The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked.
Let's hear the word of the living God
as it's found in Jeremiah chapter 17 from
verse 5 to 10.
Jeremiah 17 starting in verse 5.
Thus says the Lord, Cursed is the man
who trusts in man and makes flesh a
strength, whose heart departs from the Lord.
For he shall be like a shrub in
the desert and shall not see when good
comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in
the wilderness, in a salt land which is
not inhabited.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the
Lord, whose hope is in the Lord.
For he shall be like a tree planted
by the waters, which spreads out its roots
by the river and will not fear when
the heat comes.
But its leaf will be green and will
not be anxious in the year of drought,
nor will cease from yielding fruit.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked.
Who can know it?
I, the Lord, search the heart, I test
the mind, even to give every man according
to his ways, according to the fruit of
his doings.
This is the word of God.
The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, which
is the opposite of what we hear so
much in the world.
The world throws its lies at us.
Man is good by nature, but is corrupted
by society.
How often don't we hear that lie?
Actually, it's man's depravity which corrupts society.
Every man possesses an innate moral goodness, they
say.
Really?
It would be more accurate to say that
there's bad in the best of us, evil
in the best of us, actually, because we
have fallen to creation.
There is good in the worst of us
because we're God's creatures, but there's evil in
the best of us because we've fallen to
creation.
Happiness is the measure and goal of our
lives, we are told.
But is it?
No, happiness is not the goal and measure
of our lives.
God's word is the measure of our lives.
God's will is the measure of our lives.
God's worship is the measure of our lives.
The chief end of man is to worship
God and to enjoy him forever.
God's work is the measure and goal of
our lives.
We are told only fools restrain their desires.
Actually, it's the fool who gives in to
selfish desires fueled by pride, greed, and lust.
Proverbs 28 verse 26 cuts across all the
Disney premises where we're told to follow your
heart.
Proverbs 28 verse 26 says, he who trusts
in his own heart is a fool, but
whoever walks wisely will be delivered.
It is foolish to trust in our own
heart.
In fact, James Dobson wrote a book on
emotions.
Can we trust them?
That's a great book and it's well worth
reading every word, but the short answer is
no, you cannot trust your emotions.
Everything is relative, they tell us, but that
is not true.
There is objective truth.
There is objective reality.
However, without the God of the Bible, the
creator, who has a mind and is rational,
logic and intelligent design would not even be
possible without a creator God.
All you need is love.
In fact, that mantra was a song by
the Beatles, I think.
But what do they mean by love?
If they're meaning emotionalism and sentimentality, that's not
enough.
You need a lot more than emotion and
sentimentality.
The biblical definition of love found in 1
Corinthians 13 is love is unselfish giving.
Love is sacrifice.
Love is duty.
Love is integrity.
Love is doing the right thing.
Loving God and loving a neighbor with all
of our heart, soul, mind and strength.
And true love is measured by sacrifice.
So the song All You Need Is Love,
well, are you talking about biblical agape love
or are you talking about the world's sentimentality
or emotionalism, which is definitely not good enough.
The Marxists keep telling us only material and
economic change can produce a social change.
Not at all.
Only regenerate lives, only transformed hearts, only renewed
minds can change society for the good.
Satan has a whole lot of lies he
wants you to believe.
And one of the most successful that so
many people believe is, I'm a good person.
You just have to ask the average person
on the street, are you a good person?
And the answer is, I'm a very good
person.
And people are so full of themselves.
And I've been taught to say this by
Hollywood.
So much so that you can ask anybody,
even a Christian, how are you?
And the average answer will be good.
And that gives us this wonderful evangelistic opportunity
to say, but Jesus said no one is
good except God alone.
When we evaluate ourselves in the light of
God's 10 commands and we recognize that Jesus
is the standard, he is the gold standard,
no one should deceive themselves by claiming I'm
a very good person.
1 John 1 verse 8.
If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not
in us.
If we say we have not sinned, we
make him to be a liar and his
word is not in us.
How categoric is that?
Ecclesiastes 9 verse 3 says, truly the hearts
of men are full of evil and madness
is in their hearts.
There's a book written on the terrorist war
in Rhodesia where the title is A Time
of Madness.
That's exactly what it was, a time of
madness.
There's madness in people's hearts.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew 7 in
Mark 7 verse 21 to 22 said, for
from within, out of the heart of man
proceeds evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, thefts, murders,
covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, and evil eye, blasphemy,
pride, foolishness.
Out of the heart.
So where's this business of follow your heart
and I'll have a good heart as Bill
Clinton famously said.
Dr. Martin Luther was overwhelmed by a sense
of his sin.
When asked which Pope had caused him the
greatest trouble, Martin Luther responded, Pope self.
People racked their minds because there'd been 10
Popes that Martin Luther had lived through and
which Pope is that?
The Pope that sits on the throne of
my own heart.
He said, that Pope, Pope self, which sits
on the throne of a selfish nature, that
had given him more trouble than all the
Popes around.
In other words, we are our own worst
enemy.
Dr. David Livingston in his journals expressed his
frustration that even when he was engaged in
the best of actions, it was with mixed
motives.
He was not satisfied.
Now it's an interesting thing that you ask
the average unregenerate person about themselves and they'll
say, I'm a very good person.
It seems the further away from God one
is, the more one believes in the goodness
of man, such as Kenneth Kohunda.
Kenneth Kohunda who had reformed parents, who studied
at Livingstonia.
Kenneth Kohunda wrote in his book, Humanism and
a Humanist in Africa.
He said, I could not agree with the
Calvinist religion of my parents.
They believed in the depravity of man.
I believe in the goodness of man.
Well, how interesting he should say that considering
he was a one party dictator who locked
up people who criticized him, locked up people
without trial, oppressed people.
When the evil British colonials imprisoned Kenneth Kohunda
for his revolutionary subversive activities, he had a
cell to himself.
He had running water, electricity.
He had a bed with sheets and pillows.
He had a gramophone.
He had access to the library.
He had a desk and table.
He had three cooked meals a day brought
into him by the demonic evil colonials.
When he, the humanist who believes in the
goodness of man, was running Lusaka Central Prison,
there was one cooked meal a day, no
plates, no bowls, no sauce.
They would dish up into people's hands.
You had to lap it up like a
dog.
There was no eating utensils, no bowls.
The British built Lusaka Central Prison for 80
prisoners.
He shoved 1,200 prisoners into Lusaka Central
Prison.
He had a cell to himself.
We had 65 people in a cell without
beds, without sheets, without any utensils, without running
water.
No, the plumbing was blocked up.
It didn't work.
There was no electricity whatsoever in the prison
because he believed in the goodness of man.
Isn't this funny?
People who believe in the depravity of man
do the most charity of the kindest, and
the people who believe in the goodness of
man are guilty of the worst atrocities.
Kenneth Kohunda's Lusaka Central Prison, when I was
his guest as a presidential detainee, they actually
had a majority of the people, the vast
majority, were remanded prisoners.
They hadn't had their day in court yet.
You could tell the difference because a prisoner
wore a prison uniform, and a remand prisoner
who hadn't had his day in court yet,
hadn't been sentenced, he was still in civilian
clothes, all the tattered remains of it.
The vast majority of the 1,200 in
that prison, probably over 800, were remanded.
Some had been there eight years and hadn't
had their day in court.
But Kenneth Kohunda rejected the reformed teachings of
his parents who believed in the depravity of
man because he believed in the goodness of
man, which is why he didn't allow his
people a choice as to who to govern
over them.
I've seen in the museum the actual ballot
paper.
It didn't even have a no box.
There's only one candidate, Kenneth Kohunda.
There was just the box for the yes.
Not even a no.
But he believed in the goodness of man.
When Charles Spurgeon was asked which of his
5,600 members had given him the most
trouble, he responded, Charles Spurgeon.
And they said, you have a member called
Charles Spurgeon?
He said, I refer to myself.
No member of Metropolitan Tabernacle has given me
more trouble than I have given myself.
And that is the truth.
We are our own worst enemy.
Nobody can cause us more grief than we
can cause ourselves.
Now, one of the lies that you see
in the world is people saying, I cannot
change.
That's one extreme of the spectrum.
I cannot change.
However, the persecutor of the church, Saul of
Tarsus, became the missionary of the church, the
Apostle Paul.
Bernard Nathanson, once head of the Abortion Rights
Action League, who ran a chain of abortion
clinics responsible for tens of thousands of abortions.
He became an avid pro-life activist, producer
of the Silent Scream film.
Abbie Johnson, once a director of a planned
parented abortory, responsible by her own calculation for
22,000 abortions, has become a pro-life
activist and the author of the book, Unplanned.
Before my conversion, I was a shy, introverted,
quiet library bookworm.
After my conversion, I became seriously evangelistic, but
I was an Arminian, antinomian, dispensationalist, rapture fever,
end times enthusiast, convinced the Lord was coming
before the end of the year, 1977, 78,
79, 80, 81, gave up by 82.
I was also a pessimist, and I taught
you should not be involved in politics, and
I was convinced we were living in lost
days.
I was extremely negative about the idea of
getting married or having children, because there wasn't
enough time.
I mean, we're living in lost days.
Snatch some salt from the fire.
So, I changed.
I changed to the point that on this
adventure of discipleship, you've got to continually be
willing to change as your mind is renewed,
and as you learn more about the scripture,
and you come across wiser people, and experiences
prove that your previous suppositions were wrong.
And so, in time, God has turned me
into where I'm now, a reformed post-millennial
missionary father and grandfather.
I was a bit surprised at the shop
yesterday to be given a pensioner's discount.
I hadn't asked for it, and to be
addressed as Madala by some of black staff,
Madala meaning grandfather.
And I'm still being challenged to change in
response to the renewing of the mind, to
the studying of the word of God.
Now, there's some who claim God can never
forgive me.
How many times do you hear that?
God can never forgive me.
However, church history is full of the details
of enemies of the gospel, like Paul, and
frightful criminals, even persecutors of the church, converted
and becoming trophies of grace.
I've met many of them.
I've had meals with many of them.
I've met people who are persecutors of Christians,
who are now brothers and sisters in Christ.
Come now, let us reason together, says the
Lord.
Though your sins be as scarlet, yet they
shall be as white as snow.
Though they are red like crimson, they shall
be as white as wool.
That's Isaiah 1 verse 18.
Then you hear people saying, I'm unchangeable.
God cannot change me.
I've heard that often.
But Titus 2 verse 11 says, for the
grace of God that brings salvation has appeared
to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness
and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present age, looking for
the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our
great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave
himself for us, that he might redeem us
from every lawless deed and purify for himself
his own special people, zealous for good works.
Now there's a new term that I've heard,
showing the deceitfulness and wickedness of man's heart.
It's really like wildfire.
First heard in America, now it's all over
South Africa too.
I'm done.
How many times do you hear this?
I'm done.
And actually it's only God, our Creator, who
can tell us when it is finished, and
when we are done, when our work is
complete, and when we are dismissed, and when
we're free to go.
Nobody can just excuse themselves from the commanding
officer or the monarch's presence.
They will tell you when you are dismissed,
when your work is done, your presence is
no longer required.
We do not have the right to say
I'm done.
Try that in the army and from the
commanding officer and see what happens.
How much more in the presence of the
King of Kings and the Lord of Lords,
a conqueror, the eternal judge, he is the
only one who could say when your work
is truly done, and when you are dismissed,
and when you're free to go.
And then you hear these people, and this
is very common, especially in South Africa.
People think things are only going to get
worse and worse, but that's not true.
There have been many extremely bad times, even
worse than ours, when dramatic turning points came.
For example, take 1517 when Professor Martin Luther
nailed his 95th thesis on the church door
of the castle church, the Slosskirche in Wittenberg.
That's the major turning point from a time
of unbelievable darkness and superstition.
And the resultant Reformation unleashed forces of faith
and freedom that the world had never before
seen.
And nations were transformed, and the scientific revolution,
industrial revolution that flowed out of that Protestant
Reformation created the most productive, prosperous, and free
nations in the history of civilization.
And the great revivals of 1859, 1860 transformed
Western civilization even more.
You have people who say, we cannot win.
The moment you suggest anything, you've got these
people, the gift of discouragement, come up, we
cannot win.
Well, with that kind of attitude, it becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
If you think you can or you can't,
you're right.
If you think you can, you can.
If you think you can't, you cannot.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And so this attitude is everything.
Your attitude determines everything.
A defeatist and negative attitude will inevitably lead
to defeat and disaster.
It cannot but.
But consider the facts of history.
Against all odds, just a few hundred knights
of St. John held Malta against a phenomenal
Ottoman Turkish army of over 40,000 dedicated
jihadists, and they won.
Four months of siege, and yet the knights
of Malta stood firm.
Every one of them wounded who was not
killed, but they stood firm to the end
until the jihadists set to flee.
Against all odds, the Christians of Europe defeated
the vast numbers of Turkish invaders at the
Siege of Vienna in 1683.
In our own lifetime, we've seen how the
Tutsi David defeated the Hutu Goliath in the
Rwandan Holocaust in 1994.
In our own lifetime, we've seen decisive victories
won over communism.
Our defeating of the Cuban forces, the elite
presidential guard of Castro himself at the Battle
of the Lomba River in 1987-1988, all
those battles around Crete-Cornwall, the high point
of the Soviet Empire's expansion blunted by South
African defense force in Angola, and the Russians
have even written books on Angola, the beginning
of the end.
Angola, we never saw it, not even in
Afghanistan.
And Angola, the beginning of the end of
the Soviet Union.
Those are books written by Russian officers who
fought in Angola.
We saw the conclusion of the Cold War,
the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse
of the Iron Curtain, the fall of communist
regimes all over Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union, the coming down of the Soviet red
flag with a Hammond signal rising up from
the beautiful Russian flag.
We've seen the Soviet Union abolished and 15
nations go free as a result of that.
The liberation of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, so
many countries.
Praise God for all those countries in Eastern
Europe released from the prison house of nations.
In 1982, Christians launched a seven-year Jericho
prayer march initiative focused on bringing down the
Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain and praying
for the opening up of Eastern Europe and
Russia to the gospel.
In 1989, those prayers were answered.
In 2011, we witnessed the independence of South
Sudan from Islamic Sudan.
Just in recent years, we've seen the Brexit
vote against the European Union globalist agenda in
Britain and the President Trump victory against all
odds and against all the predictions of the
mass media and the establishment in the United
States.
In history, just 464 fortresses against all odds
defeated over 10,000 Zulus at the Battle
of Blood River.
The Zulus had never been defeated up to
that point, but they were defeated on the
16th of December 1838 in response to prayer.
Nobody expected the farmers of the Transvaal to
defeat the redcoats of the British Empire, but
in 1881 at the Battle of Majuba, they
did.
We have seen communism defeated in Russia and
Eastern Europe and we will go on to
see Islam and the New World Order defeated
as well and all the other communist regimes
from China, North Korea, Zimbabwe, they will all
be defeated in time.
Psalm 2 verse 8 is a messianic psalm,
ask of me and I will give you
the nation's free inheritance, the ends of the
earth for your possession.
Psalm 22, all the ends of the world
shall remember and turn to the Lord and
all the families of the nation shall worship
before you.
For the kingdom is the Lord's and he
rules over the nations.
Psalm 72, which inspired that Jesus shall reign
him, which was written 300 years ago by
Isaac Watts, in his days the righteous shall
flourish.
He shall have dominion also from sea to
sea.
All the ends of the earth, his enemies
will lick the dust.
All kings will fall down before him, all
nations shall serve him.
James 4 verse 7, therefore submit to God,
resist the devil and he will flee from
you.
Romans 8 verse 37, yet in all these
things we are more than conquerors through Christ
Jesus our Lord.
Zechariah 4 verse 6, not by might nor
by power but by my spirit says the
Lord of hosts.
Habakkuk 2 verse 14, for the earth shall
be filled with the knowledge of the glory
of the Lord as the seas are full
of water.
The seas are pretty much 100% filled
with water.
This isn't as the waters cover the earth,
it's as the waters cover the sea.
The earth shall be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of the Lord.
Submit to God, resist the devil, he will
flee from you because greater is he who's
in you than him who's in the world.
And yet you find people saying some people
never change so don't even try to share
the gospel with them.
But church history is full of the testimonies
of individuals whom Christians could not even imagine
being able to change, yet the gospel is
the power of God for the salvation of
all who believe.
Quasimodo mission was built by the conversion of
witch doctors, chief of witch doctors, trainer of
witch doctors, terrorists, murderers, gangsters, drug dealers transformed
by the grace of God, and even my
last visit to Quasimodo at the ministers conference
this year I met individuals with those kind
of testimonies who've been converted recently.
I remember meeting Pastor Musa, a Zapu communist
terrorist leader who'd been converted at an evangelistic
rally in Rhodesia which he had been targeted
to destroy.
And he had his men waiting for his
order, they had grenades to throw, they were
going to open fire with their machine guns,
and as he was in this tent outside
Salisbury, hearing the gospel being preached, he was
so convicted that he didn't give the order
and his men came to ask what the
problem is.
He says no, this isn't the right time
to go home.
He got converted.
When I met him, which was in Frankfurt
during Kirsten Tag, 1987, and we were having,
he was working for the International Society for
Human Rights at the time, and Pastor Musa
had been imprisoned by Mugabe in chains and
mistreated as you'd expect.
But on this occasion we were at a
hotel, he had gone through the buffet and
I said to him you missed the meat.
He said I don't eat any meat anymore.
He says it reminds me of when I
used to eat people.
And I was thinking who am I having
supper with?
But I've had suppers with people who had
taken part in cannibalistic rituals and so on.
You should never place limits upon the gospel
and upon the grace of God.
My father was very resistant to the gospel.
He said after going through Second World War,
couldn't believe there's a God to allow such
terrible things to take place.
But he got converted.
Eight years of prayer and witnessing, my father
finally was converted.
There's those people who say I cannot make
any difference.
In fact, I was one of those people
who said that.
When I was converted at age 17, I
didn't know much about the Bible, but I
felt quite helpless to make any kind of
impact for the Lord at all.
Yet the challenge on the night that I
was converted, 3rd of April 1977, was all
this Christ did for you, what have you
ever done for him?
As I sat in that cinema, all my
agnostic pretensions disappeared.
I saw myself as sitting before a holy
God, justly deserving of the wrath of God
and held forever.
And I recognized I'd never so much as
given thanks to God for anything, not for
the life of my parents being saved from
bombings in Berlin or artillery barrages in North
Africa.
And of course, if my parents had died,
I wouldn't be around.
I hadn't thanked God for how he'd saved
my life at so many different points in
my mother's testimony when I was young.
I had not thanked God for so much
as a meal.
I was an ungrateful soul.
And I had to confess, I'd done nothing
for Christ at that point, and I went
forward and I surrendered my life to Christ.
But what difference could I make?
What impact could I make?
What worth was it?
My salvation was worth nothing because there was
nothing I could do for the Lord.
I felt completely helpless.
But within a few weeks, I was involved
in a scripture and holiday mission in South
West and even preaching in a Presbyterian church
in South West.
I'm so glad there's no recordings of that
because I have no idea what I would
have been saying.
I remember when it was hard for me
to preach a one and a half minute
message introducing the Jesus film because it's like
running.
If you've never done running before, you could
start getting stitches within a few minutes and
you haven't even done a few hundred meters
and you've got to give up.
But you keep at it and repetition brings
revelation.
And so, as a Christian, you find that
whereas before you struggled to give a one
minute message, after a while you have more
stamina for marathons.
And so it goes on in the spiritual
realm.
Well, very soon I was involved in teaching
Sunday school for teenagers at Pines Baptist and
running a church book table and mass liturgy
distribution, railway stations and helping to put Gospels
of John in every one of the 4
,400 homes in Pinelands as part of our
EE program, putting up posters to invite people
to the same evangelistic rally that I've been
converted in.
And when Missionary Francis Grimm of Hospital Christian
Fellowship came past our congregation at Pines Baptist,
I went forward and I joined his mission,
HEF.
And soon I was called up to the
South African Infantry for two years military service
and I was led to challenge others in
my unit who wanted to join me for
Bible study and prayer fellowship.
And out of that daily Bible study and
prayer fellowship grew our mission.
And by 1982, I was crossing the border
on a mission to Mozambique and then to
Angola and Zimbabwe and Zambia and Malawi and
Rwanda and Kenya and Uganda and Sudan followed
and soon outreached into Eastern Europe and still
when the Iron Curtain was up.
In the last 40 years, I've ministered in
38 countries, traveled in 42 countries, ministered in
38 countries, and by my best calculations, taken
18,000 meetings in the last 42 years.
Then marches to Parliament followed, mobilizing opposition to
the ANC's plans to paganize South Africa.
In 1995, mobilized 30,000 people onto the
streets of Cape Town and the next year
over 10,096, compelling the government to backtrack
on all kinds of plans that they declared
the intention to prevent any churches meeting in
school halls, classrooms, town halls, or any other
facility owned, they claimed, owned by the government.
Well, most people may not be aware that
most churches in this country fall in that
category.
Most churches meet in school classrooms, school halls,
in community halls, and so on.
And so that would have been a tremendous
problem for the church.
But we mobilized opposition to make them back
down it.
When the government announced the intention to close
all Christian community radio stations, 1998, they said
a community station must be represented to the
whole community and therefore you can't have Christian
community radio stations, you've got to have every
religion represented in every station, especially Islamic and
so on.
And we mobilized in very short order with
barely a week's warning, 10,000 people to
march to Parliament.
And by the time we got to Parliament,
the minister concerned ran of the white flag
and said they'd abandoned the plan.
When legislation was drafted to infringe on Christian
schools and other independent private education, and homes
education in particular, 1999, we mobilized marches to
Parliament over that and forced them to back
down as well.
Our Operation Clean Sweep from 1991 to 1994
persuaded over 9,000 stores to no longer
stock pornography.
Just one member on the Africa Christian Action
Network managed to go to Raymond Ackerman, head
of Pick and Pay at that time, and
showed him from our Finding Freedom from the
Pornography Plague booklet, a picture of the room
of the rapist who murdered Ramonda Jacobs, just
a few meters where her bloodstained body in
a dustbin bag was found buried just outside
his shack.
The wall plastered with pictures of scope and
all that sort of pornographic stuff.
And Monica Sandrys plonked it down in front
of Raymond Ackerman and said, can you guarantee
to me that none of these were sold
from one of your stores?
And the man hung his head in shame.
And he stood up and he went to
the phone, he ordered all of it out.
Then he actually called a press conference, decided
to make it a marketing thing, saying, just
as we are for the environment, we cannot,
and he used arguments straight from our booklet,
that nobody would justify pumping raw sewage into
a public swimming pool, neither can we allow
moral sewage into our shops.
And I was saying how their shops have
got signs saying no dogs allowed.
I said, but they'll allow filthier things on
their shelves.
We've got cleaner dogs and what they're selling
in their magazine racks.
And he used the same arguments in press
conferences, and other shops followed.
Okay, bazaars, checkers, and so on.
And so Operation Clean Sweep was spectacularly successful.
Just a few of us.
One person, going to one key person, cleaned
up all the pick and pay shops.
It just shows we should never use any
excuse to justify disobedience and inactivity.
I can do all things through Christ who
strengthens me.
Philippians 4 verse 13.
There are those who claim they're too young
to be used of the Lord.
I was one of those who said that,
but I'm too young.
I remember at age 28 saying I'm too
young for what Bill Bathman was saying, and
he rebuked me very soundly that you cannot
say you're too young.
That's how often has God not used people
who are very young.
David, the shepherd boy, saw himself as the
youngest member of the least tribe, and yet
God raised him up.
Jeremiah protested, ah Lord God, behold, I cannot
speak for I am but a youth.
But the Lord said to me, do not
say I'm a youth.
You shall go to all that I send
you to, and whatever I command you, you
shall speak.
Do not be afraid of their faces, for
I am with you to deliver you, says
the Lord.
That's in Jeremiah 1 verse 68.
Timothy thought he was too young, but the
Apostle Paul declared to him, 1 Timothy 4
verse 12, let no one despise your youth,
but be an example to the believers in
word and conduct and love and spirit and
faith and purity.
The Apostle John, the Evangelist John Mark, they
were youths when they began, but God chose
to use them.
Esther, Ruth, Mary are other examples of young
maidens whom God used in powerful ways.
At the beginning of our mission, there are
many who declared that I was too young.
Mozambique was closed.
It was too dangerous.
It was illegal.
It was the wrong time.
This is the wrong way.
But looking back with hindsight, there's no doubt
that God called, God led, he equipped and
he opened doors.
It was his project.
And if God can change you, then he
can use you to change some parts of
this world.
Then you get others to say I'm too
old.
I'm too old for God to use me.
But Moses was 80 years old when God
called him from the burning bush to lead
his people out of Egypt.
But Moses said to God, who am I
that I should go to Pharaoh?
That I should bring the children of Israel
out of Egypt.
Then Moses answered and said, but suppose they
will not believe me or listen to my
voice.
Suppose they say, the Lord has not appeared
to you.
Then Moses said to God, oh, my Lord,
I'm not eloquent, neither before nor since you've
spoken to a servant, but I'm slow of
speech and slow of tongue.
Sounds like a very eloquent way of arguing
that he's not eloquent.
The Lord was angry and said, who has
made man's mouth?
Who has made the mute, the deaf, the
seeing or the blind?
Have not I the Lord now therefore go
and I will be with your mouth and
I'll teach you what to say.
What the Lord's basically saying is, if you're
not going to use your mouth for me,
I can take away your ability to speak.
If you're not going to use your eyes
for me, I can take away your sight.
The Lord is the one who determines all
things.
Why should you waste your legs if you're
not going to go where I send you?
I can make you crippled.
You don't want to use your legs.
This is a threat.
All this in Exodus chapter four.
Caleb in his eighties could declare, give me
that mountain.
He wasn't satisfied with the flat lands or
the valleys.
No, even his eighties, he wanted the tougher
challenge of the Highlands.
Frederick Bedecker was only converted to Christ in
his forties.
Yet he packed the second half of his
life with so much strenuous journeys to evangelize
Russia that would have depleted the energies of
many younger men.
We've seen missionaries like Dr. Fritz House, over
68 years as a missionary.
Reverend Earl O'Stegan, now, I think he's 84,
he has been preaching gospel since he was
16.
Brother Andrew and Bill Bethlen, both the same
age.
Bill Bethlen put 67 years into missions.
Working well into his eighties, proclaiming the gospel,
teaching and serving the Lord fervently.
Even his last year on earth, Bill Bethlen
was able to be banned from a pulpit
for giving an altar call.
When Bill Bethlen was in his seventies, I
took him up to celebrate 50 years in
ministry up to Sudan 2001.
Flew in there.
That was enough for him.
When he came back after preaching at the
Battlefront Sudan, he bought a land cruiser in
Cape Town, stocked it up with all of
our materials and trailer and drove overland.
Cape Town up to Mundry.
We're talking about 8,000 kilometers by road.
A man in his seventies, he drove across
Africa, which our young people complain about how
hard that is.
It is a rough, rough, rough road.
And it only gets worse the further north
you get.
And he delivered the vehicle supplies to beleaguered
Christians, not enough to fly into the war
zone, he had to drive up there too,
over the continent in his seventies.
Now we need to recognize that all of
these lies of the age, I can't be
changed.
I'm too old.
I'm too young.
I can't be forgiven.
So these are actually just excuses for disobedience.
You're never too old.
You're never too young.
You're never too this or that to make
a difference and to be used to God.
You can change.
God can forgive you and God can change
you and use you for his glory.
Do not be deceived.
The Bible continually warns us less Satan should
take advantage of us, for we are not
ignorant of his devices, but are fearless somehow
as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness.
So your minds may be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ.
Whose minds the God of this age is
blinded, who do not believe less the light
of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God should shine on him.
That is why we are instructed to put
on the whole armor of God, that we
may be able to stand against all the
wiles of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and
blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this age, against
spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.
Cursed is the man who trusts in man,
who makes flesh a strength, whose heart departs
from the Lord.
Blessed is the man who trusts in the
Lord and whose hope is in the Lord.
The heart is deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked.
He who trusts in his own heart is
a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be
delivered.
Let us pray.
Lord God, we thank and praise you that
you are our rock, you are our fortress,
you are our shield, our strong deliverer.
We pray, Lord God, that you'd make us
more faithful to your word and more brave
and bold in your service.
For we pray it in Jesus' precious and
holy name.
Amen.
Hymn 52.
I need thee every hour.
You will keep him in perfect peace, whose
mind has stayed on you.
Hymn 52.
I need thee every hour, most gracious Lord.
No tender voice like thine can peace afford.
I need thee, oh I need thee, every
hour I need thee.
Oh bless me now, my Saviour, I come
to thee.
I need thee every hour, stay thou nearby.
Temptations lose their power when thou art mine.
I need thee, oh I need thee, every
hour I need thee.
Oh bless me now, my Saviour, I come
to thee.
I need thee every hour, in joy or
pain.
Come quickly and abide, all life is in
vain.
I need thee, oh I need thee, every
hour I need thee.
Oh bless me now, my Saviour, I come
to thee.
I need thee every hour, teach me thy
will.
And thy rich promises in me fulfill.
I need thee, oh I need thee, every
hour I need thee.
Oh bless me now, my Saviour, I come
to thee.
I need thee every hour, most holy one.
Oh make me thine indeed, thou blessed son.
I need thee, oh I need thee, every
hour I need thee.
Oh bless me now, my Saviour, I come
to thee.
And now Tim is able to keep you
from stumbling and to present you faultless before
the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.
To God our Saviour who alone is wise,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both
now and forever.
Amen.