Once again, Lord, we thank you for the
opportunities you give us.
You don't want us to die in darkness.
The gospel helps us and teaches us and
gives us counsel that you make something out
of us.
So help us, Lord.
Amen.
We'll read from Hosea chapter 2.
Verse 20, I will betroth you to me
in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy.
Verse 20, I will betroth you to me
in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord.
In Zulu, it says, I will betroth you
that you will be mine and be my
wife.
In other words, I will get engaged to
you so that you will be my wife,
will become my wife.
In the time of the prophets, an engagement
wasn't just a minor affair where you just
say okay, well, we'll promise each other that
we'll get married to each other one day.
Now, you saw what happened here earlier on,
the couple standing in front here, the young
man handing over the ring, promising her his
faithfulness and vice versa.
This young man comes all the way from
Joburg to get engaged to this Mapanga girl
down here.
And so also God comes down from heaven,
he chooses you from among many girls and
he says I want to get engaged to
you.
I will betroth you to me, that you
will be mine.
You've got to, you can make a note
of that.
I will be betrothed to you.
I will get engaged to you.
Now make a note of that and then
ask yourself, have you got engaged to the
Lord Jesus yet?
That's no small thing.
that God should take note of me, a
mere man, just a human being, like a
flower, here today, tomorrow it withers and dies.
But here, God the Almighty, the creator of
heaven and earth, he says to me, he
says I want to get engaged to you,
that you will be mine.
You will be mine.
You are finally mine.
from the father when he returned home.
Just imagine God, who is almighty, creator of
heaven and earth, above everything else.
He created the animals, the fishes, everything that
breathes and lives.
He is the creator of it all.
But just imagine that He, being as great
as He is, that He should be interested
in us, in me, who is absolutely nothing.
Shouldn't that move us?
Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ was born in a manger, who
grew up, he healed the sick, he calmed
the storm, and he died on the cross.
On the third day he was raised, he
ascended to the Father, sits at his right
hand, and was given all power in heaven
and on earth.
He is interested in us, he wants to
get engaged to us.
Anyone who refuses such an offer is the
greatest fool there is.
If God proposes to you, and you say
no to him, what a fool you are.
F-O-O-L.
Even if you're not an English speaking person,
you should understand what a fool is.
And that's what you are.
If God comes to you in his greatness,
almighty, creator of heaven and earth, he played
and died for you, sitting at the right
hand of the Father, saying, look, I want
to get engaged to you.
And you say no.
One wonders how people can be so bewitched
that people can turn down such an offer.
Remember, everyone on earth should be a Christian.
It's like a young girl who goes into
the world and the first loose man that
comes across her path, he smokes, he drinks,
he lives a loose life, and she doesn't
even really know who he is.
But off she goes with him.
One doesn't understand how someone can do a
thing like that.
Many
of you know about true love waits, and
that true love does wait, but know the
first girl that comes across your path, you
fall, you're infatuated with her, you run after
her, but that which is true and which
is good, that you despise.
Just
these days I had a bit of a
chance to take a bit of a break,
and I read some books, and I thought,
wow, people who don't have a lot to
do, they're privileged, and I don't understand how
people can say, but we are lonely, we're
all on our own, why, what an opportunity
to read some good books.
One of the books I read was about
David Livingston, who learned to speak the language,
he started preaching the gospel, he was there
in Central Africa, and the chief of that
tribe got converted.
This chief had been a very hard man,
and had killed people for almost no reason
whatsoever.
You probably know how the old chiefs used
to do it.
And people like Shaka and Dingon, when the
king still ruled here, if they wanted someone
to live, he'd live, if they wanted him
to die, he'd have to die.
And so this king came along and he
said to David Livingston, he said, I want
to become a Christian.
He said, I've never seen a white man
like you, you're a white man that's different
to all the other white men, because you
treat us like your brothers, and he said,
I want to serve your God.
And he got his whole nation together, he
said to his people, come, let's hear the
word of God.
But then the people didn't want to, many
had excuses.
Eventually, it was just a small group, mostly
of the royal family.
And then the chief spoke to Livingston, and
he said, Mfundis, minister, pastor.
He said, if I tell my people that
we're going out on a hunting trip, he
says, then everybody, the last man turns up,
and they all come with their dogs.
It's a huge event, because we're going out
to hunt.
And he said, if I tell my people
that we're going to have a huge party,
a feast, and we're going to have some
beer available, everyone turns up.
And if we have a get-together to
sing and to dance, then everyone turns up,
even the young people come.
We'll have a huge crowd.
But if I invite them to come and
hear the word of God, hardly anyone turns
up.
He says, how is it possible?
For beer they come, for dancing they come,
for hunting, but
when we say we're going to read the
Bible to listen to God's word, they don't
arrive.
And he said, what shall we do?
And he said, you know, he said to
Livingston, he says, you know, in the past,
before I became a Christian, if I used
to send out an order to the people
and they wouldn't follow and they wouldn't listen,
I'd get together all my headmen and I'd
get those people and I'd say to the
headmen, these people don't listen to what I
say.
And they would all come with their whips
and they'd give everyone who wasn't listening to
the king a good threshing.
And he said, well, I wonder whether that
would perhaps be the solution to this problem.
Everybody would, every headman would come with a
shambuck.
That's the skin, made of skin of the
hippopotamus.
And where they didn't have them, they would
take a rhinoceros skin.
And if you get a threshing with that,
you'll feel it.
It will go right through the skin and
you'll feel it beneath the skin.
And he said, should we, all these people,
all these people, should we thresh them with
the skin of a hippo?
And he says, no, you can't do that.
That's their free choice.
Livingston said, that's their free choice.
If they choose to go to hell, well,
that's where they'll go.
And the punishment there will be far worse
than that shambuck that they would have got.
That will be worse than a thousand shambucks.
But that's what they deserve.
If they trample underfoot the love of God,
the son of God, and the grace he's
showing them and his word, that's what they
deserve.
When the young man proposed to the lady,
he didn't come with a shambuck, with a
whip.
No.
He said, look, this is what I feel.
You pray about it as well.
And ask God to show you and see
whether you feel God leading you in the
same direction.
Because in this matter, no one decides for
you.
Not your father, your mother, brother or sister.
No one.
You've got to know before God.
And Livingston encouraged that king and said, you
just be faithful.
You and your wife, your family.
You go through with the Lord.
And so that's what they did.
And it didn't take long.
And one after the other, the other people
started joining them.
And they said, now we recognize that this
is the eternal way.
This is the right way.
Now, what,
how do you respond to the Lord's proposal
when he comes to you and he says,
I want to get engaged to you.
I propose to you.
I choose you.
And he is the Lord of Lords.
He wants you to be engaged to him.
Now, what do you, how do you respond
to that?
Now, when you get converted, that is like
putting on that ring.
Even if you come from the pigsty, you
put on that ring.
A new garment.
That you become a new son.
You don't live the old life anymore.
You now live a new life.
Now, when you come to the Lord, he
doesn't take you home immediately to heaven.
Some people still have to live some time
here on earth.
Now, Now,
be
faithful in this time that the Lord has
given you.
You've got converted.
You've now got this time.
You may think it's going to be long.
Maybe it'll be short.
Or you may think it's going to be
short and it'll be long.
But whatever it is, be faithful to the
Lord and pray and ask him that he
will keep you faithful.
These days, we had someone here from overseas.
I asked him, I said, well, how are
things going?
How's it going at work?
He said, He said, it's going extremely well.
The Lord is very good to us.
He said, look, when I was still young,
I made a decision.
I said, I don't want to have anything
to do with God.
My I grew up in a Christian family
and I even went to Sunday school.
But he said, my parents, they were lukewarm
Christians.
And then they also said, well, look, you've
got to decide because God wants everything or
he wants nothing.
All right.
And then he said, well, is that what
God says?
Well, then I will say the same.
If I must choose, then I'll take everything
the world offers and I want nothing to
do with God.
Some of you may know him.
His name is Hartmut.
And he says he went.
He says, I went into the world good
and solid.
I went and took all the world had
to offer.
He says, and eventually I got married.
And he says, well, it was interesting.
I loved this girl.
But in spite of the fact that I
loved her, she just dropped me and went
off with another man.
And he said that left a huge gap
in my heart.
He couldn't pray because he had turned his
back on God.
And then he thought, well, let me go
and look for another girl.
He looked for her and found her and
got married again.
But she was like a madman.
All right.
See, he had decided he doesn't want anything
to do with God.
He doesn't want God.
So God also left him over to his
own thing.
And remember, after all, he had looked for
this wife and she would end up being
what he was anyway.
If you don't want Jesus, if you don't
want God, all right.
If you don't want God, you'll get those
who are like you are.
And a child was born.
But the relationship among them was like that
of a cat and a dog.
And she got divorced.
He says it was like hell for me.
If you don't accept the ring the Lord
offers you, that heavenly ring, then you'll accept
the devil's ring.
And that's going to be very tough for
you.
But he says.
But he says the day he heard the
gospel, he said, and he realized that he
had sinned.
He said, Lord, forgive me.
I have sinned against you.
I want to turn back to you.
But that was after his first wife.
That was after his first wife, whom he
says he loved very much.
After she had left him, gone off with
another man.
And that is tough for a man.
If you love your wife and she leaves
you, goes off with other men, then it's
better for the man whose wife dies.
And at least he knows that she is
gone.
And if she was a Christian, she's with
the Lord in a far better place.
Far better that than the one who just
loses his wife because she runs away.
I lost my wife.
She's with the Lord.
And I can continue with what I'm doing
and serving the Lord and preaching.
And I have nothing holding me up.
But you feel sorry for those people who
lose their wives because she goes off with
another man.
That's a slap in the face for a
man who loves his wife and she goes
off with another man.
I would rather lose ten wives due to
death, as a result of death, than having
to go through that which he had to
go through.
Losing his first wife in that way, getting
married, getting divorced again.
It's not worth serving the devil.
But he said, since I've met the Lord,
my life has taken on a different meaning.
It's so different.
He says, yes, and sometimes I can spend
a weekend with my little daughter.
But he says, I've got one aim now,
and that is to be faithful to my
Lord.
I asked him where he was working now.
He said, now I've got a new job.
I'm working for a very big company, a
wealthy man who owns it.
And he says, the boss, he treats me
like his own son.
He says, I haven't been there very long,
but he already has sent me to America,
to England, and all over the place.
And he told me that just these days
I had some holidays, and he thought
of his boss.
He's got his own children and a daughter
as well, but she doesn't help the father
with anything.
He has to go and hire other people
to do the work.
She works, but just like anybody else.
She looks at the watch, whether it's time
to start, it's time to stop.
And his secretary is an old lady.
She should have retired long ago.
But she sees what kind of a predicament
he's in, her boss, so she comes and
helps him.
And the son, he's busy studying in England.
He's just carrying on with his studies, not
a real help to his father.
Just imagine, you get parents with such children.
So Hartmut came.
Now he's working for him.
So the other day it was a holiday.
He says, here I am at home, I'm
not working, and my boss is working.
Now it's time to drink tea.
I'm drinking tea here and eating cake.
My boss is working.
He says he got up, into his car,
went to the restaurant, bought the best cakes.
Went to the office of his boss.
Opened the door.
Went in.
He found his boss working.
He said, boss.
Have a cup of tea.
Here's some cake for you.
I can't sit at home and you are
working.
He said, enjoy the cake.
And he went to his office and workshop.
And he worked for two to three hours
very hard.
He says, my boss works.
I can't work.
Do you see faithfulness and initiative?
No wonder that man treats him like his
own son.
I can't sit at home and eat cake.
I'm at home, sitting at my office.
My boss is working.
And I'm eating cake.
I'm eating it.
And I'm eating cake.
My hands are cold.
So he took that initiative out of himself,
with his own money he did that.
Why is it that I don't have a
boss?
And then after that he said to his
boss, I'd like to go to South Africa
to visit Siza Bantu.
And his boss said, well you can gladly
do that, go and get yourself a ticket,
send the account to me, I'll pay it.
When he came back and he asked him,
he said, well how much was the ticket?
He told him how many thousand it was.
So he said, but Hartmut, is it all
that it costs?
I thought it was a lot more money
than that.
I wanted to do something far greater for
you.
And Hartmut told me, he says, he treats
me like his own son, as if I
was there.
But if you are one of those who
just looks at the watch waiting for the
clock to strike five for you to go
home, you'll always be a T-boy, you'll
never get promoted.
You'll end up being a garden boy always.
And even if you have studied, well maybe
you'll get something which is equivalent, but you'll
never really get anywhere in life.
So I said to Hartmut, I said to
Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I said
to
Hartmut, I said to
Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I said to
Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I
said to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I
said to Hartmut, I
said to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I
said to to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut,
I said to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut,
I said to Hartmut, I said to
Hartmut, I
said
to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I said
to
Hartmut,
I said to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut,
I said to
Hartmut, I
said to Hartmut, I said to Hartmut, I
said to Hartmut.
Well, let me draw to a close.
There was a man in America who shot
his wife, he killed her.
Now, in certain places there in the states,
they still have the death penalty.
Now in this particular state, they still had
the death penalty.
This man had been on a drinking spree,
he got rolling drunk, and in that state
he killed his wife.
He was arrested, he
was imprisoned, and it was clear to everyone
that he'd get the death sentence.
And then he thought he was going to
get the best lawyers and advocates.
Now he was a drunkard, he used to
get raving mad if he didn't get alcohol.
Now in prison, he suffered because he couldn't
get it.
And then the day came for his case
to be tried.
The judge sat there, and it wasn't just
one, there were almost a dozen of them.
And then this judge spoke to this man,
addressed him, and said, Is there anything you
still want to say before we sentence you?
No.
Could you say, is there anything that you
could say that would save you from being
hanged?
Because you need to be hanged.
But is there anything that you could say?
The man stood there, he was silent.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Everyone with their gaze fixed on him, waiting
for him to say something.
It was an icy silence.
And then the man got up.
He said, yes sir, my lord, there is
something I would like to say.
I'm not guilty alone.
Everyone suddenly woke up and they wondered who
this other guilty person was that was guilty
together with him.
What, my lord, I would like to bring
to light and expose that I'm not the
only guilty one in killing my wife.
And their eyes opened wide, even his lawyers
thought, my, has he been quiet with this
thing?
Why said he?
He said, my lord, I'm going to start
with you.
He spoke to the judge.
He says, remember, don't you also, when you
go to a cocktail party, also lift up
your glass?
And all the other judges here, isn't everyone
here guilty of having a drink now and
then?
Like when they go to a party?
And he said, look, here are my lawyers
and here are all these other people.
Even my minister himself, he also, when there's
a wedding, he will also lift up his
glass.
When there's a toast and he says, I've
seen all of you doing it.
And I always said, well, that's just the
way it's done.
And he said, well, even right here in
our state, the government allows bottle stores and
bars to be opened.
And all these things played a role in
what I eventually did when I killed my
wife.
They didn't know what to say.
He says, I saw your example.
And he said, the state is trying me,
but they are themselves guilty of selling us
this alcohol, which drives us.
So I was actually only supporting them and
you.
He says, well, now I can die.
You can pass that death penalty, but I'll
die having said what you asked me to
say.
And there was a minister who was deeply
touched and convicted.
And he said.
This minister was so convicted.
He said, I also still want to confess
my sin because what I've done is I
voted for this government who passes these laws
to do these things.
And that minister wrote the story and what
he went through.
And I thought, is that what it's going
to be like when we meet with God?
Remember here in South Africa, elections are coming
up soon.
Are you going to vote for a government
that allows homosexual laws to be passed and
giving them all their rights and prostitution and
all the things that are happening?
Are you going to vote for a government
that's going to pass such laws and allow
such things?
Remember, you'll have to give a count on
Judgment Day for that.
Pornography, also child pornography, where this becomes and
where pornography is allowed and children can get
hold of the stuff.
You pray and say, Lord, may your will
be done on earth as it is in
heaven.
But in the next breath or the next
moment, you go out and you vote for
a government that passes laws that are contrary
to God's will and his word.
You vote for such a government.
And you...
What will you feel like when your son
comes home from Joburg and he comes with
another man and he says, Mom, Dad, I've
come to introduce my wife to you?
And it's a man.
This is your daughter-in-law.
And he's wearing pants.
It's a man.
You and I will still stand before God.
If I haven't told you the truth, then
I will be condemned.
But if I've told you the truth and
you don't listen, then you will stand condemned.
Who hasn't repented, let him repent.
And who hasn't put on that heavenly ring,
let him do it.
He says, I want to be betrothed to
you.
What is your response to that?
Are you going to go
home
and maybe get your children together, your family
and say, From today I want to be
faithful to the heavenly bridegroom.
I've heard him propose to me and I
want to respond positively to it.
And even if I didn't in the past,
but from today I've decided to choose him.
Let us stand.
He is offering you his ring.
He wants to get engaged to you.
What do you say to this offer?
Do you accept, say yes, or do you
say no?
And remember, once you've accepted that ring, you
need to be faithful to him.
You cannot change your mind and choose someone
else again.
Unless of course you want to take off
that ring and return it to him.
But you'll regret it for all eternity.
Have you said yes, yes Lord, I agree?
Or have you said no?
That you say no and then the devil
will rejoice.
Let us pray.
Lord, you've heard as we sang and where
it is said, I say yes Lord.
And you also know whether it was just
the lips or whether it was also the
heart that said yes.
And you also know whether we'll go out
from here with that ring or whether we're
just going to take it and throw it
away.