Now, we've been talking to you on the
high cost of writing paper.
We have been discussing this from the standpoint
of 2nd Corinthians 3.3. Ye are manifestly
declared to be the epistle or letter of
Christ.
Letters are for the purpose of conveying a
message to an absentee, someone who isn't with
you and you've got a message.
Jesus Christ is here and the sinner is
over here and he's got a message he
wants to get to him.
So he writes a letter to him and
you're it.
You're it.
You are the letter.
Not simply a letter bearer, you are that
too as well.
But you and your person, in your conduct,
in your behavior, in your submission to the
will of God, and in your whole reaction
to the whole matter of obedience to God
and living out a godly life, you are
it.
You are the letter.
God's dear son bought your bodies as well
as the fellow who lives in them.
And he bought your bodies for a purpose,
that he might live in that body and
live his life after it.
Therefore glorify God in your body.
You are not your own.
You're bought with a price.
You have no more right to your body
than I have to yours.
Not a bit.
It's sold out to Jesus Christ.
It's his property.
And he bought it for the express purpose
of moving in and living out his life
through your hands and feet and vocal organs
and so on.
And let me say again that the only
Christ that the unsaved world will ever see
until they see him at the judgment seat
of the great white throne, the only Christ
the world will ever see is the Christ
they see in Christians.
Paul said, For me to live is Christ.
That means for me to live is Christ
to somebody.
I, Robert Thomas Ketchum, as Christ lives his
life out in me, I am the only
representative, I am the only manifestation of Jesus
Christ that somebody will ever see.
And that's true of you.
What kind of a Christ do they see
when they look at you?
You're it.
And they judge Christ by what they see
in you.
And that may be why he doesn't appear
to be too attractive to the world, it's
because we're not making a very good image
for them to look at.
Now, the Lord Jesus Christ bought you and
me as standing timber in a great forest
of pulpwood.
He bought the raw material, the stock, the
forest, there are millions and millions and millions
of standing trees in the forest of potential
writing paper.
He bought us as the raw pulpwood for
the express purpose of transforming us into writing
paper upon which he can write his message
to a lost world.
And the initial purchase by the one who
is the owner of the whole proposition and
the one who is going to manufacture those
trees into writing paper, it was a costly
deal for Jesus Christ.
Oh, what a price he paid.
And now we've been looking at the cost
to us.
And the first thing I called your attention
to was that there are four processes through
which that tree has to go before Joe
can get a box of writing paper and
write a letter to his sweet pie.
Before that happens, something has to happen to
that tree.
He just doesn't write on that tree and
put it in the mailbox, you know.
And yet essentially that's exactly what he does,
but it has to be transformed from its
raw state into its refined state, and then
he can write on it.
And there are four things that has to
happen to that tree before that can be
done.
The first one I pointed out to you
was it has to be cut down to
the place of death.
We have to reckon ourselves to be dead
to sin.
You can't play around with sin, known sin,
in your life and expect to be a
good piece of writing paper for Jesus Christ
to put his impressions on.
You can't do that.
I'm not talking about sinlessness.
I'm talking about this business of having victory,
which you can have, over known sin.
If you know it's sin before you do
it, you don't have to do it.
Unless you want to, and that's the trouble.
We want to, so we do.
But if that's the way you want to
live your life, you just don't need to
be figuring that somebody is going to read
Christ in you, very allegedly.
We must be dying out to the whole
sin principle in our lives and the renunciation
of it and the reckoning ourselves to be
dead to sin and alive to God.
Now, yesterday morning we dealt with surrender.
The next thing that has to happen to
that tree I know in the forest, all
of its pretty branches and foliage has to
be cut off and it lies there naked
and stripped of everything that made it a
thing of duty.
It must surrender.
And so yesterday we talked about surrender.
And I don't know to whom I should
be speaking about this, but I sincerely hope
for the benefit of the team and those
who are with them that the tape, the
message yesterday morning, may be played back for
their benefit.
I said some nice things about you yesterday,
fellas.
You're a whale of a crowd.
And I spoke about surrender.
God will never take anything away from you
except that which he sees will hurt you
if you keep it.
And he just may have seen that victory
down there might have hurt you.
It might have.
So he just let it go the other
way.
And we had a precious time together yesterday
morning on this matter of surrender.
And I don't know who I should speak
to, so I'm speaking to you now.
Why not arrange some morning to have that
tape played back here for the whole chapel?
Those who heard it yesterday won't hurt you
to hear it again.
But I do want the team, for their
own encouragement, to hear that message that we
gave yesterday morning on surrender.
Now, the next thing that has to happen
to that tree that's been cut down and
trimmed is loaded on a car and taken
over the railroad up to Lockheed in Pennsylvania
to the pulp wood mill, a paper mill.
And there it is put into a thing
they call up in that part of the
country, the hog.
It gets that name because of the racket
it makes up and down that Susquehanna Valley
when it starts chewing up one of those
logs.
But a derrick is here and lays hold
upon one end of a log and it's
swung out over this great big...
Well, have you ever seen the old-fashioned
family coffee grinder?
About yea square, open top, and you pour
a pound of coffee in one and you
crank it up and grind it?
Well, that's exactly what the thing looks like,
only several hundred times bigger.
It's a mammoth thing and this log is
upended and dropped down into that hopper and
hurling knives and bits and augers, grab it
and twist and turn and suck it down
in and chew it up into little pieces
of wood like that, just rip it and
tear it and shred it and break it
up into little chunks of torn and broken
wood.
Well, it has to do that if it's
going to be a writing paper.
And so with you and with me, if
we're going to be a writing paper upon
which Jesus Christ can write, there must be
the fellowship of his suffering.
We must know what it is to suffer
with Jesus Christ.
Now, that's the thing we don't like.
That's the thing we shrink from.
Anything that gives us suffering and uneasiness and
unpleasantness, we don't like it.
So we shrink away from it and we
back away from it.
Okay, go ahead if that's the way you
want it, but you'll never be writing paper
for Jesus Christ.
Never, never.
There's got to be a broken life, there's
got to be a life that knows what
it is to go down into the black,
awful shadows and fill up that which is
behind the sufferings of Christ.
We've got to know what it is to
fellowship with him in his sufferings.
And so often that is done by personal
suffering, by going down into the valleys of
the shadows where a heart is ripped and
torn and broken, where loved ones are snatched
away, where help is taken away and the
victim may lie for years upon a bed
of pain and twisted out of shape.
All of this may happen, and it can
be the most blessed thing in the world
to you, if you take it as from
him.
And then beside that there is this blessed
ministry of living so close to him, with
your head pillowed upon his precious bosom, until
you catch the great pulsating heartbeat of the
love of Jesus Christ for a lost world.
As you hear the inner sobs that must
still rise from the heart of our ascended
and glorified Lord as he looks out over
the world, prancing by his cross and paying
no attention to it.
Lamentations 1 and 12, while it refers to
Israel, I know, it doesn't take too much
imagination to transfer those words from the lips
of the prophet concerning Israel and put them
into the lips of the Lord Jesus, born
crowned, blood soaked, split bedraggled, nailed fast to
a bloody cross, and saying to all who
pass by, Is it nothing to you, all
ye that pass by?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow which is done unto
me.
When the Lord hath afflicted me in the
day of his fierce anger, Is it nothing
to you, all ye that pass by?
Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto mine.
The Lord Jesus is still saying it, not
only to a lost world who go giddily
by his cross, paying no attention to it,
but he's saying it to born again Christians
this morning.
Hear me, is it nothing to you?
You've let me save your soul, you've brought
your poor miserable soul to me, and let
me save it to get it out of
hell and into heaven, and you've put the
period there?
You've never tarried at my cross, you've never
waited there to hear the great sobbings of
my heart, as I still weep and yearn
over a lost world?
You know nothing about it.
You let me save your soul, and then
you've taken your body and your interest and
all to go with it, and you've thanked
me for saving your soul, and then you'll
run the rest of the show yourself.
You'll go where you want to go, you'll
be what you want to be, you'll marry
who you want to marry, you'll buy what
you want to buy, you'll work where you
want to work, and you'll never ask me,
never once, have you come and said, Lord,
you brought this body of mine as well
as the fellow or the fellowess who lives
inside it?
I want your will, tell me what you
want me to do, where you want me
to go, and where you lead.
I'll follow, oh, that the people of God,
those who have been saved by his grace,
may know something of what it is not
to just prance along with the consciousness of
eternal salvation and be saved and enjoy all
this not, but oh, that we might linger
at his cross and hear the sobbing of
his heart today over a world that has
rejected him, and the sorrow which is still
added to his heart because of his own
saved ones who are ignoring his lordship in
their life.
If you're going to be good writing paper
upon which he can make his image, and
you can be Jesus Christ to somebody, a
representation of him, his letter, then you're going
to have to know what it is not
only to die to sin and surrender to
him, but you're going to have to know
that this surrender will take you often into
the valley of suffering, and that's what we
don't like.
We shrink away from it.
Don't do it!
Don't back away from suffering.
Don't detour the hard spots in life.
For I give you my witness after 54
years of walking with him, and Mrs. Ketchum
would stand here on this platform and bear
witness with me this morning that the most
lovely things, the dearest, the sweetest things that
we have ever found out about Jesus Christ,
we found them out in the shadows.
All the beauties of his person and all
that we have found up in the great
mountain peaks of the blaze of sunlight, of
happiness and what have you, but there isn't
enough money in all of this universe to
buy one hour of what we found out
about Jesus Christ down in the deep, dark,
black night of sorrow and suffering.
You all are so many lovely things in
Jesus Christ that you will never know we're
there until the experience of suffering with him
elicits them and brings out that ministry of
his to you.
So don't dodge the suffering.
Don't shrink away from the unpleasant things.
You say, well, I still, I still guess
I just still don't know.
No, no, that's not what?
Oh, that's not for me.
That's not for me.
Okay, if that's the way you want it,
I'm not a good, I don't Christian you,
but I wouldn't give you 10 cents a
box full for your writing paper.
No, I wouldn't.
Look, my dear friend, is the servant above
his Lord.
Just a few days before Irene Farr was
killed and Ruth Heggie bitterly so, it was
my joy to read a letter out in
California that Ruth had written just about three
days before the massacre there on the station
to a friend of hers in California.
And she said, we don't know what is
coming to pass around us.
Things are getting pretty serious.
And she wound up her letter with this
statement, but may the dear Lord help us
to glorify him, whether by life or by
death, sign Ruth.
How little she knew then, how close she
was for having to demonstrate that.
And she did.
She did.
Who are you and who am I to
say we will not suffer?
Who are we anyhow?
Are we above our Lord?
Are we to let him take the path
of suffering and then we trance along up
on the sunny hill while we watch him
down in the valley going through the sufferings
and we refuse to fellowship with him down
there?
We refuse to take the path of obedience
which we know if we take it will
cost us something.
It will cost us friends.
It will cost us loved ones.
It may cost us our betrothed.
It may cost us a pension.
It may cost us our job.
It may cost us the love of some
of our family.
And we know it's going to do it
if we follow him in obedience and therefore
we won't do it.
Okay.
But you won't be very good writing paper,
no.
But oh, the soul, the man, the woman
that's willing to go down there and walk
with him through the black shadows.
Oh, the purifying, the sanctifying ministry of suffering
with Christ.
I don't know what to say.
Well, it's not for me.
Not for me.
Hear me again.
Are you above the Lord?
Listen to me.
If all of the black darkness that has
covered the earth since darkness covered the earth
back there in Genesis down to the last
total eclipse of the sun if all of
this awful black darkness could be gathered together
in one awful ball of darkness massed all
in one terrible ball of darkness it would
be gleaming sunlight compared to that awful black
night that wrapped itself around my Lord when
he went down with my hell in his
body.
If all the floods of all time from
the time when the waters covered the face
of the earth in Genesis 1-2 down
through Noah's flood and to the last great
tidal wave if all of these floods could
be massed in one great towering crashing wave
coming blazing and blasting its way all in
one it would be but the gentle lapping
of a little wavelet on the sandy shore
compared to that hour when all the waves
and the billows of the wrath of God
against the sins of the world went crashing
over the head of my beloved and from
its depths I hear him crying all my
waves and my billows have gone over me
in the belly of hell cried I and
said that's all right for him but excuse
me there's a passage in Philippians it says
it's not only given to you to believe
on Christ but to suffer for his name's
sake what's that?
yeah that's right that's part of your inheritance
this business of suffering with Christ is such
a wonderful thing that is part of your
inheritance well we are so grateful and so
thankful that he saved us because we believe
on him but the rest of that is
our inheritance too you know it's given to
us not only to believe on him but
to suffer don't judge it don't judge it
dear friend don't stay away from the hard
place because it's going to hurt you for
down there in the shadows you'll find out
things about Jesus Christ that you never knew
existed and you would never need to know
apart from the shadows down there oh how
wonderful he becomes when the black night gathers
around you and perhaps pain is racing through
your body like lightning expresses laden with the
cargo of sharp agonizing pain or whether it
may be distress of mind and heart and
concern is tearing at your very brain oh
how sweet just to turn and see him
standing there in the shadows and as we
cast ourselves upon him to give his arms
around us and drawing us close to his
own great heart and saying when thou goest
to the waters they shall not overflow thee
when thou walkest through the fire it shall
not kindle upon thee for I am the
Lord thy God the Holy One thy Redeemer
and if you don't want to go into
the path of suffering you miss all of
that now there's one further process and just
with that we'll close this particular subject when
this broken twisted torn little bits of wood
are through with the suffering doctor they're spewed
out into a great vat of acid you
put your hand in it and hold it
there a minute and you wouldn't have any
hand to bring out in these acid baths
these little chunks of broken twisted wood are
reduced to the finest pulp you can imagine
farther down the line of vats where the
process is about completed you can pick that
stuff up and you never had flour in
your fingers or butter that is finer than
that then it goes on into cleansing baths
where the little hard pieces that may not
have yet been actually reduced to this smooth
pulp are strained out and cleansed out until
finally way down at the end of that
long paper mill miles and miles of great
gleaming white paper without a flaw in it
anywhere they're rolling up on great rollers they're
grabbed by derricks and whisked into boxcars and
off to philadelphia they go and in a
couple of weeks you go over to the
drugstore and pick it up in the saturday
evening poster the ladies home journal printed and
written all over it some of it is
shunted off into a special track of special
refinement and coloring and what have you and
it's put up in nice little stationary boxes
and stacked up on the counter at the
drugstore and joe goes over and buys a
box of it and writes to his sweetie
pie yeah so not only
dying out to sin surrender to his will
for your life knowing what it is to
take the path of obedience even though that
takes you into the darkest deepest shadows of
your life suffering with him but
this life of daily cleansing daily cleansing hour
by hour the blood of jesus christ keeps
right on cleansing keeps right on cleansing keeps
right on cleansing so that in your body
men and women around you may see the
writing of jesus christ in your life all
of this all of this is a costly
business it's a costly business my friend but
the greatest price of all that was paid
was paid for the raw material when he
bought not only your soul but your body
in which your soul is at the awful
cost of calvary and now the cost to
you and to me the cost to you
and to me of coming into a sober
solemn life of dedication to him in the
matter of the forsaking of known sin in
our life the thing that you know to
be wrong i'm not talking about the things
that you don't know i'm talking about the
things you do know to have that surrendered
to him and put to death and then
to say lord whatever i have whatever i
am i now put into your hands in
total complete unconditional irrevocable surrender i walk out
of the throne room of my life and
renounce my right ever to walk back into
that throne room thou shalt be lord and
king and ruler of my life thou shalt
have the preeminence and lord this is going
to take me again and again and again
and again into a place where it's not
going to be pleasant it's going to be
rough and tough it's going to take me
into places where i'll cry myself to sleep
at night it's going to take me into
places where my face will be fleshed with
the shame of humiliation as people make fun
of me i know, i know, but dear
lord is nothing compared to what you went
through for me and i'm not above my
master teach me, help me lord as i
follow you and fellowship with you in your
sufferings keep me so close to your own
great heart dear lord that i may catch
something of the inner sobs of it as
i hear you weep over a lost world
and teach me how to weep with you
and then lord this life of mine as
i travel through this world of contamination on
every side i know, i know, i know
there's contamination everywhere but lord will you just
keep me clean keep me clean in my
thoughts keep me clean in my desires keep
me clean in my affections keep me clean
in my deportment so that no one will
see anything in me that is unlike christ
then my friend it can be said of
you ye are manifestly declared to be the
letters of christ father in heaven make it
sure in all of our hearts for jesus
sake amen