Just let's have a word of prayer, shall
we?
We thank you, dear Lord, for your great
love for each one of us.
In a world today where life is so
cheap, each one of us matters to you.
We praise you that the Lord Jesus died
for each one of us personally, and he
calls us to walk the Calvary road, that
in so doing we may find the secret
of life, the blessing of God in our
hearts, and the reality of what it means
to be a Christian.
Lord, for all you have said to us
tonight already, in song, in music, and in
the singing of hymns, in the sense of
thine earnest, we do praise you, and now
we pray that as we turn to the
word, and as we listen to it, that
thou wilt speak to our hearts.
May we see far beyond a preacher, and
hear far beyond a human voice, and tonight
may we see Jesus, and respond with all
our hearts' love, because he gave all for
us.
May we tonight give all to him.
We ask it for his name's sake.
Amen.
Good evening, everyone.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
It's good to be here again tonight.
It's terrifically hot.
I don't know what I do feel.
I don't know if this is normal for
this part of the world, but it's really,
you don't need to lay it on like
this, because I can believe it without experiencing
it all.
I remember last time I was to Adelaide,
I saw some fantastic things, and one of
them was, we had heat like this, went
on day after day after day, and then
one night we had a, not a rainstorm,
but a storm of mud, and it simply
poured on us, all sorts of mud and
dirt from the skies.
I didn't know you could do that, to
turn out that in Adelaide, that's tremendous, but
it made everybody's shirt very dirty, I remember.
It was hard lands in the choir.
So we're waiting for your mudstorm, and the
sooner it comes, the better.
Meanwhile I hope you're all watching with, may
I say, real interest, the world-shaking events
at Sydney, and the cliff-hanging experiences.
I don't think I'm going to sleep too
well tonight.
It'll all be over tomorrow morning, one way
or the other.
Well, as from tomorrow night, we go to
Flinders Street in the city, the Baptist church,
and I believe that God would have me
bring a series of messages, which will have
a connecting link, on the ministry of the
Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian.
I think that that subject is very much
needed today, and perhaps one that is very
much misunderstood.
So would you come prayerfully, expecting that God
will speak to us night by night?
I'm so glad the choir are going to
be with us each evening, and we're not
having a sort of regular hymn, prayer hymn
sort of thing, but we're having singing and
music, and then the message.
I just ask you to pray that God
may speak, as we move into the centre
of the city, that we may really have
numbers far exceeding our expectation.
I've always heard that Adelaide's a difficult spot
to get a crowd.
Well, may the Lord can do that for
us, and you come in praying and believing
that he will meet with us.
Now will you turn in your Bible tonight
to the Epistle to the Romans, just a
short portion, Romans chapter 14, verses 7 through
9.
Romans 14, 7 through 9.
I'm reading it from the King James Authorised
Version.
None of us liveth to himself, no man
dieth to himself.
For whether we live, we live unto the
Lord, and whether we die, we die unto
the Lord.
Whether we live therefore or die, we are
the Lord's.
For to this end Christ both died and
rose and revived, that he might be Lord
both of the dead and of the living.
If there ever comes a time, I very
much doubted myself, but if there comes a
time when the history of the 20th century
is written, I think it will measure upon
the amazing collapse of democracy.
When this century dawned, I wasn't here at
the time, believe it or not, but when
this century dawned, I'm told, that the system
of government called democracy was regarded as that
which would bring in a sort of millennium.
The government of the people, for the people,
by the people.
Nowadays, any country which is practising that kind
of government has its back to the wall.
And new countries emerging in Africa, in many
different continents, are discovering that there's got to
be a different principle altogether to that.
The thing that has brought that about, interestingly
enough, is another phenomenon of this century which
didn't exist when it all began, and that
is communism.
One of the earliest leaders of the communist
regime in Russia, Lenin, said this, that it
is the most absurd folly to believe that
the transition from capitalism to socialism can ever
be achieved apart from dictatorship.
Do you get the thrust of that?
That the shift, the transition between capitalism and
socialism can't take place without dictatorship.
And he's dead right.
And you know, the very interesting thing to
me is that Christianity has, at its heart,
the principle of dictatorship.
Not the Belsen camp type of thing, of
course, but it begins with the statement that
Jesus Christ is Lord of the dead and
of the living.
And to this end he died and rose
that he might be Lord.
And this is the whole principle of the
Christian life.
And that which makes it individually such a
thrilling experience.
Now, you know, it isn't very long before
we discover that in many areas we must
have a master.
Every ship has to have a captain, and
at sea his authority is undisputed.
Every plane has a captain, and in the
course of its flight he is in control.
Every home has to have a head, and
every Christian has to acknowledge the lordship of
Jesus Christ.
As a matter of fact, the reason for
our failure, our pathetic failure as Christians, is
the strange belief that somehow or other we
can get away with a kind of religion
which pays Jesus Christ a sort of lip
service on Sunday and then more or less
forgets about him for the rest of the
week.
And the result of all that, merely playing
church, is defeat and misery and failure.
I remember some time ago I had a
small car.
It was eight horsepower, the kind of car
I don't get into, I put it on.
You know the sort I mean?
I wrapped myself round it.
Well, I was quite friendly with this car.
It was quite a nice little vehicle, really.
I bought it quite cheaply.
It was eight horsepower, but I think before
I bought it four of the horses were
died.
I only paid about thirty pounds for it,
that's about sixty dollars.
It did very well, but it was very
bad in cold weather.
I could never get it to start.
The self-starter never would work.
Battery wouldn't turn.
So anticipating such emergencies, the manufacturers of this
vehicle provided every owner with a colossal, long
starting handle, a great long thing.
And the idea was, you see, that you
got hold of this starting handle and you
went round to the front of the car
and you stuck it into the engine.
It went in quite a long way and
then you cranked it up.
But the unfortunate thing was this, that on
the dashboard there was a little thing you
pulled out that had written on it, choke.
So you had to pull this out, you
see.
It wouldn't stay out, of course, you had
to pull it out.
Well, if you had this choke pulled out
and the self-starter worked, well, that was
fine.
But I never have understood how the manufacturers
of that vehicle expected anybody to hold the
choke out with one hand and go round
to the front of the car and crank
it with the other.
You get me, apparently.
Yes.
Well, you see, that was my problem.
And that often happened.
So the only thing to do on such
an occasion was to call for my wife.
And I got her to come and I
said, now, would you mind just sitting in
this driving seat and holding out the choke
while I get round to the front here
and crank it up?
Well, she did that.
And after some, several cranks and some hard
work on a cold day, eventually those four
house horses sort of startled themselves into activity
and life with quite a considerable noise.
Well, having accomplished that, of course, I went
round to the driving seat and then I
said to my wife, now, thank you very
much, that's all, you can go back to
the washing.
Because it would have been absolutely ridiculous, wouldn't
it?
Supposing I'd said to her, now, when we
go out this morning, would you mind just
keeping your hand on that choke and I'll
put my foot on the accelerator and you
put a foot on the brake and I'll
have a hand on the steering wheel and
you put a hand on the handbrake, in
about ten yards we'd be in the nearest
ditch.
The only secret of that vehicle going satisfactorily
along the road was having one person in
control.
Now that's the only secret of life, really,
when you've got the right person in control.
And what I want to do very simply
tonight is to talk to you about your
relationship to Jesus Christ.
Because that's what Christianity is all about.
It's not your attachment to a church or
a denomination or anything like that, it's your
personal relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And may I ask you, right away, what
place does he have in your life?
Honestly, is he first?
Or second?
Or third?
Or one of the also-rans?
Or is he had no place at all?
What position, when the chips are down, I
mean, when you look at the thing and
think of it realistically in your life, what
place does Jesus Christ hold?
Well, now, he demands the place of lordship.
And, of course, you might have every right
to say, what is his claim for sovereignty?
I find people are willing to dedicate themselves,
to give themselves a service, to consecrate themselves,
but they're not willing, not willing to surrender
their little kingdom.
Everyone, even though he gets right the way
down to some skid row, he's still a
king in his own right.
And he refuses to give up the throne,
and he runs his own life.
He likes to be the boss.
Now, of course, this is the trouble in
the whole world today.
I have two daughters.
One of them is on the mission field
in Africa, and the other one is studying
teacher training in Manchester in England.
One is 30 years old, and the other
20.
She's a post-it.
And I remember so well how this daughter
of mine, who is now 30, when she
was about nine years old, and we were
living in Richmond in London, she had a
date every morning with a boyfriend who lived
next door.
She was eight, he was nine.
It was getting quite serious, and developing very
happily, and I'm simply recounting to you the
incident which brought the whole thing to a
screeching halt.
She went out that day to meet him,
as usual, at 8.30. And she got
onto the gate at our garden, and I
could tell that she was expecting his arrival.
But he didn't deign to appear until about
nine.
And I could see that she was getting
quite annoyed with him.
I knew that from her back.
You can always tell what a girl's thinking
about when you see her back.
There's something about it that conveys the impression,
you know, that she's really getting a little
irritated.
And I could see that she was getting
thoroughly vexed.
So he came along at nine.
Technically, it didn't really matter what time he
turned up.
And so he got up on this gate
beside her, and I was watching out of
the window, and I saw her just take
her elbow and give him a terrific push.
Well, he slipped and fell off the gate
onto the back of his head.
Well, no Englishman takes that from a girl
lying down.
So he got up, and to this day
I can remember the sound of the tremendous
crack as he smacked her face good and
hard.
But what staggered me was to see the
reaction of my daughter.
She was always one of the placid variety,
the sort of calm, cool type.
Goodness, she got hold of that fellow with
both her hands round the neck and shook
him like a rat.
They both fell off the gate.
And about two minutes later, I had to
go and rescue him because he was having
a terrible time with nails and teeth and
all the rest that a girl uses in
such emergencies.
And when I got it all cooled down
and went back into the dining room, I
said to myself, what on earth caused all
that?
And I thought to myself, well, it's merely
one little girl who that morning was in
a bad mood, and a little boy who
was selfish and inconsiderate, two little people with
a little boiling point, both jealous of each
other, both saying that it's as much right
as the other to sit on that gate.
And the only answer to such a predicament
is a stand-up fight.
Now, please don't think me childish, childlike if
you like, but not childish.
When I tell you that sort of thing
is at the root of the situation in
Vietnam, it's at the cause of the queue
or line at the divorce court, it's at
the back of unhappy marriages, broken homes, it's
the reason for all the breakdown in human
relationships, this little god-self which is always
wanting its own way.
Now, when you have hundreds of millions of
people all wanting their own way, you're bound
to have a clash.
Now, the only answer to that is for
the world to submit to the lordship of
Jesus.
For when he is lord of our lives,
and we have a common lord and one
master, then we enjoy the thrill of his
life and power every day.
But on what basis does he claim sovereignty?
Well, I'd simply say this to you, that
regardless of what you and I may think,
God has put Jesus on the throne, he
is lord.
Psalm 110 says, the Lord said unto my
lord, sit thou on my right hand until
I make all thine enemies thy footstool.
The writer to the Hebrews says, God has
spoken in these last days to us in
his son, who being the brightness of his
glory, the express image of his person, when
he had by himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is on the throne.
And he has that position because he has
the right to it.
Remember that wonderful passage in the Philippian letter
where Paul says about Jesus, he counted not
a thing to be grasped after being equal
with God, made himself of no reputation, took
upon him the form of a servant made
in the likeness of man, humbled himself, and
was obedient unto death, even the death of
the cross, wherefore God hath highly exalted him.
Give him a name that is above every
name, that the name of Jesus every knee
should bow.
So this Jesus Christ, this Lord is on
the throne, and he has won the right
to sovereignty and lordship because he came down
here and lived the kind of life that
God intends all of us to live, but
we'd all fail to live it, a life
of absolute obedience and absolute submission to him.
And in response to that obedience, God took
that kind of life up to heaven and
raised it from the throne.
It was impossible for him to stay dead.
God has made that same Jesus whom you
crucified, both Lord and Christ, says Peter.
Now while we don't say so in so
many words, most of us say, we don't
want this man to reign over us.
God has got no problem with the world.
We think it's a very dreadful place, it
is really, but God has no problem with
it, because Jesus said to his disciples, be
of good cheer, I have overcome the world.
God has got no problem with the devil,
for at the cross Jesus stripped from himself
principalities and powers and made a sure man
of many.
No problem.
He's only got one problem, and his problem
is this, it's to make Christian people who
profess to be Christians, to be followers of
the Lord, to live the way he intends
us to live, in submission to his authority.
If your faith doesn't lead to submission to
the authority of Jesus, it's invalid in terms
of the New Testament.
Let me illustrate just this in experience these
days.
I come from England as you know, and
you know that we have a very strange
form of government in Britain.
We call it, and it sounds wonderful, a
constitutional monarchy.
Now in practice it's a very wonderful thing,
I'll tell you what it is, it's very
peculiar really, actually of course you're all part
of it too.
But on June the 2nd 1953, the present
Queen Elizabeth was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey.
I never forget the day, I was watching
the ceremony on TV from the home of
Mr. Lindsay Glegg, a well-known evangelist and
layman in England.
And it was the day that was chosen
by the weather prophets as likely to be
the sunniest, the warmest, the finest day in
the whole year.
Actually it never stopped raining from daylight to
midnight, poured all day long.
Well I remember on TV to this day
seeing that girl, that's all she was, she
was just about 22 or something at the
time, sitting on a throne in Westminster Abbey
without a crown.
And there were 5,000 people in that
historic building which has witnessed the coronation of
kings and queens for centuries.
And the moment came in the service when
the Archbishop of Canterbury, representing the church, turned
to that whole crowd and said, My Lords,
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you your
rightful sovereign, Elizabeth.
Are you willing to pay her homage?
And one word echoed through that abbey that
day, I, and in response to the unanimous
consent of the Commonwealth, in which we were
all represented, the Archbishop turned and placed the
crown on her head.
And everybody stood up and shouted three times,
God save the Queen.
It was quite a moment, sent heckles up
your back.
But listen, I'm not getting into any secrets,
I'm telling you what you already know.
Not from that day until this, that's 17
years and more, has she made one decision.
Ted Heath and company do all that, for
better or worse.
They made the decisions.
Now listen, honestly, don't you think it would
take an Englishman to think up a situation
like that?
I mean, really, seriously, when we have a
Queen on the throne, monarch, sovereign, lady, whom
we all love, and for whom we pray,
because we know she's a Christian.
Billy Graham goes and has lunch with her
every time he's in London, and often tells
me about conversations with her, and she speaks
to him of family prayer, and how to
arrange it in her home and life, and
often speaks about the Lord.
Unquestionably a Christian woman.
But never has she made one decision from
that day to this.
And we have a Queen on the throne
and a government over here who make the
decisions.
And all she does, poor girl, is sign
on the dotted line.
Everything she, that they bring, she has to
sign it.
That's all.
That's what we call a constitutional monarchy.
We like it that way, but then of
course we're peculiar people.
You know, but it sounds a good thing.
That's democracy.
That's a constitutional monarchy.
But listen, the thing that concerns me is
the mass of people in our churches who
are carrying out that sort of experience into
Christian living.
If I said to you, which I can't
do, but if I could, I would, say
to each one of you, listen, is Jesus
Christ your Lord?
You would say to me, well, don't be
so stupid.
What do you think I'd be here on
a hot night like this for?
He wasn't.
Of course he isn't.
All right.
I would come back at you, lovingly, I
hope, but firmly, and I would say just
this.
All right.
He's Lord.
Well, tell me, who makes the decisions?
I mean, who chooses your friends?
Who chooses your life partner?
Who chooses the books you read?
The places you go?
The way you spend your money?
Who chooses?
Who makes the decisions?
I mean, really, who is at the centre
of you?
Let me tell you that God will not
be a rubber stamp to anybody.
He won't sign on a dotted line.
He demands a position of absolute sovereignty, because
he has a right to it, over all
of our lives, and yet we dispute that
tooth and nail.
Oh, but you say to me, what are
the implications of this in my life?
Well, supposing Jesus Christ is Lord, what does
it mean in personal experience?
Well, it means, obviously, absolute submission.
My will is not my own until I
make it thine.
This means submission to the sovereignty of Christ.
Of course, this is not once and for
all.
Can you look back to the day of
your conversion?
Maybe you can't.
Maybe you haven't yet been converted.
I don't know.
Maybe you can't remember.
Well, I can, because I was there at
the time when it happened.
I remember the time, the day, the place,
where it was.
And as I look back on that day,
I don't think I have ever had such
a spiritual moment in my life.
Forty years ago now, I don't think I
have.
Because when Jesus Christ came into my life,
I had no reservations.
I just needed him so desperately.
And I said, Lord, you've got to come
in and take over and put my life
right and clean it up.
There were no reservations, no hesitancy.
I knew I needed him.
And at that moment, he was Lord.
But in less than six months, I'd started
to kick.
I started to rebel.
I'd started to say no and to argue
with him and to dispute his right.
And Jesus Christ ceased to be Lord.
Oh, he didn't go out of my life,
but I put him on the shelf.
I didn't want him to interfere.
I wanted my own way.
And he ceased to be Lord.
And at that moment, I ceased to enjoy
his presence and the reality and the communion
and the wonder of knowing God.
Nothing made sense after that for years until
that sovereignty was re-established.
So you see, there's no end to this.
You remember the statement made by the angel
to the Virgin Mary concerning the birth of
Christ?
He said to her, of his kingdom, there
shall be no end.
And what is true prophetically is true experimentally.
There's no end to the sovereignty of Jesus.
Every day, right till we get to heaven,
he is demanding his own way in every
situation.
Now, I'm not asking you what the position
was five years ago or ten years ago,
but what is it tonight?
This night in 1971, is Jesus Christ in
command or isn't he?
You know the answer to that question.
I don't.
But is he?
Is he Lord?
Has there been absolute submission to him without
reservation?
But then it also means not only submission,
but that submission leads to obedience.
One of the questions which our Lord asked
and which personally I've never been able to
answer to my satisfaction is this.
Why do you call me Lord and don't
do what I tell you?
Now, I have no answer to that question.
Why do I call him Lord and yet
refuse to do what he tells me?
I don't know.
I don't obey him in order to get
converted, but I obey him as an evidence
that I am converted.
And the evidence that I am saved, that
I know him personally, is the desire in
my heart to obey him at all costs.
This is New Testament Christianity.
This is the reality of the headship of
Jesus Christ.
Now, are you obeying him in your life
every day?
You have a perfect right to choose your
master.
He never forces his sovereignty upon any of
us, never forces himself into our lives.
Perfect right for us to choose.
That's for us to do.
But once you choose, what you haven't any
right to do, what I've no right to
do, is to wear the uniform of one
master and do the bidding of another.
That's an ugly word, describes that sort of
person, and there's nothing worse than a hypocrite.
Especially a religious one, who wears the uniform
of a Christian, who gives the appearance on
Sundays that he belongs to the Lord, but
all through the week he's doing the bidding
of the enemy.
Now, are you obeying?
Whom are you obeying?
Lord Jesus or someone else?
I have a perfect right to choose my
own master, but if I choose Christ, then
this means obedience to him every day of
my life.
Submission, obedience.
And one other thing, this means ownership.
Ownership.
You are not your own, you are bought
with a price, says Paul in writing to
the church in Corinth.
You belong to him.
That's a tremendous thing, that you and I
belong to the Lord Jesus.
We belong to somebody.
He possesses us and owns us.
We are not our own.
We are bought with a price.
Have you ever surveyed in your mind, or
better still on paper, the areas of your
life which have been yielded to him and
which you acknowledge don't belong to you?
Have you surrendered him to your business, your
home, your family, your money, your friendships, your
recreation, your habits, your reading?
You don't belong to yourself anymore.
If you're a Christian, you belong to him.
And everything you have belongs to him, and
all you are belongs to him.
Have you acknowledged his right to all you
possess?
You belong to the Lord Jesus.
Now, what about your relationship, I again, I
ask, to the Lord Jesus Christ?
I would hasten to say, in case you
think this terribly hard and tough, that he
wants to establish his rule in your heart,
in your interest.
He knows it's in your own interest, and
for your own blessing, and for your own
happiness, for him to be Lord.
It's very interesting that the 14th chapter of
Genesis contains the first record in history of
warfare, war, in the plural.
It also contains the first record of kings,
in the plural.
And that's the story of human history.
Kings, in the plural, war.
Always, all throughout history.
And that is the story of Christian living.
When you have several people trying to learn
your life, you have conflict, and warfare, and
defeat within, until Jesus Christ is established as
Lord, undisputed Master.
There's no peace.
There's constant battle, and warfare, and struggle, and
unrest.
Is he disputed Lord?
Well, this disputed Lord demands absolute loyalty, in
acknowledging that we are not our own.
We are bought with a price.
One of the greatest preachers in Britain of
a generation ago was Dr. F.B. Meyer,
a Baptist preacher of some years ago.
One year he spoke at Keswick, Keswick Convention
in England, and he was a wonderful man.
He never preached at people.
He just shared his heart and opened his
heart to them as he talked to them
about Jesus, who was so real to him.
And one year I'm told that at Keswick
he gave his testimony, which really brought tears
to everybody's eyes.
He said, you know, for three years there's
been a sin in my life of which
I've been ashamed.
I'm minister of a church in London.
But he said, three years ago I allowed
something to come in which I knew was
wrong, but I didn't think it would affect
anybody else.
It was between me and God.
But soon I began to discover that it
was coming between me and my people.
Every time I preached, this thing came to
my mind.
It stood in the way, and there was
no blessing.
And congregations got smaller, and people dwindled away.
Nothing was happening.
No interest.
And every time I prayed, this thing came
before me.
And every time I tried to read my
Bible, over and over again, the Lord Jesus
spoke to me about this thing.
And I wouldn't give in.
I was stubborn.
And he said, a week ago, I came
up to Keswick absolutely desperate.
And I went up to the mountain like
Jacob, and I went and wrestled all night
with God.
And I said to him, Lord, you've had
the key to every part of my life,
and every key except one.
And I can't stand this battle anymore, this
defeat, this misery, this failure in preaching and
ministry.
Lord, take this last key.
And you know, he said, said Dr. Miles,
and his face glowed, they tell me, when
he said it.
He said, you know what the Lord Jesus
did?
He never took that key.
What he did do was, he took the
door out.
And ever since then, he put in a
window.
And ever since then, the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ has shone into my
heart.
Lord, take the last key.
Have you ever said that to a client?
Signing off, completely.
Every door open to him.
No door in your room, no apartment in
your hut, no section marked reserved, nothing closed.
The Lord is free to move through your
whole life.
Have you ever taken that stand before Jesus?
And is that the position as far as
he's concerned now?
Or do you shut him out?
Do you try to lock the door?
What about your thought life?
Your sex life?
Is he master, Lord, of this, the most
sacred party of personality?
Or is it a playground for the dead?
Is he Lord, or have you locked the
door?
And what goes on there is nobody's business,
but it's your business and God's business.
He's not Lord.
And that door is locked tight and barred
to him.
And Jesus wants you to recognise that this
Christian life is acknowledging his Lordship, which means
submission, obedience and ownership, that you belong to
him and that your body is the temple
of the Holy Spirit.
What kind of traffic is going on in
your body?
The temple of God, it belongs to them.
He owns it and he wants to live
in it and dwell in it and control
it.
And you cannot have a holy life unless
you have a holy body.
Is he Lord?
But let me say one more thing here.
That isn't the end, it's only the beginning.
And how does this work out and how
is it applied in your life?
I think most of us fail to understand
this simple thing.
That in crowning Christ as Lord and opening
every door of our lives to him, we
admit and make room for the incoming of
the Holy Spirit.
For, says the scripture, God has given the
Holy Spirit to them that ask him, to
them that obey him.
And you can't live your Christian life apart
from him.
Matter of fact, he's the only one who
can live the Christian life.
God expects, do you know what God expects
from you?
I can tell you, from every one of
you, God expects nothing from you but total
failure.
As far as heaven is concerned, we're a
complete write-off, absolutely helpless.
But he's given us the Holy Spirit that
we need not fail.
Not that we cannot fail, but we need
not fail.
Never impossible for a Christian to sin, but
always possible for him not to sin.
Always possible.
So he's given us the Holy Spirit to
live in us, to reproduce the life of
Christ, to apply the Lordship of Jesus every
day of my life.
And you see, it works this way.
When thoughts and temptation attack like a flood
and you've no time to pray and you've
no time to do anything except to say,
Lord Jesus, I hand over to you, I
get out of the way and I let
you in and you move over and you
come in and you deal with this.
For the battle is not mine but yours.
Well, he begins to work on my behalf.
Oh yes, this is what Hudson Taylor called
the exchange life in which it is not
I who fight the battle but God in
me.
It's not what I do for him, it's
what he does in and through each one
of us here this evening that counts.
And he can do nothing until he gets
sovereign control and right to rule and right
to live until we make room for the
Spirit of God every day.
And he always comes into the life that
he's absolutely surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus
Christ.
And therefore in absolute weakness and the knowledge
that I just can't of myself, I can
establish the Lordship and sovereignty of Christ in
every situation and the power of his Spirit
in my heart every day.
Now, is he Lord?
And is that life of Lordship being applied
by the indwelling Spirit of God in every
situation?
I wonder.
I think in my mind of a little
place on the southeast coast of England which
was in the days of World War II.
And you can read this story in Winston
Churchill's war memoirs.
Quite an exercise to read then but very
illuminating.
In that volume we call Our Finest Hour,
he tells there of an incident which occurred
in an air base in a little town
in southeast England called Ramsgate.
And one evening if you'd gone there during
the Battle of Britain, you'd have found six
pilots and six gunners, twelve men, drinking coffee,
smoking heavily.
And outside on the tarmac, half a dozen
planes.
If you looked at those planes you'd said
to yourself, well they aren't fit to go
in the air.
For as all that was left, nothing left,
nothing in reserve, the whole of a squadron
had gone.
Except for that six planes and these twelve
men.
They hadn't had their clothes off for two
weeks.
They were exhausted, dead beat, drinking strong black
coffee to keep them awake.
Suddenly a message came from air force headquarters
in London.
Enemy approaching across channel.
Estimated strength 500.
Immediately those men put out their cigarettes, left
their coffee and made a dash for the
planes.
And one of them, one of them on
the way had just time to stop and
say message received and understood.
And in less than half a minute they
were all in the air.
Six planes to tattle 500.
It was total war.
Absolute war, unconditional war to an end.
And there was no possibility of armistice.
Everything depended upon their complete obedience and that
obedience was taken for granted.
Taken for granted.
They never supposed at the headquarters these men
wouldn't dare to go.
They weren't.
My friend, you and I, if we're Christians,
are engaged in total war.
And that war will continue until Jesus Christ
comes again.
And there were no armistice, no let up.
It'll get harder and tougher as the days
go by and the coming of the Lord
draws near.
And every man who owns the name of
Jesus will have to be stand up and
be counted.
And known as someone who isn't prepared to
be with it, who's prepared to take his
stand for Christ, against things that are utterly,
utterly wrong in the world today.
This is absolutely impossible unless you and I
know the secret of the Lordship of Christ
and the sovereign rule of the Spirit of
God in our land.
If you do, I tell you, you can
face the world with your head lifted high,
with the joy of the Lord in your
heart, with a sense of victory in your
life, with the assurance that you're able to
overcome, and you have the secret of living
in the power of an indwelling Christ.
Well, message received and understood?
Message received and understood.
Obedience taken for granted.
Right Lord, I'm ready for anything.
In your power.
Can't, by my own strength, but I can
in yours.
I don't want to be any more a
church member, merely.
Merely a nominal Christian, merely an adherent to
a denomination.
Lord Jesus, make me a tool, an instrument
whom you can use for your glory in
these days to bring men and women to
Christ.
That's what he wants of us, that we
may live unashamed as those who belong to
him.
And I tell you, when you start living
like that, well, the fun starts.
You find yourself in a battle before you
know where you are.
But people realize at last they've met someone
who's living a reality.
I close with just this simple illustration to
show you what I mean.
Before I left England, I had a few
days holiday in Scotland.
And I was walking alongside a Scottish loch,
a lake it is, they call it a
loch there.
And it had a sea entrance.
It was an ocean-going loch.
And I walked alongside it, and as I
walked alongside that road, I saw a man
in the middle of it fishing.
He was up to his neck in water,
letting out a line.
Pulling it in, letting it out, pulling it
in.
And as he pulled it in, it bent
double.
And I saw that line quiver, and then
he let it up.
But he pulled it in again, bending it
double.
As it quivered, and then out it went
again another 50 yards.
And then he began to pull it, pull
it, pull it, pull it, pull it.
And then out it went.
And I was fascinated at this.
I didn't know what he was doing.
So I said, excuse me, sir, I shouted
to him.
What are you doing to that fish?
I presumed he had a fish on his
line.
That's why he was shaking so much.
So without looking at me, but continuing doing
this, he said, I'm drowning it.
Drowning it.
What does he think I am?
Drowning a fish?
The thing's impossible.
I didn't say anything, but I thought, well,
no.
And he said, he stopped.
He began all this again.
He said, you didn't look like that.
He said, I am.
He said, I've got a salmon on that
line, and it's that long.
I didn't stay, because I didn't have time.
But knowing fishermen, I would put it at
that size.
But nevertheless, it was a mighty big fish,
because it was making his line shake, quiver
so much.
He said, I've got it in a line.
And he said, you know, what I'm doing
is I'm playing with it.
Playing with it.
And he said, when I get it thoroughly
tied out, I'll turn its head downstream, and
water will get in its gills, and it'll
drown.
And then I can pull it in.
If I pull it in right now, it
will snap my line, and it'll go off
with my line, and hook, and bait, and
everything.
Ah, but he said, when I've got it
exhausted, when it's weary, when it's tired, then
I'll just turn its head downstream, and it'll
hide it.
I didn't believe his story for a while.
But I thought, I was very impressed.
I thought I'd like to find out.
So I went into the village.
Then I saw there was a shop which
had books on fishing, but I didn't want
to buy a book.
I've come from Scotland.
So I thought I'd go to the public
library, where I could see one for nothing.
And sure enough, I got a book and
read it there, a chapter on that part
of the world, fishing at that season of
the year.
Ocean-going salmon swim against the tide for
the spawning season, and come in to the
locks.
And the live salmon swims against the stream.
And if you want to drown them, if
you want to catch them, you've got to
drown them.
And you drown them by turning their head
down, and getting them to go with the
current.
Now know if I say nothing more to
this crowd than this one thing tonight, that
trouble with many of you here is the
devil that has you on the hook.
And trying to make you serve two masters,
and he's got you going downstream, and he's
playing with you.
Playing with you, tiring you out, saying it's
okay, situational ethics, premarital sex, all the rest,
okay, everybody does it.
And he's playing with you, dragging you along
until he's got you thoroughly weary, downstream, and
then he drowns you.
And that's the end.
That's the end.
He's won the battle.
I tell you, it takes a man with
all the power of God in his life
to stand against the stream today.
I don't mean that a Christian is negative,
but he's against something.
He's against principalities, against powers, against spiritual forces
of wickedness in heavenly places.
It's a spiritual battle, and he's fighting a
warfare against them.
And I tell you, it takes a man
with all the power of God, the fullness
of the Spirit, to swim against the current.
Any fool can go downstream.
Anybody can do what everybody else does.
It takes no spiritual guts to do that.
And that's the whole trouble.
Satan has got people, young people, including professing
Christians, on his hook, and he's playing with
them and driving them.
How many people really dare to stand for
God today?
In your school, university, college, and be against
the stream, and live in the power of
the risen Lord.
It's those kind of people that they could
turn the tide of history.
And this country, which has never seen spiritual
revival, can see it yet.
And maybe that's the only hope for Australia,
as it is for Britain today.
Well, don't you want to be part of
that?
Let Jesus Christ be your Lord.
Let's pray.
Now I'll give you just a moment to
give your answer to him.
What place has he in your life?
Is he sovereign?
Has he had his coronation day in your
heart?
If he hasn't, give it to him now.
You step right off the throne, which you
have occupied for years, and ask him to
take his rightful place in your life, which
he purchased at Calvary, and which you've denied
him.
Let him be Lord of every thought and
action.
Let him be Lord of your heart.
Just a moment of prayer.
O Lord Jesus, please, by the power of
thy Spirit, bring such conviction upon our hearts
that it is absolutely impossible for us to
leave this building without encountering the living Christ,
without a personal encounter and a personal commitment
to the sovereignty of Jesus in our hearts.
Do save us from this trifling with Christianity,
this playing with it all.
Help us to understand that the enemy of
souls is just playing with us and dragging
us down and making us not care.
But O God, we want to get off
that hook tonight and want to swim against
the stream in the power of the risen
Christ by whose strength alone we can do
this.
So Lord, we would yield to thee that
we may know thy strength in our hearts
and we would make room in our hearts
for thy Holy Spirit that he may be
Lord of all of us.
We ask it for thy name's sake.
Amen.