of the society
in which we live.
There's no permissiveness about God.
His law doesn't water itself down to suit
the 20th century.
It stays the same.
And the glory of His people consists in
their obedience to the Lord Himself, and our
shame consists in our revolt to His authority.
Of course these commandments presuppose failure and sin.
They won't have any place in heaven, because
when I get to heaven I'll have a
nature which can't disobey God.
And as long as I live here though,
Christian or otherwise, I'm living in touch with
a nature that is altogether and always sinful.
Been a Christian now for 42 years.
Converted to Grey Bull Public House, Holthurstville, hallelujah,
42 years ago.
I like to get there when I come
up to Kedding, just to see it again.
Left hand side in Holthurstville, going along towards
Hexham, it's worth having a look.
There it is, there it stands, that dirty
old pub where Jesus met me for the
first time through the ministry of a business
colleague.
And I'm no better a man now than
I was then, potentially, just as sinful, just
as evil, but for the grace of God.
The only good thing about a Christian is
Jesus in his life.
So I say, as long as I live
here, I have a nature which is altogether
sinful, and but for the grace of God
it will always be sinning.
And these words and law are of constant
importance.
For though the Christian needs to be reminded
that the law of the Christ, of the
spirit of life in Christ sets him free
from the law of sin, it doesn't set
him free from the law of God.
Liberty is not being away out on our
own somewhere, independent.
That's lawlessness.
And with those people who want to tear
up society, revolt against the regime, the tradition,
the establishment, well, hold it a minute.
Before you do that, just consider what you're
going to put in its place.
Be sure you've got something instead.
Liberty is not being independent.
Many countries like to have independent churches.
Well, bless your heart.
If you're a member of one, thank the
Lord.
But independent is not a Bible word.
It's dependence is the Bible word.
We need another independent church, just like we
need a hole in the head.
Independence, that isn't a Bible word.
And liberty is not being independent.
The little separated field all of your own,
that's lawlessness.
Liberty, praise God, is fulfilling our destiny to
do the will of God.
That's liberty.
Liberty leads to law.
Indeed, the epistle of James talks about the
law of liberty.
That's a wonderful phrase, the law of liberty.
And what is law?
It is a rule of life, which one
intelligent being lays down to another intelligent being,
having the absolute right to total authority over
his life.
And if there's somebody here who says, oh,
what awful legalism, that must be.
I want to say to you, blessed legalism,
for the thing that I need in my
heart 24 hours a day, seven days a
week, not just at Keswick, but all the
time, every day, is the sovereignty of God
expressed in my heart by the indwelling of
Christ.
The law of liberty, a man free, blessedly
free, when he's doing God's will.
Saw a program on TV a bit ago,
24 hours, interviewing some folks on drugs.
Fellow was interviewing a girl, age 17, and
he asked her, who's your father?
Don't know, she said.
Who's your mother?
She left him when I was two.
Where have you been for 17 years?
Oh, just any old where.
That's all she said, any old where.
You taking drugs?
Yes, she said.
What are you taking?
Heroin.
Going high on it?
Yes, going high.
I've been going high for two years.
Aren't you afraid that drug will kill you?
I can hardly, I can hardly describe the
sense of horror as I saw the look
on her face, and when she replied and
said, I hope to God it will.
That's freedom.
That's what this generation has gone to.
What on earth, where on earth does that
lead anybody?
Freedom is not license, not doing what you
like.
It's fulfilling the word of God and the
will of God in your life, day by
day.
Augustine said, love God and do as you
like.
That may sound dangerous, but it's wonderfully true,
because when I love him, I accept his
law as the sheer delight, and while this
law makes demands upon me that are absolutely
impossible, he has grace to give me to
meet them all.
Well, the law of God leaves me helpless,
because it tells me I'm a sinner.
The law, as someone has said, opens my
eyes and shuts my mouth, lets me see
what I am without excuse, that I'm a
rebel against Almighty God, and the Ten Commandments
are interpreted in the New Testament with added
force and authority.
What did the Lord Jesus say about them?
You have heard it said, thou shalt not
kill.
I say unto you, he that hates is
guilty.
You have heard it said, you shall not
commit adultery.
I say unto you, he that looks to
lust is guilty.
You say the gospel is easy.
You say grace is way of escape.
It isn't.
It's a way of fulfillment by the power
which he can give us all, and why
is God's law so severe?
It's because, believe it or not, it's the
most perfect expression of his love, the most
perfect expression of his love.
His goal for every one of us 5
,000 people in this tent tonight, his goal
is perfection, is to make us like the
Lord Jesus, blot out the image of the
devil and blot in the image of Christ.
That's what he wants you to do.
Wipe out Satan's image and put in the
image of Jesus.
He is perfect love, and the cross frees
us from every bit of condemnation, but it
doesn't free us from obligation.
And Jesus alive today, alive in this tent
today, the one person who really matters in
this congregation is the Lord Jesus right now,
here by his Spirit, him alive today.
He is the one who has the right
to rule your heart and rule your life,
and the Holy Spirit present today, the gift
of a blessed ascended Lord, is the one
who can make that rule in your life,
absolutely real.
Oh dear me, that's only the introduction.
No it isn't, it's all right, take heart,
good be of good cheer, the end is
near.
Though I do remind myself that Paul, writing
to the Philippians, said, finally brethren, when he
was only halfway through.
So he's the father of many preachers like
myself, who announced by saying finally that we've
just got our second wind.
But I just simply had to say that
so we're clear about the relation of the
law and the gospel, because we're so indefinite
and vague about it.
I hope what I've said has come through
by the power of God's Spirit to your
heart, that we're free from the law's condemnation
by the blood of Jesus, and you put
your faith in him, and you're free.
There is therefore now no condemnation in Christ.
That's the verse that my office friend gave
me when I was converted.
I underlined it, there is therefore now, and
I underlined that word now so heavily that
it went right through to the epistle of
Philippians and ruined my Bible the first day.
But it was worth it, there is therefore
now no condemnation, praise God, hallelujah, that's wonderfully
true.
But listen, there's no condemnation, but there is
total obligation, absolute obligation.
We're not free from that.
And therefore, as we listen to this obligation
to revolt, this divine requirement and call and
summons from heaven to revolt against every false
god, listen, listen to the words of the
Lord himself, I am the Lord thy God.
He confronts us with himself tonight by the
name Jehovah.
And that's a combination of three words, he
that will be, he that is, he that
was.
And at once I find myself in the
presence of the eternal God.
And if I really believed it, I would
feel that I'd have to stop preaching and
we'd all be on our faces crying to
him for a new sense of his power
and authority in our land.
He that is, he that was, he that
will be.
If I reach out to the future all
unknown to me, limitless without end, he is
the God that will be.
If I face life today with all its
problems and all its bewilderment and all its
confusion, I am he that is.
If I look back, way back to the
beginning, to the beginning, why before that ever
was, I am he that was.
And whether I think of my origin or
my present state or my eternal condition, he
is saying to me tonight, I am, I
am.
None can escape the immense revelation of the
character of God.
I am the Lord thy God.
And the word here is Jehovah Elohim.
And it means the supreme object of worship.
He faces us and says, yes, my friend,
you tonight, you, not speaking to the fellow
in front or the girl behind you or
beside you, you, I am the Lord thy
God.
Upon that fact rest this command, thou shalt
have no other gods before me.
And if he is what he claims to
be, it would be a most unreasonable thing
to have another God before him.
There can't be two who fulfill this description
of an endless life.
The other, God must be limited.
Oh, but you say, I haven't any God.
Have you?
How interesting.
You're an atheist?
I'm no wonderful.
I'm not being funny.
You are really an atheist.
You don't believe in God.
Fine.
But you do, you know.
You do.
Excuse me, but you do.
I have to say that you do.
If you say you don't, you know better
than your dog, your cat, your sheep at
home.
If you have no God, you don't want
to put down there.
Mind you, the Bible says, all we like
sheep have gone astray.
But there's something about human nature that there's
a shrine in every one of our hearts
in which there's a God whom we worship
every day.
The very composition of a man and a
woman demand a center of worship as a
necessity of existence.
The question is, who is your God?
Can I help you to discover that?
I'll tell you who he is.
Are you listening?
It's the person you think most precious.
It's the thing or the person for whom
or for which we would make the biggest
sacrifice.
It's the thing or the person which, if
it left us, we'd be desolate.
If we possessed, we'd be happy.
And here in this commandment, there is a
declaration from heaven that at the very center
of our being, enshrined in our hearts, there
is to be enthroned not a rabble of
little tin gods, not a hypothetical unknowable being,
not sex or drugs or addiction or anything,
but a living person who can arrange my
plans and utter his commandment and expect my
obedience.
Of course, the moment a man loses the
vision of him as Jehovah is sacrificed.
It's the thing or the person which, if
it left us, we'd be desolate.
If we possessed, we'd be happy.
And here in this commandment, there is a
declaration from heaven that at the very center
of our being, enshrined in our hearts, there
is to be enthroned not a rabble of
little tin gods, not a hypothetical unknowable being,
not sex or drugs or addiction or anything,
but a living person who can arrange my
plans and utter his commandment and expect my
obedience.
Of course, the moment a man loses the
vision of him as Jehovah, at that moment,
he puts something else in the place of
God.
The gods of Old Testament days were quite
interesting, many of them.
Three of them, for example, were the god
Moloch.
If a man worshipped Moloch, he's the god
of the Ammonites.
You find about him in Leviticus chapter 20.
If someone worshipped Moloch, they became cruel, ruthless.
The god of cruelty.
And the god of Baal, to descend to
worship him, was to descend to bestiality, immoral.
The god of Mammon, to worship possessions and
things.
These gods go by other names, but I
tell you, my friend, they're here today.
How many of you and how many of
us worship Moloch, the god of absolute cruelty?
Huh, people tell us that Christianity and Communism
have much alike.
There's much alike.
Christianity and Communism, there is unlike each other
as chalk and cheese, totally different.
Christianity says, what's mine is thine and you
can have it out of the love of
my heart.
Communism says, what's thine is mine and I'll
have it with a barrel of a gun.
They're as different as that, so don't let
anybody kid you.
They're alike, they're not.
But how cruel Communism is.
Oh, but you don't need to go to
Communism.
How cruel I am.
How cruel you are.
How often we just want to get on
at anybody else's expense.
You, you first after me.
And we're after, number one all the time,
the cruelty of mankind, the cruelty of human
nature.
The god of Baal.
How many prostitutes are on the streets of
London today?
Who keeps them going?
Those who worship Baal, the god of bestiality,
the god of immorality.
Man has lost his god and worships sex.
The god of man and the abundance of
things that we possess.
My, how this first commandment needs to be
preached to Britain today.
The greatest country in the world, now the
greatest gambling in the world.
600 million pounds spent in Scotland alone between
Christmas and New Year on alcoholic liquor.
This Britain of ours, the god of mammon
that we worship.
But in the New Testament I find Paul
speaking like this, listen.
Philippians 3, many walk of whom I've told
you often and now tell you weeping that
the enemies of the cross of Christ whose
end is destruction, whose god is their belly,
just one god of animal appetite.
What shall we eat and what shall we
wear?
The god, let me say it to you
gently because I know so much of this
god in my life, the god of myself.
You've got a god and I have.
The god of myself, self-respect, self-esteem,
self-preservation.
And may I say it lovingly, but I
trust with Holy Spirit penetration.
If you hadn't got that god in your
heart, some of you, you'd be on the
mission field tonight.
The god of self-preservation.
How much am I going to get?
Will the missionary society insure me for life?
Will they give me an old age pension?
Will I be safe?
Will I be kept?
Will I be, will I, will I be
secure?
I don't think I will, so I'll buy
my house at home and I'll build up
my practice and I'll get an equity in
it and I'll become rich and I'll possessions
and things, self-preservation.
My beloved brother and sister, you've never touched
the very heart of Christianity when you live
like that, for the heart of Christianity is
not self-preservation but self-sacrifice.
I lay down my life that I may
take it again, could be said of every
child of God if he's really living in
the will of God.
The God that we worship.
You mean to tell me you don't know
any about, anything about that?
I do, but God is saying to you
tonight, I am the Lord Jehovah, thou shalt
have no other gods before me.
Who is your God?
Let me press this upon you with Holy
Spirit conviction.
Who is your God?
The God of cruelty, the God of self,
the God of impurity.
Who is your God?
Who do you worship?
Who's at the center of you?
A little puppet king self who's never been
dethroned.
Or has there been a moment in your
life, and some of you have had that
moment, bless the Lord, when you've stepped off
the throne and you've knelt at the foot
of it and you've said, Jesus, Jesus, take,
take the place of preeminence, of lordship, of
authority.
Does worship cost?
I want to say to you it does.
Don't think that God has laid aside his
claim for it these days.
Far from it.
Listen to the words of Jesus.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, with all thy soul, and
with all thy mind.
If any man will come to me, let
him deny himself, take up his cross, and
follow me.
What a divorce it is in the nature
of God to suggest to anybody that you
can have an easy sort of salvation and
not know the lordship of Jesus.
You can't.
Not in the New Testament.
I tell you, my friend, I ask you
again, what is your life devoted to?
Even in Kezikir, what are we here for?
What are we devoted to?
Is it some of these gods that I've
been talking about?
I'm saying that heaven is calling upon all
of us to revolt.
Revolt from their authority and come under the
authority of Jesus Christ.
And thank God I don't have to revolt
in my own strength for the weapons of
our warfare are not carnal but mighty through
God to the pulling down of strongholds of
the devil.
My, how I'd love to know that tonight
strongholds of Satan in your heart and mine
had crashed, crashed because of my determination to
turn to Him and the power of His
Holy Spirit let loose in my heart.
But this cross, it doesn't permit of any
substitute.
The woman of Samaria soon found that out.
It wasn't a question of place, it wasn't
a question of denomination.
No, no, it was reality, reality.
Oh Lord, how people long for that today
in Christians, reality.
I know a man who was married when
he was at his 25th wedding anniversary, silver
wedding, and for 10 years he'd be getting
very concerned about his wife because she'd got
so indifferent to him.
And at their 25th anniversary he thought he'd
pluck up courage and ask her why.
So he took her out to a good
meal first, that was a good idea, gave
her a good dinner and then he said,
dear I want to talk to you, there's
something I want to ask you.
For the last 10 years I've given you
new cars every year, you've had new homes
and new clothes, you've had everything that a
woman can possibly want.
But why is it you're so cold to
me?
Why so cool?
Why, why are you so lacking in any
affection?
So she said, I'm so glad you asked
me that.
I've been trying for years to pluck up
my courage and tell you.
I'm grateful for all the new cars I've
had, and all the new clothes, and all
the new homes, and all that you've done
for me.
But I want you to know that you've
never given me the love of your heart.
Simon, do you love me?
Said Jesus.
If any man love me, he will keep
my command.
And my father will come to him.
Hodgepodge.
No substitute, no substitute.
Worship permits of none.
The church in Ephesus got a mighty shock.
It was one of the fundamental churches of
the day.
Sound, orthodox, wouldn't have anything to do with
anything that wasn't quite dotting its I's right
and crossing its T's correctly.
Turned all those sort of people outside.
Liberals weren't heard of in Ephesus.
They were terribly sound, thoroughgoing, fundamentalist believers.
Nothing wrong with the doctrine.
I have summoned against thee was the word
that crashed to them from heaven.
For you've left your first love.
Is Jesus saying that to you tonight?
It doesn't permit any substitute.
I tell you, it demands all you've got.
For the woman of Samaria, it meant repentance.
Go, call thy husband.
Come out into the light.
Tell me about the story.
I know all about it, but I want
you to tell me.
Tell me the truth.
Go, call thy husband.
Repentance.
To Ephesus, that respectable church, accept ye repent.
Repent or else.
Change your mind or else.
Worship demands all you've got.
I have a little boy putting on his
shirt the other morning.
Massive great shirt it was actually.
Beautiful colours and he's having such a battle
to put all the buttons in the right
holes and he's getting so frustrated and his
mother was looking at him and he was
really getting quite mad about all this.
Couldn't get this wretched shirt on right.
And now he said, Mum, take it easy.
And his mother said to him, Yes, well,
I'll take it easy, but you take it
easy.
Look, here's the top hole and here's the
top button.
Put those two in first and all the
rest will fit in.
Brother, sister, friend, have you got your priorities
right?
Where is Jesus in your life?
First, second, third, or one of the altar
rams?
Unpressed.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, with all thy soul, with
all thy mind.
It demands all I've got.
But I want to say this.
Worship creates tremendous power.
Oh, how I long for this in my
heart and yours tonight.
We're all meeting just exactly on the same
level.
I'm not preaching at you, talking to my
own heart, the most needy of all.
How I long for the power that came
to that woman of Samaria.
For she went into the city of Sychar
and told them that she'd met a man
who told her all things that she ever
did.
And Jesus saw them coming and said to
his disciples, Look, the harvest is plenteous.
Fields are ripe to harvest.
And then they said, Now, many believe in
him because of the word of that woman.
What did they see?
A great theologian?
A PhD?
No, an ordinary woman, a sinful woman transformed
with the water of life who had met
and confronted Jesus Christ and honestly repented.
And through that life, immediately there was shining
the reality of the love of Jesus.
So, my dear, beloved friend, this is my
message to you tonight, very inadequately given, but
given to you with a tremendous sense of
burden and concern for a Christian revolution.
Will you join me tonight in a thorough
going down to earth revolt against every god
that takes the place of Jesus?
My, my, oh my.
Young people in our churches today, programs of
all sorts and kinds, anything's all right as
long as you have devotions at the end.
You can play the fool, do anything you
like, social drinking at parties, everything permits, everything's
permitted these days, no barriers.
Put the barriers up, my friend.
Seek to live in the law of God,
in the will of God, and then you'll
be happy.
Remember, remember that the more Christian becomes like
the world, the less like he is to
Jesus.
And the whole purpose of God the Father
is to make us like God the Son,
a new humanity, redeemed by the blood of
Christ, invoked by the Holy Ghost, and submitted
to the authority of a risen Lord.
What a thrilling thing it is to be
a Christian.
Are you one?
Who's your God?
Are you willing to rebel, repent?
Are you willing to revolt, to take part
in a Christian revolt against false gods, and
to enthrone Jesus as King and Lord?
He gives you a power, you can't do
it, but are you willing?
Let's pray.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me,
says Jehovah.
Have I and have you been worshipping, holding,
clinging to that which is false and unreal
and sinful?
And we tonight, the Spirit of God has
convicted us, and our longing is that we
may know the cleansing power of the blood
of Christ and the indwelling of his Spirit,
and take part in a mighty Christian revolt,
which would bring to this land a new
breath of life in reality.
May we just bow in prayer today.
Tell the Lord that you want to be
a Christian revolutionary, that you want in your
heart that Jesus be King and Lord of
your life.
He's died for you and risen again in
order to make it all gloriously possible.
There's one step between you tonight and him,
it's the step of faith.
Will you take it?
Believe into the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved.
And you're a Christian?
Oh, but what a failure, what a carnal
Christian you've been.
And tonight you've needed this message and I've
needed it.
And in our hearts we want to dethrone
that which is false and enthrone Christ, that
he might be crowned with many crowns.
May we have a moment of silent prayer.
May I leave you with the Spirit of
God, just for a moment.
Well, have you said yes to Christ and
no to yourself?
Have you, have you said, Lord, I want
to be a Christian revolutionary?
I want Jesus to be Lord.
I would like to pray for everyone in
this tent who tonight has encountered the living
Lord Jesus.
You may have never met him before, you
may be utterly unsaved, but you've realised tonight,
you may, you may not have understood, but
you've realised something of the fact that this,
this is the one whom you need.
You may have been a Christian, but you've
other Lords have long held sway.
Tonight is his enthronement evening.
In order to help me to pray, I'm
going to give you a moment quietly to
rise to your feet, if tonight you've encountered
him and you're revolting against yourself, against false
gods and you're enthroning Jesus Christ.
If that's true of you, would you mind
standing for a moment and then we'll pray
together.
Let this be a solemn, quiet, sacred act
of commitment.
I'm not going to press this invitation.
I'm giving you the tremendous opportunity of making
known in heaven that tonight your commitment has
got you to your feet and you've started
a life with him.
So I leave you just for a few
seconds and please remain standing.
Thank you.
God bless you.
I'd like to pray now you remain standing,
please, and if there are others who want
to make this commitment to the Lord, just
do it now and take your stand dethroning
all others but him.
Lord Jesus, forgive the poor representation that your
servant has given of your wonderful, saving, delivering
power and the wonderful God you are and
the glorious liberty there is in following Jesus
all the way.
Lord, may every one of us have heard
far beyond a human voice and heard the
voice of the Lord sounding like an alarm
bell in our heart, stirring us, challenging us,
calling us wholly to follow the Lord our
God.
Bless these who now stand on their feet.
May this act of commitment have already brought
to them a sense of peace, a sense
of assurance, a self of well-being, a
sense of forgiveness and cleansing, a new confidence
in the power of God who's able to
do exceeding abundantly above all we can ask
or think.
Sort out all the individual circumstances that face
each one of us and may the Lord
Jesus get glory to his name and may
there be great confusion and hell over this
week at Keswick.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Would you please be seated and I'm handing
back to the chairman but before I do
so may I just say this one word.
The time is six minutes past eight and
we shall sing a hymn.
I'll ask the chairman if you'd mind just
singing the first and third verses of this
hymn and after the hymn he will pronounce
the benediction and then, you listening to me,
I would like to speak for five minutes
more on what happens of I do.
The fear of the future may keep many
of you back from the challenge of today.
What happens if I do?
However can I keep it up?
Would you allow me to talk to you
for five minutes on that?
We'll have a hymn, the benediction, then you're
all free to go but particularly those who
stood and anyone else who would like to
stay, I would like to speak to you
for five minutes more when the tent is
cleared of those who are leaving on what
it means and how I can continue in
this life with God.
The hymn is, Out of my bondage, sorrow
and night, Jesus I come to thee.
I'll, Mr. Cagey will take over and I
hope that you are perfectly clear that after
the benediction you're all free to go.
Good night.
God bless you.