I read from this third chapter of Acts,
the account and the healing of the lame
man.
Now Peter and John went up together into
the temple at the hour of prayer, being
the ninth hour.
And a certain man, lame from his mother's
womb, was carried, whom they laid daily, at
the gate of the temple, which is called
Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered
into the temple.
Who, seeing Peter and John about to go
into the temple, asked them alms.
And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him with
John, said, Look on us.
And he gave heed unto them, expecting to
receive something of them.
Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I
none, but such as I have, give I
thee.
In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Rise up and walk.
And he took him by the right hand
and lifted him up.
And immediately his feet and ankle bones received
strength.
And he, leaping up, stood and walked, and
entered with them into the temple, walking and
leaping and praising God.
This was the red-letter day in the
life of this poor man.
I am quite certain that he must have
started off for the temple that morning, just
like any other morning, anticipating the run-of
-the-mill humdrum day, just like any other
day.
But Peter and John showed up, and the
power of God came down.
And the man who never had walked, leaped,
and changed from monotony to miracle, and from
sorrow to shouting.
So that in this account you have first
tribulation, then you have transformation, then you have
testimony, because we read in verse 14, that
when accusation was made against Peter and John,
that beholding the man which was healed, standing
with them, they could say nothing against it.
That was the unanswerable argument.
There he stood.
But I'm interested tonight in a postscript found
in verse 22.
For the man was above 40 years old,
on whom this miracle of healing was shown.
It's more than passing significance that attaches to
this verse.
Why would the Holy Spirit go to all
the trouble to tell us that the man
was over 40 years of age?
Well, for one reason, when anything miraculous happens
to anybody over 40, it's worth an extra
verse.
Most people get in a rut by then,
and rusted in the groove.
They tell us that life begins at 40,
and did in this case.
But a great many other things set in,
and in the Christian life.
Sometimes rigor mortis sets in, along about this
time.
This is the day of youth movements all
over the land.
But I'm concerned tonight with some of the
rest of us.
We preachers never hesitate to preach to young
people when there are plenty of older people
in the congregation.
Why should we hesitate to preach to older
people if there are young people in the
congregation?
And you younger folks here tonight, if this
has no immediate application to you, all you
need is a little time, and you will
get into the same category.
So we don't hesitate.
But we are in great and drastic need
today of something miraculous happening to the 40
-year-old and over class.
The first half of our lives we are
romantic, and the second half we are rheumatic.
And of course I've known some rheumatics to
become romantic and lose their rheumatism even after
40.
But life does not need to flatten out
after 40.
The psychology seems to be against a new
start.
And we have unfortunately taken the attitude, let
the young people go forward.
We have all that we expect to have
from the Lord.
We've arrived.
We don't intend to take in much more
spiritual territory.
And the biggest problem that I'm up against
today in meetings in churches over the land
is that solid block of folks 40 years
old and over who just sit there, set
in their ways, looking for young people to
do all the going down the aisle and
making all the dedications and thank God for
the young people.
I don't know what would happen to some
of our services if they didn't summon enough
energy by the grace of God to make
a move.
But unless something happens to this older bracket,
we are not going to have revival.
You know how that when fresh cement is
poured, you can make the slightest imprint upon
it and it will remain through the years.
But let it harden and an elephant can
walk across it and make no impression at
all.
The Bible speaks of those who are settled
on their leaves and have not been emptied
from vessel to vessel.
People get into that condition like a jar
of milk that is turned to curds or
vinegar with a crust on top of it.
And sometimes we get in that condition and
we need to be emptied from vessel to
vessel.
And that's what revival is.
Revival is the churning up of the Church
of God and particularly, I think, some of
the older ones and emptying us from vessel
to vessel.
All one needs to do is to check,
as I might do tonight if I had
time, on how many have been saved before
you were 15 and how many from 15
to 25 and then on up and you
would instantly see what I mean.
The biggest problem in this little journey down
here is the middle mile.
It's the hardest part of the journey.
There's a certain exhilaration at the beginning and
there's a certain thrill at the close.
But it's the middle mile that tests the
traveler.
I grew up in the red dirt country
a hundred miles down the road here and
I used to have to hoe corn and
cotton and we would start out early in
the morning and I remember particularly a bottom
down by the creek where I did a
good deal of rather fancy corn hoeing.
I always stuck the hoe up in the
evening so I'd know where I'd stopped the
day before and resume my operation.
There was no other way of telling which
had been hoed and which hadn't been hoed.
But I remember that of a morning I
started out, although I had a healthy distaste
for hoeing corn, I still was a youngster
and I'd had a good night's rest without
benefit of the sedatives of any sort, whatever,
and had had a good breakfast.
And although I didn't care particularly for hoeing
corn, there was youthful zest and the beginning
of the day wasn't any problem.
And then in the evening when the day's
work was done and we started back up
that long old hill to the house on
top, I was weary physically but there was
a certain exhilaration about it.
But ah, the middle of the day, when
we had had our meal and then had
to go back to this salt mine as
it were, ah, that tested me.
I didn't need any expositor to explain what
the burden and heat of the day meant.
I understood that full well.
Now youth and age have their delights, but
when the sunrise glow has disappeared and the
sunset has not yet filled the west, that
is the test.
My heart goes out to older people.
They're the backbone of the church.
They carry the financial burden.
And if they're not as starry-eyed as
they once were, they've learned some things from
experience.
And I want to rouse them as I
go about from their midday nap, as it
were.
Somebody has said that youth has fire without
light and age has light without fire.
And we need the proper combination of both
so that we may be what John the
Baptist was, a burning and a shining light.
He had both.
We shouldn't leave all the fire to youth
and we shouldn't leave all the light to
age, but combining them, let them shine all
together to the glory of God.
The accent's on youth today, I say.
You know that full well.
But revival, beloved, must come to all ages.
Do you remember the plea that Joel made?
The only verse out of Joel that most
people know is the one that Peter quoted
on the day of Pentecost.
But there are some terrific things in this
little book.
Joel was a revivalist and he called in
chapter 2, verse 16, "...gather the people, sanctify
the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children
and those that suck the breast, let the
bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the
bride out of her closet, let the priests,
the ministers of the Lord, weep between the
porch and the altar, and let them say,
spare thy people, O Lord, and give not
thine heritage to reproach that the heathen should
rule over them or use a byword against
them.
Wherefore should they say among the people, where
is their God?"
Now, I submit to you that that was
not a youth revival.
That was a family revival.
God has not committed his program to any
age group.
The middle-agers all too often sit in
so-called revivals today to watch young people
go forward, but there will be no real
awakening until the family is moved.
The family used to sit together at church.
That, of course, is all a thing of
the past now.
And some of the oldsters haven't walked down
a church aisle since they were in their
teens.
We need a return to this in this
day of split churches and split personalities and
split atoms, even the family splits before it
ever gets to church.
Some never go, and others do nothing about
the opportunity after they arrive.
But God's program is not limited to any
age group whatsoever.
Somebody has said recently that we are suffering
today from an epidemic of amateurism.
Immaturity is in the saddle.
Revolutionary movements spearheaded by students with more zeal
than knowledge, long-known enthusiasm and short-owned
experience trouble us these days.
And we're seeing the disgusting spectacle of young
rock and roll idols making fabulous fortunes for
millions of teenage worshippers.
Castro in Cuba is an example of such
misguided amateurism in government.
Paul Harvey said the other day, with this
man and others in mind, when small men
make big shadows, the sun has almost set.
Rehoboam ruined his kingdom and wrecked his career
because he listened to the rash advice of
youth and ignored the sober counsel of age.
The churches want pastors so young nowadays that
a preacher is almost superannuated at 45 years
of age.
Somebody said that it's getting like the elder
son in the parable of the prodigal son.
They're complaining, thou never gavest me a kid
that I might make merry with my friends.
It's time for preaching on some such text
as let him not boast that putteth on
his harness as he that taketh it off.
There's no special brand of Christianity for young
people.
I get a little amused today at these
youth churches and youth gospels and youth everything
else where you'd think young people had just
been invented.
But we've had them ever since I can
remember.
And all in the world they need to
do is what they've always done.
They all sin and they need to repent
and they need to confess their sins and
present their bodies a living sacrifice and put
on the Lord Jesus and make not provision
for the flesh just like everybody else.
There isn't any peculiar brand of Christianity for
young people.
We need a family revival in the Church
of God today.
And we need particularly to be guarded against
what Psalm 91 calls the destruction that wasteth
at noonday.
Now there are many reasons why older people
ought to be the first ones to go
to the mourner's bench.
Theirs is the responsibility of example for one
thing.
We've been on the road longer.
We ought to be the best Christians in
the entire outfit.
But sometimes brand new Christians are better witnesses.
You know that.
Sometimes the best soul winner is the fellow
just fresh out of sin and all aglow
with his new experience.
I've often said the happiest fellow in the
world is a brand new Christian before he's
met too many Bible scholars.
He doesn't know any better than to believe
it just like it reads, full of zeal
and enthusiasm.
And then ours is the responsibility of the
home, the foundation of our national life.
As goes the home, so goes the nation.
And the older people are the head and
the heart of the home.
They have a solemn charge to keep.
And then ours is the responsibility of money.
Of course young people have more money than
they used to have.
But the older people generally have the larger
supply of it and theirs is the responsibility
for it.
And then ours is a solemn responsibility of
time because we don't have much left.
When you don't have much money, you have
to spend it very carefully.
And when time is running out on you,
then you need to be extra careful about
husbanding what years or maybe months are left
to you.
I used to say now when I'm 20
and when I'm 30 and when I'm 40
and so on, and nowadays I come to
with a jerk and realize that I haven't
many more decades, if any, to count on.
The less of it, the more carefully we
ought to spend it buying up its opportunities
because the days are evil.
And I feel peculiarly that responsibility just now
coming as I have to a new lease
on life and a new extension of time
granted me by the direct intervention of God
in response to the prayers of his people.
Only a few months ago I passed through
a night when I was closer to the
other side, it seemed, than to this one.
And the head nurse on that floor, a
fine Christian indeed, and she'd worked all day,
but she volunteered to set up all night
there with me.
And I looked out many a time through
the night out of that oxygen tent.
And over here she was.
And when she wasn't watching me, she was
praying.
And along about the middle of the night,
I said, let's claim the promise.
I couldn't get enough breath together to say
much, but she took my hand and we
claimed the promise if two of you agree
is touching anything.
And I have a peculiar responsibility.
These days it seems to me because, and
you don't have to come through a hospital
experience, of course, to have a new lease
on life.
Sometimes God grants it in other ways.
You do have it anyway.
What are you doing about it?
When one comes to that day when a
note is left but jaded powers to meet
the challenge of the hours, as the poet
has said, and you don't have all that
you once had to battle with, you think
of those lines that Amy Carmichael used to
quote so much.
What though I stand with the winners or
perish with those that fall?
Only the cowards are sinners.
Fighting the fight is all.
Strong is my foe who advances.
Snapped is my blade, O Lord.
See their proud banners and lances, but spare
me the stub of a sword.
Some of us are battling out the rest
of our days with only the stub of
a sword.
But I, you can do a good job
for God with the stub of a sword.
And I speak to some here tonight who
haven't yet begun to live for God.
And you've only the stub of a sword
left.
Why don't you turn that over to the
Lord?
Yes, thank God he can give you a
brand new sword in the spirit with which
to spend your declining years.
It's a solemn and a serious responsibility, beloved.
You remember Paul's wish that he might finish
his course with joy.
You're never safe till the last step.
Oh, if you're in Christ Jesus, yes, you're
safe for time and eternity.
But as far as your witness and your
testimony and the usefulness of your life, you're
never safe till you get clear across.
So many have started out gloriously and they've
run well.
And then within sight of the goal they
have finished miserably.
What a fool a man can be after
40 and after 50.
Moses did pretty well the first 40.
And it was later in life that he
made his big blunder.
David as a shepherd boy on the hills
of Bethlehem did right well.
But David, a king in a palace, fell
miserably.
One thinks of Gideon who in the early
chapters was a noble warrior for the Lord.
But it was after 40, it was in
the later chapters that he slipped.
One thinks of King Asa who walked so
close to the Lord in the early part
of his life and then came to that
day when he turned away from the Lord
and turned to man.
And the last chapter wasn't so good.
One thinks of Isaiah, he was marvelously helped
till he was strong.
But when he was strong, not when he
was weak, when he was strong, his heart
was lifted up to his destruction.
Paul said, I've been faithful to the faith,
I've kept the faith.
I've been faithful to the fight, I've fought
a good fight.
And I've been faithful to the finish, I've
finished my course.
No wonder he kept his body under.
And well, he might have prayed the prayer
of the psalmist that I think ought to
be put on a big board in every
one of our living rooms.
Now also when I am old and gray
-headed, O God, forsake me not until I
have showed thy strength unto this generation and
thy power to every one that is to
come.
Was it dear Bishop Taylor Smith who prayed,
God, keep me from being a wicked old
man?
It's amazing how one can stumble in the
last round of this fight.
There's a danger, beloved, of resting on the
oars.
We may have mounted up with wings as
eagles in youth.
We may have run well in middle age,
and then we fail to walk, not faint.
One of my friends in the North, speaking
of a great preacher that most of you
would know if I mention him, said, Oh,
there was a time in my life when
he was my greatest inspiration.
And then there came a time when he
was my greatest warning.
Isn't that a tragedy, to start out an
inspiration and become a warning sign?
The sin of middle age is complacency and
smugness and lukewarmness and leaving one's first love
and getting used to it and it need
not be so because the last years can
be the best.
I heard of two preachers who were talking
on Monday and one said to the other,
I preached to older people yesterday in Elventure
that you can't guess what my text was.
The other said, well, at evening time it
shall be light?
No.
The hoary head is a crown of glory
and so on?
No.
Well, I give up.
He said, what was it?
Oh, he said, I preached about the parable
of the laborers in the vineyard where the
Lord said to the eleventh hour crowd, Go
ye also and work in my vineyard.
Nobody is exempt.
But look at the other half of my
text.
The man was over forty years of age
on whom the miracle was shown.
Miracles after forty.
Nobody looks much for miracles after forty.
They don't look for miracles any age these
days.
Scoffers say all things continue as they were.
Everything runs the natural course.
There aren't any miracles.
God doesn't break through.
And yet the magazines and the books are
filled with recipes of success and happiness after
middle age and how to stay young and
look pretty and be happy and millions try
it with, I must confess, poor success.
And that's all because, all because we want
a miracle.
All kinds of miracles we'd love to have
and secure us a few of them.
You remember what Gideon said, the land was
under a foreign power and here was old
Gideon trying to beat out a little grain
and all of a sudden an angel appeared.
Now, an angel is a miracle.
The appearance of an angel is something that
doesn't happen every day in the week.
But Gideon was so down in the dumps
that he said, If God be for us,
why has all this befallen us and where
be all the miracles that our fathers told
us of?
And I tell you, there are people today
asking that and yet, my friends, we shouldn't
do it because every Sunday morning in church
you're right in the middle of a miracle.
When you hold the word of God in
your hand, that's a miracle.
If you've been born again, that's a miracle.
How foolish to sit in a gathering and
say, where are the miracles?
Of course, a lot of church members have
not been converted today.
They don't know what this miracle means.
They're not operating on a miracle basis.
Nothing has happened to them that couldn't have
happened if the Holy Spirit had gone out
of business.
And there are some churches operating today that
would not know the difference if the Holy
Spirit ceased to work.
But I thank God that miracles are happening.
When John the Baptist had the blues in
jail and sent a delegation to Jesus of
all men to get low and to ask
such a question as this, Art thou he
that should come?
Or do we look for another?
John the Baptist was the last man to
ask such a question.
White stood out on the banks of the
Jordan and proclaimed it as a glorious affirmation,
and now it had become an interrogation.
I'm so glad, however, that my Lord didn't
bawl him out.
The Lord didn't send back a scorching message
of reproof and say, I'm ashamed of you.
You ought to know better than that.
He knows our frame and remembers that we're
dust.
And he sent word back and said, Tell
him that I'm still in the miracle business.
Tell him that the blind are seeing and
the deaf are hearing and the lepers are
being cleansed and the poor are having the
gospel preached and blessed is he whosoever shall
not be offended in me.
That's one beatitude we don't know much about.
Everybody knows the beatitudes in the Sermon on
the Mount.
This is the one I call the forgotten
beatitude.
Blessed is he who is not upset by
the way I run my business, the Lord
says.
And we do get upset about it.
And I hear Christians say, Oh, why the
world isn't being converted and things aren't working
out the way I thought they were.
Lord, do we need to start looking for
somebody else?
And the Lord's saying, No, I'm doing what
I started to do.
I began it way back there in Luke
and I'm still carrying on what I began
to do and teach.
It's the unfinished work.
I'm carrying it on.
And blessed are you if you don't get
upset about it.
Can you claim the beatitude of the unoffended?
And then there are others that after 40
settle down after conversion and don't expect another
miracle till the resurrection.
Now, my friend, you're due several.
You're due one a day.
Better than vitamins, you're due many a day.
You ought to live one miracle to another.
Dear Dr. Ironside used to tell about an
old lady that would get up in every
testimony meeting and start out 40 years ago.
And he said, I just wanted to say,
dear sister, whatever happened to you 40 years
ago, thank the Lord for it.
But hasn't anything happened since?
Now, thank God for that happy day that
fixed our choice on him, our Savior and
our God.
But the path of the justice is a
shining light that shines up more and more
into the perfect day.
Why, this Christian life is a miracle.
It's miraculous in its origin because it's the
gift of God.
And it's miraculous in its operation by the
grace of God.
And it's miraculous in its objective to the
glory of God.
And there ought to be miracles every day.
I don't mean handling rattlesnakes without being poisoned,
but I mean miracles of guidance and answered
prayer and victory and soul winning.
We don't need to keep scrubbing up this
old experience that happened way back there.
Every day ought to shine with the presence
of God.
You can have a miracle after 40 years.
I preached many, many years ago in a
little country church near Davids in North Carolina.
I was entertained that week in the home
of a poor farmer, and I mean poor.
And he was really verdant green.
That poor fellow not only didn't know anything,
I don't think he even suspected anything.
And if he hadn't kept moving, he was
so green that I believe if he hadn't
kept moving, he'd have taken root and sprouted.
I never saw anything like that poor fellow.
And I stayed in his home, and they
put me in a little corner room where
it wasn't a room.
It was just the corner of the house
with a kind of a sheet up in
front of it to sort of seclude me
from the rest of the domain.
And in the morning I'd have to look
out to make sure that the coast was
clear before I could venture out.
And I preached all week, and not a
soul moved.
I never saw such immobile people in all
my life.
I began to wonder, why did I ever
waste a week on this crowd?
Nobody cares whether they ever hear the call
of God or not.
But who do you suppose heard the call
of God that week?
That dear man, over 40, heard the call
of God, went back to school, finished school,
became a Presbyterian minister.
Miracles after 40.
If I'd been going all over that community
with a fine-toothed comb looking for a
prospect, he would have been the last man
I would have selected.
But I never despair of the grace of
God and the power of my Heavenly Father
to work miracles after 40.
Sometimes we get rather churlish and set in
our ways after 40.
Oh, I think of that godly woman who
was married to an unbeliever, and she prayed
all through the years that he might be
saved.
And he showed no signs of interest in
spiritual things.
But a revival meeting was held in the
community, and he fairly astounded her one evening
by saying, I think I'll go with you
to church.
And he went, and God spoke to him,
and he got saved.
The next morning as she was preparing breakfast,
he said from the other room, I want
you to come over here and look out
the window.
And she came, and although it was a
barren winter landscape with not a leaf on
the tree, he said, Isn't that the prettiest
sight that you ever saw in all your
life?
He said, It seems like the very trees
want to clap their hands.
Well, he had scripture for that, because the
mountains and the hills shall break forth before
you into singing, and all the trees of
the field shall clap their hands.
Miracles after 40.
My last conference before I came here was
in Altoona.
Pennsylvania.
One afternoon as we rode home from the
service, there was a sweet old man in
the back seat of the car.
He'd been saved when he was 69, and
now he was 78.
He got in at the last chapter, and
as we drove along, my friend in the
front seat said to him, Why don't you
recite your favorite poem for Brother Hefner?
And with rare diction and with a wealth
of feeling that I couldn't possibly equal, this
dear soul began to quote those amazing lines
of Martha Snell Nicholson.
When I stand at the judgment seat of
Christ, and he shows me his plan for
me, the plan of my life as it
might have been, had he had his way,
and I see how I blocked him here
and I checked him there, and I would
not yield my will, will there be grief
in my Savior's eyes?
Grief, though he loves me still.
He would have me rich, and I stand
there poor, stripped of all but his grace,
while memory runs like a hunted thing down
the path I cannot retrace.
Then my desolate heart will well and I
break with the tears that I cannot shed.
I shall cover my face with my empty
hands, I shall bow mine crowned head.
Lord of the years that are left to
me, I give them to thy hand.
Take me and break me and mow me
to the pattern thou hast planned.
Well, bless his heart, he got into the
kingdom of God at 69, and he had
nine years to praise God.
Miracles well after 40.
I am concerned with dear friends these days
who are letting life slip by, and the
sands have almost run out, and you don't
know for sure that you're a child of
God, or you haven't really yet committed all
you are and have to him.
And maybe you're saying, well, there's no use.
My life is spent.
I couldn't be a missionary.
There isn't much.
Why, my dear friend, you're the one that
ought to be the first one to get
down the aisle, because you don't have much
time left.
If I were here tonight, 75, 80 years
of age, and still hadn't yielded my life
to the Lord, hadn't been saved, as fast
as I could make it, I'd be the
first one to go and say, I haven't
much left, but if God's been gracious enough
to wait on me all this time, certainly
the least that I can do is to
stand and make a move and say, Dear
Lord, I give myself to thee is all
that I can do.
And I wouldn't leave you younger folks out
either completely on this.
God forbid.
The best way to keep from getting into
such a situation as this is to remember
thy creator in the days of thy youth,
before the evil days draw nigh, when thou
shalt say, I have no place in them.