Let's turn to the subject of the Daily
Lament or Prayer first.
Father, how wonderful it is that we can
gather into thy presence, Lord, away from all
other things, that they should be shut out.
And we, Lord, should be shut in with
thee, that thy grace may work, that thy
Spirit shall bring out all truth that we
need at this moment, knowing that thou hast
guaranteed to us that we shall keep on
entering into truth, that our finite minds may
be taught of thy eternal Spirit and be
prepared for eternal dwelling with thee.
Lord, we glorify thee.
We want nothing else but to serve and
love thee, know thee more intimately, and lose
all carnality, and go on with thyself, indeed
being members of thy flock.
We glorify thee, dear Lord.
We do indeed, that our finite minds grasp
little by little the great things of the
eternal God, and prepared, Lord, to dwell in
thy presence and with thee forever and forever.
Take away our coarseness, our vulgarity.
Take away all those things, Lord, that do
not at this moment harmonize with the heaven
and the very heaven of heavens in which
we shall dwell with thee forever.
Discipline us, Lord, as thy sons above angels,
and grant unto us, Lord, thy great love
coming to us as grace.
Move us, Lord, take us away from being
our mere selves.
We ask thee, Lord, make us like that
only real self that you had in mind.
In looking at thy son, Father, thou didst
see thyself.
Make us like him, that we may live
in the spirit, not in the flesh, desiring
only to have his flesh and his blood,
that we may, Lord, be changed into his
likeness, and please thee, glorious Father, that thou
hast accomplished thine almost impossible task, to make
us just like Jesus, as near as we
can be on this earth, ready to pass
into that eternal world of heaven.
We glory in thee, Lord.
If you will pardon our ignorance and come
again, Lord, to teach us and separate us
in the truth from willful ignorance and neglect
of thee just to develop our own personality.
We thank thee, Father.
We are not here to be ourselves in
this world.
We are here to be Jesus in the
world.
And we glory in thee, and thou dost
even forgive the ignorance that science will have
taught us to be a wonderful individual.
Lord, we come as only one science.
It is the knowledge of God.
And we thank thee for this, Father.
When all things else shall have gone, it
will be thou and thy children.
How we love thee.
Unfold to us something of thy plan, Lord.
Even this morning, show us again thy wonderful
miracles of changing the inner man into the
likeness of that man who the world hated
and crucified, hoping to rid themselves of him.
Impossible task as it is, for in the
end, thou art.
God, we should be like him, Father, just
to please thy heart, forgetful of all self,
so that we can live for thee as
Jesus lived unto thee and for thee.
Thank you.
Glorious Lord.
Amen.
All right, let's go on.
Chapter 10, isn't it?
We couldn't finish it yesterday, could we?
Today I want to take the rest of
chapter 10 that I left yesterday because time
is inexorable.
And the whole of chapter 11.
So let's go on, shall we?
May I say this?
Before we get into chapter 11, remember this.
All of us must take this to heart.
That Jesus had to learn.
You see, in the beginning, he did the
simplest of miracles.
Turned water into wine.
It didn't start off with raising somebody from
the dead, which silly idea we get into
our heads, or what we want to do.
Jesus had to learn.
He graduated in miracles.
He didn't raise Lazarus from the dead.
That was practically the last of his miracles.
You know, he restored the ear to Marcus,
whom Peter, in his foolishness, fleshly energy, or
we all have it, or have had it.
They tried to protect the Lord from what
the Lord had really come to do, that
is, die on the cross.
He didn't want that.
Most of us reason from the flesh, few
reason from the Spirit.
And then when we do, we start with
a little thing.
Jesus had to graduate as a man.
Showing us the way.
He said, I am the way.
Keep our eyes on him.
And not just drop on a particular verse,
say in John 14, or something like that.
It's better still to start at the beginning.
Try turning water into wine, and then you
may be trusted to raise someone from the
dead.
I'm not saying actually, I'm giving you the
progress of Jesus Christ on earth.
Swelled heads and big ideas come out of
the pit that's in us.
God has to cleanse everything out, not just
take away sin, but this pit of the
unknown self.
Though most people think they know themselves.
Let's go on, shall we?
Then in John chapter 10.
I finished up really in the 18th verse.
No man taketh my life from me, but
I lay it down of myself.
I have power to lay it down, and
I have power.
It's the word authority, that word power.
And I have authority to take it again.
And this commandment have I received of my
Father.
All right, here we go.
There was a division therefore again among the
Jews through these sayings.
Many of them said, he hath a devil
that is mad.
Why hear ye him?
Others said, these are not the words of
him that hath a devil.
Can a devil open the eyes of the
blind?
And it was at Jerusalem the feast of
the dedication.
And it was winter.
It was the dedication of the temple.
Herod's temple, not Solomon's.
Keep that in mind.
When, I suppose, with all his grandiose pomp
and ceremony, Herod was nearly worshipped.
But he built them a wonderful temple to
worship God.
And he got it all wrong.
He was a wicked man.
And all the Herods had a history, like
the Borgias in history that we know of.
And he built a division in the temple
where the Gentiles could come and the Jews
had this place.
They also had great divisions between men and
women.
There was the court of the women and
all these kinds.
You should look at the plans sometime.
You can.
You used to have Bibles in my day.
Of course you don't have Bibles like this
now probably.
I don't know.
I don't look at the modern versions.
The great thing is they would have a
plan of the temple and plans of this
and a map of this and a map
of the other.
And could be helpful.
But Herod was a monster.
Don't you think that?
Pretending to be a God lover and a
God worshipper.
Beware of them.
There are lots of them about today that
they aren't called Herod.
And he was walking then in Solomon's porch,
verse 23, at the Feast of the Dedication.
Let us pay honour to Herod.
You see, that's where it was.
Then came the Jews round about him and
said unto him, How long dost thou make
us to doubt?
If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.
Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye
believed not.
The works that I do in my Father's
name, they bear witness on me.
But ye believe not, because ye are not
of my sheep.
That is a very pointed statement.
You won't believe all that you should believe
unless you're one of his sheep.
Truth will raise complications in your mind because
you're not heart led, you see.
Beware of being a worshipper of your own
mind and intellect.
Be wary of it.
Get to know the voice of God.
Let's go on, shall we?
We should see it all working out.
And you believe not, verse 26, because ye
are not of my sheep.
That's it.
Are you having trouble with believing this or
believing that?
You make sure you're one of his sheep
first.
Don't follow the state of your own mind.
The state of mind follows the birth of
the Spirit.
And you have to be educated in that.
It doesn't matter whether you get a university
degree, not a lot.
Not in heaven, it'll get you a better
job and better income and all these kinds
of things, but that's not it.
Just remember this.
Keep it in mind because we're being taught
to worship our own minds.
That's what's happening.
We do what we want.
We wear what clothes we want to wear.
Of course that's very excellent, don't the film
stars do that?
We have to be conformed to Christ in
that fifth gospel I was talking to you
about.
If Paul tells you that, Paul's gospel, you've
got to be conformed to the very image
of Christ in a man.
You see his outer image in the Synoptic
Gospels.
They trace him from the manger right through
to the cross.
John ignores the manger part.
He's trying to redirect the human mind into
the true spiritual patterns of God.
That's John's great commission on this earth.
And the sooner you take that deeply into
your heart, there's one thing God demands of
every one of us is to be conformed.
So don't run away from conformity.
Conformed to the image of Christ.
That's the big thing.
Not the one we make up in our
own mind, but the one that's been revealed
in the Scripture.
That's the image.
We can be worshippers of images, chiefly ourselves.
We've got to come into what God wants,
beloved.
The works that I do, and listen, he
did not do them in his own name.
Verse 25, I'm doing them in my Father's
name.
If my Father was on earth, he would
do exactly what I am doing.
The person that you call your God, he's
talking to people, anybody that's got an ear
to hear, he would only do exactly what
you read about Jesus Christ in this book.
That's all.
Hallelujah.
Isn't it wonderful that God should have a
human birth on this earth.
And indeed all because he wants to give
you a new birth into his family.
Isn't that glorious?
How wonderful it is.
All right.
You believe not, he says, 26, because you
are not of my sheep.
I want to instance the thing, I don't
want to overdo it in this, but there
should be a full stop there.
And the next letter should be A, capital
A, the capitalized word.
As I said unto you, my sheep hear
my voice.
Versification often, as well as tractorization, has ruined
the flow of the truth.
Here it is.
As I said unto you, because he had
said that, my sheep hear my voice.
And I know them, and they follow me.
Now, beloved, let me emphasize a point to
you.
I mean, I should have three whole years
at least expounding this book.
And you're all invited to come, of course,
but I should love to do this.
I once took three years in a group
just studying the epistles of the Ephesians.
Three years on Ephesians.
Here is the thing.
Listen.
It's tremendous to get into the heart of
God.
For you do know, don't you, though you
will nearly have been taught to worship your
own brains, it's what comes out of your
heart.
Jesus puts the brain function, I mean the
mind function rather than the brains.
The brains are up here.
They're only in machinery.
He puts the origin of thought in the
heart as a man thinketh in his heart.
So is he.
Oh, I'll honor you ladies and say, so
is she.
It's the same.
Oh, beloved, never you be deceived by these
modern teachers, however many letters they may have
after their name.
This is it.
And you, if you say you are a
child of God, are bound to believe it.
This is the written word of God.
Understand that.
Hallelujah.
Now this is what he said, And I,
as I said unto you, my sheep hear
my voice, and I know them, and they
follow me, and I give unto them, and
I'm going to put only unto them, eternal
life, and they shall never perish, neither shall
any pluck them out of my hand.
My Father, now you keep this indelibly in
your mind.
Never let this be erased.
My Father gave them to me.
Now that's what makes us so dear to
Jesus.
If we are truly one of his sheep,
we're not like a great big bull rushing
about.
Certainly not like some brontosaurus or something.
My Father gave them to me.
Now if you say you belong to Jesus,
you were given to Jesus by his Father.
He had nothing but what his Father gave
him.
Gives him.
It's not you tag along, I want to
join this church, or I want to belong
to that church, or I want, it's whether
you, just think of yourself now, you know,
you've known about yourself since your childhood, with
a gradually growing understanding.
All right.
You didn't become a Christian, in the sense
which you know I've become a Christian or
something.
This is the poor human way of thinking,
and of course it has a degree of
correctness.
But you've got to get into the real
truth of God, the eternal truth.
Do you think you've been given to Jesus
by the Father?
Go on, think about yourself, and think about
what an awful mammal we may have been.
A tigress or a tiger, with all our
tempers and tantrums and traumas.
You see, given to him by his Father.
And he repeats this very especially later in
this Gospel, and he isn't talking about sheep
as in general, he's talking about the man
that God gave him, who he was going
to turn into being the real apostles of
Christ, after he had left the earth, to
be Christ's.
Not belonging to Christ.
Leave out the apostrophe, to be little Christ's
almost.
Understand that.
Like him.
My Father gave him to me.
That's what makes you precious to me.
To hell.
Wonderful.
I mustn't stop.
I always tend to preach on every verse
actually.
I'm sorry about that, it's my failing.
Here then is the big thing.
Oh, it's so lovely.
They'll never perish.
Never perish.
Now, perishing has a certain significance, not that
I can stay or have time to stay
on all these lovely verses, but that word
perishing, you know, take Jake John 3, 16,
famous, most famous verse in the Bible I
suppose, God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.
Now that word perish does not mean go
to hell, or to the lake of fire.
It's a very present word.
It is being saved from perishing, wasting away
your life on this earth.
That's the exact Greek.
It's a pity we can't all speak Greek,
isn't it?
And I don't know whether the translators who
are bringing up these new versions except make
it clear either.
If you want to learn a language, you
learn Greek.
Classical Greek.
Learn it.
And the cold truth is this.
You're wasting your life.
You're wasting every minute of your life.
Time was given by God.
God, if I may say so, invented time.
Man didn't.
And don't you think we're going to pass
out of time into eternity?
You're deceived if you think that.
And I was brought up on this, that
when we get to heaven, no more time
and no night there, and all these things
seem to be based firmly on scripture.
But there is time in heaven.
And it's stated to you by this same
man, John.
This is why I love this man, John.
He really got into the understanding of God's
heart.
Paul got into it with his great mind.
He was the only one that went through
university, by the way, Paul.
All the rest, God seemed to prefer people
that could only just about catch fish.
He wasn't very interested in education.
Here's the thing.
It says, and the fruit of the tree,
this is in Revelation, it says, it brings,
the tree of life, brings forth its fruit
every month.
So there's time.
Alright?
It brings forth its fruit every month.
So there is time in heaven.
Let me digress a minute, but it's good
for you and your future ministry to understand
these things.
Alright?
It's much better for you to get an
understanding of God and intrinsic truths and learn
the Bible, because there won't be any Bibles
in heaven.
You understand that?
They're simply paper, and they'll be burned up
in the general fires.
You've got to know the Word, which is
Christ.
Always understand this, that they say this is
the Word of God, and it's not strictly
speaking true, and you've got to learn to
think strictly.
They are the written Word of God.
Now keep that clear.
The Word of God is first, personal.
Jesus Christ is the Word, which was made
flesh.
Secondly, the Word was spoken.
Genesis 1, and here it is.
And God said, let there be light.
And there was light.
And thirdly, it was written, and the Bible
was begun so far as it's possible to
trace it at the foot of Mount Sinai.
It was not begun with Genesis.
This is the order of creation in Genesis,
but it was begun at Sinai.
Alright?
And you can read it, just keep on
reading.
Moses started to write, and he wrote the
first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch.
He started his treatise, whatever you want to
call it, at the foot of Sinai.
Now that sets you hunting and thinking, doesn't
it?
Go ahead.
Always remember that everything so far as God
is concerned starts with being.
I am.
The only way for any one of us
can say I am is because that is
the great self-consciousness that creeps in.
I am.
I am a little boy or a little
girl.
And oh dear how terrible it is when
everything in our world turns around the eye.
I can think, therefore I am.
But this isn't that kind of a lecture,
is it?
Let's go on.
To see the glorious truth that God unfolds
they shall never perish.
That is, not waste their time and their
substance.
Never waste it.
Because you've got to know that having been
born into this world you can never, never
cease to exist.
Your body will.
But you can't.
Keep that clear.
What you have to do is not waste
your life.
Waste it.
Hear the words of the Lord Jesus in
the parable in Luke.
There that prodigal son wasted his substance.
The real manhood of him.
Not the fortune he brought from his dad.
God so loved the world that he gave
his only son who never wasted his substance.
Who fashioned himself by grace upon the Father.
And he was the image of the Father.
All right.
OK.
There's much more in this Bible than you
think.
If the scientists of the world were to
take this as their substance instead of trying
to destroy it in people's hearts they would
be wonderful people.
Don't listen.
You follow this.
You cannot go out of existence.
You can go out of this world out
of this earth, away from this earth.
But you will exist forever.
Now whether you really only miserably exist or
have eternal and wonderful being in the presence
of God and life eternal is up to
you entirely.
Up to you.
Watch your choices and especially watch the drift
of your life.
How old are you?
Where are you now?
I know we're all in this room.
But where is this you that I can't
see when I look at your body that
has nothing to do with male or female
either?
You.
Who are you?
What are you?
That's the thing that God's concerned about.
And He sent His Son.
I'm going back in John alright to that
wonderful third verse 16th verse in the third
chapter.
It's the chapter in which He talks about
new birth by the way.
And never perish.
I must not waste my time I must
not waste my brains if I have any.
I must not waste my personality if I
have any.
We've all got that.
You must not waste it.
You must not perish in any degree.
We should not perish.
What was I like at 12 when I
was 12?
What was I like when I was 10?
Horrible little creature I suppose.
I don't know.
Can't remember.
And what am I like now I'm 84?
Wasted?
Have I wasted opportunities?
Life.
God so loves He blots all that out.
Yes, but He doesn't blot it out He
intends you to blot out the rest that
He's got for you.
We're all concerned about going to heaven when
we die.
It's the last thing you want to be
concerned about.
It's pleasing God.
Up to Him whether He takes you at
50 or whether He takes you at 80.
That's up to Him.
Sometimes I get vehement about this because I
go to churches and all they're concerned with
is going to heaven when they die.
Let me tell you it's not good enough
for you.
He's going to make a new heaven for
you.
Told you so.
Just keep it clear.
Be sure only that you have heavenly states
in your heart now.
The greatest thing about all this you can
talk all the other things is about saving
you from yourself.
That's right.
You say well we're talking about sin.
I wish preachers preached about self.
We only have salvation because God is the
self He is.
I am who I am.
I am what I am.
Of course He forgives.
That is love.
But you friend, you in the presence of
Jesus Christ.
I'm getting away from John but let me
take the point one step further.
Paul wrote to the two books of Thessalonians.
In the first one he says this What
is my glory or my crown you in
the presence of Jesus Christ.
That was his crown.
He never let a moment of his life
perish.
He invested it in souls.
I mean his eternal life.
That's the thing.
He wasn't looking for a golden crown.
All the hypnologies that stray on it.
Most of it.
The crown of Jesus is you and I.
In his presence.
That's his crowning glory.
That he could come to earth and take
the sin of the world and take the
hatred of mankind personified in those Romans and
Jews of his time and present you spotless
and wonderful a proper human being as God
intended.
In his presence.
That's his crown.
We are his crown.
God doesn't invest in gold.
Dirty stuff that has to be dug out
of the earth.
And men idolize it.
Here's the thing beloved.
It's you.
Get it in you.
Into your heart.
And mind your own business.
And don't apply yourself to trying to mind
other bodies business.
Unless you would be called like Peter calls
you.
Don't be a busy body in other men's
matters.
Just be a slave of God.
What a concept.
Because that's all Jesus was.
And because he would be a slave of
God.
You say he was a son of God.
Of course.
You can't be a slave of God until
you're a son of God.
He enslaved himself voluntarily.
Listen.
Twelve years of age.
I must be about my father's business.
I am among you as he that serveth.
Everybody wants to be lord.
Don't they?
Oh, not you of course.
But you know what I mean.
Everything is.
Before you'll ever be a good salesman for
instance.
I'll talk to you.
You'll be on there.
Everybody wants to be a good salesman.
Knows this.
That they've got to sell themselves before they
sell their commodities.
Watch it.
The Bible goes across the teachings of all
modern psychology.
So don't get.
Oh, yeah.
Wonderful.
Well, let's go on with our subject, shall
we?
Look at this.
It's nearly my tea time.
Perhaps I'm wasting my time.
Let's go on.
Here is the thing.
I give unto them eternal life.
And they shall never perish.
Neither shall any man pluck them out of
my hand.
My Father which gave them me is greater
than all.
And no man is able to pluck them
out of my Father's hand.
I am my Father alone.
And what was the reaction immediately?
They threw up stones for stoning.
Now you've got to be one with the
Father.
One with the Son.
One with the Holy Ghost.
Not try and force your ideas on them.
You can't be a Christian and a witness
unless you know.
You must be a martyr.
The Greek word translated witness is martyr.
Oh, oh.
They've already laid down their life, their career,
their everything else, all their hopes.
Perhaps their mother and father's hopes for them.
Yes, they're not based on the scripture.
Dead to the world and all its toys,
its idle pomp and fading joys.
Jesus my glory be.
I guess if I asked you who wrote
that, nobody would be able to tell me.
You won't find it in the world's literature.
You must study to be approved unto God.
That's Paul to Timothy.
A vessel unto honour, fit for the Master's
use.
What high ideals.
But with Paul it was a reality, not
merely an ideal.
You see, beloved, this is your gospel to
which you have been called.
First to live it and then to preach
it.
This is marvellous.
And my father won.
They took up stones again to stone him.
Jesus answered them, Many good works have I
showed you from my father.
He never hatched them up in his own
mind.
He showed them from the Father.
For which of these works do you stone
me?
The Jews answered him saying, For a good
work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy.
And because thou, being a man, makest thyself
God.
Jesus answered them, Is it not written in
your law, I said ye are gods?
Fancy God having that written in the Bible.
I said ye are gods.
If he called them gods, out of whom
the word of God came, and the scripture
cannot be broken, Say ye of him whom
the Father hath sanctified and sent into the
world, thou blasphemest.
Because I said, I am the Son of
God.
Really, do you think God would ever have
it written about you?
I said you are a God.
Oh, not someone that he worships.
But I've raised, I've elevated you to the
place of the earth.
That's how I've looked upon you.
My chosen people.
And when the Father looks upon you, he's
got to see his Son in you.
If he can't see him, you don't belong.
I took this many years ago, by God's
grace, into my own thinking.
You must.
Not to take the place of God, but
being in his likeness.
And remember to whom he was speaking, people
who got hooked up in idolatry, but they
were still his chosen people.
How many of God's chosen people are idolaters
today?
I don't know.
How much time do you spend in front
of the mirror, for instance, looking at yourself?
I should advise everybody to have a little
look now and again.
But here is the main thing, beloved.
What an elevation.
Moves from calling people his sheep, and the
next time he said, I said you were
God's.
God's coming.
I love the old Quaker saying, that when
they spoke about being baptised in the Spirit,
what we would say today, they never spoke
of it as being baptised in the Spirit.
Do you know how they spoke of it?
You should read some of the early Quaker
literature.
They called it being Godded with God, and
Christed with Christ.
We say, he's baptised in the Spirit.
Yes, it's right, it's biblical.
But you see how they saw it?
Being Godded with God.
God gives you God through God.
Through God the Son, God the Father will
give you God the Holy Ghost.
How can you live any other way than
living just exactly like that?
That's what it's about.
Christ never gave himself for any other reason
but to produce sons in the image of
the Son.
Paul's gospel called Romans.
Have you read it?
That's what it's all about, beloved.
It isn't to make you happy or anything
like that.
It's to make you in his own image.
Not that you should go in for self
-worship, but to be like Jesus.
They taught me that when I was a
child going to Sunday school years ago.
It didn't mean anything.
I just sang a chorus.
How marvellous it is.
Now let me hurry, because I want to
get into chapter 11.
I mean, I've got a commission on, well,
self-made one.
Derek doesn't care whether I get through one
chapter or two, three, four.
Here we go.
And this is very, very important.
Now keep this in mind.
And carry it forward to chapter 11 when
we come together again.
If I do not the works of my
Father, believe me not.
I invite you not to believe me.
But if I do, though you believe not
me, believe the works that you may know
and believe that the Father is in me
and I in him.
Therefore they sought again to take him, but
he escaped out of their hand and went
away.
Beyond Jordan is a place where John at
first baptized, and there he abode.
Many resorted unto him and said, John did
no miracle, but all things that John spake
of this man were true.
And many believed on him there.
Amen.
We'll come together in about five minutes, beloved.