I want in the closing message of this
evening to meditate with you for a little
while in a wonderful story that you will
find in the 13th chapter of the Gospel
of Luke.
Luke chapter 13, I'm only going to read
a few verses for the sake of time.
Verse 11, Luke 13, 11, And behold,
there was a woman which had a spirit
of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together,
and could in no wise lift up herself.
And when Jesus saw her, he called her
to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou
art loosed from thine infirmity.
And he laid his hands on her, and
immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.
This lovely story is both a miracle and
a parable.
I think all our Lord's miracles are parables
because they are just an illustration of the
kind of thing that the same living, triumphant,
risen Lord Jesus can do in your life
tonight, if you're prepared to meet him.
You will notice, please, the place where this
miracle was effected.
It was in the synagogue.
Now, I'm not getting involved in any dispensational
issue on this.
All I want to say tonight is that
the place where the greatest miracles are needed
is within the sphere of the Christian Church.
That somehow, God would take hold of crooked
Christians like this poor crooked woman, and make
them straight, that they might thereafter glorify him.
You know, we think that the world is
a very difficult place to live in, and
that it has immense problems, and that it's
in the grip of the enemy, and it's
very powerful.
Well, so it is.
But God has no problem with the world.
The Lord Jesus looked into the face of
his disciples and said to them, be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world.
And we think the devil's very powerful.
Oh, so he is.
And we know something of his subtlety, and
how often we've been caught unaware, that the
Lord Jesus at the cross stripped from himself
principalities and powers, and made a show of
them openly.
And how glad I am tonight to be
able to speak to you in the name
of the Lord, our Lord Jesus, who has
conquered all the wiles of Satan, and our
enemy is a defeated foe.
God has got no problem with the world.
He's got no problem with the devil.
God's great problem, and how humbling, how humbling
it is, his great problem is with his
people.
With his friends, not with his enemies, but
with people who have been redeemed by his
precious blood, and who have given to them,
in the grace of God, all the resources
of heaven to enable them to live gloriously,
and for his honor and praise, to get
people like that to live in his will,
to get crooked Christians made straight.
That's God's problem.
And I think of this woman tonight, and
I'm only going to spend the briefest of
moments, because Mr. Samuel has dealt with this
aspect of our evening message so thoroughly.
I want to ask you to notice the
condition of this woman, her need, and you
know, whenever I look at this story, as
indeed, whenever I find myself looking at the
word of God, we're looking at a mirror
all the time, aren't we?
And you look at the condition of this
woman, and what a reflection it is of
our own need.
What was the matter with her?
She had a spirit of infirmity, 18 years,
and was bowed together, and could in no
wise lift up herself, poor soul.
She was bent double, a spirit of infirmity,
and I believe I'm right in saying that
the word there conveys the meaning of our
English word, neurasthenia.
Now, if you had neurasthenia, my, it would
be worth paying a lot to a specialist
to be told you've got that.
It sounds terrific if you've got neurasthenia.
Tremendous.
But if I tell you that neurasthenia is
simply a lost connection between your mind and
your body, that's not so good.
You see, it operates like this, though we
don't take time to think about it.
Your body never loses, moves an inch without
receiving instruction from up here.
The brain is the managing director, and the
brain says to the body, body move, and
the body replies, all right, and move.
The brain sends a communication to the foot
and says, one step forward, march, and forward
you march.
The brain says to your hand, lift yourself
up, and the hand raises itself.
Everything's wonderful when it all works.
Ah, but it's tragedy when it doesn't.
And when the mind says to the foot,
foot move forward, and the foot sends back
an SOS right through your personality, through your
nerves, and says to the mind, sorry, can't
be done.
And your body is unable to fulfill the
will of the mind.
That is neurasthenia.
In the spiritual sense, dear folk, Paul spoke
about that in Romans chapter 7.
With my mind, I serve the law of
God, but with my flesh, the law of
sin.
And at once this parable begins to live,
and at once it comes out of the
pages, as it were, of the New Testament,
and it hits right into my heart, because
this has been my experience time and time
again.
With my mind, I serve the law of
God, but with my flesh, the law of
sin, neurasthenia.
And this woman had been like this, in
this condition for 18 years.
Bent double, twisted, earthbound, crooked.
I've no doubt that from the very moment
of her birth, there were the symptoms of
this disease in her.
And as she became a girl, and an
adolescent, and a young woman, gradually she became
more and more bent double, until now she
was unable to lift up herself, not to
the uttermost of her ability.
It was quite beyond her to straighten her
poor, bent, double back.
What a picture this is, you see, of
sin.
I'm not concerned about what your particular profession
of Christianity may be, but the tragic thing
about many people is that the experience of
conversion, as such, seems to have made mighty
little difference.
In spite of the fact that you claim
to be born again, in spite of the
fact that you've believed John 3, 16, in
spite of the fact that you've received Jesus
Christ into your heart to be your Saviour,
in spite of all this, and, of course,
you're a Christian, but nevertheless, as a Christian
tonight, you are still bent double.
You are still earthbound.
You've believed everything that the preacher has told
you to believe, and you've believed your Bible
implicitly, but the fact of the matter is
that somehow or other, there's a principle of
evil within you which has overcome you time
and time again, and there's no victory.
Don't let's be afraid of facing that fact.
As I said this morning in the morning
meeting in the tent, conversion was the act
of faith in which I put my faith
implicitly upon the atonement of Jesus Christ, and
I was justified by faith, but that was
something that took place outside of me, the
objective work of Christ on Calvary for me.
That work in itself did not touch an
evil principle within me, the principle of F
-I-N, capital letters.
By the act of conversion, by the wonderful,
wonderful fact of trusting Christ, all my sins
are forgiven.
There is therefore now no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus.
You know, I remember, my, it makes me
feel so old.
It's 30 years ago now, in a little
public house called the Gray Bull in Haltwistle
in Northumberland, not so far from here.
Wonderful county, wonderful place, wonderful country.
On the 10th of August 1926, as a
young fellow, a friend of mine pointed me
to that verse, Romans 8.1, and for
the first time in my life, I believed,
I was saved.
And I underlined those three letters, N-O
-W.
There is therefore now no condemnation, so heavily
that I went right through to the epistle
of the Philippians in my Bible and ruined
it the first night.
Oh, but it was worth it.
Like Christian in Pilgrim's Progress, I just gave
three leaps for joy.
Ah, but see, that wasn't the end of
a battle with sin, it was the beginning
of it.
Before, I had been sin's ally.
Now, in the name of the Lord Jesus,
I wanted to be sin's enemy.
I wanted to know what it was to
hate the things I used to love.
But I found, as a young Christian, there
were many, many things that were still pulling
me down.
There was an evil principle that was still
there, and I found myself earthbound.
And see, the tragic thing about this woman
was that she'd been like this for 18
years.
It's wonderful to have so many folks from
young folks' organisations, Boys' Brigade, and Covenanters, and
Crusaders, and all the rest of you.
It's such a thrill to have you at
a meeting.
And I'm all in favour of every work
among young people, CSSM, Crusaders, everything.
But I want to tell you, my friend,
that the gospel I know about is a
gospel that breaks the power of long-standing
complaints.
The eighth Spurgeon asked one Sunday night by
his deacons how many converts he had, replied,
three and a half.
Oh, said his deacon, do you mean three
adults and a child?
No, he said, I don't.
I mean three children and one adult, three
whole lives and one half.
Wonderful thing when a whole life comes to
Christ.
But listen, my concern tonight in this message
is with people in Christian leadership and Christian
work who have settled down to something less
than full salvation, who are content with a
second best, and who, in spite of years
of Christian experience, are still earthbound.
I don't mean that you're bogged down of
necessity by David's sin.
That may be so.
I don't mean that.
But I just mean that you probably spend
far more time watching a television than you
do reading a Bible, and you're earthbound, my
friend.
Earthbound.
Far more interested now in radio, in business,
in making money, in progress, in worldly ambition,
in material things, far more concerned about that
than the salvation of a soul.
Earthbound.
Far more interested in feathering your own nest
and making life comfortable in ensuring the future
than blazing your life out for God.
Earthbound.
And somehow or other, in the course of
life, in spite of the fact that 18,
20, 30 years ago, you professed conversion, let's
honestly face it, has it made much difference?
At home, you're still critical, and still rather
unpleasant to live with, still unkind to your
wife and your husband.
That home of yours is not really the
corner of heaven that it ought to be.
It's sometimes more like the other place.
Oh yes, and you're a professing Christian, and
the home is being held together simply for
the sake of show.
And that's the tragedy today I find so
often.
That somehow love has died out, and it's
all a nominal kind of union, and there's
no tenderness in it, and no, no just
love and warmth in it.
And you go into a home like that,
and you'll find one nattering at the other.
There's a sense of unhappiness and formality and
coldness, and there's no warmth and glow and
reality about it.
Somewhere in that home, there's someone who's earthbound.
That's the kind of thing I mean.
That in spite of your professed conversion, it
hasn't made much difference.
Still bad-tempered, still critical, still censorious of
other people, still defeated.
This is the experience of this woman.
Have you ever noticed in the gospel record
how the Lord Jesus so often dealt with
people with long-standing complaints?
Have you?
Think of a woman who had hemorrhage for
12 years, and she'd been to every physician.
And as Mark tells us, rather cuttingly, the
only thing that happened to her was that
she only got worse.
Luke, being a doctor, put it a bit
more mildly than that.
Just simply said that she wasn't getting any
better, but Luke said she was getting a
lot worse.
Oh yes, in spite of all that, there
was one day when Jesus came and she
touched the hem of his garment, and immediately
her plague was stopped.
Ah, there was a day when a man
who for 38 years had been in a
pool of Bethesda, waiting beside the pool, had
given up all hope of being cured, and
one day our mighty Lord came on the
scene and said, do you want to be
made strong?
And he was on his feet, oh.
And there was a man who for over
40 years had been lame since birth, and
was outside the beautiful gate of the temple.
And one day Peter and John came and
said, silver and gold have we none.
Yes, at that time the church boasted of
its bankruptcy, boasted of its bankruptcy.
She knew that her wealth, nay not her
power and resources, lay not in material things.
We haven't any of these things.
We're bankrupt in that realm, but such as
we have, give we thee in the name
of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.
And the church today has a good deal
of material things, and it's a good deal
of programs, but it's lost the power to
make men do this kind of thing.
And after 40 years, poor helpless lame living,
the man was on his feet leaping and
praising God.
Oh, dear friend, tonight with all the love
in my heart for you, listen, listen.
How long standing has been the complaint which
bogs you down?
How long has it been that this principle
of sin, this ego within you, this I
has caused you to fail?
How long is it since some habit in
your life has just mastered you?
And listen, let's be honest about it.
You've stopped praying about it.
You've assumed that this is a matter of
temperament with which you were born, and you've
got to go through life like that, and
there's no answer to it.
And you've stopped praying about it.
You've stopped believing about it.
You've stopped trusting God for it.
You used to pray about it every day,
but now you've resigned yourself to defeat.
And you've thought to yourself, well, I suppose
I was made like this, and I can't
be altered.
Christ has saved me from this and that
and the other thing and this, but never
from, oh, from this thing that so often
I'm so ashamed of.
Is that you?
I'm praying as I speak to you tonight
that the Holy Spirit may speak to you
so really and so wonderfully that there may
be created in your heart a longing, a
hunger, a conviction, a belief that there is
no sin that has gone too far, but
that Lord Jesus tonight can smash its power.
But I want more especially to look as
we close this evening at how the Lord
Jesus met this woman, me, for I am
sure that need is written over every one
of our lives in this tent tonight.
What did Christ do about it?
Will you notice this?
He saw her.
Do you know I could just pass that
by, and yet the whole music of the
gospel is in there?
He saw her.
Other people had seen her, but never quite
like he saw her.
Other people had got used to her being
there for 18 years and assumed that she
would never be any different, but Jesus saw
her in a way that nobody else ever
had.
A woman, anonymous, unnamed, and you came to
Keswick anonymously, and somehow you feel yourself in
this crowd lost amongst it.
Just a kind of little cog in it
all, unknown to other people, but Jesus sees
you.
So differently from the way anybody else sees
you.
Could I just drive that home in a
very simple illustration?
It was necessary for me some years ago,
nothing very wonderful about it because many of
you have had to do the same thing,
to get some passport photographs.
Awful agony.
When I had the photograph and received it
from the photographer, I opened it and, well,
I was a little disappointed, and I spoke
to the photographer and he said to me,
well now of course that's only a passport
photograph, would you like some touched-up photos?
That sounded better to me, so I ordered
some of those, and I got some touched
-up photographs, but to my disappointment, the American
consulate only wanted the passport photograph.
I offered them the other, but no, no,
they wanted the passport photograph that was not
touched up.
The two were completely different.
You wouldn't have recognized the same person.
The touched-up photograph was what I wanted
other people to think that I was, but
the passport photograph was the ugly reality.
It was the real thing, and the only
thing to do was to submit to the
diagnosis and give the man the thing he
wanted.
Ah, you smile, but listen, Jesus saw her.
He's not wanting your touched-up life.
He's wanting just to look into your heart
tonight as you really are, and he wants
you to allow him to do it.
The one thing to be afraid of, beloved
friend, is hiding your life behind a kind
of mask, is avoiding this personal interview with
Christ, when you just get out from behind
the camouflage, and behind the pretense, and behind
the hypocrisy, and behind the sham of the
make-believe, and you come right out into
the open before God with an honest, open
confession, and he sees, and he looks at
you.
He saw her.
And somehow I think that during the last
two days in this convention, the Spirit of
God has been looking at people rather like
that.
He saw her.
But not only did he see her, he
called her to him.
Listen, the initiative, the first move in every
step of blessing is from heaven.
It isn't simply that I decide for Christ.
It isn't simply that I decide to do
something about it.
Oh no, but there's the prompting of God's
Holy Spirit, and he speaks and calls you
to him.
How can I hear the voice of God?
I'll tell you.
Has there been a moment tonight, last night,
through this week, when somehow or other you've
forgotten about a crowd, forgotten about even what
the speakers said, and you couldn't remember a
thing, but you just felt yourself in the
presence of God, and he's spoken to you.
Your heart has been melted, and somehow he's
drawn so near, and it seemed as if
you were the only person in the tent
he has been calling you to him.
I do not believe that any of us
is at this convention by accident.
I don't believe that it's simply because your
friend asked you to come.
I believe because it is in the eternal
purpose of God for you to be here.
He began calling you to him long, long
ago before you knew anything about it, and
he's done it many, many times since, and
in this weekend and his mercy, he's done
it again.
He's seen you, and he's called you to
him.
And what did he say?
He spoke to her and said, Woman, do
you know the first time I read that
word, I thought it was a little patronizing
of Christ to say that, Woman?
But then I recall the times when he
used that word.
Do you remember a poor soul, hounded into
his presence at the crack of dawn one
day by religious leaders who wanted to condemn
her because of her act of adultery?
And what did Jesus say when he said
to them, Let no him that is without
sin be the first to cast a stone,
and they all trooped out?
He looked at her and said, Woman, where
are thine accusers?
A word of absolute tenderness.
He said it again on the cross as
he hung on Calvary, and he saw there
beside the cross his mother and John, the
disciple he loved, and he said, Woman, behold
thy son, son, behold thy mother, Woman.
My friend, listen, if there's anybody in this
tent tonight who has literally squirmed under the
conviction of God's Spirit in these days, who's
felt themselves to be an absolute, utter sinner,
and to be hopelessly inadequate and utterly unable
to do anything about it, I want to
say to you, there's nobody in all this
tent nearer to the heart of God than
you are.
And he doesn't stand over you with a
whip to condemn you.
He stands in front of you and says,
well, he speaks your name with utter infinite
tenderness, because he died to save people just
like you.
Woman, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.
Thou art loosed, and you know that word
is elsewhere translated in the New Testament, thou
art divorced.
Thou art severed from thine infirmity.
Woman, listen, by the authoritative word of Jesus
Christ, supported by the touch of his hand,
that woman immediately was made straight.
There was no gradual unbending.
There was no gradual straightening out.
In a moment, in the moment, at that
moment, when he looked into her face, spoke
to her heart, saw her completely, knew her
need, and she lifted that longing heart to
him, he said, Woman, thou art loosed from
thine infirmity.
Oh, friend, all I want to say to
you tonight, and oh, do get this, if
you and I are being honest with the
Lord and coming out from behind our camouflage
and our pretense, in spite of all the
years that we profess to be Christians, and
acknowledging honestly the defeat that's been bogging us
down through all these years, the sense of
somehow or other this principle of sin within
us that has caused us to be so
earthbound and bent double, if we're being honest
in God's presence about it.
And we lift our hungry hearts to him
and say, Lord, I'm sure you didn't die
and rise again to leave me in this
mess, and I long to be perfectly whole.
If there's a cry going up from a
hungry heart, he speaks your name, and in
answer, in answer, in answer to that open
acknowledgement of your need, an absolute honest confession
of your sin, the Lord Jesus speaks the
word of power, and behind the word is
the authority of an empty cross, an empty
tomb, an ascended Lord upon the throne, far
above all principalities and powers, and the outpouring
of his Holy Spirit to come into your
life to make you straight.
Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity, and
immediately she was made straight and glorified.
God, listen, has God made you straight?
Do you want him to?
Straight, that your word might be your bond,
that you might be a man, a woman
of integrity, of righteousness?
That's why you're saved.
That's why God has saved you.
That's why he's brought you to Calvary, not
to leave you twisted and crooked and earthbound,
but to make you straight.
Have I time, just as I close, to
use this simple illustration, true to life?
Some of you, especially from areas near here,
have heard me tell you that when I
was a young fellow and cared nothing for
the things of God, I worked in an
office in Newcastle on time, training to be
a chartered accountant.
I'm only a shattered accountant now, but I
was training to be that then.
And there was one man in that office
out of 60 others who was a Christian,
and I thought he was completely crazy, absolutely
crazy.
He annoyed me intensely, made me angry, always
got there before office hours began and never
stopped work till after they were over.
Wouldn't take more than half an hour for
his lunch when we were entitled to an
hour, never stopped for coffee or tea.
And frequently in accountancy offices we worked in
pairs, and it was often my misfortune to
have to go with him.
And I had to work so hard, it
was nonstop all day.
There was no coffee, no tea, there was
no golf, there was nothing when I worked
with him.
And when we wanted to gather round and
tell stories that weren't pleasant, we had to
shut up when he came.
He didn't tell us to, but they were
just out of place in his company.
And do you know who I remember?
There's a little tavern in Grey Street, Newcastle
on time, a pub, and 11 colleagues with
myself sat down round the table and drank
beer, and vowed that in six months we'd
knock the religion out of him.
I reported him to the boss for being
dishonest.
I was commissioned to report him to clients
for not doing the job thoroughly.
Others of them clever fellows among us, not
myself, but the other clever chaps who knew
all about science were determined to tell him
his Bible was a lot of nonsense and
fairy tales.
Listen, I'm here on this platform tonight to
tell you that within five months he and
I were kneeling beside a bed in a
little pub in Holtwhistle, and he was pointing
me to Jesus.
It is absolutely impossible, get this Christian, it
is impossible for people to be indifferent to
the things of God in the presence of
a man who's straight.
Has God made you straight?
Has he?
People don't care about our Christianity.
They can be indifferent to it.
They can ignore it because we're crooked and
earthbound.
Oh, but if the Holy Ghost fills our
lives and makes us clean and straight and
pure and men of God, then nobody can
be indifferent.
They won't all be converted.
Some of them will hate us, but at
least there will be a testimony which means,
like that woman, we will glorify God.
Woman, man, Jack, John, George.
Listen, Jesus speaks and says to you tonight,
thou art loose from thine infirmity.
And in the crisis of a moment, in
response to your utter yieldedness and faith, he'll
smash his power and send you out free.
Do you believe that?