May I, may I just say two things
to you before I speak, if that isn't
being very Irish.
The first is, um, there were two Scotsmen
and two Welshmen, two Irishmen and two Englishmen,
who were, um, cast up on a desert
island and lost for six months.
At the end of the six months, when
they were found, the two Welshmen were singing,
the two Irishmen were fighting, the two Scotsmen
were talking about home rule for Scotland, and
the two Englishmen, well, they weren't speaking to
each other because they hadn't been introduced.
Now, we're inclined with what we think to
be reserved, other people think being snooty, and
it'd be a great help to me if
you took the initiative and came up and
said hi, when I'm having meals, or see
you from time to time, because I want
in these two days to get to know
you as much as possible.
And the other thing is that though I
was in Chicago for nearly 10 years, I,
during that time, my British accent got a
bit, uh, liberated, but I'm conscious that it's
been sharpened up again, and I hope you
don't have too much problem with what I'm
saying and understanding it.
I hope it won't be more than half
and half, anyway, and that, uh, I'll try
and make it quite simple.
Now then, let us turn to read a
portion of the word in a very familiar
portion.
One of the, while you're looking it up,
it's Matthew 14.
Matthew 14.
One of the most amazing things to me
about the Bible is that when you've read
a portion of it, say, hundreds of times,
you really think, well, you know it all.
Then suddenly it begins to live and take
life to you all over again.
This happened to me just recently in regard
to this particular portion, and it's from my
experience of it that I want to speak
to you today.
Matthew 14.22. And straightway Jesus constrained his
disciples to get into a ship, and to
go before him unto the other side, while
he sent the multitudes away.
And when he had sent the multitudes away,
he went up into a mountain apart to
pray.
And when the evening was come, he was
there alone.
But the ship was now in the midst
of the sea, tossed with waves, for the
wind was contrary.
And in the fourth watch of the night,
Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea.
And when the disciples saw him walking on
the sea, they were troubled, saying, it is
spirit.
And they cried out for fear.
But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, be
of good cheer, it is I, be not
afraid.
And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if
it be thou, bid me come to thee
on the water.
And he said, come.
And when Peter was come down out of
the ship, he walked on the water to
go to Jesus.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he
was afraid.
And beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord,
save me.
And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and
caught him, and said unto him, all thou
of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?
And when they were come into the ship,
the wind ceased.
Then they that were in the ship came
and worshipped him, saying, of a truth, thou
art the Son of God.
May we just bow our heads and hearts
in a word of prayer.
And would you echo in your heart the
prayer which I would offer on your behalf
and mine.
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.
I just want to say a word to
you about what I have in mind for
this week.
It is certainly not to be an hour
when you are taught more doctrine.
There are others here far more able than
I am to do that, and you're in
classrooms all day and every day.
But I want, if I may, in these
few mornings, just to speak to you heart
to heart concerning the problem of communication.
The communication of our faith.
The priority task of the whole Church, of
every Christian.
I'm basing it all on the fact that
every one of us here this morning, right
now, is either a missionary or a mission
field.
You don't become missionary because you get a
visa and go abroad.
Right now, either a missionary or a mission
field.
If your life is rightly related to the
Lord Jesus Christ, you're a missionary.
If it isn't, you're a mission field.
And then our whole theme will center around
that focal point of our personal relationship to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
For this is the key to everything in
our lives.
And as our thinking together on the subject
of the priority task of the Church, I
want to say just four very simple but
very important things that we should bear in
mind.
First, the world is much smaller than we
think.
Actually, it is no more than just a
neighborhood.
I left Glasgow in Scotland in May.
One Saturday, had lunch with my wife at
the airport and rang her up from New
York when she was just sitting down to
her evening meal.
You see, it has shrunk into a mere
neighborhood.
The world is smaller than we think.
And because of that, the task is greater
than we think.
Because all cultures of every nation have been
crowded together with the inevitable tensions and conflicts
which arise out of that fact.
And also, of course, because of the tremendous
population explosion which has taken place in the
20th century, about which I don't need to
say anything, you know it all.
But this all makes the task far greater
than we think.
And third, the time is shorter than we
think.
I think one of the most thrilling spiritual
exercises is to read your daily newspaper alongside
your Bible.
And you see unfolding all that the Lord
Jesus said would happen in these last days.
It puts a sense of urgency into our
feet, into our mind, and into our heart.
The time is shorter than we think.
We're not responsible for the evangelization of the
generation that has gone, nor responsible for the
evangelization of a generation yet to be.
But we are responsible for this one.
And the time is shorter than we think.
And fourthly, the terms are costlier than we
think.
It's going to cost us a great deal
more than we ever imagined.
This generation will never be won to Christ.
No city will be won to Christ through
mass evangelism.
Now please don't take your pencil and postcard
and write to Billy Graham and say that
I'm having a crack at him.
I'm certainly not.
Because during his crusade in Chicago, I was
vice chairman of the committee and backed him
100%.
I would do the same again at any
place at any time.
But he actually said to me in those
days in Chicago that if the church was
doing its job, I would be out of
work.
He's quite right.
When I left Moody Church in 1962, I
left behind about 40 people who were in
a discipleship class, all of whom who had
been converted at the Billy Graham crusade.
I rejoiced in it.
Many other pastors in this city could say
exactly the same thing.
This was tremendous.
But supposing every member of Moody Church in
1962 had one, just one individual for Christ.
I'd have left behind 2,500 people in
a discipleship class.
You see the difference is as big as
that.
To have an evangelistic crusade, a mass evangelistic
crusade in a big city, would cost half
a million dollars.
To have what the church really needs wouldn't
cost a cent.
But it would cost every one of us
everything in terms of personal commitment to Christ.
And it's that that I'm concerned about in
these days.
The terms are costlier than we think.
So here then you will bear in mind
during these mornings, these simple propositions.
The world is smaller than we think.
The task is greater than we think.
The time is shorter than we think.
And the terms are costlier than we think.
And I'm going to approach this theme from
five different angles.
And our first one this morning will be
a relationship which must be restored.
And that brings us straight to the message,
to the portion of scripture which I read
to a few minutes ago.
As I was reading this portion, the words
of the 30th verse of Matthew 14 came
home to me with tremendous personal force.
Matthew 14 verse 30.
Let me read it to you.
But when he saw the wind boisterous, he
was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried
saying, Lord save me.
Just those three words went right home to
my heart, because they spoke to my personal
experience.
Here they are.
May the Spirit of God ring an alarm
bell in your soul this morning, beginning to
sink.
How graphically those words, when they lived to
me afresh, spoke to my own personal spiritual
experience.
I wonder if they don't do exactly the
same to you today.
Somehow there's been a loosening of our hold
upon God, a slackening in our devotion to
him, a carelessness in the cultivation of our
inner life.
Whether that sinking is sudden due to some
tragic moral breakdown, I wouldn't know.
Or whether it's just been gradual.
But wherever I go, I find today that
people of every age group are involved in
a rat race.
They're on a conveyor belt from dawn till
night, seven days a week.
Too tired to pray, too weary to read
the Bible, study, examinations, higher academic standards, the
business, the family, the home.
All these things spell out for us with
tremendous force, the warning beginning to sink.
Old standards have been given up.
Disciplines have been abandoned.
So much easier to go along with the
crowd.
We never thought it would happen to us.
We were called into the ministry.
We thought we'd be immune from it, but
we haven't been.
We've been given places of spiritual leadership and
responsibility, and we thought this itself would be
an inoculation of this sinking process.
But we found there's nothing easier than to
lose the word of God in the work
of God.
Beginning to sink.
And some of you have come to this
campus with all its associations and tremendous history,
which has been of worldwide blessing to millions
of people.
And you thought that coming to Moody Bible
Institute would be a preventive, but you found
it accelerating the process.
So much easier, in all the rush, just
to abandon the one thing that really matters.
And you know it's noticeable to yourself, because
when you begin to sink you get irritable.
Your boiling point gets low.
You're on the defensive, on edge.
You keep people at a distance from you.
You don't want them to know about it.
But they do know.
They can see the tensions and the strains
and the pressure.
They watch you pressing the panic button every
now and again.
And they wonder what's the matter.
They don't know the reason for it.
Beginning to sink.
What did Peter do in such circumstances?
He cried out to God, Lord save me.
Now that's a very short prayer.
But under the circumstances I don't think it
could have been much longer.
His water was probably up to his chin
at the moment.
He was desperate.
So desperate indeed that he just had time
to cry, Lord save me.
How I thank God for short prayers.
We're not heard in heaven for our correct
evangelical phraseology.
We're heard because of our confessed sense of
peril and danger.
Prayer that shoots like an arrow right to
the heart of God from my heart.
It goes straight to the throne in heaven,
Lord save me.
A confessed sense of need.
One great hindrance to the operation of miracles
in life is the absence of any sense
of need.
Faith works best in the context of desperation.
I never read in my Bible that God
removes an anthill, but I do read that
it removes a mountain.
I don't read that he deals with a
mild headache, but he does deal with impossibilities.
Faith works most convincingly when there's no other
way out.
Not much use believing God if all the
time we leave just a way of escape
in case he doesn't work.
But here's Peter shut up to a miracle.
Now it's a horrendous thing when you get
to that place in your Christian life, when
you've got just no other way out.
When you cry, Lord save me.
How often I've prayed like that, when pressures
were overwhelming, when it was impossible to frame
words, when I was too tired to think,
oh Lord save me, keep me sane, Lord
save me, don't let me make a wrong
decision.
And when the enemy comes in like a
flood and attacks me, Lord save me.
Now what intrigues me about this passage of
scripture is to notice how the Lord goes
about answering the prayer of a man or
a girl who's desperate.
The fellow, the girl who just knows they
haven't got any other alternative and they're shut
up to God and to him working miracles.
I trust that there are many in that
category here this morning.
It's a wonderful place to be.
Do you notice the divine pattern of deliverance?
First of all, do you notice that Peter's
doubts were rebuked?
Verse 31, O thou of little faith, wherefore
didst thou doubt?
The first thing the Lord Jesus did was
to expose the real cause of his sinking,
and firmly but lovingly he goes and penetrates
to the root of the whole cause of
sinking, a breakdown in his basic relationships with
God.
Wherefore didst thou doubt, unbelief?
Without faith it's impossible to please God.
When you begin to doubt God's ability to
save you in a particular situation, it isn't
that you stop practicing the principle of faith,
but rather that you put your faith in
something or someone else than the only one
who is worthy of it, the only trustworthy
object, and you begin to sing.
Everybody lives by faith, everybody.
Life can't exist without faith at any level.
A friend of mine who happens to be
a minister in the Church of England was
traveling recently from England to Australia, and he
decided to go by ship, a sensible man,
but got some relaxation.
Took him about six weeks, but when he
got aboard the boat, he imagined that he
had reserved a single cabin.
But he found that there was someone else
occupying it, another man.
And he began to unpack his belongings, with
one eye on his luggage and another eye
on his traveling companion.
And the more he looked at him, the
less he felt he could trust him.
Then just after a moment, the other man
went out of the room, the cabin, so
my friend took the opportunity of his absence
to wrap up all his personal belongings in
a little case.
And presently the other man came back.
So my friend went out with his valuables
to find the purser of the ship.
And he found him and he said, I'm
sorry to bother you, but I imagined I
had a single cabin reserved on this boat,
but I find I haven't, and there's another
man in my cabin.
And the more I look at him, the
less I feel I can trust him.
Would you mind looking after my valuables on
the voyage?
So the purser said, Certainly sir, I'd be
glad to.
And he took them and locked them up
and turned round with a smile, and he
said to him, It may surprise you, sir,
to know that your traveling companion has just
been here and said exactly the same thing.
You see, it is absolutely impossible in any
situation to exist without faith.
It was unbelief which drove our first parents
from God.
But half God said that thou shalt not
eat of the fruit of every tree was
the question which Satan sewed into the mind
of Eve, with disastrous results to the whole
human family.
It wasn't that she stopped practicing faith, but
she put her faith in the wrong object.
Instead of believing God's truth, she believed the
devil's lie.
And unbelief led to rebellion, and that's the
root of all sin.
And therefore the path which God has decreed
to the way to restore a broken relationship
with him is belief unto the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Wherefore didst thou doubt?
Why has your confidence in God ceased?
I suspect very strongly, in Peter's case, it
was because of winds and waves.
You remember when he leapt out of a
ship to come to Christ?
He had no problem with winds and waves,
he just forgot about them all.
But he came, became increasingly conscious of the
waves and wind which had troubled him on
the boat, still troubled him, when he trusted
the Savior.
And he began concentrating on winds and waves,
then he began to sink.
Now this isn't only Peter's trouble, my friend,
it's yours and mine.
Why have you begun to sink?
Why did I begin to sink?
I know, because we gave our time and
our concentration to battling with life's problems and
storms and pressures, until our spiritual horizons grew
so dim that they almost ceased to exist.
Tragic that that can happen to a Christian,
but it can.
Absorption with storms and winds drove us off
our true center and removed us from the
source of strength and power which alone could
stop us sinking.
And we found ourselves living within the limited
resources of our own strength, and the battle
was too much for us, and we began
to sink.
And we lost the sense of the presence
of the One who had power to control
the storm.
Wherefore did you die?
There's the Lord exposing the basic trouble, the
basic cause of sinking unbelief.
But do you notice in this verse, not
only did the Lord rebuke his doubts, there
came a moment when he reversed his defeat.
Immediately, verse 31, that is, immediately Peter cried,
Lord save me.
Immediately Jesus took him by the hand and
lifted him up, and the downward trend, the
sinking trend, was reversed.
A new power, another person had taken over,
and Peter found himself in the hands of
one who could lift him up and deliver
him from the storm.
Jesus had taken over him.
Now that's exactly what you need and what
I need today.
Not just a visit to church, not just
three years at MBI, not a mild dose
of religion, not a correct understanding of doctrine
merely, but a God, a Master, a Lord
who can take hold of me and lift
me up above the storm.
Enable me to triumph.
Forgive me using a very childish illustration, but
I hold in my hand a Biro pen.
Interesting enough, when I bought it here in
Chicago, the advertisement said that this pen will
write on butter or will write in your
bath.
Well now, that was quite interesting, because I
don't usually write on butter and certainly never
in my bath, but I was very grateful,
I have been through the years, for the
times when it's written on paper.
And look, I'm holding this pen in one
hand, and I want to make it stand
upright.
You watching?
Now I'll try and make that pen stand
upright, and I just can't do it.
Nothing that I can do, it would fall,
collapse.
I can't do it.
There's only one thing that can make that
pen stand upright.
It's when another hand comes on it from
above and then holds it steady.
See?
And then it's upright.
That hand can't do it, and the more
it tries, the more it goes on falling.
But there comes a moment when I acknowledge
that that hand can't do it, therefore another
hand comes and takes over, and the pen
is now steady.
It's upright.
Now that's exactly your trouble, and mine exactly
your need.
As long as I go on trying to
stop myself sinking, I go on going down.
But when I acknowledge I'm beaten, and a
total failure, and never can be anything else,
then God comes in from above.
And when I begin to say, Lord save
me, because I can't save myself.
Lord save me, because I'm helpless with this
storm, and with this problem, and with this
battle.
Then he comes from above, and he makes
me stand.
But you see, he must be Lord.
He must take control.
A predecessor of mine at Charlotte Chaplain, Edinburgh,
was the famous Dr. Graham Scroggie, of whom
many of you may have heard, you've probably
read his books.
He was once speaking to a lady, a
young lady, after a service, and he said
to her, why don't you trust Christ?
She said, Dr. Scroggie, I'm afraid of two
things.
He said, what are they?
Well, she said, I play the piano in
a jazz band.
I'm afraid the Lord might ask me to
give it up.
And what's the second one?
Oh, she said, I'm afraid God might call
me to a missionary, and I'd have to
go through life without a husband.
So Dr. Scroggie, wise old owl that he
was.
Scroggie, wise old owl that he was, just
opened his Bible at Acts 10, 14.
You remember the verse?
Where Simon Peter was having a little siesta
on his rooftop at Joppa, for lunch.
And he felt hungry, and in his dream,
he was asleep, he saw some strange apparition
coming down from heaven, loaded with food of
all kinds, and a voice that said to
him, rise Peter, kill and eat.
And he said, not so Lord, I never.
Now just pause a minute to say that
it's a desperately dangerous thing to say never
to Jesus.
Don't you try it.
Not so Lord, I never eat anything common
or unclean.
Dr. Scroggie pointed out to this lady how
absolutely contradictory it is to say in one
breath, not so, and the next breath, Lord.
Now he said, take my pen, and I
go out to the office here, and I'll
come back in ten minutes, and cross out
one or the other.
Cross out either not so, or cross out
Lord.
And he went away.
Ten minutes later he came back, looked over
his shoulder.
The Bible had been stained with a tear.
But the words not so, had been crossed
out.
And Jesus was Lord.
From that moment, her life had passed out
of her own hands.
She now recognized that she belonged to another,
not to herself.
Incidentally, that lady lived for 30 years to
be a missionary in India.
Incidentally also, she got a husband.
But can't guarantee that.
But we do know that the will of
God is good, and acceptable, and perfect.
But a slave never dictates his terms to
his master, not so Lord.
Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, said
Peter.
Why is it that some Christians live in
victory, and you can tell by looking at
them, they're rejoicing in it.
And some live in hopeless defeat for years.
Why should that be?
It isn't that some have the Holy Spirit,
and some have not, because all have.
Every Christian, born again, has him.
The difference is simply this, that some have
recognized he is there, and some haven't.
Some have a theoretical Christ, some have a
doctrinal Christ, some have an experimental Christ, and
they know Christ as Lord in their hearts.
And they have crowned him as their King.
Has that ever happened in your life?
Some people have Jesus, but they're still their
own masters.
Some people have Jesus, and he is their
master.
We in Britain have a very strange form
of government.
We call it a constitutional monarchy.
I'll explain that in a minute.
In June it was, I think—oh yes, June
the 2nd, it was my wedding anniversary—1953.
Our present Queen was crowned in Westminster Abbey
in London.
It was the day forecast by the weather
prophets as likely to be the finest day
of the year.
Actually it poured from dawn till dusk, like
it can only do around there, streamed down.
But those of us who saw that ceremony
on television will never forget the moment when
the Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the
Church in England, with the crown in his
hand, turned to about 4,000 people in
that ancient historical building and said to them,
My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to
you your rightful sovereign Elizabeth.
Do you assent to pay her homage?
And just one word rang out and echoed
through that vast building in London at that
moment.
The word I and 4,000 people representing
every stage of life in Britain had acknowledged
her to be their rightful sovereign.
And he turned and placed the crown on
her head.
And that day she was our Queen.
We all love her.
She's a Christian, born-again Christian, and we
respect her.
But listen, never from that day to this
has she made one decision.
Never one.
Harold Wilson and company do that, for better
or worse.
You see, we have
a government who make
all the decisions.
And we strange Britishers, at least the English
part of Britain, sort of like it that
way.
A Queen who is above every party and
who signs every document that the government presents
to her and puts a signature, a rubber
stamp to it, and then a government who
make every decision.
That's a constitutional monarchy.
Very strange.
Very, very strange.
That that has somehow or other infiltrated itself
into twentieth-century Christianity.
In which, I mean, supposing I asked you
folk here in this auditorium, is Jesus Christ
your Lord?
You would say, yeah.
Well, I come back at you, very lovingly,
but I trust with Holy Spirit penetration, and
I say to you, who makes the decisions?
Who chooses your life partner?
Who chooses a career?
Who chooses how you spend your money, if
any?
Who makes the decisions?
Listen, God refuses to be a rubber stamp
to anybody.
Sanctify Christ as Lord, Lord Saviour.
And immediately, the downward trend is reversed, and
Peter experienced the thrill of the upward pull
of the living Christ, who gave him power
in the moment of defeat.
But he must be Lord.
A relationship which must be restored.
Is that so with you?
Why is that so essential?
What happened?
Forgive me if I use just another illustration
to illustrate, to show you what I mean.
You all know my good friend, I'm sure,
Stephen Alford.
I was speaking at his spiritual life convention
recently, and after one meeting, I was traveling
back to Chicago, which was my home at
the time.
It was a very foggy night, snow was
falling, wintertime.
When I got to Kennedy Airport, all the
planes had been canceled.
So I hung around for a couple of
hours, and eventually, somebody said, one plane flying
to Chicago, and everybody made a dive for
it.
So I managed to get in, in the
last seat, right at the back, right at
the very back.
I don't know, but I suppose there'd be
about 160 others, people all swarming in, sitting
down.
And the snow was falling like it's nobody's
business.
And outside, as I looked out through my
little window, there were four men on the
wings, soothing it off, defrosting them.
And I suddenly remembered, just the sort of
thing you would remember in a moment like
that, that the weight of a jet plane,
fully loaded with passengers and gas, was 250
,000 pounds.
And I looked right away into the distance,
and saw the back of the pilot's head.
And I said, oh Lord, bless him.
I wasn't fearful, but certainly prayerful.
Presently, the engines began to turn over, and
we trundled to the end of the runway.
And we stopped.
And when we'd stopped, I looked out the
window and wondered why.
Here were the four men back, with the
ladder, on the wing, sweeping away the snow,
defrosting it.
The whole situation was most unpromising.
But suddenly, there was a tremendous roar.
And if you travel economy class in a
jet, you know what it's like.
It was a roar.
And that plane gradually took speed, and with
a flurry of snow, went along that runway.
And when it had reached a speed of
about 150 knots, the pilot pulled a stick,
the nose went up in the air, and
it began to soar, and soar, and soar,
and climb, until it reached 35,000 feet,
in a brilliant moonlight, starlight night.
And in less than two hours, I was
back in O'Hare Field.
Was that just something that happened by chance?
Oh no.
Is it something that might happen, or might
not happen?
Oh no, it must happen.
Why?
Well, you see, this reason.
At a speed of 150 knots, another law
came into operation.
Until that moment, the law of gravity had
held that plane on the runway.
But at 150 knots, the law of aerodynamics
began to take over, and the sheer thrust
of four jet engines inside the plane was
so tremendous, that it overcame the law of
gravity, and kept it in subjection.
And the plane soared through the storm.
Recognize this verse?
The law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus hath set me free from the
law of sin and death.
Hallelujah.
When I say, Lord save me, and I
know that it's desperate, and I know there's
no other way out, except he takes over,
Lord save me, at that moment, at that
very moment, he stretches out his hand and
lifts me up, and I experience the upward
pull of a living Christ.
Do you know that in your life?
Do you?
Or are you defeated?
Are you still your own master, managing your
own business, trying to run your own life,
trying to do your own studies, and you
haven't discovered that in Jesus dwells all the
fullness of the Godhead, and you are complete
in him, and he is in you today?
If every one of us knew that, not
as a theory, not as a doctrine, but
as an experience that each one of us
has God in our hearts, seven days a
week, 24 hours a day, it would revolutionize
Christianity.
Every one of our lives would be absolutely
revolutionized if we believed, not theoretically, but experimentally
in our hearts that we carry God inside
us, and all he wants is to be
God in us.
For you and I to get out of
the way, and let him get into business,
and into control, and take over, Lord save
me, and until I get to the point
of desperation, until I, as long as I
think there's some other alternative, that after all
I'm not so bad as the Bible says
I am, I'm prepared to give him 95
percent of the commission, but I want five
for myself, as long as I go on
talking about it like that, I go on
thinking.
Now just a word in conclusion, which isn't
easy to say from this platform, but which
I want to say to be honest.
Do you notice Peter's doubts rebuked, his defeat
was reversed, and then his dilemma was removed.
Verse 32, immediately when they got into the
ship, the wind ceased.
Now you notice the order of this.
Doubts rebuked, defeat reversed, dilemma removed.
The last in order of treatment was the
first in order of desire.
May I repeat that?
The last in order of treatment was the
first in order of desire.
Lord save me, get me out of this
mess.
Lord deliver me from this situation.
Lord save me, I can't take it anymore.
Panic button, and the Lord ignores that, and
the first in order of treatment was to
rebuke his doubts, and then reverse his defeat,
and finally to remove the dilemma.
Because you see the Lord is concerned about
dealing with the man, first of all.
As long as we're in defeat, the dilemma
remains.
Situations get worse, the pressures increase, the hopelessness
of it all seems to become increasingly powerful
and real.
But when we come to the point of
trusting Christ completely, the dilemma moves.
Moses knew the secret.
When he took three million people through a
wilderness, he didn't say, Lord deal with these
awkward people, Lord get rid of them, Lord
send them away, I don't want them, don't
want them.
No, they're always grumbling and complaining.
He didn't talk about that.
The problems were far too big for him.
He just said one thing, Lord, I beseech
you, show me your glory.
That's all that Moses needed.
It's all that you and I need, just
a touch of his glory.
And you see, what I want to say
in conclusion, is that the circumstances in which
you are sinking are brought about by your
Heavenly Father in order that you come to
the place of saying, Lord save me.
Just four years ago, I was preparing my
message for a Sunday, it was that Saturday
afternoon, in my study in Edinburgh.
As I was writing it out, I suddenly
lost control of my hand, and it wandered
all over the paper.
I called out to my wife, I found
I couldn't stand up.
I had some idea of what might have
happened, and before long I was sure.
In five minutes I couldn't speak, I couldn't
walk.
I knew that I'd had a cerebral hemorrhage,
which is a stroke, might well have been
fatal.
I was helpless, and in a few minutes
reduced to childhood.
Spiritually, I couldn't pray, read my Bible for
months.
Mentally, I couldn't think, couldn't concentrate.
Physically, I was as weak as a child.
This situation lasted for about seven or eight
months.
One time I suddenly found that the devil
was hurling everything at me.
I thought just like him to take advantage
of a situation like this, and he began
to put into my mind sinful thoughts.
Temptation that I thought I'd got rid of
for twenty years came back with overwhelming force,
and I had no power to resist.
Temptation to impurity, temptation to bad language, temptation
to blow my top with my wife and
children, and they experienced a father who had
reverted to childhood.
In the midst of all this, when I
was absolutely desperate, I cried out to God
and said, Oh God, get me out of
this mess.
Lord, take me home to heaven.
I can't stand anymore this attack of the
devil.
Can't lie here like this.
I don't want the last memory that my
wife and family have of me to be
a man who lives like a cabbage and
helpless for all his life.
Lord, save me from it.
Get me out of it.
Take me right away.
Let me die right now.
And it seemed to me, though I had
no vision, no dramatic sense of God's presence,
a conviction came to my heart, born of
the Spirit, who said to me, You've got
all this wrong.
Satan hasn't got the slightest thing to do
with it.
You've been blaming the devil.
This isn't from the devil.
It's from me.
I had to bring you to this point
in order that you might understand that this
is the kind of man with all the
temptations to impurity and sinfulness and bad language
and blowing your top, this is the kind
of man you always will be but for
the grace of God.
And I knew in theory, but now I
knew in experience, that God is not in
the self-improvement business, but is in the
Christ-replacement business.
He's never been attempting to make me a
better person, but he's always been wanting me
to get out of the way and make
room for him.
And then he said to me, Just take
a look and a long big think into
the past 30 years.
And I went back to the time when
I started the ministry in London, 14 years
over there, 10 years here at Moody Church,
two or three years in Edinburgh.
And I saw a building up of a
situation which was pressure, problem, work.
Oh, I thought it was so spiritual.
For I was working like any slave for
the sake of God's dear son.
Seven days a week, 14 hours a day,
sometimes more.
No time for home, no time for family,
no time for anything but work, work, work.
And I had substituted work for worship, service
for heart surrender.
And I recalled how I had spoken to
a congregation many times and demanded from them
an obedience to truth, which literally I wasn't
prepared to give myself.
I had substituted orthodoxy for obedience, so proud
of being a fundamentalist.
But literally in my life there were points
in which I was not obeying God, and
I had substituted the Bible for God.
So proud of my neat outlines, three points,
introduction and conclusion, all points beginning with the
same letter.
So proud of it all, built up over
20 years all this, so proud of it.
I'd substituted my knowledge of truth for my
knowledge of God.
You remember Paul's great life ambition, that I
might know him.
Not that I might know truth.
The one is important, of course, but it's
only, it's only the gateway to the other
that I might know him.
And I saw it all.
And I tell you, though I could do
nothing but weep, I wet my heart up,
and I knew that I was at the
end of my rope.
And when I knew that, from sinking sands
he lifted me, with tender hands he lifted
me, from shades of night to planes of
light, oh praise his name, he lifted me.
And here I stand before you 100 percent
well, restored.
But he brought me to the place when
I was absolutely finished in myself.
I'm not suggesting that God is going to
do that sort of thing with you, but
I am suggesting that he will insist on
the principle of a relationship which must be
restored, and will use anything, and go to
any means, until you're prepared to say, Lord,
it's no good, save me.
Let's pray.