Let's look at the epistle of Paul to
the Philippians, Philippians chapter 4, and
verse 18.
But I have all and abound, I am
full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which
were sent from you, an odor of sweet
smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God.
Somebody attempted to give us another beatitude.
I don't know what attitude the man was
in when he said it.
I don't know whether he was smiling or
cynical or smug or satisfied or sincere.
But his beatitude was this, blessed are they
who expect nothing, for they shall not be
disappointed.
It sounds a bit cynical, but there's an
awful, awful lot of truth in it.
And I'm quite sure that the Apostle Paul,
on a higher level than that man said
it, had already made this his way of
life.
He was not disappointed, because he expected nothing
from the world in which he lived.
He had written it off, and they had
written him off.
And the cost of his discipleship, to use
a phrase that Bonhoeffer liked so much, the
cost of discipleship to him was this, that
when he wrote this marvelous verse that I've
read to you just now, he was in
prison.
The sweetest note that the Apostle sang was
when he was in prison.
I don't know whether we'll have to go
to prison to make some of us sing,
but anyhow that's true in his life.
And you remember that the background of this
epistle was this, that he went to a
place called Philippi.
And being the good preacher that he was,
he landed up in jail.
And he decided to sing praises, and he
sang his praises at midnight.
And you remember that there was something tremendous
happened, and the jailer was converted.
He had a ministry in Philippi.
And one of the outstanding converts there was
a girl with a familiar spirit.
And the Apostle was able to cast that
spirit out of her.
Now he did write on another occasion about
the gospel of the grace of God.
He said there is neither Jew nor Greek,
there is neither bond nor free, there is
neither male nor female.
You could break that down this way and
say, there is neither bond nor free, that
is race distinction.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, that is
race distinction.
There is neither bond nor free, that is
class distinction.
And there is neither male nor female, that
is sex distinction.
Or you could say, as a result of
his preaching in Philippi, that a very beautiful
lady was the one who first gave him
comfort and gave him an ear, Lydia the
Seller of Purple.
She was a patrician, that is, that she
was somebody high up in society.
It's usually said that she was of Asiatic
descent.
And so he was a means of converting
this patrician, this lovely lady.
He was the means of converting a woman
with a familiar spirit.
She was a prophetess.
He was a means of converting a jailer
and he was a, well let's say, a
man who would punish.
And so you see, each scale of life
was met by the apostle in this one
single incident.
Philippi had been established by a very famous
Roman.
In fact, it's usually credited with being the
first foundation stone in the Roman Empire.
And Paul seems to have always been a
strategist in this, that he didn't go to
the small town, he went to the main
cities.
He went to Ephesus and he went here
to Philippi and he went to Rome because
everybody crossed through those cities and he set
up shop, if you like, where everybody would
see that he was there.
And he didn't hesitate even to go to
the synagogue and he didn't hesitate to call
fire from heaven, as it were, in hostility
from himself to himself.
I find it tremendously challenging that a man
who has braved everything that it is possible
to assail his body, his mind and his
spirit, now an aged man.
I'm sure his eyes weren't straight.
I'm sure his cheeks were pleated where stones
would rip them open.
I'm sure his chest was all scarred with
rough stones that had been thrown at him.
I'm quite sure he limped.
Because, you see, one day he was taken
to a city called Lystra and they stoned
him there.
They left him outside of the city saying,
well that's the end of him anyhow, we
finished that.
And I don't wonder that a man like
this, you see, the great thing to me
about the Apostle Paul is this.
He's the best example of his own theology.
You can't fault him anywhere.
Everything he says he did, everything he talks
about he was.
He made up his mind that Christ came
and Christ said, look I'll take your human
nature, I will be all that you are,
in order that you may be all that
I am.
Now you could sit down and think of
that for a week.
Christ said I will become all that you
are, minus of course human sin, that you
may become all that I am.
That is, on the level of a man,
not sharing his deity, but being made a
sharer, a partaker, as the word says, of
the divine nature.
You know, sometimes we're kind of rebuked because
we accept things by faith.
Well, you need faith to accept things that
you can't reason out.
There are some things you just can't reason
out, and therefore you, you accept them by
faith.
Not that we'll ever explain God.
God cannot be explained, he can be experienced.
Now I say again that Paul says here,
and he's writing to these people, now he's
in Rome and he writes this, and this
seems, it seems ridiculous, it's nonsensical.
He says, I have all, and abound, I
am full.
If you trace the story back, you'll find
that part of his imprisonment at Philippi was
this, that he was, he was in favor
with the Roman guard, and he was allowed,
allowed to live, he said, in his own
hired house.
But he didn't stay there too long.
The man got moved on, or he died,
and therefore the apostle Paul fell into a
different situation.
And he says a little later that, all
the saints salute you, chiefly they who are
of Caesar's household.
And it wasn't an uncommon thing, in fact
it was a very pretty ordinary thing, in
those days, for a man to build an
enormous palace, and then underneath, like you have
in say Warwick Castle in England, were the,
the areas where the slaves were put, or
where the prisoners were chained to the wall.
Now Paul was never minus that chain.
Wasn't it when he stood before a gripper
that he said, a fester stood up and
said, my, you almost persuade me to be
a Christian.
And he said, I would that you were
as I am, except for these bonds, except
for these chains.
It was a sign of humiliation that a
man dragged the chain, like today a convict,
and he struggles with a chain between his
legs.
And even if this man was allowed to
go free in the street as he was
sometimes, that mark of condemnation was on him
all the time.
He had to drag that weary chain with
him.
It was an identification that he'd lost his
freedom.
It was an identification that they'd humiliated him
and robbed him of everything that he had.
He was spoiled.
And yet listen, there's no embarrassment to the
apostle Paul.
He takes that chain of, of iron with
him as though it were a chain of
gold.
He's as happy in his bondage.
You see, here he's living down here in
a basement.
Will you notice what he says?
I could have been comfortable, but the springs
in the bed were rough last night.
The air conditioner wasn't working.
And I couldn't get a drink of cold
water.
And my mail's been held up for days.
And you know, the food isn't quite as
good as the other prison I was in.
You notice this, that Paul never whines?
He never whimpers.
Why doesn't he whimper?
Why doesn't he whine?
Because he says, Christ dwells in my heart,
and I can no more whine than Christ
whines.
Christ never whimpered.
Oh, the height of really being lost in
God, lost in Christ as the apostle was.
He's downstairs, and he's chained to the wall
when he sleeps.
The other man's upstairs with a silken couch.
The man up there is terrified he'll be
assassinated.
Paul isn't.
He knows nobody will bother with him.
His freedom is he's already an outcast.
His liberty is he's already protected.
This man is delicate and says, we don't
have to eat this again today, do we?
Oh, it's boring.
I mean, after all, we did it.
Well, these are leftovers.
Oh, leftovers.
You offend the dignity of my lovely appetite.
Paul down there gets the scraps that fall
from the rich man's table, unless, of course,
the slaves ate them in between the two
places.
And then he says in his heart, I've
got meat to eat that ye know not
of.
This man walks about and says, do you
know that I have power from Caesar?
The apostle Paul says, do you know I
have a power from a man who's going
to live when Caesar's been dead a thousand
million years?
He lives in a world they know nothing
about.
He has freedom.
While the man upstairs is in bondage.
The man upstairs has a delicate appetite.
This man has said, I've learned, he says
to these very people, I've learned whatsoever state
I'm in therewith to be content.
Now, should we change this into a testimony
meeting and let you all say the last
time you quoted that?
Huh?
He doesn't say I've learned some conditions, he
says I've learned whatsoever state I'm in.
Not that I speak in respect of want,
he says.
Do you know one of the most stirring
things to me about this epistle?
This is a love letter.
He uses a personal pronoun here almost a
hundred times.
He speaks twenty times in different ways about
contentment and joy and rejoicing.
Oh come on, what do you mean?
Are you bluffing us?
Are you putting on an act?
Do you want everybody to hear that when
you really got your back to the wall
and you'd only half the skin on it,
that you really kept your chin up and
you sang in the night?
You see, this is not an epistle of
some people that are living in comfort and
an easy street.
It's a man who's lost everything.
You see again, as I've said to you
before and it stands for Caesars, when you
have nothing you don't have to worry you
lose anything.
And Paul had nothing.
He'd no reputation, he certainly had no money,
he had no creature comfort.
You couldn't go in his cell and sit
down because there's no chair to sit on.
He couldn't offer you some refreshment because he
had no refreshment to give.
Everything that the eye could see, everything that
the five senses could feed upon had already
been demolished.
And that's why he says to the believer,
listen, listen, set your affection on things which
are above.
Do you know why?
Because the market never changes there.
Because the supplies never run out in eternity.
He giveth more grace as the burdens grow
greater.
It'll be horrible if you thought there was
less grace tomorrow than there was yesterday, if
your burden's twice as big tomorrow as yesterday.
But he says, he giveth more grace as
the burdens grow greater.
Listen, these very people he says, my God
should supply all your needs.
You want to see a living example of
it?
Here I am sitting in a lousy prison
cell.
And as a matter of fact he says,
if I came right down to it, I'm
really feeling sorry for you because you don't
have as much victory where you are as
I have right down here and I've got
nothing.
And in having nothing I've got all things.
You see a fire doesn't make a man
a martyr, it reveals he is a martyr.
If somebody stood you by the wall this
afternoon and shot you because you say, well
I, yes I'll stand by Christ instead of
communism or some other thing, that would just
reveal that somewhere else you'd already made your
decision.
As I've said so often, Jesus did not
die on the cross, he died in Gethsemane.
The will of his, was surrendered to his
Father.
The cross was the physical evidence of something
that he denies before when he sweat with
great grief and agony and said, if it
be possible let this cup pass over me
or all thy billows have gone over me.
It's my opinion, you may disagree, but it's
my opinion that after the Apostle Paul himself,
nobody ever stood as tall in spiritual life,
after Jesus himself, nobody ever stood as tall
as the Apostle Paul.
He says, I have all things and abound.
In a prison cell, hey come on Paul,
you don't have a change of socks and
you know it, why don't you own up
to it?
You don't have a spare, a spare shirt,
why don't you admit it?
You've got, what do you mean you've got
all things?
Well he says, all you need is air
to breathe and that keeps you alive.
You don't have a money jingling in your
pocket, you don't need a lovely home, you
don't need a marvelous palace like this king
that lives above my head.
I have all things because I only live
on one level, I only have one interest,
I only have one joy, I only have
one goal and there is nothing can cut
me off from that.
You see, on that Damascus road, he says
that Christ revealed himself to me and then
God took him to that great school, the
University of Silence and he was there for
three and a half years.
On the Damascus road he said Christ revealed
himself to me, but in the wilderness he
said he revealed himself in me.
I'm afraid the great population of so-called
Christians, Christ has revealed himself to them but
I wonder how far he's revealed himself in
them.
I wonder what the degree of abandonment as
God runs as it were his slide ruler,
takes my temperature this afternoon and I may
preach with zeal and a little effort and
a little joy and a little sorrow and
a little anguish but I wonder when he
gets right down there into the center of
my being and takes my temperature, what degree
of reservation there might be right now?
Is it showmanship?
Is it zeal?
Is it my hatred against worldly systems?
Or is it my pure love to him?
You see, Paul gives us a catalogue there
in the second letter to the Corinthians and
verse 11, he spells out some of the
things that had come to him.
In verse 24, 2 Corinthians 11, he says
of the Jews, five times received I forty
stripes saved once, thrice, listen, thrice, three times
I was beaten with rods, once I was
stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and
a day I was in the deep, in
journeyings oft, in perils of the waters, in
perils of robbers, in perils of mine own
countrymen, in perils of the heathen, in perils
of the city, in perils of the wilderness,
in perils of the sea, in perils amongst
false brethren, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings,
in hunger, in thirst, in fastings, often in
cold and nakedness.
Hey, they aren't very good wages for a
man that sold everything he had on that
Damascus road, are they?
This man could have been sitting up on
a chair in the university because he had
a greater colossal intellect, I'm sure, than Hillel,
the greatest of the rabbis that ever lived.
And here he says, I'm in weariness, I'm
in fasting, I'm in pain, painfulness.
Oh, you have to have pain when you're
spirit-filled.
Well, he had anyhow, didn't he?
Hunger?
Well, that's what he said.
You know, I'm staggered, honest I am, and
I'm not fooling.
I'm staggered that when this man went into
Philippi, he didn't go around and say, spread
the news, spread the news, spread the news.
Do you know who's come to town?
Paul, the apostle.
I've done more than any man that ever
lived.
I do everything Jesus did.
He raised the dead, I raised the dead.
He cured the sick, I cured the sick.
He drove out devils, I drove...
Why did he set up shop and shake
the whole heathen city with a healing crusade?
It's amazing how little he does of that.
Now, that's not wrong, it's right, it's beautiful.
It's wrong when you need it for entertainment
and give you a lift.
You see, Paul's center and circumference, his beginning
and the end, his source and everything is
Jesus Christ.
Now, I say in this epistle, he uses
the personal pronoun a hundred times, but as
in every other epistle, his whole philosophy is
geared and he centers people not on Paul,
not I, but Christ.
And he exalts him and he uplifts him.
When he finished writing that longer epistle to
the Romans, you remember the end of it
where he sums it all up beautifully and
he says, and I think there's a, could
I put these together?
They don't sound right, but there's a holy
swagger here.
There's a holy swagger.
He puts his shoulders back and he says,
all right, well, just a minute before you
chop my head off, let me tell you
something.
Who shall separate us from the love of
Christ?
Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, or sword?
As it is written for thy sake we
are killed all the day long.
We're counted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things, not some of
them, we are more than conquerors.
Not we just skip through and then finish
up exhausted.
He says, when I finished, I have a
surplus left.
He says, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers.
You see, he's not only fighting something, he
said, there's a sword.
Nakedness and the sword, they have to do
with the body.
You can't put a sword through my spirit,
you can put a sword through my body.
But he says, I triumph over that.
And then he says, also there are principalities
and there are powers.
Do you remember he uses that same word
in writing to the Colossians in the first
chapter?
He says, for by him, that is Christ,
by him all things were created that are
in heaven, in the earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities,
or powers.
You remember he finishes Ephesians 6 saying the
same thing?
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers.
I'll tell you what, the church has got
by pretty well until now, but it's my
guess, no, it's my certainty, that we're going
to have a lot more to do with
principalities and powers in heavenly places in the
next few years than we've had in the
past few.
This is a fight to the death.
This is Satan's last great drive before the
final outpouring of the Spirit of God.
And Paul doesn't hesitate to say that he's
wrestled against principalities and powers, and against the
rulers of the darkness of this world.
And yet I remind you again of this
text in which he says, but I have
all.
He not only says I have all, he
says I abound.
I not only abound, I'm full.
He's a shirtless, homeless, moneyless, wifeless, childless, positionless,
possessionless man, singing in glory, when the world
has done its very best.
And he said, I've told you over and
over again that the matter's not about tribulation,
or distress, or famine, or peril.
What can separate us from the love of
God?
Again, you can wall me in, but you
can't roof me in.
You can cut me off from fellowship.
You can take my Bible, take my church,
and what do I do?
Well, before God, it doesn't take that much
to upset a lot of us, does it?
A little adversity.
Oh, I wonder what the Lord's doing.
Has he forgotten about us?
Hey, you were brave.
You told him not long ago in prayer
that you'd take anything, and so he says,
all right, I'm going to try you out
for a season.
Where are my resources when it comes to
that issue?
Now, Paul is reminding this people that he
himself is in jail.
He's in a bad situation.
But if you go to chapter 1 and
verse 29, he says this, For unto you
it is given on the behalf of Christ,
not only to believe on him, but also
to suffer for his sake, having the same
conflict which he saw in me, and now
here to be in me.
The same conflict.
You're going to suffer for his sake.
In the second chapter, he says in verse
15, that he wants them to be blameless
and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke,
in the midst of a crooked and a
perverse nation.
Coming over into the third chapter, he begins
to excite them in praise and adoration.
You see, I reminded you that a hundred
times he uses the first personal pronoun, because
he's showing them what Christ means to him,
but he's keeping their eyes on Jesus Christ,
the Son of God.
Again, in twenty different ways, he talks about
peace and calm and quietness and rejoicing and
exaltation and worship.
Now, there's one great omission in this chapter
I only discovered.
I think it was this morning.
Do you know he says nothing in this
chapter about sin?
He says nothing in the epistle about sin.
He wrote the next epistle in the same
place, at least he wrote it in prison
in Rome.
But in the next epistle, he has to
take up a cudgel, he has to fight,
he has to do some combat.
You see, some of the people have crept
in and said, well, we don't deny Jesus
is the Son of God.
We deny that he made a perfect atonement
for sin, and man, that pulls everything there
is in the apostle Paul.
You can tread on him, but you don't
touch Jesus Christ.
You can beat me and bruise me, you
can cast me into the Mediterranean in a
night and a day in the deep, that's
all right, I'll take it, but you don't
touch the Son of God.
He loved me and gave himself for me.
He has a holy passion, he has the
fire that took men down to the martyr's
place.
He doesn't mention sin.
Would you agree if I say there are
some things harder to deal with than sin?
Come on, you know there are.
You know there are certain sins, if Satan
tempted you, get out of here, I have
no interest in them.
The average believing man is not tempted to
adultery and drunkenness and thieving and all those
other abominable sins of the flesh, but there
are some things harder than sin, and the
apostle had to face them, and you and
I have to face them.
He had to face betrayal by some of
his closest friends.
He'd invested a great deal and trained some
young men.
For instance, he says, uh, Demas hath forsaken
me, having loved this present world.
Demas had been a firebrand, Paul would never
have had him.
The men that swore their allegiance not to
him, they swore their allegiance to Jesus.
And I say in God's name, if men
couldn't listen to the apostle, Paul teaches they
couldn't listen to Gabriel.
And they took issue with him on one
thing, another thing, and they found a place
of separation.
Do you know why?
The cross got too difficult to bear.
They couldn't bear the scorn of the world,
and so they compromised with it.
Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present
world.
He doesn't say he committed adultery.
He doesn't say he murdered somebody.
He doesn't say he did something obscene.
He says the world, the world, the world
got a pull on him.
And finally he gets to the place where
those giant men at the side of him,
do you know what he says?
I don't think he said it with his
tongue in his cheek.
I don't think he was crying on somebody's
shoulders.
He says, uh, well, all men forsook me.
Nevertheless, the Lord stood by me.
You know when you'll find who's your dearest
friend?
When everybody quits you but one.
I'm not sure you didn't say amen, but
that's still true.
Everybody quits you but one.
Do you think it was easy for this
man?
He's up against the Roman Empire.
He's up against the might of the Greeks.
He knows the Jews hate him with a
perfect hatred.
You see, he's got everything going for him.
He's got nothing going for him.
He's a tribe of Abraham, a tribe of
Benjamin, everything a good Jew wanted he had.
He was circumcised the eighth day.
You know why they circumcise a child on
the eighth day?
If you circumcise it on the seventh, it
would bleed to death.
It's circumcised on the eighth day.
Isn't it marvelous the Bible knew that before
modern science knew it?
But you see, you don't have to try
and reconcile the Bible with science, you can't
reconcile them.
Jesus didn't come to reconcile us to this
world, forget it.
Sure, I think we need more godly men
in government if we can get it, but
I'm going to tell you this, you'll never
reconcile Washington or London to Jesus Christ.
That is not the purpose of redemption.
The purpose of redemption is that men should
be reconciled to God, then reconcile with each
other as far as possible.
But we're in a world system and it
doesn't get any better.
It's getting infinitely worse.
Satanic powers are engineering everything they can for
the downfall of this great country.
And I'll tell you again, the White House
isn't going to save it, God's house will
save it.
If God's house is cleansed, then really in
the place you ought to be in.
But Paul says, I've got everything going for
me, I'm circumcised the eighth day of the
stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin,
of the seed of Abraham.
Good night, that's about as much as you
could take.
Then he says, I'm not only a Pharisee,
I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisees.
My dad was one of the outstanding men,
and I have everything open before me.
And you know, he says later, he's not
only of the tribe of Benjamin and the
seed of Abraham, so he's got it religiously,
he says, I've got it socially.
You know, I'm a Roman, I'm free-born.
You don't mean that?
Yeah, yeah, my father had the freedom of
the city.
Oh, the Roman soldier said, I bought my
commission, at least my daddy bought it for
me, he's a lot of money.
You're free-born?
Yes, I'm free-born.
And I think under his breath he said
twice.
But, uh, he was free-born.
He was free-born as a Roman, he
was free-born as a Christian.
I think he would have loved Isaac watching
him, maybe sang at the end of the
day.
Every day, my richest gain I count but
loss.
Oh, how easy to sing, how difficult to
do.
My richest gain I count but loss.
Where's my testament?
Let me look here.
All right.
But he says the very thing in that
next verse, verse 7 of Philippians 3.
Those things that were gained to me, those
I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and
I count things.
No, no, no, no, read it.
I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my
Lord, for whom I have suffered.
Now, he doesn't, he doesn't try to be
too heroic.
He doesn't say, listen, uh, you know, I'm,
I'm not built like you.
I, I, it's so marvelous.
You know, when God filled me with the
Spirit, he took my emotions away, took my
nerves away, took everything away, and I don't
feel like you.
I'm sorry for you, but I'm just not
built like that.
Paul didn't say, none of these things hurt
me.
He said, none of these things move me.
Of course they hurt him.
The more sensitive you become, the less of
self you have, and the less of other
things you have, the more sensitive you become
in the Spirit, and it's harder to take.
The irritation of the world, the blindness of
the world, the folly of the world.
The thing that gets under my skin now
is that preachers are talking the language they
talked 25 years ago.
I want to tell you we're on a
collision course.
In America, in England, in, in, in all
the, we're on a collision course.
Number one, we're on a collision course with
communism, I'm sure of that.
Number two, we're on a collision course with
God, because God gets angry with nations as
well as individuals.
But poor Paul says he suffered.
Man alive, when they whipped him, he says,
I was whipped, what?
Five times I received 40 stripes.
What's 540?
It's 200 and 200 minus 40 stripes, save
one.
So that's 195.
It was a whip, and on the end
of every lash, there was a long piece
of spiked copper, and he was tied to
a whipping post.
And you know what?
If they hadn't have tied him, he'd have
stayed there.
He wasn't going to run away.
He'd already asked for what I didn't ask
for.
You see, everybody wants joy bells and happiness,
and you turn God's house into a pigsty
almost.
Everybody wants to eat and do everything.
But I'll tell you what, nobody wants to
travel in birth.
When did you last hear a man daringly
say to God, let me fill up the
sufferings of Christ?
That's something, isn't it?
That's where our strength is proved.
Disagree, but I'm convinced in the Old Testament,
the sign of God's blessing in the Old
Testament was prosperity.
The sign of God's blessing in the New
Testament is adversity.
What's your breaking point?
And the hostility of the world is such
that if you get just a Christian philosophy
in your mind, and believe in the virgin
birth, and believe in the resurrection, and believe
in other things, you'll break.
But if Christ comes and lives in you,
and that's what Paul says.
You know, I like to tease people.
You get them just as mad when you
tease them sometimes.
And I say, if you go to a
Pentecostal church, you say, well, I got saved,
and I got filled with the Holy Ghost,
and I got some gifts, I spoke in
tongues, and everybody says, Amen, glory, glory.
Well, that's great, what's wrong with it?
You go to a holiness church, you're not
quite as exuberant.
You have to look a little sad, maybe,
and say, I'm saved and sanctified.
Everybody wonders whether you're saved and sanctified, or
saved and sanctimonious, but anyhow, you say it,
and it passes off.
But I say again, change your philosophy.
And the night you're going to do it,
take all your little children with you, if
you have them to church.
And the preacher say, preacher, do you know,
my heart's overflowing, want it?
Stand up, sister, and testify.
Stand up, brother.
And you stand there and say, sweetly, you
know, dear friends, I was once a sinner
and a rebel, but well, now Christ lives
in me.
Christ lives in me.
As I say, you sit down, and your
wife says, well, George, when did that happen?
I've been living with Christ all this time.
You know, I never guessed that.
Oh, I know, you stop spitting on the
rug, and swearing, and drinking, and carousing, and
all.
But you know, I never realized.
I mean, you get angry so soon, and
you get so bitter, and I didn't know.
And then, of course, you try and rub
it off on the old nature, and she
says, well, you had that when I married
you.
But you said that now Christ lives in
you.
Well, that's the whole thing.
I wonder, I say to myself, well, look,
here is this man.
He's defiant of the devil.
Man, he doesn't live on an earthly plane,
merely.
I wish I could find some folk like
that, honest to goodness I do.
I go see them.
One of the greatest men I ever knew
was a little Pentecostal pastor in the city
of Leeds.
We went to a holiness church.
If you went to the Pentecostals, you'd almost
to be re-baptized.
But my dad and mum sneaked off, took
a street car, cost a penny, and we
rode on the street car to town, and
then we hadn't a penny to go the
other, so we walked it.
But I'd love to go to that church.
Oh, it wasn't that they whooped it up,
but you know, there was a stillness, there
was an atmosphere, there was something that, even
as a boy, I knew the difference.
That little fellow was unlearned and ignorant, he
had never been to Bible school, he hadn't
been spoiled by men's philosophies.
But I'll tell you what he learned to
do.
He learned to pray.
And you know, I liked to see him,
because whenever I saw him, he, of course,
he only had one suit, and he'd have
to do for everything, weddings, funerals.
You didn't know where he was going when
he went out, you knew he'd have a
funeral, a wedding, or a church.
But his knees were shiny, on his trousers,
at the front.
Preachers' trousers are shiny now, not on the
knees.
But he would come, and his trousers would
be all shiny, you know.
And you'd go in the meeting, and you
know, when that man prayed, I felt he
and God were on real good terms.
I felt he was like Spurgeon.
Spurgeon said, you know, there came a day
when I looked in his face.
He looked at me, and I looked at
him, and we were lovers ever after.
I think that's beautiful.
That's a whole life story.
Of course, a guy was shouting on the
radio the other night, he said, neither Wesley
wouldn't make it today, and Finney wouldn't make
it, and Spurgeon, because he didn't have the
baptism.
Well, I'd take their share anyhow, for what
he got.
Of course, others have said that, don't worry
about that.
But isn't this the secret of Paul's all
in all?
He says, I don't live, Christ liveth in
me.
Yeah, we sang Mighty Fortress again.
Good old Luther.
What did Luther say?
Why, he said, used to be a knock
at the door of my heart, and I
went to the door.
I soon discovered what was happening.
I knew that knock, it was Satan.
And he said, Satan came one day and
knocked at the door, said, Mr. Luther.
And he said, I said, uh, he doesn't
live here anymore, Jesus lives here now.
He's taken over.
That Christ may dwell in your heart.
Not that he may bless you, not that
he may give you some gift, not under
a 19, you know, we only stick by
two or three.
No, no, no, it's not that he may
somehow put a halo on my head.
Paul says, Christ liveth in me, and the
life which I now live in the flesh,
I live by the faith of the Son
of God.
You see, this man has no concern about
himself.
Do you know why?
Listen to these readings, just a minute here.
He says, let your moderation be known unto
all men.
In the next verse, this is the fourth
chapter, that's verse 5, let your moderation be
known.
In verse 6, he says, be careful for
nothing, let your requests be known unto the
Lord.
And verse 7, the peace which passeth all
understanding shall keep your hearts and minds.
Now I understand why he's so defiant.
Now I understand why he's so daring.
Now I understand why he's so durable.
Why?
He's found a peace that passes all understanding.
Let me tell you, let me put my
improvement on it, would you?
He not only found a peace that passes
all understanding, he found a peace that passes
all misunderstanding too, and it had been shifted.
He says, you not only have enough grace
to stand, but withstand when you can't understand.
You see, this is the man who wrote
all that marvelous interpretation of gifts in 1
Corinthians 12, and nobody'll ever surpass that, and
picks it up in the 14th chapter, and
in between he comes up to breathe, and
he gives you the most amazing thing that's
ever been written on love since the world
began.
Troubadours have written about it.
The Old Testament talks about love being like
a fire.
But the apostle wrote, and he says, listen,
you know, what people have done, and it's
totally false, they say you either have all
the gifts of the Spirit, or you have
love.
You can't have both.
Listen, the reason many churches have gone down
with the gifts of the Spirit is they
didn't maintain love.
If you're going to have all the gifts
of the Spirit, brother, you're going to need
more love to operate those gifts than ever
you needed before.
It isn't a case of either or, it's
a case of have this, but get an
abundant supply of that love.
Otherwise they can become competitive.
I speak in tongues, oh brother, speak in
tongues, almost everyone in church speaks in tongues.
There's only three of us with the gift
of interpretation, you know.
If we're on vacation, all heaven is suspended.
And you have the gift of interpretation, well
I have the gift of healing.
That's what it became, they became competitive.
I'm of Paul, I'm of Kephas, and Paul
says, who is Paul?
If you start putting a halo on my
head, I've missed it, he said.
I want you to love Christ, not me.
Lean on him, I can be dispensed with,
he's indispensable.
He cannot be destroyed.
He says, may the peace that passeth all
understanding garrison your heart.
That means you have a center on either
side, and when Satan comes up, the center
is challenged, say, where are you going?
I'm going to upset him.
You can't upset him, why?
Because Christ dwells in him, and Christ has
control.
And even if you got in there, you
couldn't do it.
But he'll garrison your heart, so that that
thing can't even get inside to molest you.
Why?
Because first, we have the promises of God.
Second, we have the blood of Jesus Christ.
Thirdly, we have the power of the Holy
Spirit.
You see, this man has spelled it out
in his ambition.
He says that Christ may be magnified in
my body, whether by life or by death.
I think that's wonderful.
Christ may be magnified.
There aren't any around right now, but when
they come up, would you do me a
favor?
Pluck a nice, beautiful, gorgeous dandelion out of
the garden.
A dandelion is only a, it's like a
mum, except it's more beautiful than mums.
I don't mean these mums, I mean mums
in the garden.
You take a dandelion and take a magnifying
glass and look at it.
You'll be astounded.
It is one of the most magnificent flowers
that God ever made.
And you may have 20-20 vision, but
you can't see it correctly.
As you look at it, as you pluck
it and look at it, that you take
that magnifying glass and do this.
Oh, it's got another world in it.
Your vision isn't enough, so you put a
piece of glass between, and there is the
flower, and here is the glass, and here
is my eye.
And I look at it and say it's
beautiful, but oh my, it magnifies.
Oh, what beauty!
And you know what Paul says?
The world outside hasn't got very good eyesight,
and it can't see Jesus as it ought
to see Him.
So put me between the world and Jesus,
and when they look through my life, Christ
is magnified.
Huh?
Or is He minimized?
You see, that's what God, Jesus came to
do.
He says, I'm the light of the world.
You're the light of the world.
Paul says, as long as I live in
the flesh, Christ lives down here on this
earth.
Christ dwells in my heart, and my sole
ambition is to please Him.
And you know, when you please Him, you
please everybody else worth pleasing anyhow.
You don't have too much trouble if you
set your goal to please Him.
Or, I'm not saying somebody else won't be
displeased, but that doesn't alter the fact.
If the Spirit bears witness, and that's the
only place that the Apostle Paul lived in.
The Spirit was bearing witness with his Spirit
that he did the work of God, that
he was perfectly in the will of God.
That Christ may be magnified in my body,
whether by life or death, for to me
to live is Christ.
You see, it's a kind of a sneer
at the world.
He says, do you know what?
As long as I live on earth, Christ
lives in me.
And as soon as I die, He'll still
be there.
So you've lost anyhow.
You see, you're tossing up with a two
-headed penny.
Christ lives in me now.
And if you cut my head off, I'll
still meet Him there.
So what have you done?
You haven't taken the thing from me.
I'm still winning.
He says Christ is all in all.
All right, let me skip over this here.
We've quoted from the next chapter, 3rd chapter,
where he says he suffered the loss of
all things.
He sums it all up in this 4th
chapter when he says in verse 4, be
careful for nothing.
Isn't that wonderful?
Man, it cost you $5 or $10 on
a psychiatrist's couch to get that.
And here you read it for nothing.
He says that, verse 6 of chapter 4,
be careful for nothing.
Be prayerful in everything, in everything by prayer,
and supplication with thanksgiving.
Let your requests be made none unto the
Lord.
Now the Word of God says a three
-fold cord is not easily broken.
Look, here's the first cord.
Be thankful, be careful for nothing.
The next line, be prayerful in everything.
The next line, be thankful, be thankful for
anything.
So you've got it all covered.
Be careful for nothing, be prayerful in everything,
and be thankful for anything.
Well, you've got nothing to lose there.
You've covered the whole of it.
If you're prayerful in everything, if you're thankful
for everything that comes along, if you're prayerful
in everything, and if you're careful for nothing,
you couldn't have it better than that.
And then he says, keep your mind stayed
on him.
And this is how he tells you to
do it in the 8th verse.
Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever
things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report, if there be
any virtue and if there be any praise,
think on these things.
You see, we've got to keep our mind
stayed on God.
If you don't, the enemy will come in.
I can remember when I went to work
in a factory, my mother told me to
keep my mind busy.
And I've used it to the children often,
and young people talking about the attacks of
sin and said, look, if you have a
phonograph here, and that phonograph isn't turning, and
you take sugar and pour it on, it
will pile up.
And then if you try and play that
phonograph, it will go whizzing off, but man,
your needle's going to be in trouble.
You put that foreign
substance on top of that record that isn't
made to take sugar.
But if you take that record off and
clean it thoroughly, and then put it on,
and speed it up, and then start pouring
sugar on it, you've got problems.
Sugar will fly in every direction, but it
won't stay put.
And if you leave a vacant mind, you
see people talk about transcendental meditation, that's the
devil's take-off on be still and know
that I'm God.
But if you sit with a blank mind,
all you'll do is invite Satan to come
in.
But if you concentrate as well as meditate,
then you'll keep your mind stayed on him.
You think of things that are pure, and
lovely, and of good report.
In other words, they're elevating, and they're uplifting.
Paul says that he has no desires for
anything at all that the world can offer.
He isn't groaning in his bondage.
He says, I have all, and I'm full.
And very obviously, he is not referring to
visible things.
He's not saying, I've just had a six
-course dinner.
You don't get that in jail, in case
you don't know.
He doesn't say, I'm full of all the
excitement I've had in some of the great
meetings I've been in, and great revivals I've
seen.
But he says, listen, all that I've spelled
out to you in this book is already
mine.
I've discounted everything the world has.
I've laid my social caste on one side,
I've laid all my distinctions and privileges on
one side, and Christ has become all.
And I'm filled.
What was he filled with?
Well, I'll tell you one thing, amongst others,
he's filled with faith.
I like the hymn we sang this afternoon,
and camp along the hills of life, ye
Christian soldiers.
Faith is the victory that overcometh the world.
I confess to you, I don't have too
much of it.
I've never had to have too much.
Certain areas I've had it, certain areas I've
seen deliverance.
Now it's different to talk about a faith,
the faith once delivered to the saints, in
which we kind of think of a theology
from the virgin birth, or if you want
right, from the incarnation to the consummation, that's
one thing.
But I'm talking about an active, virile faith.
A faith that operates, a faith that sees
God do things.
Now again, you don't need faith to believe
what you can explain.
It's the invisible things.
You see, remember this, there were rationalists in
the days of the apostles.
As I've told you, in the second chapter
of the next epistle, the Gnostics come up.
Oh sure, Jesus was the son of God,
but you're not going to say he made
a perfect atonement for sin, that the act
of one man obliterated all this.
Oh now, come on, come on.
But you know, this man has got all
his roots very deep, and peace is the
root of faith.
The root is all right, therefore the fruit
is all right.
The fruit of his faith is the fruit,
the root is faith, and the fruit is
peace, and joy, and long-suffering.
He's got it settled forever in his mind,
he's made no false investment in Jesus Christ.
He knows in whom he has believed, he
is persuaded that he's able to keep that
which he's committed.
He's quite sure that since Christ has come
so far and done all he said, that
all the other prophecies that are going to,
that have been prophesied concerning him, will come
to pass.
There's not one of them going to miss.
And after all, that's one of the most
amazing things, surely, about the Word of God,
that every prophecy in it is accurate.
Everything that was prophesied until this split second
in which we live, everything came to pass.
And therefore, the other side of the story
is going to come to pass too.
And therefore, he's defiant because he has a
faith, and he has a hope, and he
has a love.
You know, no person that was on that
Damascus road when Paul was converted ever dreamed
he'd become the pillar he became.
Nobody ever dreamed when he came out of
that wilderness experience in the three or four
years, that that man was going to bring
to birth the empire of Jesus that would
outlast the empire of the Caesars.
I suppose sometimes you might think, well, uh,
Brother Raven gets a bit hot and gets
a bit determined about these things.
I wonder what some of these children think.
I wonder if they pick up anything.
Well, I say sure.
Do you know why?
Because I can remember things I picked up
when I was five years of age and
six years of age that stuck in my
gullet, as my mother would say, and they
stuck there till now.
We had a lady in England years ago,
more than a hundred, one of the distinctive
ladies of the day.
What we would say in England, a title
lady, a very educated lady, a fine painter.
They said when she came in the room
she changed the atmosphere.
Her name was Josephine Butler.
They said even before the grace of God
came in her life, there was something about
her that, that was so different.
Dora Greenwell dedicated one of her books to
her.
The greatest poem ever written outside of the
Bible, if you can find it, was written
by F.
W.
H.
Myers, St. Paul.
I don't think I've ever read it without
weeping.
I've never found a full edition.
I have an edition now that has 72
stanzas, but it's not complete.
I found about another 10 that I've tacked
on the back.
He wrote the most magnificent interpretation of the
Apostle Paul.
I remember one stanza in it says, Then
with a rush the intolerable craving shivers throughout
me like a thunder roll, all to save
these, to perish for their saving.
He's not talking about gutter girls.
He's talking about intellectual Greeks.
He's not merely talking about the man in
the street.
He's talking about all men outside of Jesus
Christ, whether they're barbarians, or scythians, or bond,
or free, or male, or female, or Jew.
No distinction.
There are only two distinctions, he says, away
with your abominable social distinctions and caste distinctions.
There are only two distinctions in the world,
save men and lost men.
All right, he wrote that magnificent poem.
And you'll notice in the cover it just
says, Dedicated to J.E.B. Josephine Butler,
this beautiful, distinguished lady who had her afternoon
tea parties and lived in a mansion.
She said, I can remember some of the
great things in my life.
Two of the greatest, she said, I was
a little girl, and I sat at the
feet of Clarkson.
Clarkson was one of the men that engineered
the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire.
And she remembered, I remember that dignified man,
that great man coming from Parliament, and I
sat at his feet with other children, and
I listened to him talking about fighting to
liberate the slaves in West Africa, raiding the
raiding parties, how they snatched men and women,
how they found them bruised.
And she said, it lived in my mind.
And she said, I remember Mother would put
me to bed some night and say, darling,
or put me on her knee and say,
you know dear, one of the outstanding things
in my life was an old man came
to our house and he had silver gray
hair, and I was very small, and he
lifted me on his knee and gave me
a hug and spoke to me.
His name was John Wesley.
And she said, those things stood vividly in
my mind.
But my dear mother sat on the knee
of John Wesley, and my mother listened to
one of the great emancipators of all time.
And the third crisis was that she had
been out giving a lecture and she came
home.
She lived in a stately mansion and there
was a porch over the entrance, a stone
porch, and her little girl was up there
welcoming her mummy, coming up the carriageway, coming
up the driveway in a carriage.
The little girl was so excited, she reached
up and she fell over and crashed to
the ground and cracked her skull.
I try and help others, I try and
comfort others, now I've no comfort, now I've
no comfort.
But she said, I had been away and
heard a man preaching when I was at
school.
He wasn't a great preacher, he wasn't very
stirring, but some things he said.
One day he talked about a woman that
came to Jesus, and he emphasized she was
a sinner, a sinner, a sinner, nobody would
touch her.
And she came and took the feet of
Jesus, and washed them with her tears, and
wiped them with the hairs of her head.
And the critics all said, this man receiveth
sinners.
Well, after all, I wasn't that kind of
woman, and I'd lived a very sheltered life.
And then she said, the Holy Spirit said,
my dear, my dear, listen, that woman is
your sister because you're a sinner as well
as she is.
It's not the same sin, but you're still
a sinner.
And she said, I knelt down at his
feet, and I said, Lord Jesus, I'm a
sinner.
She was impure, and I'm pure, but I'm
a sinner.
She's lived her own life, and I've lived
my, I'm a sinner, and she said, I
just explained it all to him, and I
got up, changed.
He changed me.
He said to me what he said to
her, thy sins, which are many, are all
forgiven.
And I was sitting in my house one
night, and there was a circus in town,
and there's a girl filling the crowd.
She was on the high wire, and when
the circus was over, the girl ran away,
and she was screaming up the road, and
this, this, this lady heard her, and went
after her.
And she said, the Lord said to me,
you don't have a daughter.
She lost her life, pure, innocent, beautiful girl,
lost her life.
You've got a ministry to all the girls
that are lost.
You've got a ministry to all the street
girls, and outcasts, and forsaken people.
And years after, I forget exactly who it
was, a great politician in England said, there
isn't a woman in England whose life hasn't
been touched by that of Josephine Butler.
God transformed that hour of tragedy and emptiness
into a life of fullness, and she went
everywhere.
She went to jail.
She went to the street.
She went everywhere, and she, she was a
means of emancipating women, and getting certain liberties
for them, and, and getting homes for them,
and teaching them the gospel, and putting them
straight in things pertaining to godliness.
And she said, it all happened when I
realized how frail my life was, and how
much I needed him.
But despite my home, and my luxuries, and
creature comforts, I didn't have one that could
abide with me.
I invited him to come in, and he
came.
Completely changed my life.
And I know in whom I have believed,
and I'm persuaded he's able to keep that
which is committed unto him against that day.
Yeah, I've heard testimonies you have.
Some are very daring.
I used to listen to kids at teen,
teen challenge.
It almost chilled my flesh, the way they'd
lived.
They'd lived in sewers, and they'd enjoyed it.
They'd lived next door to hell, and were
almost proud of it.
I remember Gypsy Smith saying, and I'm through
with this, he said, I, I went to
a big conference, and they put up a
man who had been one of the most
outstanding criminals in the country, and he'd such
a vivid story, that I felt I was
a little faded lily.
The second man got up, and said he'd
been maybe the greatest drinker, and fighter, and
he had a story that made everybody shiver,
even as he said it.
My mind went back, he said, to when
I climbed up the wheel of a wagon.
A little gypsy boy, my black flashing eyes,
my massive curls, all hanging down nearly to
my shoulders, massive curls.
And the old man on the bench, it
was a farm cart, and he said, he
kneeled down, and ran his fingers through my,
my long curls, and said, well God bless
you son, and make you a preacher.
And he said, I thank God that Moody
ever said that.
A little skinny looking boy, with his shirt
hanging out of his trousers seat, and godly
old Moody said, Sonny, God bless you, make
you a preacher.
And it started something, I want it to
be.
So he said, I stood up, and said,
you've heard what God did for that man,
what a wreck he was, how many jails
he's been in, you heard about this man
with all his sin, there's no more sin
he could have.
I want to tell you something, I have
a bigger testament in either of them.
Man, everybody sat up straight and listened.
He said, I want to tell you that
Jesus found me when I was a boy,
and he kept me from all the filthy
things they've ever been in.
And what's better, to build a fence at
the top of the cliff, and keep you
from going to the bottom, or having an
ambulance at the bottom, that picks you up
when you're all broken, and wounded, and useless.
You see, Paul says, as long as I
live, I'll drive men and women from perdition.
They're bent on it, they love their sin,
they buy it, they sell it, they love
it, they breathe it, they talk it.
They use it in their bodies, they use
it in their minds, they use it in
their spirits, they'll sell it, they'll damn you
for it.
My wife said, Martha said last night, Lynn,
did you hear that?
I said, no, she said, they're just talking
about some heroin, I think it was, on
the streets of Philadelphia and New York, that
somebody had put out, and it was six
times stronger than normal, and already 25 kids
have died of it.
Do you think the man who sold it
worries?
The fellow that wastes somebody's life, does he
care?
Of course he doesn't.
Pollutes somebody's life?
I remember a guy in the factory when
I worked, there was a girl came, and
they, they gambled on who'd be the first
to molest that girl, or have some affair
with her.
A year after, they were talking about the
same girl, and one of them says, well,
I'll tell you something, you dirty bunch, there's
not one of you would want your son
to marry her, now you've polluted her, would
you?
Oh, the world's a rotten place in which
to live.
Satan is a taskmaster here, and a taskmaster
for eternity.
I'll tell you what, you won't have it
easy from here to the golden gates.
Satan hates every part of your being, every
cell in your body, every thought in your
mind.
He lost control of you, and he hates
you for it.
And he said, I'm going to fight you
every inch of the way.
If I can get you to backslide, if
I can get you to unbelief, if I
can get you to bitterness and sarness, if
I can get you discouraged and so forth,
I'll do it.
And Paul says, let me just tell you
one thing, he's going to try.
But we sang in that hymn about what
old Luther gave us today, what?
We'd go down if the right man wasn't
on our side.
Well, he's not on our side, he's on
the inside, thank God.
Greater is he that is in you.
And therefore, Paul says, none of these things
move me.
Therefore, he puts his shoulders back and says
in Romans 8, 37, in all these things,
and the kind of figure most of us
won't have to go through, that same catalog
that he went through.
But he says, in all these things, we
are more than conquerors.
And I say again, a man with an
experience is never at the mercy of a
man with an argument.
I'm not listening to a man who's telling
me a story, I'm listening to a man
who's trod every inch of the way, faced
every issue, and a thousand more than I'll
ever meet.
Met Satan head-on, met principalities and powers
that I know so very little about, and
he's engaging them, and he's released the power
of God over cities and over people.
And he says, I'm quite happy about it
all.
I've no regrets.
Even in the prison cell, I want to
tell you, right down here for me to
live is Christ.
Because you see, they can take my visitors
out, but they can't take him away.
He lives on the inside.
And he walks with me, and he talks
with me, and he tells me I'm his
own.
So, farewell world, everybody else.
It's quite all right.
Nothing shall separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
But I know whom I have believed and
am persuaded that he is able to keep
that which I've committed unto him against
that day.