Let's go back to Proverbs 29.
This is the chapter from which I read
the last time, or the last Sunday morning
that I preached a week or two ago,
and I have a message to finish.
I had five points and I only preached
on three, so I'm going to review those
and give you the last two.
Let's look at chapter 29 here, and let's
read verses 4 to 8.
The king by judgment establisheth the land, but
he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it.
A man that flattereth his neighbor spreadeth a
net for his feet in the transgression of
an evil man that is a snare, but
the righteous doth sing and rejoice.
The righteous considereth the cause of the poor,
but the wicked regardeth not to know it.
Scornful men bring a city into a snare,
but wise men turn away wrath.
Now turn to verse 12.
Verse 12.
If a ruler hearken to lies, all his
servants are wicked.
Verse 14.
The king that faithfully judgeth the poor, his
throne shall be established forever.
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a
child left to himself bringeth his mother to
shame.
When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth, but
the righteous shall see their fall.
Correct thy son, and he shall give thee
rest, yea, he shall give delight unto thy
soul.
Obviously the welfare of a country or even
on a city depends upon its lawmakers.
It's a very solemn thing to be raised
up as the leader of a nation, especially
if you don't have a good history when
you take over the leadership.
America has suffered because of the present presidency.
It's been very successful economically, but religiously
and morally America has taken several steps down.
I'm not going to talk about that.
Instead I want to talk about having a
good day.
Maybe you say when you're leaving your friends,
have a good day.
Some are more enthusiastic and they say, have
a great day.
Well I want to talk not about a
great day, but a day of great things.
And three of those I want to recap.
You'll remember that I talked about the day
of the great expansion, and that's the kind
of day that we are living in.
Geographically we have advanced, we have expanded.
There was a time when our own country
kept us busy with our responsibilities, but it
has spread out to the world, and when
the world wasn't enough we now have moved
a long way into space.
Geographically we live in a day of greatness,
the great expansion.
Now numerically that is true also.
The world is growing numerically, and there are
grave dangers ahead because of it.
Medicine is causing us to live longer, and
the country is getting worried that we old
people don't die soon enough, because they are
afraid that they will go bankrupt keeping us
in our older days.
Numerically we are expanding.
Commercially we are expanding.
I never looked at the stock market.
I didn't even know how to read it,
but I do today, only because I bought
10 stocks in GTE, and they had a
split, and then I had 15, and then
I had another $5, and then $10.
I got 30, I mean 10 stocks.
I got 30 stocks now.
I'm rich, and I'm always wanting to see
it.
I said to my wife one day, do
you think we could afford to lose $240?
I had a man in Cleveland, and he
kept hounding me.
In the bank your money is not, you're
not a good steward.
You should put it in the market, in
something that's sound and good.
One day he said, I despair of you.
I am going to order some GTE stock
for you, and you're going to pay for
it.
I said, all right, how much is it?
He said $24.
Then I said, get me 10.
That's how I come and ask my wife,
do you think we can afford to lose
the money?
I was very suspicious of the stock market.
Today, those 30 stocks are worth $74 apiece,
and I have 30 of them.
I'm a rich man.
Yeah, I look at the stock market, but
I only look at GTE.
It's fun for me.
The thing is, the little man has gotten
into the market.
Commercially, there has been a tremendous expansion, and
educationally.
Again, I talked enough about that the last
time, but I pointed out that living in
the day of the great expansion brings with
it a very grave danger.
It's a danger of neglecting the center for
the circumference.
The more you push the walls out, the
more you get fascinated by the distance, and
you forget the center.
This country, by and large, has forgotten God,
and without God, you cannot succeed in the
best meaning of that word.
So, we live in the days of the
great expansion.
The danger is, we mustn't be interested or
concerned about the pushed-out walls.
We have to keep our eye on the
center, and God is the center.
Not acknowledged so by the world, not acknowledged
so by the country, but he positively is
the center, and the wise man fixes his
eye on the center, and lets God have
his way.
You know, I thought I was going to
be a draftsman.
I'd better not keep on this too long,
but I learned a little mechanical drawing because
that was in preparation for being a draftsman,
and I learned to draw geometric figures, but
then I learned to combine them.
I found with a circle that it was
very easy to deliver the center, to define
and to find the center of a circle.
You divided it into four parts, and where
the lines intersected, that was the center.
But as I drew more convoluted things, my
instructor said to me, now the center moves.
Always keep your eye on the center.
Don't let the circumference, what's happening on the
outside, all around you, become an obsession with
you.
Keep your eye on the center, and the
center is God.
The day of the great expansion.
Then I talked about the day of the
great expertise.
You remember that?
Everyone is a specialist, and a specialist is
a man who knows more and more about
less and until he knows everything about nothing.
The great expertise, even your garbage man, is
a sanitary engineer in these days.
We have to get the right, the appropriate
language.
It's a great sin in these days not
to be correct in describing things like this.
We are living in days when education gives
to us, or develops for us, many, many
skills that we have and never discovered until
we began to get educated.
But you know, there is a danger with
this expertise.
If what you learn, if the knowledge that
you accumulate does not impress upon you increasingly
your ignorance, it has failed and failed utterly.
The bible speaks of men who are ever
learning and never able to come to a
knowledge of the truth.
That's the bible.
Now think about that.
Ever learning and never able to come to
a knowledge of the truth.
If we got our eye off the center,
God says, the fool has said in his
heart, there is no God.
If we are being trapped into the experience
of exchanging what is simple for that which
is complex, and that's what happens with expertise,
you know.
The more you get educated, the more experts
you get in these things, the more you
imagine you can do until you trip over
your feet and fall flat on your face.
We are living in the days of the
great expertise.
And simplicity is going by the board.
Now most of us here, by all means
most of us here, we know what it
was like to live in simple days.
Isn't that right?
Yes indeed.
But now because of all the expertise we
live in very complex days and it's very
very easy to lose our way.
Those of us who know the Lord, we
have somebody to lead us and guide us
and instruct us and give us wisdom.
But men today through their expertise are just
hastening themselves to their doom.
Education is good, but when it says no
God, it's rotten to the core.
It's rotten to the core.
If our boys and girls cannot learn the
basic truth that God is and that God
has to be faced and we ought to
want to be his servants and witnesses for
him, the teachers cannot.
One teacher got disciplined because although she couldn't
talk about it or read about it, she
put a Bible on her desk.
It was part of her testimony and the
authorities said it goes out of the door.
God has nothing.
I mean man has nothing without God.
And education is pushing him out of the
schools.
He's already gone out of the colleges and
so these people are learning and they're learning
and they're learning, but they're never able to
come to a knowledge of the truth.
The Word of God is the truth and
if the Bible goes, then truth goes with
it.
No wonder so many warped lives in these
days are becoming such an influence.
I don't really think we realize the danger
this wonderful country is in because it is
being positively undermined by atheism and with that
goes vileness.
Did any of you hear the news about
Madeline Murray O'Hare this week?
Did anybody hear it?
Nobody heard it?
Well it turns out she founded an atheistic
society and it grew and she made it
her business to travel all over the place
getting adherents who paid a fee.
When she got to $600,000 with her
son she vamoosed and to live with her.
$600,000.
She purchased gold, they know that much and
they evidently carried it with them.
The authorities were glad to be rid of
her and nothing seemed to be done about
her disappearance.
She has a son who got saved you
know.
The very one who was used to take
the Bible from the schools and prayer from
the schools.
He got saved and he's a good preacher
today, but he's very puzzled.
I don't think in his heart he's puzzled
that the authorities don't seem anxious to trace
Mrs. Madeline Murray O'Hare.
But two detectives decided to do it and
they found out and were robbed of the
money and they landed up dead in two
barrels.
If you're going to defy God you're going
to pay the price.
If you're going to say no God for
me you're going to pay the price.
You can't afford to be without God.
We're living in the days of the great
expertise but while education is good it's becoming
damning in this country to our young children
in the public schools.
We ought to be on our knees about
this.
We ought to begin to pray earnestly that
God will begin to remove these high court
judges who make the final decision and every
time it's a majority that he's anti-God.
Let's pray that God will remove them.
He can do it in his own way
but let's get rid of them and there
is no power like the power of prayer
to bring it about.
We ought to be praying that God will
remove these judges, that God will remove these
proponents of atheism in the schools and who
are trying to destroy the children's opportunity to
learn about God and they need nothing, no
one more than they need God.
The day of the great expertise.
Then I talked about the day of the
great expediency.
Expediency.
You do what is uh it's really opportunism.
You know you you just well it may
not be quite right but however it's expedient
that I do this.
It's better that I do this and people
live like that and people by their millions
live in this country.
The language is this, communication.
That means you say I talk and you
listen.
Accommodation.
That means you give and I take.
Negotiation.
We demand and you comply.
That's the way it goes.
It's expediency, opportunism.
Take advantage of everybody that you can.
The facts are there is social expediency.
Lots of things.
You know I thought it was a an
affront when one of the minorities rose up
and said look we need uh public school
diplomas and we demand that we get them
even if we don't attend school.
Can you imagine that?
That actually happened.
There were those who also demanded that they
be given the opportunity to college to go
to college even if they didn't have sufficient
education.
See this is so nonsensical but it's part
of the day of the great expediency and
it really means compromise.
We compromise here, we compromise there, we compromise
somewhere else and you know what the danger
here is?
It's not the danger of deserting the center
for the circumference.
That was the first one.
It's not the danger of exchanging simplicity for
complexity.
That was the second one.
It's the danger of deserting principle for convenience.
Men don't feel ashamed at all if they
are described as unprincipled.
It's part of the culture.
You don't have to stand up for principle.
You have to do whatever is convenient.
You have to do whatever is the easiest
for you and brings the most to you.
Now I have two other days to talk
about in twenty minutes.
The day of the great exposure and the
day of the great exploitation.
Now the day we are living in the
day of the great exposure.
Man lives in a goldfish bowl.
Do you ever feel that?
Do you ever feel like you live in
a goldfish bowl?
There are three things that I think glaringly
illustrate this and the first is the disappearance
of the remote.
There was a time when some people thought
that the moon was green cheese or they
were very content and they went on in
their ignorance.
But of course there were those who said
we have to destroy that myth and so
by means of telescopes and so on they
did.
But the moon was still so remote.
I can remember as a young teenager in
a museum one day or in some kind
of an exhibition hall climbing onto a scale
which told me how much I would weigh
on the moon.
And I got on the scale and instead
of the finger going round like it went
like this.
That's what I would weigh on the moon.
And you know on the moon men float.
You know that.
They have to be held down to the
spacecraft with magnetic shoes.
We've gotten sort of familiar with the moon.
I was mentioning the last time footsteps on
the moon.
I've often thought that Russia would just love
to get to the moon so they could
stamp them out.
But there they are in the pictures of
them to assure us that men really did
get to the moon.
Well you say I'm not likely to go
to the moon.
It's still going to be remain remote for
me.
Look how many of you people, and you
can raise your hands, how many of you
people have been outside this country?
Let me see.
Look at all those hands.
Your fathers and mothers probably never went out
of their town.
And you've been out of the country?
Yes and some of you have been a
long way out of the country.
You see we travel.
And sometimes we go to far away places.
I'm talking about the disappearance of the remote.
We go to these places, we take a
camera with us or we take a video
camera with us.
And we not only go to these places,
we bring them back with us.
And then we can go over.
The remote is no longer remote.
We go out there and then we bring
it back with us.
So the disappearance of the remote is one
evidence that we are living in the day
of the great exposure.
We were exposed to this and we were
exposed to that.
Other cities, other countries, other cultures.
The remote is certainly disappearing.
The next thing is the adoration of the
limelight.
In this day of the great exposure, people
love it.
How many of you watch the Today Show
in the morning?
Nobody watches.
Mr. Gilbert, you watch it?
You used to watch it?
Well I'll tell you what you do from
time to time on the Today Show.
They take you outside and they show you
all those people down the block and round
the corner.
They walk with a camera and people wave
and they jump up and down.
They have their placards.
They love to be seen.
This is the day of the great exposure
and people adore the limelight.
You go to a football game, people have
their posters there.
And or else the camera comes near them,
they have to crane their necks and get
into the picture.
It's the day of the great exposure, the
adoration of the limelight.
But here's something else, the invasion of your
privacy.
I think you would be shocked if you
knew how many people know your name, how
many people know your address, how many people
know your social security number, the number that
you have in your family, even your bank
account, your habits, good and bad, and your
rating, economically.
I doubt if there's a person here whose
history like that is unknown in certain areas
that they never even thought of, never went
to, never communicated with.
If you get a magazine, your address has
already been sold to maybe a thousand more,
a hundred anyway.
Where do you think all your advertising comes
from?
It comes from the people who've gleaned that
information and you have very little privacy, very
little privacy.
See this is the day of the great
exposure.
Now there's a danger here, and it's the
danger of cultivating the outside instead of the
in.
If people are going to see me, I've
got to look good.
If people are going to watch me, I've
got to be, I've got to be dressed
right, I've got to do the right things,
I've got to make the right gestures and
so on.
And so you work on, you know, decorating
the outside, because you suddenly realize this is
the day of the great exposure, when you
ought to be looking after the inside.
You see what you are really is not
what you are outside.
You can put on airs, you can, you
can put on all sorts of things, but
it's what you are on the inside.
Now on the inside there's only one who
can make a difference to you.
You can try to give up your bad
habits in order to develop good habits.
You can, you can try to give up
your crude language in order to speak properly.
Some of these things you can do, but
what's on the inside you can't change.
The Word of God says, you were born
in sin and shapen in iniquity, and in
sin did your mother conceive you.
On the outside you may be beautiful, on
the inside you're putrid.
And it's time you forgot the outside to
take care of the inside.
You see if I'm like that, if my
heart is full of sin, if I'm a
vile sinner, as you tell me, what can
I do about it?
Do you know why the Lord Jesus went
to the cross?
Because there was no other good enough to
pay the price of sin.
Do you know why the Lord Jesus shed
his blood on the cross?
Because it's the blood of Jesus Christ, God's
Son, that cleanses us from all sin.
The only way you can make any difference
on the inside is to stop trying to
make difference on the inside.
But if throwing open the door of your
heart and life to the Lord Jesus, who
paid a price in order to deal with
your sin, and who wants to come into
your heart, you know what happens when Jesus
comes in at the front door?
Sin has to go out at the back.
You can know that your sins are forgiven
once you have deliberately, acknowledging your sin, opened
your heart's door and said, Lord Jesus come
into my heart and be my Saviour.
I know for a little while ago that
a seven-year-old in one of the
Christian day schools, I'd been there for the
devotional in the morning, that little boy came
to me and said, Mr. Woodhouse, I'm not
saved.
His mother was with him too.
I said, well, do you want to do
something about it?
So we talked together, then we knelt down
at the pew, and there he said very
simply, Lord Jesus I'm so sorry I kept
you out of my heart so long.
Please come into my heart and be my
Saviour.
He got up and sat up, we both
got up and sat on the pew, and
I said to him, Kevin, where is Jesus
now?
He said, he's in my heart.
I said, how do you know?
He said, because I asked him, and he
said he would come in, a seven-year
-old.
But we get very, you know, I grope
for these words.
My memory isn't what it used to be.
We get very sophisticated.
Can't imagine ourselves doing that.
The Bible says, except you become as a
little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of
heaven.
And a little child takes God at his
word, and when he does what God says,
he knows it's happened, because he believes God.
Oh, to be little children again, willing to
listen to the voice of God, to make
sure that our sins are gone, because Jesus
is actually in the heart.
Don't worry about the outside, take care of
the inside.
You can't cleanse it yourself, but the Saviour
is knocking at your heart's door.
Who can?
And the moment he comes in, the sin,
question and judgment is taken care of.
Don't be a superficial person.
Talk to God about these things.
Read the word of God.
Find out if this is the way, and
it's sure in the book.
And then say, I'm not going to go
one day longer without him in my life.
Now the last thing is the day of
the great exploitation.
If you look around and you have any
kind of powers of observation, you will realize
that the good of the people is a
thing of the past.
The good of the people is a thing
of the past.
All the politicians still talk about it, but
the history of some of them shows that
you can't really depend too much upon the
politicians.
The good of the people, why the people
in this country are exploited.
This is the day of the great exploitation.
They're exploited by big business, big business.
My wife had to have a cataract removed
just a couple of weeks ago, and the
doctor gave us a prescription for two small
bottles of eye drops.
I took the prescription to the pharmacist.
He filled it.
The girl handed it back to me and
asked me for $70.
Who says the people are not being exploited?
All they say, we need all this money
for research.
We've got to keep doing research.
But believe me, a lot of that money
is flowing into pockets other than the researchers.
We are being exploited by big business.
Older people, I'm glad this president is getting
a concern about older people and prescriptions.
I could ask any one of you in
this congregation, how many of you have prescriptions
that cost you more than $500 a year?
Your hands would all shoot up.
Some of you, it costs $2,000 a
year just for your medication.
I hope Medicare does something about this, because
I have Medicare.
However, the thing is that we are being
exploited by big business.
They know how every time you go back
for the same thing you bought before, it's
always a few cents or a dollar and
a half more than it was the last
time.
It hasn't got any more expensive to the
maker, but he just sees you as somebody,
he can look a little more.
We are being exploited by big business.
And these big businesses have found a unique
way of turning their penalties, when they're penalized,
into profit.
I'm not going to explain it to you,
because you might want to do that yourself,
and it isn't honest.
But they actually find out how to make
their penalties pay off, so it doesn't worry
them when they get fined.
Exploited by big business.
We're also being exploited by organized labor.
You say, well now, what do you mean?
Do you realize that your doctor may very
shortly belong to a union?
They have just started a union for doctors.
Now you know what happens to the union.
What's going to happen if they go on
strike?
Their patients will die.
So what?
We've got our rights.
A doctor's union.
Did you ever hear anything as ridiculous?
And, oh, I'd love to know, to have
the word that I'm thinking of.
Unconscionable.
That's it is.
That's it.
To join a union so you can bring
pressure on your patients when they complain about
your fees.
We're being exploited by organized labor.
Where do you think inflation in the country
comes from?
Strikes and organized labor.
Who pays the bill?
You do, and I do.
We're even being exploited by organized crime.
I read about the A&P grocery stores.
How many of you ever heard of the
A&P grocery stores?
Of course.
Do you know that organized crime actually made
the stores of A&P put in a
detergent that they manufactured, that is the syndicate,
that they manufactured and put it in at
the same price as the detergent they were
presently getting?
And it was extremely inferior.
But they did it.
They were scared to death.
Two managers lost their lives and 12 of
the stores were closed.
It was fear that did it.
Fear of the crime syndicate that was the
A&P.
And we're all the time being exploited by
agitators.
I don't know whether you ever stopped by
open air meetings other than gospel meetings and
listened to the tirade and the diatribes and
the talking of men like this.
You know, most agitators are out for their
own ends.
They really are.
Or else they are serving some cause that
you wouldn't be sympathetic with.
There are so many of them, their service
is causing rejoicing in hell.
We're living in the day of the exploitation.
Now, do you know what the danger is
here?
It's the danger of substituting self for others.
All the circumstances are calculated to make you
say, I've got to do more for myself.
I've got to stand up and be counted
because of me.
You and I are very fortunate.
We live in the best country in the
world with all of its faults.
You only have to travel to a few
of the not so very far away countries
to realize how fortunate we are to be
in America.
I can even say now to be Americans.
All the country has gone down a long
way.
It's got a long way to come back.
But we are among the most fortunate people
on earth.
So, we mustn't spend time in self-pity
because you look around, there's always somebody worse
off than you are.
If you get wrapped up in yourself in
spite of the fact that you're being exploited,
if it troubles you to the point that
it becomes an obsession to overcome it, you're
way off in a left base, a left
field, because there are others around you worse
off than you.
I grumbled that I had no shoes until
I met a man who had no feet.
We can always find somebody worse off than
ourselves.
I'm glad I got that sermon finished.
It's not a great day, but it's a
day of great things.
But all of these have peculiar dangers, and
I've outlined them for you.
Now, you need the Lord.
You should be sitting in your seat asking
yourself a question.
If it is true that I can't conquer
my own sin, if it is true that
I'm in such danger of dying and going
to hell, if it's really true that I
can do nothing good with my life unless
God gets it first, I ought to do
something.
If you have a problem about knowing where
you stand before God, I would like you
to stay behind after this service, even if
it means you get late for dinner, because
I would like to talk to you.
Don't go away uncertain about your state before
God.
If you crossed the road out there, got
hit by a car and were killed on
the highway, as one woman from part of
the farms was done, crossing over to McDonald's,
hit, and she was ready, would you be
ready?
Now, that's a good question for you to
ask yourself.
If I died today, where would I go?
All that's around you in the world is
calculated to keep you not thinking about these
things.
The preacher is the one who has to
do his duty and tell you, if you
die without Christ, you go to hell.
And hell was never meant for you.
Hell was made for the devil and his
angels, and they're going to go there, every
one of them.
But if man goes there, he goes there
of his own volition.
There was a way of escape, and Jesus
paid a price to make it available by
giving his life.
Until you receive him, you're not ready to
die.
Let's pray, shall we?
Our Father, these are solemn things, and we
know the truth behind so many of them.
Our own experiences preach these things to us,
and they influence us.
We ask, Lord, that we may not get
our eye off the center, that we might
realize that you, God, are the one that
we need above everything else.
Grant, Lord, that we'll not be led off
into Bypass Meadow and get away from that
which really matters.
And Lord, we ask that we may not
try to substitute for your salvation our own
good works, even though we be the best
people on the face of the earth.
We are sinners, and we are lost, and
we need to be saved.
Oh, how it would rejoice our hearts if
someone came and said, I am not sure
that I'm right with God.
To see them become sure.
Lord, speak to every heart, each one of
us, as we separate the one from the
other.
We ask it in the Savior's name, the
Lord Jesus Christ.