I'm sure there are some folk here this
afternoon who had the privilege that was mine
to to be a delegate to the World
Congress on Evangelism that was held in the
city of Berlin two or three years back.
And you will remember that there in the
entrance hall there was the big backboard with
circles carved out of it and in those
circles the faces of little children from different
parts of the world.
And a time clock that registered the net
increase of the world's population.
Not just how many babies were born, but
the net increase after the number who had
died had been subtracted from the number who
had been born.
And this clock ticked out relentlessly throughout the
whole of the Congress, which lasted nine days
and 13 hours, so that at the end
of the Congress we might become aware of
how much bigger the task had become since
the Congress began.
And at the end of the Congress we
were informed of the net increase of the
world's population during the course of our deliberations.
Throughout the whole of the period the world's
population had increased by 2.14 every second,
by 128 every minute, by 7,704 every
hour, and by 184,896 every day.
And the population had increased through the period
of nine days 13 hours by one and
three quarter million.
It's quite fantastic.
You know that there is something like three
and a half billion, million, million people in
the world today, and it's estimated that that
will more than double by the end of
this century.
Between seven and eight billion people.
And the amazing thing is this, that even
now of the three and a half billion
people that walk this planet, and this is
something that's hard to credit, more than half
of those who have been born into this
world since Adam was created are still alive.
Did you know that?
Of all the people born into the world
since Adam was created more than half are
still alive.
And in 30 years the number is going
to be doubled.
Well people don't die at the age of
30.
Some do.
Depends how well they drive.
But can you imagine if more than half
the population of the world that was ever
born since Adam was created are still alive.
Imagine what proportion it'll be by the end
of the century if Christ doesn't come.
Of all the people in the world today
more than 50 percent are under age of
21.
And by the year 2000 if the Lord
has not returned, two-thirds, two-thirds of
the world's population will be under the age
of 15.
This world is going to be run by
teenagers.
Do you know that the number of children
in China under the age of 10 at
this moment is greater than the whole population
of Russia?
The children under the age of 10 in
China more than nearly 200 million.
It's incredible.
People.
There are people everywhere.
They're oozing out of our ears.
But you know if it's people that overwhelms
me that there's one thing above everything else.
No matter where you look and no matter
where you encounter them and no matter what
their pedigree or background by and large the
people you meet and no matter where you
meet them are tired.
Have you found that out?
Tired people.
I'm tired.
Tired of pockets instead of people.
Of crew cuts and tweed coats and pipes
and Picasso buttons.
Of people who drop soliloquies carefully labeled intelligence.
I'm tired of people who play the dating
game like Taos at the racetrack.
Tired of seeing people used because it is
only a game.
Of people who turn making out into a
social grace.
Of watching sincerity fester into smoothness.
I'm tired of cynics who call themselves realists.
Tired of minds rotting in indifference.
Of people bored because they're afraid to care.
Of intellectual games of ring around the roses.
I'm tired of people who have to be
entertained.
Tired of people for looking for kicks with
a bottle in each hand.
Of girls proud of knowing the score and
snickering about it.
And a girl's intent on learning the score.
I'm tired of sophisticated slobs.
Of people who tinker with sex until it's
smart.
Of people whose understanding goes as deep as
neat.
But won't leave it because they're lazy.
Tired of people with nothing better to do
than to glue their days together with alcohol.
I'm tired of people embarrassed at honesty, at
love and at knowledge.
I'm tired, yes.
Very, very tired.
A tired world.
Wonder what it is that makes people tired.
I thought there were a number of things
that make people tired.
Of trying to forgive their own sins.
Because they don't know how sins can be
forgiven.
And when you don't know how your sins
can be forgiven and you get tired of
trying to forgive your own sins, then you
end up by trying to justify your own
wickedness.
And the best way to justify your own
wickedness, of course, is to blame somebody else.
Find a scapegoat.
And this is the world in which you
and I live.
We're living in a world which is one
vast combination of shattered human relationships.
Where everybody is blaming everybody else.
And there's only one thing about which we're
all entirely united and in complete agreement.
And it's this.
It's everybody's fault but mine.
Of that we're all completely convinced.
That's the world we live in.
Finding a scapegoat in whom I can justify
my wickedness by pinning the blame on somebody
else.
So the boy blames the girl, you see,
whose life he's wrecked.
And of course the girl blames the boy
whose extravagance and excess she herself enticed.
And deliberately inflamed.
Of course parents blame their children for their
own delinquency.
And children blame their parents for their own
pig-headedness.
The employer blames the employee for his own
greed.
And the employee blames the employer for his
own idleness.
This is the kind of world we're living
in.
The capitalist, of course, blames the communist, but
the communist blames the capitalist.
The colored blame the white, but the white
blame the colored.
The Arab, of course, blames the Jew, but
the Jew blames the Arab.
The faculty blame the student, but the student
blames the faculty.
The people blame the government, but the government
blame the people.
The pulpit blames the pew, but the pew
blames the pulpit.
Congregation blames the pastor for its own lethargy
and apathy and indifference.
It's everybody's fault but mine.
Of course there's nothing new about this.
Way back when as by one man's sin
entered into the world and death by sin,
death occurred, about which we have been talking.
And God walked where he had always walked.
But it wasn't God that reacted first to
sin, it was man.
God was where man left him.
It was man that hid.
Man's been hiding ever since.
And I'm probably talking to some right here
in this very building who are still running
away from God.
Hiding in a thousand and one different ways.
God said, where are you?
There's no answer.
Finally said, I'm hiding.
Why are you hiding?
Afraid.
God said, you've never been afraid before.
This is a new experience.
If you are afraid, you've sinned.
Because you see fear is the first child.
Of a bad conscience.
And the bad conscience is the inevitable consequence
of sin.
And if the first child of sin is
a bad conscience and the first child of
a bad conscience is fear, that fear begets
self-justification.
And the first child of self-justification is
to find a scapegoat.
And so when God pointed the finger of
accusation at Adam and said, you've sinned, he
immediately said, oh no, you're wrong.
She did it.
Don't blame me, blame her.
And of course the moment God pointed the
finger of accusation at the woman, she did
exactly the same thing.
She said, no, the devil, the devil, he
lied.
He deceived me.
Everybody's fault, but mine.
You tired of trying to forgive your own
sins?
Are you really tired of trying to prove
that it was your husband's fault?
Are you kids really sick and tired of
trying to prove that your parents' fault?
Are some of you students really sick and
tired of trying to prove that it's the
establishment that's wrong?
What God intended them to be.
In him was light, this life was the
light of men.
And until you and I found our way
back to God our maker, and have had
restored to us the only valid content that
makes life add up, we won't even have
a life to live.
And we get sick and tired of trying
to live a life we haven't got.
If you try to live a life you
haven't got, you'll end up by trying to
live somebody else's life.
And if ever there was an age in
which people lived other people's lives, it's the
20th century.
You see, if you haven't got the moral
character, the person whom God intended you to
be, then you're apes somebody else's existence.
Slaves to servile colorless conformity.
So you'll copy everybody else's hairstyle, and you'll
wear the silly little miniskirts, and everybody will
rush around in little white socks.
To be different and to be non-conformist,
we all queue up to conform to their
non-conformity.
Isn't that right?
This is the world in which you and
I live.
Nobody's got the moral courage to be different.
And if anybody happens to have the animal
guts to be different, we admire them and
worship them as though they were idols.
Most extraordinary.
This is the colorlessness of human existence without
God.
You tired?
Dead scared of being anything other than the
mass, so that we excuse everything by saying
everybody does it.
So we'll all go to hell.
That's the cry of the world today.
Others, of course, are tired of trying to
make life add up to something intelligent and
meaningful when most of the essential factors are
missing.
And when you get tired of making life
make sense, when there's no sense to it,
you find an awful lot of time on
your hands.
And when you end up with an awful
lot of time on your hands, you end
up by trying to kill time.
And billions of dollars are spent year after
year to kill time.
Somehow to occupy the hours of my existence
until I die.
Billions of dollars.
From our home in England, headquarters at Cape
and Ray, we have a youth outreach, we
base it upon what we call the warehouse.
It was an old warehouse of great big
old buildings which we've turned into a youth
club.
Has a nursery school there in the morning
and every night of the week there are
youth activities from which derive the outreach into
the coffee bars and the dance halls and
the public houses and the streets and the
beaches.
And teams of youngsters go out and by
way of introduction they use what is quite
popular nowadays, a simple youth questionnaire.
And this is directed by the wife of
one of my very fine colleagues, Stuart Briscoe,
whom I trust one day will come and
visit you here perhaps at the end of
the year, here in Australia.
Jill Briscoe.
And she's just a slip of a girl
really, but she's got the courage of a
lion.
Mind you she tries to persuade us that
she's scared stiff and I think she is
really, but you see you don't need courage
if you're not scared stiff.
Some people have got just sort of animal
sort of courage, which that isn't real courage.
But she was telling how she wanted to
penetrate one of the largest dance halls in
Lancaster, 10 miles from my home.
They had between 800 and 1000 youngsters every
Saturday night.
And she wanted to be able to penetrate
that dance hall and somehow get to grips
with these kids.
They wouldn't go to church, they wouldn't come
to one of our meetings.
So she wanted to take a team in
and just begin to talk to them about
the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is what they quite often do.
She wrote to me some time ago and
said, I've just written to the managers of
24 dance halls asking for 15 minutes on
the microphone in the middle of the dance
so that we can sing a few songs
to them and then tell them about Jesus
Christ.
And she said, I'm terribly afraid that they're
all going to say yes.
And they did.
Anyway, she said three times she tried to
go and see the manager of this particular
dance hall and courage failed her.
And she said, God, I've asked you for
courage three times and you haven't given me,
I'm going without courage.
And that's how she went in.
And she saw the manager and she explained
that she would like to bring a team
of young folk and conduct a youth questionnaire.
And she said, I'm going to leave you
the questionnaire.
It has some loaded questions and designed primarily
to bring to the centrality of the Lord
Jesus, the conversation that's being engaged in.
She said, I'll leave your question.
I don't ask, I don't ask you to
make a decision right now.
Just look it through and I'll call back
and let me know what you think.
When she called back two or three days
later, she discovered the man had filled in
himself.
And this is what he said.
He said, I know perfectly well that my
life is utterly bankrupt, utterly empty, utterly meaningless.
I know that the only purpose I have
in life is to try to help 800
to 1000 other people whose lives are equally
bankrupt, equally empty and equally meaningless to fill
in a few vacant hours.
I have nothing for myself and I've got
nothing for them.
That's all.
And he said, if you can bring any
young folk and introduce any of these boys
and girls into a life that really makes
sense, I'll give you 30 free tickets every
Saturday night.
Now that's it.
The world knows it's bankrupt.
Youth Secretary of the United Nations over a
year ago said this world has got 10
years, 10 years maximum.
And that's an optimistic view, he said, 10
years.
And he's got information from every country in
the world at his fingertips.
He says if the world hasn't solved its
problems in 10 years, there is no further
solution and it will be too late.
So we've got less than nine now.
This is the world in which you and
I live and by and large folk are
tired, tired of trying to kill time.
And of course when you get tired of
killing time, you end up by killing yourself.
That's why last time I was in Canada,
I discovered in the previous 23 months, the
number of suicides in increased by 25%.
The largest single cause of death in the
student world today is suicide.
Not car crashes, not marijuana, not alcoholism, not
cancer.
Suicide, self-destruction.
This is true of every country, including yours.
Interviewed on television, a slip of a girl
in her late teens, a drug addict in
England at Christmastime, was asked, don't you know
that this is going to kill you?
She said, yes, I hope it does.
Time.
Curious sort of subject really for Easter Sunday
afternoon, wouldn't you say?
This is the world.
But the question I want to ask you
is this, why is it, even though we
can understand why the world is tired, that
there are so many Christians who are tired?
Weary Christians.
I spend most of my life ministering to
weary Christians, not the least on the mission
fields of the world.
And I have visited, I suppose, a very
large proportion of the mission fields of the
world in many different geographical contexts.
And I discovered that by and large, the
average missionary, dedicated, loyal, marvelous people.
I can't help but admire them, because they
stick at it, doggedly.
But the large majority of them, weary beyond
description, tired beyond degree.
Why?
Do you know that in the city of
Los Angeles alone, and this is typical of
countless others, there are over 200 evangelical pastors,
missionaries, and preachers, and evangelists in the hands
of psychiatrists.
That's in one city alone.
Now, let's not run away from the fact,
this is hard-stuck reality.
And I counsel with such constantly, week after
week.
I can remember, after speaking in the church
service during the Keswick convention in England, the
following day a lady came to me and
she said, I've been a missionary in South
America for 30 years, and I'm due to
go back in just about two months.
And do you know, she said, until yesterday
I dreaded the thought of going back to
that country.
In fact, she said, in 30 years I've
never once been on furlough, but I dreaded
going back.
Because for 30 years I've fought all my
own battles, I've carried all my own burdens.
I never discovered until yesterday that Jesus Christ
rose again from the dead to live in
me and share his life with me.
And she said, for the first time in
30 years, I can't get back quick enough.
I can remember after preaching in Moody Church,
that famous memorial in the city of Chicago
to Dwight L.
Moody, after the end of the morning service,
I had invited folk who wished to talk
to me personally, to meet me later in
the vestry, and there were a number of
folk there, and amongst them an older man.
And as I chatted with them, and explained
more fully how simply to appropriate the resurrection
life of Jesus Christ, and then said goodbye
to them, he was choking with tears as
he went out, and gripped me by the
hand, he said, I'd like to talk to
you this afternoon, could I come and see
you?
Where's your hotel?
I told him where I was staying, and
he came to see me.
And when he arrived, I apologized for not
knowing his name.
He said, I don't want to tell you
my name.
He said, if I told you my name,
you'd recognize it once.
For two reasons.
He was a man well into his 60s.
He said, for two reasons.
First, my father is internationally known worldwide, and
I'm known all over the American continent.
But I've traveled 250 miles this weekend to
discover what you had to say about a
living Christ.
He said, I've been on the board of
one of the largest Christian, evangelical, liberal arts
colleges in this country.
I've been an evangelist, I've been a missionary,
I've been a pastor, I've served on boards
and committees.
But I've never discovered the resurrection life of
Jesus Christ.
And you know, talking to that man who's
typical of countless others that I could tell
you about, I could have been talking to
a little kid of 9 or 10 or
11 years of age, simply telling him that
the Lord Jesus died upon the cross, that
his sins might be forgiven, so that risen
from the dead, he might come by his
Holy Spirit and live within him and share
his illimitable resources with him.
And he said, how could I have lived
so long and missed it?
Over 60 years of age, true-die evangelical,
a Bible-believing Christian to the fingertips, assuming
heavy organizational and administrative responsibilities, ministering himself
the Word of God, and yet never, never
having discovered the real spiritual content of the
Christian life.
Just two years ago, a man came to
me and he said, could I talk to
you privately?
I said, I'd be happy to do so.
He said, well, I'm the field director of
my mission.
I sit on the committees and I send
out directives and I believe sincerely, I serve
my God as best I know how, and
I serve my fellow missionaries.
I believe that I'm being true and faithful
to my board back in the home country,
to the uttermost of my ability, I believe
that I'm discharging my responsibilities.
But do you know, as a man, as
an individual, as a missionary, I'm absolutely I'm
beaten.
Can you help me?
Well, it's marvelous to be able to help
a man like that.
And of course you can.
You've only got to talk to that man
for five minutes to discover that he never
knew that Jesus Christ rose again from the
dead to live in him.
This is the crying need of our evangelical
age, is to rediscover Jesus Christ and the
power of his resurrection.
We've organized him out of existence.
We've become so pragmatic in this age of
hardware that whether Jesus were alive or dead,
it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the
average Christian organization or denominational entity.
Business as usual.
And this, of course, is why we achieve
nothing and why so many people are utterly
exhausted, utterly exhausted, not with insincerity, but out
of sheer misguided dedication, trying to do for
God, God's job that only God can do.
Well, if that sounds all very miserable, I've
got some good news for you.
It was given to me.
I get lots of poetry, at least it's
called poetry, under my ministry.
Some of it, some of it's good.
Rather like the man, you know, to turn
to his friend and he said, he said,
do you think there's enough fire in my
poetry?
And his friend said, I don't know, but
I don't think there's enough of your poetry
in the fire.
And that was a little unkind, but I
like this.
Discovering daily who God really is, thanking him
daily, he's mine and I'm his.
Discovering daily God's great love for me, such
mercy, forgiveness, amazingly free.
Discovering daily that God really cares, discovering daily
he does answer prayers, discovering daily what grace
really means, unmerited favor beyond all my dreams,
discovering daily God speaking to me.
He speaks through the Bible.
Once blind, now I can see.
Discovering, discovering each day that I live that
all that I need, he freely will give.
Discovering daily Christ working through me, accomplishing daily
what never could be.
Discovering daily I can't, but he can.
Thanking him daily for my place in his
plan.
Discovering daily how real life can be when
I'm living in Christ and he's living in
me.
Discovering daily a song in my heart with
anticipation for each day to start, delighting and
basking in love so divine, securing the knowledge
I'm his and he's mine.
Besides mere contentment, excitement I see, a daily
adventure, Christ alive and living in me.
Now that's, that's the normal Christian life.
That's not just poetic, that's down-to-earth
biblical historical Christianity.
That's exactly what Christian, historical Christian experience
of a forgiven sinner.
That you and I might be caught up
into this fabulous, fantastic adventure of proving daily
that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God,
being himself the very dynamic of all his
demands, the cause of his own effect, the
source of his own activity, and the origin
in us of his own image in action.
Yes, I like that, but I like it
particularly because I know the girl who wrote
it, Bonnie Hain, and I know the circumstances
under which she wrote it.
You see, about five and a half years
ago, her husband called a friend of mine
who is, or was, pastor of the church
which they now attend.
They didn't attend that church then because they
didn't attend any church.
But her husband called this pastor, Bob Hobson,
and he said, would you come round please,
in a hurry, it's an emergency.
And when he got round to this home,
he discovered that the husband had returned home
unexpectedly early when his wife thought he was
going to be very late.
And when he got back, he found his
wife lying in the bathtub with both her
wrists slit, bleeding to death.
And on the table in the kitchen, a
little note explaining that she did it in
the bathtub so he wouldn't have to clean
up the mess.
That at least was thoughtful.
So tired that there was only one possible
solution, finish it.
In the goodness of God, he arrived home
just in time to save her life.
Rushed her off to hospital, and when things
had been tidied up, they were waiting for
an ambulance to bring them home, and in
the waiting room there was the television, and
on it, the hour of decision.
And Billy Graham was speaking.
Telling the simple story of a redeemer who
shed his blood upon the cross, that guilty
sinners, tired, tired, so tired, that they wanted
to finish it, could find forgiveness.
Well they went converted then and there, but
instead of sending her away as he'd been
told he should, to a mental hospital, he
called this pastor, and he let them both
to Christ.
And I mean exactly that.
He didn't make them Baptists, or Methodists, or
Anglicans, or even Brethren.
He just led them to Christ.
And I loved the lot.
But he wasn't interested.
He was interested only in introducing them to
that vital relationship to a risen Lord that
would allow him to invade their personalities, and
from then on, express himself in terms of
their daily behavior.
And that's exactly what happened.
And marvelous things have taken place as a
result of the re-inhabiting of their humanity
by the Lord Jesus.
She wrote this for the daily broadcast.
She writes one I believe almost every day.
And this simply expressed the new thrust that
had come into their lives because they had
discovered that the Lord Jesus who died for
them rose again from the dead to share
his life with them.
And every day became the sheer adventure of
stepping out into his timeless plan.
Lord Jesus, we haven't a clue what you're
going to do today.
We don't know who you're going to talk
to.
We don't know who you're going to raise
from the dead spiritually.
We don't know what weary Christian we're going
to bump into who's just about to quit.
But it's going to be marvelous to know
that it's our privilege to yield our humanity
so that you can be in us where
you please doing what you want, how you
want to do it, anytime you like.
Now that's the Christian life.
Great, isn't it?
Those who've come to a vital relationship to
the Lord Jesus simply by the communication of
his life through these two to them.
But you know, it is exciting to see
God at work in lives like that.
And I'm thrilled about this.
I'm particularly thrilled because I know the past
who led them to Christ.
Because you see, I first met him 15
years ago when he was as thin as
a rake.
And he was so depressed on the verge
of a nervous breakdown that as pastor of
a small church outside the city of Rochester
in Minnesota, he was just about to throw
in the sponge and quit.
Had all his formal training, evangelical to the
fingertips, loved Jesus Christ, could look back to
the day of his conversion in his second
pastorate, but just about to quit.
Well, it just so happens I had been
invited to speak in a church in Rochester.
And the pastor just before I arrived, resigned.
And I don't blame him for that.
I think if I knew I was coming,
I'd quit too.
But actually, it had nothing to do with
my arrival.
He suddenly got the opportunity to do some
postgraduate studies and he accepted the opportunity, but
it left the pulpit vacant just at the
time when I was supposed to be coming
for a Bible conference.
And the officers of the church decided to
go ahead, but they had in the meantime
got in touch with this young pastor, Bob
Hobson, and invited him to take care of
certain matters in the interim period while he
was still running his own little church about
20 miles out of town.
And he was doing this on top of
the other load.
But he was living on his nerves.
If you don't live through Jesus Christ, you'll
live on your nerves, there's no alternative.
And when you live on your nerves, you
live on everybody else's.
And of course, everybody else lives on yours.
And when I arrived, I was invited to
speak at the morning broadcast at the radio
station.
And they forgot to tell him, and they
told him he was going to do it.
You see, so now two were going to
do it.
I was going to do it, and he
was going to do it.
And when he arrived to do it and
found I was going to do it, he
wondered who really knew their own minds.
You know how you get when you're living
on your nerves.
Strictly correct, but I could hardly say overwhelmingly
warm.
And he marched me off to the radio
station, introduced me to the manager, he showed
me where the record library was, and he
was just about to leave me to stew
in my own studio juice.
When for some reason or other he decided
to remain.
And afterwards over a cup of coffee we
began to talk.
And as I began to share with him
the thrilling adventure of being caught up into
Christ, and just allowing him day by day
to unfold his plan, created in Christ Jesus
unto good works which God hath before ordained
that we should walk in them.
You see, there's nothing for God to settle
about your life or mine.
There are no issues to face, no decisions
for him to make.
We are recreated in Christ Jesus unto good
works which God hath before ordained that we
should walk in them.
Just like the Lord Jesus when he was
born in this world, he didn't come into
this world to do his best for God.
He didn't come into this world to do
his best to redeem humanity.
It wasn't somehow, it was triumphantly.
Every step he took and every word he
spoke and everything he did, every decision that
he made was a divine fulfillment of a
plan agreed as between Father, Son and Holy
Spirit in the eternal ages of the past.
It was simply that the Father had his
yielded humanity in which to tell the story.
Until he could cry triumphantly, it's finished.
Story told.
Bow his head and die and the Father
say amen and raise him from the dead
and exalt him now at his own right
hand.
Now the marvelous thing is this, that that
same Lord Jesus has his own program to
fulfill through you and me and all he's
waiting is for our humanity to be yielded
to him today as his humanity was yielded
to his Father then.
It's just as simple as that.
And the moment you and I become available
for Jesus Christ to be who he is
in action, we are caught up into that
predetermined purpose for which you and I first
created have now been redeemed and we prove
what is that good, acceptable and perfect will
of God.
And I began to share these things with
just how simple it was to say thank
you Lord Jesus for every step you take,
for what you are in me for this
next situation.
I shared with him some of the things
that I shared I believe when I was
here eight years ago.
I was a young fellow of 19 studying
medicine preparing to go to the mission field.
I was utterly thrashed, completely beaten, so discouraged,
never having led a single soul to Christ
in my life in all the frantic endeavors
in which I had engaged as a crusader
leader and a member of the intervarsity fellow
and leading CSSM's on the coast.
I never led anybody to Christ.
But it was then that in the goodness
of God, in tears of despair that he
showed me that he was alive and just
waiting to move into my bankruptcy and make
perfect his strength in my abject weakness.
What a marvelous discovery that was when I
decided to quit and thought God was going
to be so disappointed and found that he
was unspeakably overjoyed.
Never I chatted with Bob about these things.
Do you know he was just at that
stage where the moment of truth could dawn
upon his soul.
By and large it isn't until we're scraping
at the bottom of the barrel, it isn't
until we're flat on our backs, it isn't
until really we've jettisoned the last vestige of
self-confidence, it isn't until then that we
see the significance of Christ's resurrection.
We can talk about it, we can sing
about it, we can celebrate Easter Sunday, but
it's all academic, all academic.
Just as countless millions of people today will
talk about the cross and will have been
to church today and practiced religion but they're
not redeemed, not redeemed because they've never really
been convicted of their sin and have never
really seen any redemptive significance in the cross.
It's simply a beautiful sentimental symbol, that's all.
But convicted of sin, trying to find your
way back to God your maker.
Then suddenly you see a deep significance in
the precious blood that was shed upon the
cross that reconciles us to a holy God
and pronounces our acquittal, though we never deserved
it.
And you see it isn't until you and
I are convicted of our own sinfulness, not
just the sins we've committed that needed what
he did, but the sinfulness that we are,
what we are from which derives what we
do.
That in our flesh dwells no good thing,
that we're rotten through and through, that we're
fit for nothing but the dump, that our
noblest, our best and our highest is only
a filthy rag, until at last we've recognized
our own inherent destitution.
It's only then that we realize that we
need not only what he did when he
died, we need who he is now that
he's alive.
What he did because of what we've done,
we now need what he is to take
the place of what we are.
It's just as simple as that, that's gospel.
This is just plain biblical, historical gospel, designed
to restore a man to his true humanity.
My colleague Stuart Briscoe, whose wife I was
telling you about, I remember talking to some
of our teenagers one day, and he said
it's marvelous to discover why he is, who
he is, where he is.
Why he is, who he is, God, where
he is, in our hearts.
That's the greatest discovery you can make as
a Christian.
Well why is he who he is, where
he is?
Well because that's exactly what it takes to
be a man, because God created you and
me to function only by virtue of what
God is in us.
So if it takes God to be a
man, what will it take to be a
Christian?
Christ.
It takes Christ to be a Christian because
it takes God to be a man.
And you see Christ in the Christian puts
God back into the man.
And that's the meaning of the cross.
We've seen this all through this weekend.
He died for us, only that risen from
the dead he might come and dwell in
us and live his life through us.
Well Bob, he just embraced it.
Out of his sheer despair, out of his
destitution, out of the bitterness of self-discovery,
he kicked himself.
How domestic that Christ is alive in me
and I've been sweating it out in my
pulpit Sunday by Sunday with those poor people
listening to him.
Carrying all the burdens, making all the decisions,
facing all the responsibilities, trying to unravel all
the problems, when all the time Jesus Christ
dwelling in me has been waiting to get
into action.
I never gave him a chance.
He didn't walk home, he didn't ride home,
he didn't fly home.
He floated home.
And he burst into his house and he
said to his wife Nina, I've made the
most marvelous thrilling discovery.
And she was a sweet Christian girl, but
just as weary and just as depressed as
he.
And he simply led her to the same
glorious appropriation of a risen Lord.
Now don't misunderstand me.
Neither of them will receive one single thing
more than they've always had from the moment
of their regeneration.
God can't give you more than he gave
you when Christ came to live in your
hearts.
When you were redeemed in the blood of
Christ and the Holy Spirit came to presence
within you, the resurrection life of Jesus Christ,
God gave you all that heaven could afford.
In him dwells all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily.
When God gives you Christ, he gives you
with him embraced by him all things.
God can't give you more.
There's not one single boy, girl, man or
woman who's converted who does not have dwelling
within their humanity all the illimitable resources of
deity.
But the tragedy is we can sit on
it for 50 years and never know it's
there.
If we don't appropriate the life of Christ.
Rod held high, letting God move into action.
Well it's been fascinating to watch him over
the years.
And you know six years ago he was
preaching in the Midwest at the close of
the message.
And they said we wondered whether you would
be interested in becoming our pastor.
Well he said tell me something about your
church.
You know you had a great big church,
lovely building, you know, great crowds of people,
you know, big stipend, all the rest of
it.
Well they said as a matter of fact
we've been in existence eight or nine years.
We don't have a church building.
We meet in a school classroom of a
local high school.
And our numbers get less every week.
As a matter of fact he said we're
so depressed, we're so tired, we're so weary,
we're so discouraged that we wonder whether you'd
like to be our pastor.
Well he said yes I'd be delighted.
You see one of the beauties of taking
over a dying church is you don't have
to kill it.
I was in that.
They had a beautiful new Sunday school block
which we crammed to capacity.
And the foundations had already been laid for,
not a great auditorium, one that seats about
500.
Marvelous.
Bonnie Hayne was there and a crowd like
her.
I was back in that church just 18
months ago and it's crammed twice every Sunday
morning.
And they've got to decide now whether they
have three Sunday morning services, because they've already
over a thousand attending their morning service, or
whether they build a new church.
In fact Bob when I was talking just
a few months ago said he overheard one
of his church officers saying to somebody on
the phone, do you want to buy a
church?
Because we're building another.
That was the first he was told that.
And do you know what is exciting about
that church is this, that 85 percent have
been converted in these last few years.
At the invitation of the Sudan Interior Mission.
Several years back it was my privilege to
be in Somalia, met one of the dear
folk whom I met there just this morning.
And in the Sudan, in Ethiopia itself, where
I met Dr. Davis in Addis Ababa.
And also I was in Aden, in the
South Arabian Peninsula before the independence was gained.
And a fine missionary of the Sudan Interior
Mission, Bud Acord was his name, who together
with another missionary had been laboring in that
field for 10 years, in the Hamilton field
of course.
But unknown to me they were terribly depressed
and terribly discouraged.
Later on I learned that in the solid
10 years that they'd been there, they had
known of all missionary activity of all denominational
groups and fellowships, only 10 professed conversions in
10 years.
And he said when I came back from
my second fellow, most of those had backslidden.
I've been talking about here, but it didn't
really make sense to him.
Until they had a little prayer meeting on
the Monday.
And just on take and say thank you.
What shall I render unto the Lord for
all his benefits toward me?
And the psalmist hasn't got an answer.
He's too rich, I'm too poor.
What shall I render unto the Lord?
He answers finally, I'll take.
Take the cup of salvation.
And offered him the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
The only way I can require God is
to take what he offers and say thank
you.
Take and say thank you.
And this of course is the Christian life.
God's too rich, you and I are too
poor.
All we can take is every step into
every new situation, take and say thank you.
Take and say thank you.
Lord Jesus, I can't, you can, that's all
I need to know, let's go.
You see, that's the Christian life.
Later on in December that year in California,
I thought it was still in Aden.
But owing to the riots, the British government
finally had told all institutions to go.
The Red Sea Mission team building had been
burned down to the ground alongside the Sudan
Interior Mission headquarters.
And so all missions had to get out.
But he called me when I was in
Los Angeles and said, I'd like to come
and tell you what happened.
And he told me how he and his
colleague had got together after I left.
And they discussed this.
They said, now we've been wearily sweating it
out for 10 years.
Temperatures 100, 120 degrees and awfully humid.
He said, again and again, we'd have packed
our bags and gone home.
But he said, we chatted this over.
Here's a man who comes and tells us
all we've got to do is quit.
Just get out and let God get in.
Well, they said, we've nothing, absolutely nothing to
lose.
Maybe there's something to gain.
So we decided to get down on our
knees and we prayed.
And this is how he said we prayed.
We prayed like this.
We said, God, there's been a man here
who says that if we'll get out, you'll
get in.
If we quit, you'll take over.
Okay, we quit.
And if nothing happens now, we all quit.
Later, there was a knock on the door.
And there was an Arab outside.
He said, could you tell me how to
become a Christian?
He said, this sort of thing had happened
in the past.
So I went through the normal routine.
I said, I'm sorry, I don't have any
food to give you.
And I can't give you any money.
I can't arrange transportation to the United States
or to England for education.
I can't get you housing.
What is it you really want?
And the Arab looked at him amazed.
He said, I didn't ask for any of
those things.
He said, I asked you to tell me
how to become a Christian.
I'm sick and tired of being a Muslim.
And he led him to Christ.
And he said that happened for almost three
weeks.
Day after day.
He said they were queuing up to get
saved.
Until he said, he said it wasn't even
funny.
And so we got down on our knees
again.
We said, God, this is ridiculous.
He said, we've been here for 10 solid
years and this sort of thing does not
happen in Asia.
But we haven't seen any women converted.
Please start on the women.
And he said, next day, knock on the
door and there was a lady.
And he said for six months, it was
just as though the windows of heaven had
opened.
And then when we could hardly believe it,
we were told to get out.
Now he said, under normal circumstances, we would
have been absolutely heartbroken.
But the marvelous thing was this.
We knew that we had absolutely nothing to
do with what had been happening.
And when we were told to get out,
we couldn't have cared less.
We said, if God wants us to get
out somewhere else, it's simply because he wants
to do something through us somewhere else.
And he had a marvelous time in the
church there in California.
Then he went to Liberia with Elva.
And today he's in the Lebanon preaching a
hundred times in Arabic to all the Arabic
parts of the world.
And he wrote just the other day.
And of course, he's hilariously happy.
Things are always marvelously happening.
He said, I had a letter the other
day with a cabinet stamp from Lebanon.
One of the cabinet ministers says, I am
one of the sinners for whom Jesus died.
I believe it.
Now, this is life, real life.
And it's the life that's to be found
in Jesus Christ.
That's exactly what you've got.
Easter Sunday afternoon is that Jesus is alive
in you.