With gratitude to God for his coming, I
present to our people Dr. J.
Sidlo Baxter of London, England.
Dr. Baxter.
Now, the message that I bring to you
this morning is a quite simple one, and
is based upon some brief but immortal words
of the Apostle Paul.
In his first Philippian letter, chapter one and
verse twenty-one, Philippians chapter one and verse
twenty-one, we have these never-to-be
-forgotten words.
For to me to live is Christ, and
to die, yes, even to die, and do
I need to remind you that death is
the natural man's most irreparable loss.
At death he loses his friends, his relatives,
his pursuits, his pleasures, his possessions, his everything.
Death is the monster loss to the natural,
worthy man.
But to the Christian, even death is gain.
For to me to live is Christ, and
to die is gain.
When we write a telegram, we generally seek
to use the smallest number of words with
the greatest amount of meaning.
Verbosity in any kind of telegrammatic communication is
as extensive as it is superfluous.
Always our telegram ideal is a minimum of
syllables with a maximum of meaning.
Now it always seems to me, dear friends,
as though this text is for all the
world like an inspired telegram, coming down to
us through the centuries from the old prison
house in Rome, where the now-aging apostle
was temporarily incarcerated, clear, concise, cut down to
minimum syllables, and yet conveying a titanic amount
of meaning.
To me to live is Christ, and to
die is gain.
Brief as it is in our English rendering
of the text, the original Greek is even
coarser, where it simply reads, To me to
live, Christ, to die, gain.
Isn't it telegram-like?
To me to live, Christ, to die, gain.
Well now, in this brief morning service, I'm
quite persuaded we do not have ample time
to consider both components of this apostolic telegram.
So let us concentrate briefly upon the first
half only.
To me to live is Christ.
Dr. Criswell and members and friends of this
great Church of the Lord, this is the
first Sunday morning of 1965 anno Domini, and
I take it upon myself as a sacred
privilege to suggest this text as your 1965
motto.
To me to live is, one word, Christ.
Now I think it's always good for a
preacher to be on interrogative terms with his
listening people.
Let me become interrogative at this point.
Dear brother, dear sister in Christ, can you
say with 100% genuine meaning that for
you to live is Christ?
Now I can sympathetically anticipate that more than
half a dozen will be inwardly saying, Mr.
Preacher, I think I could answer that question
more clearly, more promptly, if I understood more
exactly all that Paul means when he says
to me to live is Christ.
Well it's just that that I want to
talk to you about.
What did Paul mean when he said to
me to live is Christ?
Let's go into that a little.
Somehow whenever my own grateful eyes linger over
these immortal Pauline words, there are three great
ideas streaked before my mental vision.
One, here is the secret of a truly
great life.
Two, here is the inmost mystery of the
Christian experience.
And three, here is something that is not
mere theory but magnificent reality.
To me to live is Christ.
I doubt whether we'll get even through those
areas this morning.
I have always found that the clock goes
more quickly in Texas than anywhere else in
America.
But we'll start anyway with those three territories.
Take the first of them.
Here we have the secret of a truly
great life.
To me to live is Christ.
I dare not claim to be an exhaustive
student of human biography, nor do I think,
however, that one needs to be an exhaustive
student of history's great personages to decide who
are the really greatest figures in history.
If you were to ask me which two
men I consider to be the greatest in
all the catalogues of human history, I should
reply without any hesitation, Moses and Paul.
Of course, I exclude our Lord Jesus because
although he was really man, he was not
merely man.
He was the God-man.
But among others, among those who are ordinary
human beings, I would say it would be
difficult to find two greater men than Moses,
the venerable lawgiver of the Old Testament, and
Paul, that Christ-intoxicated little genius of the
New Testament.
If you and I are to judge men
by the purity and the profundity and the
loftiness and the continuity of their impacts upon
succeeding generations, I think we would find it
difficult to outmatch Moses and Paul.
Do I need to remind you, my beloved
American cousins, that your American democracy and our
British democracy, your American and our British legal
systems to this very day are founded upon
the ethics of Moses.
And may I be permitted to add that
your American democracy and our British democracy owe
more to these prolific, dynamic, apostolic letters of
Paul than to any other single influence.
And as I travel around the 48 states,
indeed we've been to 49 out of the
50 now, we are getting well-travelled, but
I would say if there's one great need
in the 48 states of the American mainland,
it's this, back to the Bible, and in
particular, back to these great, emancipating epistles of
the Apostle Paul.
I believe that an American return to the
teaching of Paul would be the greatest blessing
that could come to America just now.
Don't you think so?
Well, I say again, I think you would
find it difficult to discover anywhere in the
pages of the history books two greater men
than Moses and Paul.
Now, you and I, just because we are
normal human beings, are so constituted that when
we are confronted by a truly great human
life or personality, almost inevitably we find ourselves
asking, what was his secret?
What was her secret?
Now, in the case of Paul, there may
be hints and clues scattered throughout the Acts
of the Apostles and through his epistles, but
if you want the concentrated focus point of
it, here it is.
It's all in a word, to me to
live is Christ.
And if he had not been able to
write that, you and I would never have
heard of Saul of Tarsus.
That made all the difference, to me to
live is Christ.
Now, may I ask you to get ready
for a gentle shock.
It may not come as a shock to
all of you, but it will to some
of you.
But I'm going to say it.
It's so pleasant.
It's so true.
It's so vitally important.
I hope you will believe it.
It's just this.
My dear friends, yes, get ready.
Are you ready?
I'll say it.
My dear friends, you are meant to be
great.
Oh, says somebody, you're teasing.
No, I'm not.
Oh, but you say, if you knew the
subnormality of my gifts, if you knew the
obscurity of my social circumstances, if you knew
my hereditary legacy of inward difficulties of disposition,
if you knew far more about me than
you do, Mr. Preacher, you would know that
I could never be great.
Well, in a way, I'm glad I don't
know you any more familiarly than I now
do.
Because, if I did, it would only accentuate
what I'm going to repeat.
I don't care who you are.
If you are a sinner washed from your
damning guilt in the precious blood of God's
dear Lamb, if you are born again from
Heaven by the regenerating Divine Spirit, then I
say to you with this open book, you
are meant to live a great life.
Oh, think of that as you come into
1963.
You are meant, I am meant, this year,
to live a great life.
Of course, the trouble with nine out of
every ten of us is that we have
an astigma concerning greatness.
Somehow, it seems almost in any radically constitutional
for most of us to think that greatness
has to do with notoriety, popularity, social
prestige, or possession of great wealth, and so
on.
But we are lamentably wrong.
Greatness, true greatness, has nothing to do with
those mere accidentals and ornaments.
It was said of John the Baptist before
he was born, He shall be great in
the sight of the Lord.
Friends, that's the only greatness that truly matters.
That's the only greatness that pleases God and
blesses men and really develops our personal potencies.
Greatness in the sight of the Lord.
There is no true greatness apart from goodness.
And all true goodness is real greatness.
May I remind you, as we had it
in the tenth chapter of the Acts, that
when the Apostle Peter suddenly had to epitomize
the earthly life of our Lord Jesus and
Master, this is what he said, Who went
about doing miracles?
I beg pardon, he didn't say that at
all.
He said this, Who went about doing good?
Now, I speak reverently.
If you think about it carefully, what was
the intrinsic greatness even of God's incarnated Son?
Was it his miraculous power?
No.
The inherent, the supreme greatness of our Master
was that he was good.
And every blood-brought member of the ecclesia
is meant to be good.
Now, of course, I'm sure that your dear
pastor is just as concerned as I myself
am.
Whenever he uses that word good, I'm sure
he feels as I do.
We're always terrified, lest anybody listening to us
should think that we can be saved by
our goodness.
Oh dear, no.
So far as eternal salvation is concerned, all
our supposed righteousnesses are as filthy rags in
the infinitely holy eyes of God.
If you and I are to be saved
from the damnation of Gehenna, where the flame
is never quenched and the worm never dies,
it must be by grace alone on God's
part, and through the atoning blood of Christ
on Calvary, and by a new birth effected
within us by the Holy Spirit.
We are saved, not by human goodness, of
which there is absolutely none, but we are
saved by divine grace which is infinite toward
us in Christ.
Dear pastor, have I said that categorically enough?
But once we have it clearly in our
minds that we cannot be saved by any
intrinsic goodness of our own, we come back
to this, that once we are washed in
the redeeming blood of Christ and are born
by the Holy Spirit, then, yes, not to
be saved, but because we are saved, we
are meant to be good.
I didn't say goody-goody.
I said good.
We are meant to be truly religious.
I didn't say religiosities.
I said religious.
We are meant to be truly sanctified.
I didn't say sanctimonious.
You know, my dear Ethel and I spent
our last twenty years in Edinburgh, in Britain,
living in Edinburgh, Scotland.
We are not Scottish.
We are English.
But we lived twenty years in Scotland, and
what a wonderful completion of our education that
was.
You've never really finished until you've been to
Edinburgh.
You've never really finished until you've been to
Edinburgh.
Well, now, in Scotland they have some very
interesting institutions.
Let me mention one of them.
The one to which I refer is called
the Annual Sunday School Picnic.
Do you have anything like that in these
backward parts?
The Annual Sunday School Picnic.
Oh, the Annual Sunday School Picnic.
It's a wonderful occasion, the Annual Sunday School
Picnic.
I'll tell you something else about the Annual
Sunday.
It nearly always rains.
Oh, we get a lot of rain in
Scotland.
Of course it's free.
And the weatherman seems to have a chronic
grudge against the Annual Sunday School Picnic.
I want to tell you about one of
them.
When the day dawned, it came in with
what we call in Scotland a drizzle.
Do you know what a drizzle is?
Oh, a drizzle.
Well, I'll tell you what a drizzle is.
It's just drizzles.
And the day came in with a drizzle.
However, the teachers and the scholars, they gathered
together at the Sunday School with undamped spirits,
but very damp clothes, and they got into
three charabons, as we call them, motorcoaches, and
away they went in these motorcoaches to the
semi-rural area where the playing field was.
Of course, they couldn't play any games in
the field.
They were sopping wet.
...
who was a genius, had anticipated the naughtiness
of the weatherman, and he had charted a
great big double-sized old-fashioned barn.
And into this iggledy-piggledy, old-fashioned, very
spacious barn, they gathered all the scholars of
the school, and the superintendent said, Boys and
girls, we're going to have a great time
of it.
Never mind the weather.
We're going to have some games inside the
barn, and we'll make a start.
And getting a piece of chalk, he made
a line across the iggledy-piggledy floor of
that rambling barn.
And then he said, Now, first of all,
the girls.
I want all the girls to stand on
this side of the line who, when they
grow up, want to be nurses.
And all the girls to stand on this
side of the line who, when they grow
up, want to be married, and have homes
and families of their own.
Why he should make such a hard and
fat cleavage between those two categories, I don't
know.
That was part of his hidden genius.
When the girls had sorted themselves out, he
said to the boys, Now, boys, it's your
turn.
I want all the boys to stand on
this side of the line who, when they
grow up, want to be great.
And all the boys on this side of
the line who, when they grow up, want
to be good.
Oh, great or good.
I know what those Scottish boys would have
said if they'd been American.
There's only one word that fits it.
They'd have said, Hmm, great or good.
Wow.
Hmm.
I've only learned that since I came here.
Wow.
I think it is the most expressive, the
most expressive monosyllabic I've ever heard.
Wow.
And they got their little brains cogitating, and
then some of the boys got up, and
they came and stood on this side of
the line for great.
And there they stood like embryonic Napoleons only
waiting for global recognition.
They wanted to be great.
Some of the boys came and unabashedly stood
on that side of the line.
When they grew up, they wanted to be
good.
And there they stood like little cherubs who
had accidentally strayed out from the gates of
glory.
Are there some Sunday school teachers here?
Shall I tell you what those Sunday school
teachers noticed?
On the side for good were some of
the most cantankerous little villains in the Sunday
school.
So cheer up, Sunday school teacher.
You never know what's working in those little
hearts of mine.
Well, there they stood, the greats and the
goods, all but one boy.
And he couldn't make up his mind.
There he sat.
I remember his name.
His name was Percy.
And Percy couldn't decide, so at last the
superintendent said, Now, come on, Percy, you'll have
to make up your mind.
And Percy did.
He gave a look at that line, and
then he came and he did this.
He put one foot on one side and
the other foot on the other.
And I think that young Percy had roundly
rebuked that mistaken superintendent.
The superintendent had blundered badly.
You can't put even a short line between
great and good.
You can't.
All true goodness, oh,
brothers and sisters, I can't think of anything
I would love to deserve more than this.
But upon my gravestone, if ever I have
one, it should simply say, He was a
good man.
Most of us grab back to the spectacular.
We're wrong, we're wrong.
That means nothing to God, but it means
everything to Christ.
When you're good, the greatest person you'll ever
meet is a good man, a good woman.
Well, in the remaining minute or two that
I have, let me ask and answer the
question, how did the Apostle Paul become the
great, the good, the self-forgetting, magnanimous man
that he was?
It's all here.
To me, to live Christ.
What then did he mean when he said
that?
Well, let's get this clear once for all.
Whatever else the Apostle Paul may or may
not have meant, he certainly did mean this
in the first flush meaning of the words.
All that I ever was, all that I
now am, all that I ever can or
shall be, all that I have of this
world's goods, in the sum totality of my
personality and possibilities, in one lifelong irrevocable utter
surrender I have given to Christ.
I say he meant more than that, but
he meant that right on the very surface
of the words.
He had given himself once for all in
utter totality to the monopoly of Jesus Christ.
Sidlow Baxter, have you?
Fellow de Lieber, have you?
I think dear old General Booth of the
Salvation Army came to be Paul's next-door
neighbor in this matter.
When the dear old warrior was on walk
proved to be his deathbed, some kindly curious
relative asked him, Dear old General, could you
tell us in a sentence what has been
the secret of your amazing ministry?
And the dear old, the dear old General,
propping himself up on an elbow said, in
his gruff, rough, bluff way, Well, I think
if there's been any secret at all, it's
just been this, Jesus has had every bit
of me.
Oh, that's grand, isn't it?
It's the modern rendering of to me from
it is Christ.
Jesus has had every bit of me.
Now I'm challenging you lovingly but searchingly this
first Sunday of 1965.
Can you join Paul and General Booth to
me to live is Christ, he's got every
bit of me?
There are some of us here this morning,
we call ourselves Christian believers, but have we
got real peace of heart and real rest
of mind and real poise of life?
There are some of us, although we are
Christian believers, we are so soon agitated, so
soon perturbed, so soon irascible.
We don't have the marks of similarity to
our Master.
He was never ruffled, he was never animated
with fears.
No, there was a wonderful solidarity and peace
about Jesus.
Now, there are some of us here, and
again and again we've come to the point
where we were going to do it.
We were really going to take the sacred
risk of getting in everything, and then we
looked round and we thought, what about Mr.
So-and-so, what about so-and-so,
what about this?
And we're back to where again?
Do you know what was the first thing
I ever saw in this church of yours?
I only saw it just as I passed,
it was there on the wall, on the
Sunday school wall.
I saw it just for a second and
I'll never forget it.
It said this, Give him all he asks,
then take all he offers.
Oh, you've got the whole secret there.
You know, I think that many Christian believers
in these days need saving all as much,
almost as much from the druggist as they
do from the devil.
This is the age of pills for tranquilizing
and I don't know what else.
Friends, what most of us are needing is
utter consecration to Christ so that he may
fill us and possess us and transform us
and give us his peace and his radiance
and his buoyancy and his gladness and his
fullness of personality.
But don't you see, he's really, really got
to get us.
And it's always the same when once it
happens, when once he really gets us, when
once we settle over the precipice and think
that we are going to be, to be
lost in mid-air and crash down to
something we can't think of.
Just when we think that's going to happen,
when we've stepped over the precipice, we find
as we never thought we would that underneath
are the everlasting arms of a love that
never lets us down and never gives us
up and never lets us go.
But it all begins when we come with
Paul and with General Boone and we say,
Lord Jesus, from this moment, all I have
and all I am, they're thine.
Oh, Dr. Criswell and friends, what a way
that would be to begin, 1965.
To me, to live, it...