Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, and to the
Church of the Thessalonians, which is in God
the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ,
grace be unto you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We give thanks to God always for you
all, making mention of you in our prayers,
remembering without ceasing your work of faith and
labor of love and patience of hope in
our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of
God and our Father, knowing, brethren beloved, your
election of God.
For our gospel came not unto you in
word only, but also in power and in
the Holy Ghost and in much assurance.
As you know what manner of men you
were among you, we were among you for
your sake.
And you became followers of us and of
the Lord, having received the word in much
affliction with joy of the Holy Ghost, so
that you were examples to all that believe
in Macedonia and Achaia.
For from you sounded out the word of
the Lord, not only in Macedonia and Achaia,
but also in every place.
Your faith to God's word is spread abroad,
so that we need not to speak anything.
For they themselves show unto us, show of
us, what manner of entering in we had
unto you, and how ye turned to God
from idols to serve the living and true
God, and to wait for his Son from
heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even
Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to
come.
Let us bow before him in prayer, again
praying together in your heart with me on
behalf of us all.
Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
Speak just now some message to meet my
need, which thou only dost know.
Speak now through thy holy word, and make
me see some wonderful truth thou hast to
show to me.
For Jesus' sake, amen.
As we continue considering the vital priority task
of the Christian, the communication of our faith
in the context of the 1960s, we have
thought, first of all, about the relationship which
has to be restored.
The lordship of Christ in all of our
lives.
The responsibility that we must realize.
He has chosen us that we might be
light, reflectors of light, in this world in
which we live.
Now, we approach the same subject from another
angle this morning.
The revival which must be recovered.
And our key text from the chapter which
we read together is verse 7.
So that ye were examples to all that
believe in Macedonia and Achaia.
I don't need to tell a group of
people like this that these are days of
unprecedented challenge for us all as Christians, caused
mainly, partly at least, by the population explosion
in the world.
The net increase in the world population is
at least 75 million a year.
The population has trebled in the last century
and is now well over three billion, three
and a half billion people.
Also, the challenge of the revival of non
-Christian religions.
Islam and Mormonism are having a millennium these
days, accompanied by a resurgence, tremendous upsurge of
the cults such as Jehovah's Witnesses, Moral Rearmament,
all of them on the move.
Accompanied with all this, there's the challenge of
secularism and communism, a philosophy of life which
wasn't heard of 60 years ago and now
has at least one-third of the world's
population under its control and a great influence
on the remaining two-thirds.
But the Church has never chosen the climate
in which it should work.
God chooses the climate.
It's for us so to be in tune
with heaven that we're prepared to alter our
strategy to suit the challenge of the day.
Our message is unchanging, but our method is
different.
It's hopeless once the Church uses the motto,
as it was in the beginning, is now,
ever shall be.
The methods must change as the days go
by.
And these are days of tremendous change on
the mission field.
No longer is missionary work, missionary society centered,
it is local church centered.
No longer is the missionary a leader, he's
a helper, training the nationals into Christian leadership.
We hear a tremendous lot today about mission
fields and doors being closed.
I have been in a great number of
mission fields in the last two years and
that is just not true.
Certainly doors are closing to missionaries, the type
of missionary to which we've become used.
But there's scarcely a country in the world
which is not wide open to people who
are prepared to go and never come back.
We had a conference on world missions in
Moody Church a few years ago when about
700 or 800 missionary leaders from this land
and missionary statesmen were met together under the
auspices of IFMA.
One session was held on the subject of
Europe and at the end of the session
when several hundred people were present, the people
leading it came up with the resolution that
immediately Europe needs 700 more missionaries.
Listening to that session but not participating in
it was Dr. Rene Pasch who is president
of the Emmaus Bible School in Switzerland.
He was to speak at the following session
and when he stood up to speak I
shall never forget how he began his message.
He said, I have listened with interest to
your resolution regarding Europe.
Allow me to say as a Swiss national
that we do not want one missionary in
Europe.
We want people who are prepared to come
and live and die with us.
That's the kind of missionary that's needed today.
To that kind of person every door of
every nation is wide open.
I know personally families in China and Russia
today in government positions who are there to
serve the nation but are there primarily as
Christians.
Scarcely a door closed, wide open to people
who have the know-how and various professions
but are there to serve the Lord, are
prepared never to come back.
Days of challenge, days of change and perhaps
worst of all days of chastening for the
church.
Maybe that's because we carry the needless divisions
of western culture and western Christianity into eastern
and new cultures.
What a pity we can't love each other.
What a pity we must do this kind
of thing and project theological differences on minor
issues which have no significance on the mission
field and cause division, endless division.
I remember dear old Vance Havener from North
Carolina.
I wish I could imitate his accent.
I remember him standing up at Moody Church
and saying, when the tide is out every
little shrimp has to have its own puddle.
Oh, but he said when the tide comes
in and when the tide is out every
little shrimp has its own puddle.
Marked, independent, separated, we must have our own
work.
Oh, that God would send in the tide.
A national leader in India last November said
to me, we cannot reach 500 million people
in this country except the Indian church experiences
revival.
We can't reach 50 million people in Britain.
We can't reach 200 million people in the
United States unless the church in Britain and
the church in America has revival.
And that brings me right away to consider
with you this morning an example of a
New Testament church living in revival.
He became examples to all that believe in
Macedonia and Achaia.
You remember the founding of the church at
Thessalonica?
Act 17 has the story of it.
The Aetuciples were accused of turning the world
upside down there.
There dwelt in Thessalonica, to use the quaint
language of the authorized version, certain lewd fellows
of the baser sort.
Living letters paraphrase translates it more happily, I
think.
Certain worthless loafers are interested that they existed
in the first century as well as the
twentieth.
They were there, Thessalonica had its share of
them, and the church there started amidst bitter
opposition.
Paul and the others with him had to
flee for their lives.
It was in this climate that this church
was formed and really became a church that
was an example, a pattern to all New
Testament believers.
He were an example to all that believed
in Macedonia and Achaia, because there sounded out
from them the word of the Lord.
In every place their faith to God was
spread abroad.
Others needn't to speak anything.
This church was on the ball.
Every member of it was propagating what it
believed.
It was living in revival.
I would like to put a window into
this text, if I may, that to me
at least has shed a flood of light
upon how all this happened and made me
cry out for it to God in my
own heart.
Just look with me a minute in John
chapter 20, the twentieth chapter of John's gospel.
The first Easter morning, in verse 19, when
the same day at evening, the first day
of the week, the doors were shut, the
disciples were together, uncertain and afraid.
And Jesus stood in the midst of them
and said, Peace be unto you.
And he showed them his hands and his
side.
Verse 24.
But Thomas, one of those disciples, wasn't with
them.
He was the doubter, the skeptic.
The church was falling apart already, and he
was among those who had drifted off.
Then the other disciples said unto him, when
he came into the room when Jesus had
left, we have seen the Lord.
And he said, except I shall see in
his hands a print of the Lord.
And he said, I will not believe.
I can hear him saying it.
And after eight days, the disciples were together
again.
And Thomas was with them this time.
And then Jesus came and doors being shut
and stood in the midst and said, Peace
be unto you.
Then he spoke to Thomas personally and said,
Thomas, Thomas, reach here your finger, behold my
hand.
Reach hither your hand and put it in
my side, and don't be faithless but believing.'
And Thomas answered, My Lord and my God,
I don't believe, I don't know, but I
don't believe he ever did put his finger
into his hand and thrust his finger into
his side.
He saw them.
He saw the nail prints.
He saw the wounds of Jesus.
That was enough, and it brought him in
full commitment and full surrender to the feet
of Christ, and from that moment onwards it
was, My Lord and my God.
And Thomas was one of those who was
in the upper room praying for ten days,
one of those who at Pentecost was filled
with the Holy Ghost.
My Lord and my God.
But what that got to do with 1
Thessalonians 1, 7, just everything, everything.
For Thomas said, Except I see in his
hand the print of the nails, and put
my finger into the print of the nails,
I will not believe.
The print of the nails, and the word
that is translated in verse 7 of chapter
1 in Thessalonians 1, ye were examples, that's
exactly the same word, the print of the
nails.
What the print of the nails were to
Thomas, these Thessalonical Christians were to the world.
They had upon them the marks of Calvary.
They were branded men.
They bore upon them the marks of the
cross.
And this twentieth century civilization which has gone
stark staring mad on almost every issue, has
every right to look at us and say,
Except I see the marks of the cross
upon you, I won't believe you.
I'm not interested in your doctrine.
I'm not interested in what you say about
life.
I'm not interested in your Christian faith.
I'm interested in you.
Do you bear the examination of reality?
Are there the marks of the cross about
you?
Is there anything about you that reminds me
that Jesus died and rose again, and is
able to save to the uttermost?
Except I see the marks of the cross,
the print of the nail, I will not
believe.
And this is the kind of revival that
we need in our church today.
This is the kind of thing that I
need in my life every moment of every
day.
It's the kind of thing that you need,
my friend, this morning, the print of the
nails upon you, the marks of Calvary.
But how did they get it?
How did they come?
I have no doubt about that, because I
turn to the third verse of this chapter
and I read this, remembering without ceasing your
work of faith, your labor of love, and
your patience of hope in our Lord Jesus
Christ.
You notice three great words of Christian experience,
faith, hope, and love ring around in your
Bible.
These Thessalonican Christians were living a three-dimensional
Christian life.
Faith, that's depth.
Love, that's breadth.
Hope, that's length.
They'd faith, they'd hope, they'd love.
I know a lot of people who have
got a lot of faith.
They're sound, sound asleep, many of them, but
they're sound.
They believe everything that they ought to believe.
They dot their I's and cross their T's
correctly, but you touch them, it's like touching
an icebox.
There's no love.
They're as hard as nails.
I know a lot of other people who
have a lot of love, who say, well,
you know, it doesn't matter what you believe
as long as you're sincere, not realizing that
we can be sincere and sincerely wrong, but
they've no faith.
And lots and lots of people today who
have no hope, but when you meet a
Christian who's got faith and hope and love,
you really meet somebody.
Strange that this world, this generation, doesn't produce
more of them.
Perhaps we don't give God time.
I think that's it.
We're too busy, too much of a hurry.
I remember meeting a generation ago, a year
ago, years ago now, a man like this.
Have you ever heard of Bishop Taylor Smith?
You may have read some of his books.
He was a bishop in the Anglican Church.
I only met him on one occasion.
We had a Bible Day in London, a
day of exhibition of Bibles and Bible messages
and so on, and I remember on this
day I was in charge of a bookstall.
It was when I had just started in
Christian work and I was looking after this
bookstall and I thought it was a very
important job, but I'd been looking after it
for about three hours and nobody had been
near it, when suddenly along the aisle of
this enormous building there walked Bishop Taylor Smith.
I knew it was he because he carried
his presents well in front of him.
And he was dressed, of course, as a
bishop ought to be.
And when he came up to my bookstall,
he stopped and he turned inside it and
picked up a book.
And my heart missed a beat and I
said to myself, how on earth do I
speak to a bishop?
I'd never met one to that point.
And then just as I was thinking that
out, he said to me, young man, that
was true at the time, young man, what
are you thinking about now?
That's quite a question to be asked by
a bishop.
So I thought I'd better be honest and
I said to him, sir, I was wondering
why a bishop in the Anglican Church should
be interested in reading a book called Questionable
Amusements.
And I thought that was a good answer.
But you know, he put that book down
and he walked past me majestically.
And with a little twinkle in his eye,
he said to me, young man, that's a
very questionable amusement on your part.
I never met him again, but I was
conscious in those two minutes of having been
in the presence of a man of God
with a sanctified sense of humor.
In parentheses, may I just say, I hope
that your Christianity never robs you of your
sense of humor.
I hope it sanctifies it, but you need
every bit of it.
But you know, it was said of Bishop
Taylor Smith that anybody coming within a mile
of him was in great danger of getting
converted.
And every morning at four o'clock, he
would awaken and using his bed at his
altar, he would say, Lord, your instructions for
today, please.
What are your orders today, Lord?
He was a man of a tremendous brain,
great theologian, brilliant, could outmatch anybody in our
country.
But in his relationship to the Lord Jesus
Christ, he was just like a little child,
so tender and intimate in his relationship with
Jesus.
My friend, that's how I want to grow
old.
That's how I trust that all our lives
will mature into the simplicity of a relationship
with Christ, which is just like that.
And it's the outcome of living a three
-dimensional life which has faith and hope and
love.
Nothing complicated about it.
The complicated person is the little man, I
don't mean physically, but spiritually, who's lost the
reality of Jesus in what he believes about
him, in his doctrine.
But the big man, the man of stature,
the man of spiritual maturity, is the man
who's got a profound knowledge of an indwelling
Christ as his life.
And there's nothing between him and the Savior.
But I notice this also in this verse.
Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, your
labor of love, your patience of hope, you
see, they had a faith that worked, they
had a love that labored, they had a
hope that endured.
How did their faith work?
Well, just glance down with me to verse
9.
How ye turn to God from idols to
serve the living and true God, and to
wait for his Son from heaven?
They turned to God from idols, their faith
worked.
They served the living and true God, their
love labored.
They waited for his Son from heaven, their
hope endured.
Say, does your faith work?
Does your love labor?
Does your hope endure?
Let me just look at these three things
very quickly with you, because I believe that
this is the revival that you need, that
I need, that the Church needs today.
Does your faith work?
Has it turned you to God from idols?
There are tremendous things happening in many different
countries today.
Indonesia is an example, where not one but
thousands of people are turning to find Christ
as Lord.
Same thing's happening in Brazil, same thing in
Central America, same thing in parts of Africa,
wonderful movings of the Spirit of God, but
listen, it's one thing for a man to
turn from idols of wood and stone to
God, it's another thing for a Christian in
this country turning from self to Jesus.
Does your faith work?
Has it brought self crashing to the ground?
Has it replaced self with Christ?
Does your faith really work?
Has it turned you from idols to God?
Let me ask you, no, I don't want
to ask you this, but I want that
the Spirit of God would ask you, tell
me, what's your idol?
I'll tell you.
It's what you think about when you're alone.
It's what your thoughts turn to automatically when
you're by yourself.
It's the person or the thing that immediately
you're by yourself, like the needle turns to
the north, your thoughts revert to him, to
her, to that.
What's your idol?
Think about it.
I repeat, it's one thing for a whole
tribe to turn from idols of stone to
God.
It's another thing altogether for me to turn
from the worship of myself to the worship
of Christ.
Does your faith work?
You see, God is always wanting to reduce
you and me to a minimum in order
that he may do in us and through
us his maximum.
He's always seeking to make us small that
he might be great.
Some years ago at Moody Church, I had
a long-distance call from a man who
was chairman of the board of elders of
a particular church some distance away, and he
was asking me, saying that there was need
of a pastor in his church, and they
were wondering whether I knew anybody who might
fill the pulpit.
So I mentioned several men whom I knew
at that time were probably seeking a move
and would consider it.
We talked about it for a long time,
we went on talking for quite a while.
I didn't mind, it was his call, he
was paying for it.
After about twenty-five minutes, he suddenly said
to me, well, he said, thank you very
much, that's very nice of you to tell
me all that about these men, but none
of them are big enough to fill our
pulpit.
I hope he didn't think I was rude,
but I couldn't help saying to him, sir,
are you quite sure you don't mean they're
not small enough for your pulpit?
Some of us get too big for God
to use, get in God's way, too important,
think too much of ourselves.
And all the time, all the time, God
is seeking to turn us from the idol
of self to Jesus.
And, you know, your conversion didn't do it,
did it?
Oh, potentially it did, potentially it did, for
at that moment you received Christ in your
heart as your Lord, but experimentally it hasn't,
for self still is in business, still trying
very hard, still working at the Christian life.
You see, my friend, God's moral demands don't
change when I become a Christian, but it
is no longer I who have to meet
them.
He who is the lawgiver on the throne
in heaven is the law keeper in my
heart.
Got it?
He who gives the law from the throne
keeps it in my life.
He who gave the law himself keeps it.
He who makes the demands meets them.
While all the time we're trying to do
it, he can't do anything.
When I struggle for victory, I'm heading for
defeat.
The trouble is that we're weak enough not
to do the will of God, but we're
not weak enough to get out of business
altogether.
Only absolute disillusion, complete despair with myself will
make it possible for God to move in
and to do it all for me.
Wouldn't you like to know what God expects
of you in the Christian life?
Well, I'll tell you.
Quite something for a preacher to be able
to tell an audience what God expects of
every one of you.
But I can.
I'm not clever, but I can.
I'll tell you just exactly what God expects
of you.
Do you want to know?
Absolute failure.
Complete, total failure.
He regards us all as an absolute write
-off.
All he wants is that I would be
prepared to go to the cross and be
branded and be crucified with Christ.
Like Paul said, henceforth let no man trouble
me.
I bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus.
I am crucified to the world and the
world unto me.
A man who's prepared to die, who's prepared
for self to get out of business and
for Christ to replace his idol.
Their faith worked.
Does your faith work?
Has it done that for you?
Are you able to say with Paul, oh,
it is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me?
How many, many, many Christians begin the Christian
life by trusting and go on by trying.
Begin by receiving the death of Christ for
forgiveness for all my sins and then try,
try desperately hard to overcome all my sins.
Have I really understood that the cross has
accomplished two things for me?
First, in his death, he's forgiven me for
what I do.
In his risen life, he saves me from
what I am.
Most of us have settled for a half
salvation.
We're glad to be saved from what we
do, but we go on sinning.
Over and over again we say we won't
do it, we'll try harder and work harder
at it and we'll stop it and know
that it'll never happen again, but it does.
And our conversion hasn't made a scrap of
difference except that in Christ there's no condemnation
and all our sins, in the plural, have
been forgiven.
But I'm still mastered by the principle of
S-I-N in capital letters.
Like the Apostle Paul who wrote as a
Christian, with my mind I serve the law
of God, but with my flesh the law
of sin.
O wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me?
Is there no way out?
Can't I escape from it?
Allow me to quote Dr. Graham Scroggie, who
used to say that trouble with the church
is that so many of us are on
the right side of pardon, but the wrong
side of power.
The right side of forgiveness, but the wrong
side of fellowship.
The right side of Easter, but the wrong
side of Pentecost.
We're out of Egypt, but we're not in
the land.
We sing some lovely hymns in our hymn
books, and we'll go on singing them till
our dying day, but you'll forgive me saying
so.
They haven't any foundation in the scripture.
Land me safe on Canaan's happy shore.
What will you do in the swelling of
Jordan, which all speak of Canaan as heaven?
Canaan isn't heaven, at least I hope it
isn't, for when I read my Bible I
find the only difference in the experience of
the people of God in Canaan was that
in the wilderness it was battle and defeat.
In Canaan it was battle and victory.
But in heaven there won't be any battle.
Oh, we've only a few years here to
get victory, we've all eternity to celebrate it,
and what a tragedy if we get there
and we've had a half salvation.
We've been saved from what we do, but
we go on doing it simply because we've
never entered into the experience of being delivered
from what I am by the saving life
of Christ in my heart.
We play in Britain a game which, not
surprisingly, Americans find somewhat hard to understand, and
that is the game of cricket.
It's a very exciting game because test matches
are played between England and Australia, or England
and the West Indies every now and again,
and when a test match is played it
lasts for five days, and it begins every
day at 11 and stops at 1 for
lunch, begins at quarter to and then stops
at 3.30 for a cup of tea,
and then starts at 4 and then stops
at 6.30, and that goes on for
five days.
It's very exciting.
I remember when I was in Chicago a
series of test matches were being played in
London between England and Australia, and I was
very, very anxious to know the results.
Do you know I bought every Chicago newspaper
and I couldn't find a word?
And when you buy a Chicago newspaper, brother,
you buy a library.
It was the Daily News and the Tribune,
all the American, all the rest, and I
had to stack, and I thumbed through every
page and not a word.
All they were interested in was somebody called
the, you know, Cubs, Sox, or something.
I can't remember now.
And I couldn't understand that, and they couldn't
understand me, see?
But a friend of mine in London knew
that I would be interested, and he sent
me a daily paper.
It came by airmail, and I opened it
with great excitement.
And I knew where to look for the
cricket news, right on the front page.
What Harold Wilson and company were doing didn't
matter in a test match.
And right on the front page, what do
you think I read?
In great big capital letters, England facing defeat.
Oh, that was a sad day for me.
I went into Moody Church office and nobody
cared.
And, uh, and, uh, I couldn't get home.
Not that if I could, I could have
done anything about it except to weep with
those who wept.
But two days later, another paper arrived, and
I opened it with a sense of foreboding.
But what do you think I saw this
time?
England in sight of victory.
And in two days, the whole situation had
been transformed.
Listen.
Are you...
You listening to me?
Are you facing defeat?
Or are you in sight of victory?
And the prayer of my heart is that
this week will not pass before you've entered
in to the principle not only of forgiveness
for what you do, but into the principle
of deliverance from what you are.
Because upon you, you're prepared to have the
marks of the cross.
Does your faith work?
Does your love labor?
Are you serving the living God?
Let's be very down to earth about this
and very simple.
I've got a quick eye to discern when
people are in love.
Uh, it isn't only the dreamy look they
have, but it's the obvious desire to be
in each other's company.
The quick departure from a church service after
the benediction as quick as possible.
Holding hands and then away from the crowd
alone.
The sheer delight of intimacy.
That's love.
The hallmark of love is intimacy.
You love Jesus?
Do you?
Say.
How much time are you alone with him?
Oh, I know, it's all very well for
me to talk to a bunch of students
who are under pressure constantly with study.
And there's no one more conscious of the
fact that I myself have many times lost
this battle in my Christian work.
But I come back again to the simple
question.
If I love Jesus, I want to be
with him.
Does your love labor?
Have you been with him today and told
him that you love him?
Opened your heart to him, been open with
him?
Just told him everything?
Is he real to you like that?
Does your love really labor?
Do you remember when the Apostle Paul was
converted on the road to Damascus?
And the Lord sent an unknown disciple called
Ananias and said to him, Ananias, go into
Damascus and give Paul back his sight.
Ananias, he protested and said, Lord, I can't
do that.
He's been an enemy of the church.
He's persecuted every Christian, killed all he can.
I dare not do it.
Ananias said, Jesus, don't worry about him.
Don't worry.
For Ananias, behold, he prayed.
And the mark of the man's conversion was
that he was down on his knees.
That was the authentic mark in heaven.
Somehow the angels seemed to pull their wings
as they saw a self-righteous Pharisee down
on his knees.
Behold, he prayed.
And I've often thought along the corridor of
my memory in the past and wondered what
heaven would say.
Behold, he preaches.
Behold, he works.
Behold, he serves.
Behold, he sings.
Behold, he teaches.
Oh, God.
Behold.
I have so broken his heart and I
have so put him in a state of
absolute self-despair.
Behold, he prayed.
Does he love labor?
I was out in Congo last year.
Went into a mission station.
Saw a lady.
Oh, she must be 75, I would think,
translating the scriptures into the languages of the
people.
I went up to talk with her and
I said to her, say, when are you
getting your next furlough?
She said, in heaven.
In heaven.
I went to Thailand with the OMF for
a field conference.
The field conference was a girl.
She was about 40 years of age.
She was being pushed round in a wheelchair.
She was crippled with polio.
I was very interested in her because I
saw the radiance in her face and the
look in her eye.
I asked Dr. Sanders, the director of OMF,
what was the story.
Oh, he said, on her first term of
service, about 15 years ago, she was hit
with polio and had to be invalided home,
but she wouldn't stay.
Nothing would keep her home.
So we accepted her back.
And now she's in our biggest hospital in
Thailand, at Maram.
She's doing secretarial work, pushed around in a
wheelchair all the time, and she's absolutely radiant.
Does your love labor?
How much does it cost you to be
a Christian?
I say this because I'm not preaching at
you, I just want to be right alongside
you, but I think into the future of
every one of our lives, and I know
that God's wanting to do one thing, and
that's brand us with the cross, make the
authentic marks of a disciple upon us and
give us the revival that we need upon
a life crucified with Christ.
The Holy Spirit comes in all his fullness
and all his power to meet every demand
that God will ever make upon us, and
we enter into the luxury of Christian living,
not the drudgery of trying and struggle, but
the sheer luxury of proving the sufficiency of
God in every situation.
But before God brings you and I there,
he puts us into something.
And I just wonder as I look out
upon a thousand people here ten years ahead,
over how many of you will heaven to
be able to rejoice and say, there's a
man, there's a girl that I can trust
anywhere because wherever they are, they seek only
my glory.
I know there are crucified men, crucified girls
that don't care about anything except the will
of God, and they're only there serving me
because it costs them something.
And I wonder over how many heaven will
have to weep and say there's another fellow
girl.
He went to Moody Bible Institute, she did,
ten years ago to get trained into Christian
work.
She lost out along the way.
She became involved in boyfriends and girlfriends, sex,
other interests.
She lost out.
And now I've had to put her on
the shelf.
Can't use her.
Useless.
God forbid.
I remember a minister saying to me some
years ago, I learned the sin which has
ruined my life in the ministry when I
was a boy of seven.
Jesus has saved you from what you do.
Has he saved you and delivered you from
what you are?
And because of that, because he has done
that, and you have the thrill of his
life in your heart today, and there's a
glow of reality of heaven, why you'll have
labor?
I work, I labor, said the apostle, according
to the power of him who works in
me mightily.
It isn't my own inadequacy, but now it's
all the sufficiency of Christ, and in his
strength and his power, I labor for him.
Just one more word.
Does your hope endure?
They waited for his son from heaven.
How do you define hope?
I'll define it this way.
Expectation plus desire.
You may desire to get A grades in
all your subjects, but you may not expect
it.
You may expect to be fired from the
institute, but you don't desire it.
But when you link expectation with desire, that's
hope.
Their hope endured.
They waited for his son from heaven.
And that isn't a daydream, but it's something
that puts urgency, burden, concern, love in our
hearts.
Don't any of you come up to me
and ask me what I think is the
Lord's program for his return?
Am I post-trib, mid-trib, or pre
-trib?
I know what I am.
But I'm not going to allow that issue
to separate me from other believers.
A friend of mine who was pastor in
a church in Chicago went away for six
months to the mission field alone, without his
wife.
When he came home, the church board decided
they'd put on a banquet for him at
the airport, take his wife, and they'd have
a celebration.
When they went out to O'Hare Field,
it was a foggy night, and all the
planes were hours late, and they went round
to every plane on which they thought he
might come in.
But he wasn't on any of them.
He looked at every timetable, nothing doing.
No schedule seemed to be right.
And an hour went by, fussing round, looking
at timetables, until, until one of them said,
I think he'll be on this one.
Let's all go to this gate.
And then they couldn't find his wife.
She disappeared.
Oh, they thought all the party has fallen
apart.
What's the use of it without her?
So they went to the gate and said,
well, we'll find her later.
And when they went to the gate, what
do you think they found?
They found the minister's wife in the arms
of her husband.
She'd been looking for a person.
They'd been watching a timetable.
They waited for his son from heaven.
Any day, even today, he may come, but
perhaps not for a long time.
But they waited with expectation and desire, knowing
one day for all of us there's a
moment coming.
And oh, what a moment it'll be when
I stand alone before him and give an
account to him of the things done in
the body.
What a humiliation on that day to find
there are no scars, no marks of the
cross, no love that's labored.
I'm saved, but by the skin of my
teeth.
What a thrill to hear him say, well
done, good and faithful servant.
Does your faith really work?
Does your love labor?
Does your hope endure?
I close with this illustration.
During the war, last World War, when Britain
was absolutely alone and the Battle of Britain
was being fought, down in southeast England, when
Britain was enduring terrific air raids every night,
there was a little air base, quite a
big one actually, but comparatively small, judged by
this country, down in the southeast coast.
And if you'd gone there this particular evening,
you would have seen six pilots, fighter pilots,
and six gunners, and six planes.
All that was left of a whole squadron.
They were sitting in a mess room, drinking
coffee, smoking.
It was nighttime.
They hadn't had their clothes off for two
weeks.
They were unshaven, dirty.
Many of them were bleeding and bandaged with
wounds they had had.
And as they sipped their coffee, there came
a message from headquarters in London.
Enemy approaching over the channel.
Estimated strength 500.
And immediately they were on their feet.
They'd left their coffee and cigarettes.
One of them dashed to a radio communication
and just said, Message received and understood.
And in two minutes they were up in
the air to fight overwhelming odds.
Six against 500.
Has the message been received and understood this
morning?
Brandon, bear in my body the marks of
the Lord Jesus.
Therefore upon my life there's come all the
fullness of his power.
Therefore forevermore my love will labor.
And I'll wait for that day when I
shall see his lovely face.
One bright golden morning.
And it will be worth it all when
we see him.
Shall we pray?
Dear Lord, we ask thee that thou wilt
make us, all of us, who are just
nonentities, nobodies.
Make us willing, ready for anything.
Willing that our lives may be at thy
disposal now and always without reservation.
That upon them there may be the marks
of the cross.
That the Christian life to us may not
be a struggle and a battle and a
fight.
To do in our own strength what we
can only fail in doing.
That may be a life of faith in
which we draw moment by moment from thee
in us.
To fight the battle through us for thy
glory.
Lord, may thy Holy Spirit write thy word
deeply upon our hearts.
And may the grace of God and the
love of the Lord Jesus and the fellowship
and power of the Holy Spirit be with
us now and until he come.
Amen.