We're on the high cost of writing paper.
Jesus Christ bought the standing timber, millions of
you, all across the ages, and he wants
to make a writing paper out of you
so that you can be his epistle.
Now, there's a cost to you and to
me in this process.
I said yesterday there are four processes through
which a poetry has to go before it
can be a writing paper.
And the first we dealt with yesterday morning
was, it must fall down into the place
of death, it must die.
And so we dealt with that yesterday.
Reckon yourselves also to be dead indeed unto
sin.
If you're going to be a writing paper
for Jesus Christ, you're going to have to
settle this sin business in your life and
quit fooling around with it.
Just quit fooling around with it.
And excusing yourself on saying, well, you know,
we're all human.
That is the silliest excuse I ever heard
in my life.
Of course we're all human, but you're supposed
to be born again, and you're supposed to
have a superhuman nature in you now.
The nature of Christ.
And if you yield your members to that
nature and not to the only, you won't
have any trouble in this matter.
Know you not that to whom you yield
your members to obey his servants you are?
Okay, you reckon yourself to be dead to
the old man and alive to the new
one, and you yield to him.
And we showed you yesterday that you have
a mighty helper, a heavenly undertaker, the mortician,
the spirit of God who mortifies and puts
to death and keeps in the place of
death all of the functions and uproars and
how-do-you-do's of the old man.
Now the second thing that has to happen
to that tree before it can be writing
paper is it must surrender.
It must surrender.
As it lies there now in the place
of death, sharp axes and saws go up
and down the sides of it, cutting off
every limb and every branch, cutting off all
the things that made it a thing of
beauty as it stood upright in the forest,
all of its lovely foliage and beautiful branches,
all of it chopped away, and leaves the
log lying there naked and bleeding.
That's the way it's going to have to
be if that log is ever going to
be writing paper.
And so with you, and so with me,
there must be a life of constant surrender
and submission to the will of God, whatever
that will may be.
And whatever the cost to you and to
me may be, there must be a constant
and perennial submission to it.
You can't be good writing paper and be
yielded today and rebellious tomorrow.
You can't be good writing paper and run
along a nice, clean, smooth sheet and then
all of a sudden run into a bunch
of little pot marks and holes that will
catch the point of your pen and squirt
ink all over the place.
If you're going to be writing paper for
Christ that he can write on, this business
of surrender and submission to his will must
be a perennial affair.
It must be constant.
It cannot be spasmodic and periodic.
Now, in this matter of surrender, I think
we need to get that down out of
the fog.
I tried to get this business of dying
out to sin out of the fog yesterday
by getting it down in language that you
and I can understand.
And if I can get it down where
I can understand it, you sure can.
That's for sure.
So let's go to work on this troublesome,
bothersome thing called surrender.
I'm afraid that right here our young people,
and they're not to blame for it because
the old Jews have taught them that, have
got a wrong image of Jesus Christ on
this matter of surrender.
I think the popular idea, although it's not
a good idea, but it's the one that's
popular amongst people is that Jesus Christ, after
he saves you, does nothing else now but
stand right at your shoulder and looking over
your shoulder constantly and the minute he sees
a child of God with anything in his
hand that that child of God gets pleasure
out of or has any kick out of
it, an enjoyment out of it, the minute
the Lord Jesus Christ sees a child of
God with anything in his hand that delights
him and he has pleasure in it, Jesus
Christ will say, give me that.
Give me that.
And that's the image that most people have
of the Christian life.
That once he saves, from then on out,
it's give me, give me, give me, give
me, give it up, give it up, give
it up, give it up, give it up,
give it up, give it up.
Everything, anything at all that you get any
personal pleasure or profit out of, that's out
for Christians.
Jesus Christ is just standing there and saying,
give me that.
Give me that.
I'm afraid that that's the popular image.
And it's no wonder that young people rebel
against it.
I'd rebel, I'd kick the stalls down and
tear the horror off my head and go
out into the big wide open spaces.
If I had to have a vision of
my lovely Lord like that.
Now, here's a man who has been preaching
51 years and walking with the Savior for
54.
I want to tell you something.
And I want you to remember it and
write it down in your little black book.
Let me give you a basic proposition on
this matter of surrender to the will of
God in your life.
Now watch what I say carefully.
Jesus Christ will never ask you to give
up permanently anything except
that which he in his omniscience knows will
either hurt you if you keep it or
rob you of something better.
Let me say it again.
Jesus Christ will never ask you to give
up permanently anything except that which
he in his omniscience knows and sees will
either hurt you if you keep it or
rob you of something better.
You can just put that down as a
working proposition.
You see, you and I can't see an
inch beyond our nose.
But we're dealing with a Savior who loves
us and gave himself for us, who sees
all things from the beginning.
All the tomorrows of your life are as
plain as day to the omniscient Son of
God.
And it's not an easy thing.
I'll grant you that.
It's not an easy thing to have to
give up that which you think is your
cheapest desire, your cheapest need.
You look at these lovely branches and you
say, well, I must have these, I've got
to have something.
And I just can't be expected to give
up everything, my greatest joy, my greatest ambition,
my greatest hope.
Must this all be lopped off and gimme,
gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme and surrender it all
to him all the time so that I
just go around and might as well go
into a memory somewhere and lock myself in.
Now, let me tell you, my friend, let
me say it again.
Jesus Christ will never ask you to give
up anything except that which he in his
omniscience knows and sees will either hurt you
and harm you or keep you out for
something better if you keep it.
If he's taking something away from you, he's
doing it in order to put something better
in your hand or he's taking it away
from you because it'll kill you if you
keep it.
It'll wreck him.
Young man, give up that girl that you've
set your heart on marrying.
Young lady, give up that fella that you've
set your heart on marrying.
Why?
Because the omniscient Christ knows that if you
marry him or you marry her, you'll live
in a hell on earth.
Now, wait a minute.
That boy was created in heaven and wrapped
up in cellophane and went down and landed
in my lap by an angel.
Oh!
Okay, gal, go ahead and marry him.
You'll discover that it was a fallen angel
that brought him and he was wrapped up
in the other place.
The fella said, now, look here, doc, you
can't slander my girlfriend like that.
Won't you tell me she'll wreck my life?
She was just a lovely thing dropped right
down out of the sky.
Okay, boy, you go ahead and marry her
and see what you get.
I'm not talking nonsense.
I'm talking out of 51 years of experience
as a pastor.
I've had them come by the scores in
these 51 years into my office and lay
their head in the crook of their elbow
and sob their life out, they reckon they
win.
Because they just ran their own little love
affairs without ever asking the Lord about it.
You go to be a dentist, you go
to be a doctor, you go to be
a schoolteacher, you go to be a lawyer,
you go to be an accountant, you go
to be a preacher, you go to be
this, that or the other, and the Lord's
saying, give it up.
Just put it down in your little book,
friend, that he'll never ask you to surrender
anything permanently, except that which he sees will
wreck you if you keep it, or rob
you of something better.
Now, that's hard for us to see, but
if you're going to be a writing paper,
you're going to have to be constantly pliable
in the hands of the Lord so that
he can take away from your life that
which would leave a flaw in the page
of writing paper, so that he can make
that a perfectly smooth piece of paper upon
which his image can be reproduced to friends
around him.
You see, I say we don't know.
We don't know what God is doing sometimes
when he removes things from our lives.
Let me illustrate it.
Here's a little, oh, say, 20 months old
little girl, golden hair, eyes as blue as
the heavens, cheeks as pink as a rose,
beautiful little thing.
And she's playing around the kitchen, and she
has inadvertently left the cutlery drawer open, and
the little thing is moving around, and she
looks in.
Oh, boy, what she sees.
Oh, pretty, pretty.
Nice long black something here, and a nice
long shiny something here.
Oh, that's the prettiest thing she ever laid
her little eyes on.
Isn't that a nice little plaything?
Mother happens to look over and sees what's
going on, and why, instead of screaming, she
tiptoes around behind the little darling and waits
until the opportunity arrives, and she reaches down
over her shoulder, grabs her hand, and shoves
the blade away from the little one.
Then she breaks its fingers and drops the
pair, and you know what the little darling
is saying?
Hmm?
Want me to tell you?
You want me to interpret it?
You know what the little thing is saying?
She's saying, my mother is an old bear.
My mother is an old dutch.
My mother is an old drag killer.
Every time I get something in my hands
that I like to play with, she'll give
me that, give me that.
She's an old bear hanger.
Now that's what she's saying.
Well, ten years have come and gone, and
a little twelve-year-old lovely girl is
looking at her lovely hands, and she remembers
the day that mommy took the knife away,
and she realizes that had she not done
so, all the tendons could have been cut,
all her fingers could have been drawn in,
and her now-beautiful hands could have looked
like bird's claws, and she goes to mommy
and puts her arms around her neck and
says, Thank you, mommy, for taking it away.
Don't be afraid to surrender.
You will live to see the day when
you thank God over and over and over
again for taking that nice shiny thing that
you thought was the joy of your life.
You will live to see the day when
you thank him from the bottom of your
heart.
You say, but these things are so important
to us.
May I give you my own personal testimony?
And please don't think that I'm putting on
a front now, that I'm just saying empty
words.
What I'm about to say to you, I
never was more sincere in my life, and
the only reason I'm giving it to you
is because it's out of my own experience.
I've had to live to see the day
over and over and over again with many
things that I thought was tearing the heart
and life right out of me when it
happened, and now I live to see the
day when I saw what God was doing.
He was taking something away from me that
would hurt me if I kept it, or
make room for something better, one or the
other.
As you know, I have fought through these
51 years with a very limited eyesight, and
it is my sober testimony to you today
that God took that eyesight.
And after all these years, I can thank
him for it.
People sympathize and say, what a tragedy and
what a handicap.
No, no.
The tragedy and the handicap would have been
had he let me keep my eyes.
I know the fellow that lives down in
this carcass.
I know him better than anybody in the
universe outside of God himself.
And I know, I know that if God
would let me keep my eyesight, I wouldn't
have been here today talking to you.
I know where I would have been, but
I'm not going to tell you.
I wouldn't have been here, I'll tell you
that.
And God knew it.
So he just put a blinding on my
eyes to keep me from going into the
thing that I would have gone into, head
over heels, and kept me close, close, close
to himself.
And if I had been a blessing to
anybody, if I had been a blessing to
these countless thousands down through these 50 years
of ministry, one of the big reasons for
it, beloved, and I'm not just saying a
bunch of empty words.
If I had been a blessing to thousands
down through these years, most of it's been
due to the fact that a pair of
blinded eyes have kept me so close to
the Savior that I can do nothing but
radiate him and tell you what a wonderful
Savior he is.
There are some things, my friend, worse than
blindness, and that's having a good pair of
eyes that lead you into paths that are
forbidden for Christians.
There are some things worse than losing a
basketball game, my friend.
I don't know how you feel about it,
but I personally feel that God was in
that business last night.
These boys had one great victory.
I'm not so sure that God could trust
them with their pride.
There are greater calamities than victories.
Let me give you an illustration of what
I'm talking about.
When I was pastoring Gary, dear girl, Dorothy
Burroughs, was saved.
Under our ministry, one of the most talented
girls I've ever known.
She excelled in every cultural art.
Music, instrumental and vocal, literature, prose, poetry, elocution,
any cultural art you put her in, anything,
she excelled.
She was way above and beyond everything else.
Poetry, it was terrific.
She's the girl who wrote the poem that
is now being stolen by some guy, and
rather than put anybody's name to it, they're
writing down underneath it, select it.
This is the poem she wrote one morning
after I had preached on knowing the will
of God, knowing it to do it, and
doing it because you love it, know, do,
and love.
She wrote this poem in her Bible.
I ask the Lord for some model sweet,
some rule of life with which to guide
my feet.
I ask and pause, he answered soft and
low, God's will to know.
Will knowledge then suffice, dear Lord, I cried,
and ere this I question into silence, died,
no, this remember too, God's will to do.
Once more I ask, is there no more
to tell, and once again the answer sweetly
fell, yea, this one thing, all other things
above, God's will to love.
That's poetry, as well as something else.
Everybody was watching her, and she was driving
through.
Her father was the second in command of
the great steel empire of Gary.
Her mother was a butterfly, nominal, professed Christian,
but a butterfly in all the society.
Dorothy had to blaze her trail against the
traffic like Enoch of old, and she had
her heart set on service for the Lord.
In her sophomore year in school she was
stricken with what they called in those days
quick consumption, and in 18 months she was
dead.
I asked her mother if I could use
her Bible to find something for the memorial
service, and that's when I found that poem
that she wrote the day I preached on,
Knowing, Doing, and Loving the Will of God.
Way over here on the back fly leaf
of her Bible, scribbled in a hand almost,
very difficult to read, and dated four days
before she died.
Listen to this.
God, let me lose triumphantly.
What's that?
Let me what?
Lose how?
Triumphantly!
God, let me lose triumphantly.
This is my prayer today.
I who have always prayed to win along
a glorious way.
God, let me shun all bitterness of envy
or despair that I have run the race
and lost while others have gotten there.
God, let me get my breath again.
Then, Lord, my head's still high.
Quite unashamed, I did not win, but I
had dared to try.
That's victory.
Amen?
That's victory!
Let me lose triumphantly.
And you do.
I wish I had that basketball crowd right
down here in this front seat this morning
to tell them that.
Well, I don't have them, so you tell
them, will you?
Lose!
Lose triumphantly!
Don't come home dragging that tail between your
legs, down on your heels, with your lips
down to the bottom of your walking arm.
Get your head up!
There are things worse than losing.
And it could have been the worst thing
for them to win, and for this school.
God will never take anything away from you
except that which he sees will hurt you
if you keep it permanently.
Something.
And he will take it and put it
in his hand and hallow it and sanctify
it and bless it and give it back
to you.
Hallowed and sweetened and sanctified by his touch.
If it won't hurt you, he'll give it
back to you.
Abraham!
Yes, Lord, here am I.
Take now thy son, thine only son, whom
thou lovest.
Take him out to a place that I'll
show you and sacrifice him.
I'll lay him up for the sacrifice to
me.
And you know, I like what follows.
And Abraham rose early in the morning.
Man, I like that.
Hear me, young man, young woman, if you've
got an unpleasant job to do for the
Lord that's going to really hurt you and
cost you something, get at it early and
get it over with.
The longer you play around with it, the
harder it's going to be.
If you're going to surrender, get it done!
Don't play with it!
Get it done!
Abraham!
So here he is, there he lies, and
the knife is on his downward flesh.
Abraham!
Here am I.
Now you can have him back.
Now I know.
And you mean to tell me that as
much as Abraham loved that boy before that,
as much as that boy meant to that
father Abraham before that, that he didn't mean
a million times more after that?
Joseph of Arimathea, you rich old rascal, you
weren't going to leave your resting place to
some unloving son or daughter or some pretty
old widow after you were gone to make
you a hole in the rock over there
and stick you in.
You'd go to fix that up before you
died, and you've got a nice big tomb.
We'll all fix a new one over there.
Boy, you could move a house in the
thing.
And it's all polished.
Boy, when you lay out, you go to
lay out in style, Joseph.
I rather suspect that everybody came to see
that fellow.
He said, I want to show him a
tomb.
And one day, in effect, Jesus said, Joseph,
give me your tomb.
And he gave it to him.
Now, keep in mind, my friend, that so
far as Joseph of Arimathea knew, he was
given it up forever.
He didn't know anything about the resurrection any
more than his microphone did, or does.
When he gave that tomb to Jesus Christ,
he said, that's it.
I'll never see that again.
Three days later, the Lord gave it back
to him, sweetened and perfumed with the perfume
of the rose of Sharon and the lily
of the valley.
Not all stunk up with a decaying corpse.
Oh, hear me this morning, young men, young
women, don't be afraid, don't be afraid to
surrender.
Though it may be the dearest thing you
ever laid your eyes upon and you set
your hopes upon, if the Lord's axe is
coming along this morning and saying, chop it
off, chop it off.
Get on with it, and that right early.
And if it won't hurt you, he'll give
it back.
And there'll be a thousand times sweeter.
You give up that fella, and then the
Lord gives him back to you.
You give up that girl, and the Lord
gives her back to you.
You give up that ambition to be this,
that, or the other, and then the Lord
gives it back to you.
Oh, it'll mean a million times more to
you and for you in the days that
lie ahead than it could ever have been
had you kept it selfishly in your hand.
And in the giving up and in the
returning process, God will have smoothed out a
sheet of writing paper that men and women
can see his Son on.
Our Father God, teach us this lesson this
morning, that there are a lot of things,
a lot of things worse than defeat.
God let us lose triumphantly.
Triumphantly.
May there be such a yielding and a
surrendering of every fond ambition, every earthly hope
and desire to thy Lordship this morning.
And then we'll just sit quietly and wait,
Lord, for you to do one of two
things.
Give back to us that which we surrendered,
hallowed and sweetened by thy touch, or remove
it from us so that it can never
hurt us.
Make it so for Jesus' sake.
Amen.