I would like to take for the basis
of our message this afternoon one verse from
the passage of scripture which Dr. Orr Ewing
was reading to us.
Romans, chapter 5, and verse 19, a verse
which contains the very heart of the message
of the Christian faith, a verse which lies
at the root of all Christian experience, a
verse which is absolutely basic for your life
and testimony.
Romans 5, 19, For as by one man's
disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one shall many be made righteous.
That text opens up for us today and
for us at this convention a vast subject.
I wish to introduce it this afternoon and
enlarge upon it a little from another aspect
when it is my privilege to minister the
word this evening.
It opens up the subject which I'm afraid
many of us as Christian people have either
ignored or forgotten.
And I'm afraid that some of us have
found it much less inconvenient to forget it.
May I ask you a question?
Don't answer it aloud, but answer it in
your mind.
What place do you think obedience has in
God's plan for your life?
Is this optional or is it essential?
Is it something I may choose at certain
points and reject in others?
Or does salvation involve absolute obedience?
If it does, then how can salvation be
by faith and faith alone?
To help in answering that vital question and
to get at what I believe is the
root of a great deal of superficiality in
Christian testimony today, I want to ask you
to think with me for a little while
upon this tremendous verse of Scripture.
Just for a moment, let's remind each other
about the place which obedience has in the
word of God.
As I was preparing this message and praying
about it, I was quite struck with the
central place which obedience has in the Bible.
I remind you of a few texts.
You may like to note them so that
you may consider them by yourself on another
occasion.
Genesis 2, 16, the very beginning of the
story of human history, the Lord God commanded
the man, saying, and in chapter 3, verse
11, Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof
I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
In other words, the one condition for the
enjoyment of relationship with God was obedience to
his authority.
And at the close of the story of
redemption, in Revelation 22 and verse 14, blessed
are they that do his commandments that they
may have a right to the tree of
life.
In other words, it is only obedience to
God which gives us access to life and
to his favour.
And if you ask me how the disobedience
which took place at the beginning of history
was changed to obedience which opens the way
to the presence of God again for us,
I point you to this text.
As by one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners, so by the obedience of one
shall the many be made righteous.
In other words, the whole redemption of Jesus
Christ and the whole message of the cross
lies in restoring obedience to its proper place.
The greatness of God's salvation is that he
brings us back to a life of total
obedience to his will.
And it's only when we live that life
that we can live to his glory.
And furthermore, it's only when we live that
life in submission to his absolute authority that
we have any right to expect that one
day we shall share heaven with Jesus Christ.
Modern psychology has indoctrinated this generation to believe
that self is basically good and all we
need is refining and educating and polishing up
and religion.
The Bible says that self is essentially sinful,
arrogant, proud, selfish and self-willed.
And the only way of realising self and
realising the purpose for which we are born
is in unconditional surrender to the sovereignty of
Jesus Christ.
And please, my dear friend, I am not
today preaching some, in quotes, second experience of
grace.
I am preaching no more than what is
the gospel.
And the tragedy of much modern preaching is
that in order to get decisions for Christ,
a term I hate which I don't find
in my Bible, in order to get so
-called decisions for Christ we make the way
of salvation as cheap and as easy and
as simple as possible.
And the way in so broad that you
can't distinguish the believer from the unbeliever.
It is not my decision for Christ which
decides my eternity, it is the direction of
my life that decides my destiny.
And if you have made a decision for
Christ, beloved, which hasn't been followed by the
direction of your life in submission to the
sovereignty of Jesus Christ, it is not valid
in terms of New Testament salvation.
For if faith is without works, it is
dead.
And if belief is not followed by obedience,
it is not real.
He that saith he knoweth him, and keepeth
not his commandments, is a liar, and the
truth is not in him.
May I, may I therefore underline this from
Scripture a moment, taking you through one or
two examples.
I recall, for instance, the story of Abraham.
Genesis 22 and verse 18 says, By faith
Abraham obeyed God.
And then God said to him, In thy
seed shall all nations be blessed, because thou
hast obeyed my voice.
And there's the whole basis of a missionary
call.
In thy seed shall all nations of the
earth be blessed.
Why?
Because you believe me?
No, because you obeyed me.
And if I would be a channel of
blessing, and if the Holy Ghost would get
through your personality and mine, it can only
be when he gets through a submissive character.
I remind you again of Moses.
Exodus 19, for, If you will obey my
voice, indeed, ye shall be a peculiar treasure
to me above all people.
And the Lord Jesus supported all that and
said, Henceforth I call ye not servants, but
friends.
Ye are my friends if you obey my
word.
It's a wonderful thing to be a servant
of the Lord, but my, if the Lord
can make me a friend, I'm all for
pressing in, aren't you?
To become just a bit more than a
servant, but to be his friend.
God spoke to Moses about life in the
land and said, Deuteronomy 11, 27, I set
before you a blessing if you will obey
and a curse if you will not obey.
Do I speak to any Christian to whom
this word comes like an arrow from heaven
of spiritual conviction?
And you have known through years of Christian
experience almost the sense of the curse of
God upon you, even though you're a child.
And if you were brave enough, beloved, to
look into the reason for it all today,
you would find it rise deep down in
the root of rebellion that's still in your
heart.
I remind you of the words of Saul,
or at least of the word that the
Lord spoke to Samuel about Saul, 1 Samuel
15, 23.
It repenteth me that I have set up
Saul to be king, for he hath not
performed my commandment.
And then Samuel said to him, To obey
is better than sacrifice, because thou hast rejected
the word of the Lord, the Lord hath
rejected thee.
And if I fail to obey the Lord
Jesus Christ, though I may never lose my
relationship which is established at the moment of
my commitment to him when I was born
again, if at any moment in the course
of my Christian life I resist his sovereignty
on any issue, at that moment he will
remove me from my sphere of service and
I'm put on the shelf.
Oh, I could stay in the pastorate and
could preach the same sermons and I could
stay on the mission field or teach in
the Sunday school, but from the heaven's standpoint
I've been removed, for from me has been
taken all Holy Ghost unction which he will
only give to the submissive life.
That's what Paul feels when one day in
writing to the church at Corinth, he said,
and I quote Philip's letters to young churches,
1 Corinthians chapter 9, I am no shadow
boxer, I do not beat the air, I
buffet my body, I deal it blow upon
blow, lest having proclaimed the rules to others
I should be disqualified.
Oh, the tragedy of so many Christians today
who in the sight of heaven have disqualified
themselves for Christian work because at some issue
they've said no to the authority of the
Lord Jesus.
And then I remind you that the Lord
Jesus himself takes up this theme and says,
not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom, but he that
doeth the will of my Father.
If ye love me, said the Lord Jesus,
ye will keep my commandments.
If a man love me, he will keep
my words, and my Father will love him,
and we will come unto him.
And Peter says, God has given the Holy
Ghost to them that obey him, Acts 542.
You want power?
We want liberty, we want freedom, we want
deliverance.
A month ago, traveling through the jungles of
Congo, rushing from one mission station to another
just two days before Congo got its independence,
everywhere we went there were Congolese people on
the roadside and they were shouting the Congolese
word for freedom, huru, huru.
Two more days, huru.
Freedom, what for?
Lawlessness.
License, tragedy, chaos.
Brother, the grace of God which met you
and the blood of Christ which saved you
didn't meet you for lawlessness, it met you
for submission, total submission to his sovereignty.
Jesus, brother James says in his letter, be
ye doers of the word and not hearers
only, deceiving your own selves, James 2.22.
That's the place of obedience in the word
of God.
Oh, my dear Christian friend, what place has
it got in your life today?
The enjoyment of the blessings of God's grace
are away beyond the reach of so many
of us, because we've never made obedience what
God intends it to be, the starting point,
the secret of continuance and the goal of
our Christian living.
Oh, but then wait a minute, you say,
Mr. Preacher, this is impossible.
We've at last found somebody at Keswick who
isn't sound, he's preaching law not grace.
Wait a moment.
I was down in the southern part of
the United States some time ago and I
ran into trouble along this line from a
group of young people who were very angry
with me.
They came up to me after the message
and they said exactly that thing, you are
not preaching grace, you're preaching law.
And one of them, a young lady whose
age, I'm very bad at guessing, but I
would think somewhere in the early 20s, suddenly
said to me, you don't know my Savior.
Oh, I said, really, tell me about him.
Oh, she said, you don't know my Savior.
Well, come on, I said, what's he like?
Oh, he said, she said, he's so wonderful.
Well, I said, I think my Savior's wonderful
too, tell me about you.
Have you got a different one?
Why is he so wonderful?
Oh, she said, he forgives me so easily.
Really?
I said, that's interesting.
What do you mean?
Well, she said, do you know, I'll tell
you a secret.
Since I've been a little girl, I've been
an awful liar.
Really?
I said, how long have you been a
Christian?
Oh, since I was 15.
Really?
And I said, you're still telling lies?
Oh, yes, more so than ever now.
Really?
I said, that's, that's interesting.
When did you tell the last one?
I told an awful lie, she said, this
morning before I came to church about what
I was doing last night.
I told a lie to my mother.
Well, I said, what did you do about
it?
Oh, she said, I, I knelt down beside
my bed and I said, Lord Jesus, I'm
so sorry that I've told another lie, but
you know, I keep on doing it and
I can't help it.
Now, Lord Jesus, thank you for your forgiving
grace and for the cleansing of your blood.
And I came away to church so happy.
She said, it's wonderful to have a Savior
like mine.
And I looked at her and said, I
do not know your Savior, lady.
And furthermore, you don't know mine.
And if you'll pardon me from saying so,
your Savior is not the one of the
Bible.
Mine is.
And my Bible says, shall we continue in
sin that grace may abound?
God forbid.
How shall I, who am dead to sin,
continue any longer therein?
Am I going to make a scapegoat of
the grace of God to permit me going
on living like the very devil and believing
everything that a fundamentalist ought to believe?
And my behavior lived on such a low
level?
Oh, surely not.
You say it's impossible to obey.
Listen, friend, listen.
The disobedience of Adam shut the gate to
heaven to all of us, but the obedience
of Jesus Christ has opened it again.
And that obedience of the Lord Jesus, worked
out in your life and mine by the
power of the indwelling Holy Ghost, is the
way back to the favor of God.
Let me speak to you therefore quickly a
moment concerning what I have called the power
of the obedience of Jesus.
If we see the place of obedience in
Scripture and find ourselves humiliated at the thought
of our own disobedience, may I ask you
just a moment, examine with me how it
is that the obedience of Christ is so
powerful that it can communicate victory in life
and deliverance to you.
As by one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners, so by the obedience of one
the many shall be made righteous.
Would you consider that text with me in
detail for a moment?
It must be an awfully sleepy afternoon for
you, bless you.
I thought most people would be on the
lake today, but you're here, so I hope
you're keeping awake.
But I want you to consider this text
with me rather carefully for a moment because
it's so important.
Do you notice the contrast between the disobedience
of Adam, which resulted in our condemnation, and
the obedience of Christ which results in our
righteousness?
Through one man's disobedience the many were made
sinners.
How did that happen?
How many?
All of us.
Well, how did that happen?
Because of a connection we had with the
event when it took place.
You see, we were all there.
Oh, but I was only born fifty years
ago, you say.
Doesn't matter, you were there at the time.
Seminally, the whole human race was there.
And the act of arrogance which our first
father committed imparted to the whole human race
a nature which is anti-God.
As by one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners.
Judicially, I'm involved in that awful act of
aggression against the authority of our God and
of our Lord and of our Creator.
Judicially, I'm involved in it, and if I
object to that, then I say, experimentally, I'm
involved in it too.
Because there isn't one individual anywhere here in
the tent or anywhere in the world that
hasn't said amen to Adam's act of aggression
against God.
And there isn't a moment in our...
there hasn't been one life here, but there's
been a moment when we've said no to
his authority, and we've demanded the right of
self-expression.
And we've insisted upon our own way.
I believe it was Hudson Pope himself, our
beloved friend who's with us this week, I
believe it was he who used to say,
and I always found it a bit of
a tongue twister, but I understood it in
the end, that nobody becomes a sinner because
of the sins we commit.
But we commit sins because we are by
nature sinners.
And the essence of sins in the plural
is S-I-N in the singular, S
-I-N, and the center word is I.
And there is no genuine experience of redemption
until the I has been crushed and the
Jesus Christ has been enthroned.
And that's the whole problem, may I say
it lovingly, that so many of us have
professed so much and have been emotionally stirred
up at conventions and conferences many a time
and have been intellectually convinced, but there's a
big capital I still on the throne that
demands its own way and insists on being
proved right and other people being proved wrong
and demands recognition and praise.
What an ugly thing it is.
That's why you have missionary work split in
two and church leadership.
So constantly guilty of fraction and problems and
trouble.
But listen, through one man's disobedience the many
were made sinners, and the one thing that
God asked of his creatures was obedience, for
that's the only way we can glorify him.
And the one secret of the power of
sin in the life of a child of
God is the cause of disobedience in the
life.
And the whole power of sin working in
a man has its root in the fact
that he is a child of disobedience.
And by nature he's got a rebellious heart,
and in spite of his profession of conversion
and faith in Jesus Christ, that self has
never been broken.
Though he claims forgiveness of sins, he's got
no experience of deliverance from SIL.
And therefore if there's to be redemption at
all, the one thing that Jesus must do
is somehow to remove the dominion of disobedience
from the human soul, the root of all
our misery, and restore us to a life
that's submitted to the will of God.
I tell you that all theory of the
cross and all understanding of Calvary, which doesn't
strike right at the root of all human
misery, and which doesn't dethrone self and deal
with the capital I in us, anything less
than that is totally inadequate for an experience
of the grace of God and of his
delivering power.
So the Lord Jesus came, and oh bless
his name, he was obedient until death, even
the death of the cross.
And by the one man's disobedience the many
have been made sinners.
We've given a sanctuary.
What's the answer to the reign and rule
of the dominion of this proud self?
So, says Paul, by the obedience of one
shall the many be made righteous.
How does that happen?
Listen, in the mind and in the sight
of heaven and of a holy God, the
disobedience of Adam has been replaced by the
obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And by that obedience we are made righteous.
We're accounted righteous.
And when we receive him as our Savior
and our Lord, we receive to live within
us a life of submission to his will,
a life of obedience.
I hope that this becomes a vital, living,
pressing, urgent reality to everyone in this tent
this afternoon, because when you receive Jesus Christ
as your Savior, you don't receive simply life
and get your sins forgiven and get saved
from hell and go to heaven.
That's not the gospel.
That's the result of the gospel.
If you're born again, you have received a
life which can only live on one principle.
It's a life of submission in totality to
the will of God.
That's the life you receive.
That's the Holy Spirit within.
And implanted into your nature is a new
nature, the very life of Jesus Christ, which
humbled himself and was made obedient unto death.
You see, the disobedience of Adam reigned in
the whole human race and brought death because
of disobedience.
But now the obedience of Jesus Christ reigns
in the life of a child of his
and brings righteousness and life and to receive
Christ is to receive into my heart the
power of a new nature which can give
me power to obey God in all things,
if I'm willing.
So I would say to you that the
obedience of Jesus Christ to death is the
only way by which any of us begin
to live as Christians.
It's his obedience that made it possible.
It's the Lord stepping from heaven to Calvary.
It's the Lord counting himself not a thing
to be grasped after, to be equal with
God, but coming a way, way down the
ladder until he touches rock bottom.
It's that submission of God's perfect man that
opens the way back to heaven for us
all.
But if that's the way into life, I
want to say that your obedience to the
Lord Jesus is the only way of evidencing
that life in reality.
The greatest thing about a family is family
likeness.
You often hear said about somebody, you know,
that person is the image, that boy is
the image of his father.
There's a family likeness.
Listen, the one thing that distinguishes an unregenerate
man from the Christian is his disobedience to
the Lord.
That's the family likeness.
The principle of pride, the principle of self,
the principle of vindication, the principle of self
-centered living, this, this is the family likeness
of the child of hell.
The one thing that distinguishes a Christian, a
genuine Christian from an unbeliever, is his family
likeness to the Lord Jesus as he lives
his life in submission to the will of
God.
There, there beloved, there at the very heart
of the word of God is the distinguishing
mark.
It's not what I believe.
It's not a statement of creed.
It's not that I believe my Bible intellectually
from beginning to end.
It's not that I'm a master of prophecy.
It's not that I can understand eschatology.
It's not that you could preach like the
archangel Gabriel.
It is, do you obey the Lord Jesus
Christ?
Family likeness, submission.
If you ask me, what does that involve?
What does that involve in daily life?
I turn you to the pattern of it
as expressed in the life of our precious
Savior, and give you very quickly and simply
one or two things which marked out the
life of Jesus, and which must mark out
the life of every one of his followers
if those lives of ours are going to
stand the test on that day when we
meet him face to face.
May I say to you in the first
place here, as I think of the pattern
of obedience in Christ, that his obedience was
a life principle.
It wasn't just a single act, nor was
it a series of acts, but it was
an attitude of his life.
He says, I came not to do mine
own will, but the will of him that
sent me.
He lived for that one purpose, and the
controlling power of the life of our blessed
Lord was submission.
He never permitted one rival to the will
of God.
Never for one moment.
If he had, on any one issue, permitted
any rival to the absolutely perfect will of
his Father, there would never have been a
Keswick Convention.
Not one of us would have been saved.
He lived for one purpose, and that was
to get the will of God, which was
done in heaven, to be done in earth.
And therefore I read of the early church
absolutely consumed in the midst of pressures which
were overwhelming, in the midst of opposition which
I am sure has never been equal since
in spite of all that goes on in
the world today, in the midst of the
totalitarian power of a Roman Empire which threatened
to crush that little baby church out of
existence.
And may I say there wasn't a DD
among them.
There wasn't a man of them who had
a good education.
There wasn't one of them who perhaps would
pass muster for modern missionary recruits.
They'd probably all be rejected by missionary societies
today.
And that little baby church, with all the
pressure of Rome determined to crush them out
of existence, said, we must obey God rather
than men.
And because they did that, beloved, because they
did that, why, heaven opened, the Holy Ghost
fell upon them, and the power of Rome
was scattered.
It's my profound conviction that if you and
I, let's begin right here, lived for just
one week in total submission to the authority
of Jesus Christ, I say, oh, what revival
would break out.
I long, oh, I long, and maybe this
longing is shared by you.
Couldn't we, in the course of a lifetime,
which perhaps for some of us might be
seventy-five years and some might be less,
in which we spend, if, if, if we
require eight hours in bed, in which we
spend no less than twenty-five years unconscious,
how I long that in the course of
that life, Christian people, oh, beloved, couldn't we
get away alone with God for one week,
with no visitor but the Holy Spirit, and
no book but my Bible?
That would be even greater than a Keswick
convention.
For such a man, I am convinced, if
we had just one week out of all
those years alone with God and the Holy
Ghost and the Word, that man would either
break up or break out to be a
flame for God in these days.
And we are perishing for lack of men
with a flame and a passion.
The Church is bogged down by its dead,
orthodox fundamentalism, which has got no life because
it isn't backed by obedient Christians.
The whole principle of the life of the
Lord Jesus was utter submission to one principle,
the will of God, this is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased.
It was not only a life principle, and
let me put this aside lest you think
this is a very grim situation.
The obedience of the Lord Jesus was such
a joy.
My meat is to do the will of
him that sent me.
I delight to do thy will, O God.
And the one thing that satisfied the hunger
of the heart of our precious Lord was
to do the will of God.
It refreshed him, strengthened him, and made him
glad.
Do you mean to tell me that in
preaching a message like this that I am
urging upon people a life of bondage and
misery and restriction?
That to obey God is going to be
the end of everything?
I enjoy, but I tell you it will
be the beginning of you giving three leaps
for joy in freedom to do the will
of God.
Work out your own salvation, says Paul to
the church at Philippi.
Work it out with fear and trembling for,
oh, what lovely words, it is God that
worketh in you to will and to do
his good pleasure.
It is God by his Spirit in you,
the obedient life within you, who works in
you to make you love to do God's
will.
I believe that this whole convention and every
speaker on this platform every year stands for
this great fact that I would give you.
That the New Testament teaches not only that
the Lord Jesus Christ forgives the penalty of
our sin, not only does he deal with
the guilt, and not only does he break
the power of cancels sin, but, hallelujah, he
takes away the love of sinning.
You mean to tell me I've got to
spend my life as a Christian secretly hankering
after the things for which the blood of
Jesus saved me?
Do you mean to tell me that all
through my life I've got to love secretly
the thing that got me down and nearly
ruined my life and landed me into hell?
Oh, God forbid.
God forbid.
He imparts to his child a life which
longs after holiness and delights to do the
will of God and enters into the thrill
and the joy of victory in answer to
his complete submission to our Father in heaven.
Oh, yes.
Any miserable souls around here today?
Oh, brother and sister, I would like just
to put my arm around you and love
you into the kingdom of obedience to God's
will.
Phew, for ten years as a Christian I
messed around like some of you are doing.
And if you're not obeying God and you're
a believer, I tell you, you've got the
worst of the bargain at both ends.
Because, you see, if you're a Christian, you're
fed up with the world.
And if you won't obey God, well, you
don't get on with him.
And you're having an unhappy time.
You can't go back and enjoy the things
you used to enjoy because you've got a
new nature who protests.
You can't enjoy your salvation either because you
won't obey him to the limit.
Oh, what a miserable experience that is.
To be indwelt by the Holy Ghost but
be dominated by the flesh.
Brother, at 3.50 on this day of
July 1960, that can stop right now.
And you can enter into the joy of
your salvation if you'll only submit and let
that stupid, arrogant little puppet that you call
self be put under your feet in the
name of the Lord.
Then let me say this to you.
The obedience of the Lord Jesus was not
only his great joy, but it meant for
him waiting upon God for his will.
You know, this is one of the most
marvelous things to me about my Savior.
I'm going to ask him to explain it
more fully to me when I meet him.
But the book says, Hebrews 5.8, listen
to it.
He learned obedience through the things that he
suffered.
Oh, marvelous grace.
He was always perfect.
Always without flaw and sin.
But when he was filled with the Holy
Spirit, he was driven by the Spirit into
the wilderness.
To be tested by the devil.
And after 40 days and 40 nights without
food, he came back having overcome all the
powers of darkness.
And he came back, Luke is careful to
tell us, in the power of the Spirit
into Galilee.
See it?
He went out in fullness.
He came back in power.
And fullness becomes power through testing.
And through obedience to all God's will.
And in your behalf and on my behalf,
he stood his ground in foot-to-foot
combat with the enemy who would have dragged
me into hell if he hadn't.
Do you mean to tell me I am
going to raise my proud, puny little neck
and say no to Jesus after that?
Ah, but each act of obedience of the
Master fitted him for a new discovery of
the will of his Father.
And so it is for us.
To obey God makes you fit for the
further revelation of the will of God.
To disobey God draws the veil right down
and you'll never have any more light till
you get back to the place where you
disobeyed him.
You see, you never get there.
Understand what I mean?
Nobody can come to a speaker and say
I'm the finished product.
Did I ever tell you about a fellow
who came to me in Southampton once?
After a service at the Church of Christ?
He came up to me and he said,
Hallelujah, brother!
And you know an Englishman, at least some
Englishman like me react rather peculiarly to that.
And I backed about five yards and said,
Hallelujah.
And I hoped that all was right.
And he said with a radiant face, brother,
brother, I was saved two years ago, sanctified
one year ago, and I'm completely free from
sin.
I said, my dear old boy, you've got
further in two years than I've got in
25.
And if I read my Bible aright, you've
got further in two years than Paul got
in his lifetime.
Paul began by saying I'm less, least of
the saints.
And then less than the least of all
the saints.
And then at the end, look, Timothy, I
want to tell you about myself.
I've been on the road now for 30
years and more as a Christian, but I'm
just the chief in sin.
Paradox, isn't it?
But blessedly true.
Greater revelation of God's grace is accompanied by
a constant revelation of my own corruption.
If you look for goodness inside you or
me, you'll never find any.
Waste of time.
But listen, every step of obedience opens up
the way for a greater revelation of his
perfect plan.
But if I speak to a disobedient Christian
in this world and who in some issue
has raised your proud neck and said no
to Jesus, I'm not surprised you don't know
where you are or where you're going or
what the next step may be.
Of course you won't.
There will be never any further light of
the path until you repent and obey God.
And lastly, the obedience of the Lord Jesus.
Oh, tell it, tell it out to the
angels in heaven.
Tell it out to the whole family of
God's people in the world.
Tell it out to the whole human race.
And remind the devil of it that the
obedience of the Lord Jesus was unflinching to
the point of death.
He was obedient.
Aren't you there?
And that's the obedience that Jesus Christ imparts
to you.
May I make this perfectly clear, unless there
be any who are not saved?
May I make it equally clear to any
child of God who today is a bit
uncertain of themselves?
God saves you for one purpose, that is,
to die.
That's all.
You're not asked to live for Christ, you're
asked to die.
There's an instrument which was used in Old
Testament times by the priest, about which we
don't hear too much these days.
It was called the flesh hook.
Do you know what the priest did with
that?
It was used in order to get the
sacrifice under the flame and keep it there
till it was reduced to dust and ashes.
And listen, if this convention is going to
break out in a burst of Holy Ghost
revival, and surely there's been enough preaching on
sin and conviction to bring us there, if
it's to break out in a burst of
blessing, do you know what God is going
to do?
He's going to put the flesh hook upon
some of us and He's going to pull
us back to the place of obedience and
total submission to His will, to the place
of death and put the sacrifice under the
flame until you and I are reduced to
dust and ashes and then upon that He'll
build the beauty of the character of Jesus
Himself.
I conclude by just saying this, that the
unreserved surrender of the Lord Jesus to the
will of God was met by the unceasing
bestowal of the power of the Holy Ghost.
And oh, just think what could happen out
on the mission fields of the world, out
through this beloved country, out everywhere you can
imagine, wherever you touch an issue in the
name of the Lord Jesus, if you go
from Keswick Convention, if you go a man
who's understood the principle of submission, by the
obedience of one worked out, in us shall
many be made righteous, and through such lives
the Holy Ghost has His way.
Such information as we have about Luke comes
from the passages of the book of the
Acts, in which he uses the first person
plural called the we passages.
They're the great passages really, but they're the
we passages, W-E.
And from four references to him from the
pen of St. Paul, his movements are hinted
rather than stated, but they can be traced,
and they gather round four place names, Troas,
Philippi, Jerusalem, Rome.
At Troas, Luke is the Christian doctor, caring
for the needs of the apostle who had
been ill.
At Philippi, he is the devoted pastor, who
knew where prayer was wont to be made,
and seems to have known Lydia well.
At Jerusalem, he is the careful writer, gathering
material for the third gospel.
I wonder, did he interview Mary for the
nativity details?
Then on to Rome as the faithful friend.
Perhaps he entered the ship as a slave
with Aristarchus in Acts 27, for the details
of that long voyage are described by one
who seems to enjoy a sea voyage, and
who knows the language of the ship.
At Rome, the apostle endured imprisonment twice, but
each time his faithful doctor was with him.
Then the unrecorded martyrdom, and a lonely Luke
going out to draw the closing lines of
his picture of the man he had seconded
from the shores of Troas to the Appian
Way.
O God, please may we have men like
this today.
Luke, with his special ministry.
Six, Demas with his sorry lapse.
Verse 14, we know so little about this
man, and yet he has fixed himself upon
our minds, assisted by the writings of John
Bunyan, in terms of 2 Timothy 4.11.
Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present
world, and is departed.
Was it the love of money, or of
material gain, that drew Demas from the side
of the greatest Christian of all time?
We do not know, but it was something
belonging to this world.
The saintly John Trapp has a telling comment
on Galatians 6.14, in which Paul wrote,
The world is crucified unto me, and I
unto the world.
John Trapp writes, The world and I are
well agreed.
The world cares not a pin for me,
and I care as little for the world.
Love not the world, neither the things that
are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in him.
Demas, with his sorry lapse, make much of
these penned pictures, and ask God so to
possess your life in days to come, that
you will be unable to manifest a steady
faith, to get your second wind, to fulfill
some secret service, to engage in strenuous prayer,
to exercise your special ministry, and to avoid
a sorry lapse.
Now, Paul, you really must close the letter.
You must be getting very tired there in
prison, and Tychicus is ready to depart for
Colossae.
So salutations only, please, from now.
And here they are, verses 15 to 18.
Salutations are sent to Laodicea, and to a
house church in that city.
Notice that Paul asks for an exchange of
letters.
Let the Laodiceans read his letter to Colossae,
and the Colossians a letter that will reach
them from Laodicea.
What was this letter from Laodicea?
We don't know, but most likely the epistle
to the Ephesians, which is a kind of
circular letter, and would be passed round all
that area of Asia Minor which Paul's ministry
had influenced when for three years he made
Ephesus the center of his preaching.
And say to Archippus, verse 17, perhaps the
son of Philemon and Apphia, Lightfoot suggests that
his ministry was at Laodicea.
Bishop Hanlimo thought he took the place of
Epaphras at Colossae when Epaphras left to visit
Paul in Rome.
We don't know.
We'll leave the two bishops to give us
both their suggestions.
Whatever this ministry, or wherever it was exercised,
we don't know, but what we do know
is that Paul said, Archippus, take heed to
the ministry which thou hast received in the
Lord, that thou fulfill it.
The sufficiency of Christ about which we have
been thinking provides for and calls for the
fulfillment of every ministry which we have received
in the Lord.
Beloved, listen.
There are few things so urgent today as
this.
Fulfill thy ministry.
Bishop Ryle, the first bishop of Liverpool, wrote,
We have no right to expect God's cause
to be kept up by constant miracles while
his servants stand idle.
Then fulfill thy ministry in the mission field,
in the pulpit, in the Sunday school class,
in whatever place it is made yours by
God.
Fulfill thy ministry.
So the closing words are added by Paul
himself.
Verse 18.
As was his custom, he takes the quill
from his amanuensis to write the last few
words.
Listen quietly for a moment.
You will almost hear the clanging of the
chains as he writes.
Then look, come and look here.
He's taken away his hand.
The letters are large and shaky.
It's impossible to read them and not recall
his last injunction.
Remember my bonds.
Not for the stirring of sympathy, but for
the acceptance of authority.
For there is no persuasion to equal that
which stems from a life of utter bond
service to Jesus Christ.
Grace be with you.
There is no amen.
And even if there were, it would but
mark the fact that the sole sufficiency of
Jesus Christ for creed and conduct will never
end.