A word that tells us what Paul did
not preach and what he preached, he tells
us in 2 Corinthians 4-5.
For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus
as Lord, and thou savest your servants for
Jesus' sake.
I like that triangle there in the last
half of that verse, thou savest your servants
for Jesus' sake.
If I were to ask you tonight, do
you believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
you would probably answer very comfortably that you
do.
But if I were to come around and
ask you one by one, is he your
Lord, Lord of all you are and have
and do, what would you say?
Any congregation can sing, and you sang it
gloriously a while ago, bring forth the royal
diadem and crown him Lord of all.
But not all who are willing to crown
him with their lips are ready to obey
him in their lives.
Coleridge said, there are some truths that are
regarded as so true that they lose the
power of truth and lie bedridden in the
dormitory of the soul.
And there are some things we've heard so
much and so long and so often that
they don't move us anymore.
They do lie inoperative in the dormitories of
our minds.
One of these is the Lordship of Christ.
It has been said that the word Lord
is one of the most lifeless words in
the Christian vocabulary.
And yet Dr. A.T. Robertson used to
call the Lordship of Christ the touchstone of
the Christian faith, and Dr. Campbell Morgan called
it the central verity of the Church.
Before we proceed further, let me remind you
that the problem the world over tonight, as
always, is authority versus anarchy.
The last verse in the book of Judges
tells us there was no king in Israel,
every man did that which was right in
his own eyes.
No king, authority, every man did as he
pleased, anarchy.
When authority goes out, anarchy comes in.
Our Lord told us that in the last
days lawlessness would abound, and Paul writes of
the mystery of lawlessness heading up for Antichrist.
You remember that in the book of Judges,
all the misery in that book was due
to the mistakes in the book of Joshua.
The mistakes they made when they got into
the land.
They were told to exterminate the inhabitants, and
they didn't, and I think I know what
happened.
They won a few battles, and then I
think they said, I'm getting tired of fighting.
I'm getting tired of getting up every morning
and taking off for a battle.
These Canaanites aren't such bad people.
Let's have a little peaceful coexistence.
Peace without victory.
We've been trying to have that in one
way or another ever since.
And you know what happened?
The conquerors became the conquered, and the victors
became the victims.
In America, we've tried peaceful coexistence with communism.
We tried it with the Nazism at first,
with Hitler, and found out you couldn't do
business with Hitler, and they had to exchange
Mr. Chamberlain for Mr. Churchill.
And then we tried it with Mr. Stalin,
and it still won't work, because communisms like
cancer, you do not peacefully coexist with cancer.
If you don't get the cancer, the cancer
gets you.
Douglas MacArthur stood before Congress and said, in
war there is no substitute for victory, and
that'll stand for all time.
This recent Israeli-Arab war was won in
a hurry, because as the top general of
Israel said, we had one element that we
don't think any other nation has, no alternative.
We had to win.
We couldn't fight a long war, we couldn't
fight a stalemate, we had to win.
And I watched the NBC presentation of that
war, Sunday, an hour and a half of
it, and it was titled, Victory or Else.
They had to win.
It would be a fine thing if we
could get some of God's people to go
about holy warfare that way.
Well, as a consequence of this denial of
authority, we have anarchy in all realms, no
matter which way you look.
I was in Birmingham two weeks ago, and
the magazine section of the Sunday paper had
on its front cover a picture done by
an ape.
He had rubbed his nose in various paint
jars, and then rubbed his nose on the
paper, and I thought it was just modern
art.
Of course, I'm not surprised that an ape
can do that.
Any ape ought to be able to do
modern art.
We have sown the wind and reaped the
harvest.
Well, tonight is an asylum, and the worst
thing about it is the inmates are trying
to run it.
Turn on your TV any time you'd like
and you see howling mobs around the world.
The cities of America are on fire, literally.
Set ablaze by demon-possessed maniacs, this is
not ordinary wickedness.
This is not run-of-the-mill meanness
we're reading about now.
This is demonism.
Now, we've got lots of good grassroots folks,
black and white, in this country who want
to live in peace.
And here we have to be terrorized by
these maniacs.
It's time that politicians in Washington got their
eyes off the next election long enough to
tell the truth and face this situation as
demonic lords.
Authority's out and anarchy's in.
James Bond philosophy.
Ten commandments have been thrown out the window.
Now we have situation ethics and contextual morality,
right and wrong are relative, not absolute.
And if I've heard it once, I've heard
it a hundred times, it all depends on
how you look at it.
It doesn't any such thing.
It depends on what God says about it
in his word.
I heard of a family on a picnic
some time ago.
In the summertime, a boy stole a watermelon
from a patch nearby, and his mother said,
Now, don't do that again.
You don't know what they've been sprayed with.
See what I mean?
Not a word about the Ten Commandments, not
a word about stealing.
And not all the looters in Newark and
Detroit, not all the looters are colored people.
White folks in the majority stole $600 million
worth of goods last Christmas in shoplifting.
And I'd hate to think how many church
members were in that aggregation.
You see this anarchy in the home.
There's as much authority in the homes as
ever.
The only difference is the children use it.
It is changed hands.
The Supreme Court of the United States has
more sympathy for the criminal than for the
victim.
We treat hoodlums like daffodils.
While we tie the hands of policemen, I
marvel that any man is willing to be
a policeman anymore.
Used to be an object of respect, now
he's a target for brickbats.
Authority out, anarchy in.
And what with the hippies and the beatniks
in America having struck six o'clock, the
authority of the Lord Jesus Christ is denied.
He is Lord of all.
It all boils down to this, the denial
of the absolute sovereignty of Jesus Christ.
Romans 14.9 says, For this cause he
died and rose that he might be Lord
of the dead and the living.
And the day is coming when everybody in
heaven, earth, and under the earth shall confess
him as Lord.
It won't save the lost, not then.
But everybody's got it to do.
And all the anarchy and all the violence
and all the war and the rioting and
the looting and the crime are because men
refuse the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
And we're wasting our time laying the blame
on secondary issues and trying to solve them
by education, legislation, reformation.
You can give every disgruntled, dissatisfied, yelling, maniac,
throwing Molotov cocktails today.
Give him a home in suburbia and two
automobiles and color TV and a boat and
all the status that he wants.
And next week he'll be howling for something
else until he bows.
As bow he will in hell, if not
here, to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ.
But even those who accept Jesus as Savior
deny him many times as Lord.
Our personal problems and our church problems today
boil down to the denial of the supreme
Lordship of Christ.
Christians who are living in inner anarchy.
Somebody said, I'm not a man, I'm a
mob.
I'm appalled by some things I'm reading even
in evangelical papers today.
We're getting away from the total authority of
the word of God.
Old-fashioned standards of morality and honesty and
purity and modesty have been thrown out the
window.
I know some people say that that's old
fogeyism.
I looked up that word fogey the other
day in the dictionary and never had looked
it up before.
It said a person of old-fashioned habits.
Well, what's wrong with that?
What's wrong with purity and morality and honesty
and modesty?
We have anarchy in conservative Christianity.
Strife, division, schism, debates, variance, contentions.
We have a breakdown in separation from the
world.
Christians smile indulgently at the fashions of this
age.
Clothes and conduct, dress and deportment.
In our music we've come all the way
from hymns to hootenannies.
And church discipline is a thing of the
past.
The trend is toward anarchy, away from the
authority of Jesus Christ as Lord.
Just that.
Let me say that the Lordship of Christ
was the initial confession of the Church, Romans
10.9, that if thou shalt confess with
thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe
in thine heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
When an early Christian said Jesus as Lord,
he meant it.
He better mean it.
To a Jewish believer, Lord meant Jehovah.
He better mean it.
To a Gentile in the early Roman Empire,
he better mean it, because Caesar was not
only the emperor, he was the God of
the Roman people.
And if a Christian said, I have another
king, he's gone, but he's coming back one
of these days, and my total allegiance is
to him, he was headed for trouble.
All the way through the New Testament, beloved,
it's never Christ and, you don't have to
add anything to Jesus, he's Alpha and Omega
and all the letters between.
When you write a letter, you don't have
to go outside the alphabet, everything's there that
you need.
I think one of the greatest missionary takes
in the Bible, one I've never heard used
in a missionary message, I suppose it has
been, I haven't heard it used, Jesus said
concerning the hungry multitude, they need not depart,
give ye them to eat.
They don't have to go to communism, they
don't have to go anywhere else, we have
what they need, let's get the food out,
give ye them to eat.
They don't need to depart.
But all the way through the New Testament,
it is Christ or, Christ or Belial, Christ
or Caesar, Christ or the world.
Early Christianity demanded a clean break with the
world, the flesh and the devil, and that
lasted until Constantine became a church member and
tried to Christianize paganism and wound up paganizing
Christianity.
The church tried to control the culture of
those days, didn't Christianize it, never has been
Christianized, it was Constantine-ized, but not Christianized.
We've never gotten over that mistake, the mistake
of Constantine, and to this day, although Nero's
dead, there are too many church members trying
to serve two lords, our churches have been
filled with baptized pagans, living double lives, fearing
the Lord and serving their own gods, drawing
nigh God with their mouths and honoring Him
with their lips while their hearts are far
from Him, calling Him Lord, Lord, and doing
not what He says.
Let me say in the second place that
the Lordship of Christ is the authentic confession
of a Christian anytime.
1 Corinthians 12, 3, Wherefore I give you
to understand that no man, speaking by the
Spirit of God, calleth Jesus accursed, and that
no man can say that Jesus is the
Lord but by the Holy Ghost.
You cannot confess Jesus as Lord by yourself.
You can't get saved by yourself.
You can't understand the Bible by yourself.
All of these things require the operation of
the Holy Spirit, not a do-it-yourself
religion.
You can call Him Lord, not mean it.
Jesus said there would be preachers at the
judgment day who would say, Lord, Lord, we
have prophesied, we've done wonders, we've cast out
demons, only to hear Him say, Depart, I
never knew you.
Luke 6, 46, Why call ye me Lord,
Lord, and do not the things which I
say?
But it is an authentic mark of the
work of the Holy Spirit to truly confess
Jesus as Lord, for the old Adam never
bows to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
I think we preachers over this land have
unwittingly created an artificial distinction between accepting Jesus
as Savior and confessing Him as Lord.
We've made two things out of it, and
it's not two things, it's all one thing.
And there are a great many people today
who have the idea that I can take
the free part, salvation.
I'll take Jesus as Savior.
I don't want to go to hell.
I'll take Jesus as Savior.
I'm not taking Him as Lord now.
I'll think it over, and maybe sometime at
a dedication meeting I'll go for it and
take Him as Lord.
In the meantime, if I never do, I'll
go to heaven anyhow, and the only thing
I'll lose will be my reward.
Now, that's a very strange doctrine.
It certainly isn't New Testament doctrine.
Salvation is not a cafeteria line where you
go along and take what you want and
leave the rest.
You don't get saved on the installment plan
if your fingers crossed and enter reservations.
You can't take Jesus on approval like you
buy a stock of goods.
To be sure, a man may not understand
all that's involved and all the rest of
our lives.
Fresh areas are opening up that need to
be subjected to the Lordship of Christ.
If a man takes Jesus for all he
knows Him to be at that time, God
will save him.
You don't have to be a theologian, but
no man can take Jesus as Savior and
at the same time willfully and deliberately and
knowingly refuse Him as Lord and be saved.
Paul said to the Philippian jailer, Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be
saved.
He gave him all three names at once.
Master, Mediator, and Messiah.
He didn't say, now you make a profession
of faith, and we'll take you in the
church, put your name on the row, and
give you a box of envelopes, and you'll
be all right.
He said, let's have it over, all of
it, with the stock.
Lock, stock, and bank.
You have only one option in this world.
You can take Christ or not take Him,
but if you ever take Him, friend, your
option ends right there.
From then on, you become the personal property
of Jesus Christ, bought and paid for by
His blood.
You're not your own, you're both with the
price.
Jesus Christ demanded more absolute loyalty than any
dictator, Charlemagne, Caesar, Hitler.
None of these ever demanded the absolute allegiance
that Jesus demands, but He has a right
to love so amazing, so divine.
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
I remember when I came to Jesus as
a country boy down the road here in
old Catawba County, out in the country while
a revival was going on at Corinth Baptist
Church.
I wandered out in the woods one summer
afternoon, the best way I knew how to
trust Jesus.
I didn't understand all about it.
You don't have to understand it all, you
have to stand on it all.
I don't understand all about electricity, but I'm
not going to sit around in the dark
until I do.
I came to Jesus as I was, trusted.
That afternoon I was trying to do up
the chores around the place, to go back
up to service that night, and I was
trying to sing that old song, Jesus, I,
my cross have taken, all to leave and
follow thee.
I haven't heard that in ages.
This affluent society would have an awful time
with that verse, wouldn't it?
Can you imagine a well-fed, well-clothed,
well-housed crowd of Americans standing up singing,
destitute, despised, forsaken, thou from hence my all
shall be, Lord help us.
I didn't understand much about it, but I
understood one thing.
No theologian hadn't explained it to me.
I understood that I was under new management.
That was perfectly clear.
I had a new Lord.
I believe that the sad state of our
Christians in churches today is due to a
cheap believism that doesn't believe, and a cheap
receivism that doesn't receive.
After all, the word Savior is found only
24 times in the New Testament, and the
word Lord is found 433 times.
He is wrong!
A Christian is a believer, a disciple, and
a witness.
He ought to become all three at the
same time, and be all three all the
rest of the time.
We were called disciples before we were ever
called Christians, Acts 11.26. The Great Commission
says go make disciples, not make believers.
You have to be a believer to be
a disciple, but let's get it straight, make
disciples.
God's not out just saving sinners.
He's out to make saints out of sinners.
And the crisis of conversion must be followed
by continuance.
It's a great mistake to take a text
that starts with the word and.
I've seen on streamers and placards in the
last few years, you shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free.
That's a good verse, but you wouldn't want
to rise up in the middle of Africa
and just take off on that.
You have two absolutes there.
You have truth and freedom, but you have
to get a head start.
And after all, that verse begins with the
word and.
That means something has gone before.
And the verse that goes before is if
you continue in my word, then are you
my disciples indeed.
And you shall know the truth and the
truth shall make you free.
Now, don't you see what a difference that
makes?
Oh, beloved, we've got to take not just
a step, but a walk.
Keep on stepping.
Some dear folks say, well, I took a
stand for the Lord 25 years ago.
Still standing, some of them.
We're singing, standing on the promises, but we're
sitting on the premises, really.
We're not getting anywhere.
You have to practice.
You have to work at it.
You have to learn of him.
Come and I'll give you rest.
That's an obtainment.
Take my yoke upon you, you'll find rest.
It's an attainment.
It's both.
You don't learn how to do anything else
without plenty of practice.
You don't learn how to be a musician
without practice.
I was in a Texas city some time
ago holding a meeting on Sunday morning.
The world famous pianist, Van Cliburn, came to
church, played the offertory, gave us quite a
thrill.
This charming young fellow went over after the
service, before the benediction, to avoid the crowd.
He slipped out to get away from autograph
hunters, but the children all took after him
for his autograph, including yours truly.
We got over there in the pastor's study
and I had a chat with him.
He's a genius, yes, but genius isn't enough.
The way that fellow practices would drive most
people crazy.
Practice, practice, practice, practice.
When I think about that and think of
the sloppy and slovenly living of most of
our church members, I'm not surprised that we're
not making much of a dent on this
situation today.
They resent the preacher who stands in the
pulpit and says, Thou therefore endure hardness as
good soldiers of Jesus Christ.
Have you watched on television the post-graduate
classes of extra-special students studying violin under
Heifetz, cello under Casals, guitar under Segovia.
I mean classic guitar, please, not electric.
But have you noticed this?
And you'd think, my, they're good enough already.
I can't see anything wrong with their playing,
they sound perfect to me, but not to
Heifetz.
And he grumbles, he grumbles, he says there
is no discipline, there is no discipline.
I listened to that one evening and I
found myself praying, Lord, have mercy on me
when I think I'm pretty good.
I want to be a workman, not ashamed,
approved unto God.
Are you a dropout?
What does your report card look like?
Are you anywhere near a post-graduate course?
How is it with you, dear friend?
You don't become a good Christian, you don't
become a good soldier of the cross without
working at it.
You don't become a good acrobat.
Don Amici says when acrobats are not performing,
they're practicing.
And that's just about it.
They do only two things, practice and perform,
practice and perform.
You don't get up some morning and get
a balancing rod in your hand and decide
to take off on that tight wire.
No, no, you'll take off all right.
But you just don't learn that way.
It takes infinite practice.
And beloved, it takes that in the discipleship
of the cross.
When a child is born in a home,
that's a great day, but it takes twenty
years after that to make a man or
a woman out of that child.
Evangelism is great business, but it's only the
beginning.
It's only the beginning.
Salvation is free, yes, I know, but it's
not cheap.
It costs God a plenty.
It costs him his son.
It costs the son his life.
It's free to you, but the minute you
take it, you become a disciple and that
will cost you everything you have.
The New Testament teaches not only faith in
Christ, it teaches following Christ.
My sheep hear my voice and they follow
me.
Come unto me, that's the believer.
Learn of me, that's the disciple.
The believer comes to Christ, the disciple comes
after him.
Peter followed my Lord in the Sea of
Galilee and then he denied him one day
and for some days he was not a
disciple.
How do I know?
Because the angel at the sepulcher said, go
tell his disciples and Peter.
Then he was reinstated by the Sea of
Tiberias, you remember.
We're great today for going after prospects in
our churches.
We're great prospectors.
But did you ever stop to consider that
Jesus lost some of his best prospects?
And as far as I can make out,
he did not lower any prices, he didn't
take out after them and say, well, now
maybe we can talk this thing over and
arrive at some kind of a conclusion.
Three fellows in the last six verses of
the ninth chapter of Luke, you remember the
first one said, I'll go with you wherever
you go.
And Jesus said, the foxes and the birds
have a place to stay, but I don't.
The second said, I'll go, but let me
first go bury my father.
Jesus said, let the dead bury the dead.
The third said, I'll go with you, but
I must go tell the folks goodbye at
home.
Jesus said, no man, having put his hand
to the plow and looking back, is fit
for the kingdom of God.
Now, if you're going with me, let's go,
and if you're going to stay here, stay
here, but the kingdom of God's no place
for a man with his face pointed one
way and his feet the other.
God's not taking people to heaven backwards.
If you're going with me, let's get going,
all in one direction.
Now, there was one prospect that stood head
and shoulders above all the rest, and he
was the rich young ruler.
He had manners where he came, and very
politely.
He had morals.
He kept the commandments.
He had money.
If you tried to join the average church
today, they'd say, take him in quick, make
him treasure, and don't ask him any questions.
My Lord said, sell out.
He didn't give him a massage.
He gave him a shark treat.
Sell out.
And that's just what he wouldn't do.
Now, he was a good catch, but the
Lord didn't catch him.
You see, my Lord wasn't after joiners.
There are a dime a dozen.
Americans are professional joiners.
They'd die if they couldn't join something.
Give them a red button and a certificate,
and they'll join anything on the face of
the earth.
The Lord wasn't after joiners.
He was after disciples.
Dr. Fleece read to you from Luke 14.
Jesus had a crowd on this occasion.
There went great multitudes with him.
What kind of psychology is this that would
face a multitude?
Here he is at a peak of popularity,
and he gives them three cannots, three negatives
really, in a row.
What sort of approach is that?
Why didn't he say, well, I'll come along,
and we'll not take up any of these
thorny issues, but we'll talk it over.
No, no.
If any man come to me and hate
not father, mother, wife, children, brethren, sisters, and
his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
And whosoever doth not bear his cross and
come after me cannot be my disciple.
Whosoever he be of you that forsake him,
not all that he hath he cannot.
Be my disciple.
He never put discipleship in fine print in
the contract.
He put it in boldface type clear across
the page every time.
Don't ever mistake it.
Paul said, Who art thou, Lord?
Lord, what will you have me to do?
Two Lords.
Lord came last in the first question, and
first in the second question, and after you
meet the Lord, he ought to always come
first.
Thomas, after the resurrection, my Lord and my
God.
John Wesley said a few mornings after Alder's
Gate, I awoke with Jesus Master in my
heart and in my mouth.
One of the greatest preachers of the past
said, If the convert declares that he knows
the Lord's will but doesn't mean to attend
to it, you are not to pamper his
presumption.
It is your duty to assure him that
he is not saved.
Do not imagine that the gospel is magnified
or God glorified by going to whirlings and
telling them that they may be saved at
this moment simply by accepting Christ as their
Savior while they are wedded to their idols
and their hearts are still in love with
sin.
If I do so, I tell them a
lie.
I pervert the gospel.
I insult Christ and turn the grace of
God into lasciviousness.
That was Spurgeon.
A.
Hodge said, Any man who thinks he is
a Christian and that he has accepted Christ
for justification when he did not at the
same time accept him for sanctification is miserably
deluded in that very experience.
Dr. Cameron Morgan said, I do not believe
men are ever brought to a sense of
their need of his Saviorhood, save as they
stand in the presence of his Lordship and
discover their inability, apart from regeneration, to be
obedient thereto.
I am concerned today about the multitude of
our church members who will take the Saviorhood
but not the sovereignty of my Lord.
What good is pardon if we are going
to live on in rebellion?
What sort of business is this?
I call it the rebellion of the redeemed.
We say we are pardoned and then turn
right around and say, No, I will take
him as Savior.
I won't have him as Lord.
This is a contradiction.
It is impossible.
Finally, the Lordship of Christ will be the
ultimate confession of creation because we are told
that the day is coming when at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow and
heaven, earth and under the earth and every
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to
the glory of God the Father.
Don't ever ask a man, Will you confess
Christ as Lord?
Because he will, sometime.
You might wake him up if you say,
My friend, I'm not going to ask you,
Will you?
I'm just going to ask you, When?
When?
You've got it to do.
Will you do it now or when it's
too late?
Everybody has it to do.
Heaven, earth and under the earth, that takes
in all the territory, doesn't it?
That's everybody.
It's not universalism.
It's going to be universal.
Everybody will confess his Lordship, but he won't
save the man who has waited out his
opportunity.
Now, I want to ask you in all
seriousness, tonight.
Is he your Lord?
Is he Lord of your body?
Your thoughts?
Your tongue?
Your temper?
Your spare time?
Your pocketbook?
Your life plans?
Your family life?
Your habits?
Your recreation?
What you look at on television?
The Lordship of Christ covers everything.
We talk a lot about stewardship.
We ought to talk more about Lordship.
You get a man right on Lordship, he'll
be all right on stewardship.
Stewardship's the underside.
Get him right on Lordship.
And it's not bondage, thank God.
It's liberty for him.
Where the Lord the Spirit is or where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty.
You're free to do everything that's good and
right in every relationship.
Is he your Lord?
Over in Scotland, a young lady said to
her old pastor, I think God wants me
to be a missionary, and I don't want
to be a missionary.
What am I going to do?
And he opened the New Testament at Acts
10, 14, where Peter had a little argument
with the Lord.
You remember?
And said, Not so, Lord.
He said, Now look at that.
That's a contradiction.
If you say not so, he's not Lord.
And if he's Lord, you just don't say
not so.
He said, I'm going to leave this with
you.
I'm going out for a while.
I want you to look at it, and
I want you to pray about it.
And then I want you to take a
pencil and mark out either not so or
Lord.
Because you can't have both.
He came back in, and she was in
tears, but she had marked out not so.
And he was Lord.
Oh, what would happen today if we had
churches filled with people with a one-word
vocabulary?
Lord.
No strains, no reservations, just Lord.
But so often the lip confession is nullified
by the life contradiction.
Is he your Lord?
Shall we pray?
Before I pray, I've asked this all over
this country, and I'm going to ask you.
You've listened so well.
How many of you would be humble enough
and honest enough to say by slipping up
a hand, Mr. Havener, I claim Jesus as
my Savior, but I'm going to tell the
truth.
He is not Lord of all.
But I'd like for him to be.
Pray for me that he may be Lord
of all.
He is not Lord of all in my
life.
Yes, I see that hand way back there,
putting him up all over the place.
He is not Lord of all.
Yes, everywhere putting him up.
He is not Lord of all tonight.
Yes, yes, yes, others putting him up.
He is not Lord of all tonight.
Thank you.
Now, Father, we sow the hands, but thou
seest the hearts.
Help these people to make thee Lord of
all tonight, in Jesus' name.
Amen.