Repetition is the law of learning, and so
let's briefly think again about this marvelous chapter
in John 17, the high priestly prayer of
the Lord Jesus.
Again, this is the Lord's Prayer, and what
we call the Lord's Prayer is not the
Lord's Prayer, it's the Disciple's Prayer.
One of the great commentators, Kaufman, said that
John, in his particular interpretation of the gospel,
in the fourth gospel, as we call it,
the gospel recorded by John, that Kaufman, he
called him the Plato of the inspired writers.
He has a different accent, and he uses
what space he has to tell us what
the other evangelists left out.
Again, there is nothing comparable to John 17
in Matthew, Mark, or Luke.
There is nothing comparable to the wonderful story
of the true vine in Matthew, Mark, or
Luke.
There are many omissions in what we call
this fourth gospel.
John doesn't say a word about the first
30 years of the Lord Jesus.
He doesn't even include the virgin birth.
He doesn't say anything about demons or children.
They're not connected, of course, but he doesn't
say anything about demons or children.
He doesn't say anything about Sadducees.
He doesn't say anything about faith.
I don't think he says anything about repentance.
In other words, he uses all the available
space he has to say something that hasn't
been said by the other evangelists.
He records eight miracles, six of them are
not recorded by the other evangelists.
He gives us that marvelous picture there of
Jesus in the temple, when he stood before
the crowd and said that what they'd seen
every day, which of course was pouring out
of water from a golden vessel, that that
was really a type of himself, but out
of him.
And then remember he says that when the
spirit comes into you, people say yes, when
the spirit comes out of you will flow
rivers up.
The Bible doesn't say that.
The Bible says out of him will flow
rivers of living water.
And as soon as you get disobedient, you
dry up.
You may have all the phrases, you may
preach like fury and wave and shout.
You know congregations aren't as dumb as they
look.
Excuse me.
Thank you.
And again, it's out of him you see,
not out of me.
As long as you stay in subjection and
obedience, there's an inflow and an outflow and
an overflow.
And if you put a cup under a,
under a tap and let water run in
it, and then the water runs over the
top, it hides the vessel.
You don't see the vessel, you see the
overflow.
A lot of people want to strut their
gifts, whatever gifts they are.
There are not nine gifts, there are about
19 altogether, if you include ministry gifts.
People like to show off.
This lady, oh brother you've got to give
her honor.
There are more freaks and frauds and fanatics
in the spirit-filled life today than ever.
Now there are some wonderful saints, don't make
any mistake.
But wherever you get a genuine thing, you
get a false thing.
I noticed the other day, a big notice,
it said the uh, the the leading, I
think it was a leading record right now,
is the rhinestone cowboy.
Well sure enough, we'll have some rhinestone evangelists
before we've got much further.
They'll have to copy it.
They copy everything that comes in the world.
Now Jesus is, is very, very, very hard
on the world.
As I said yesterday, if you, if you
check up in the, in the scripture, you'll
find that uh, something like 140 or 50
times in the New Testament, the world is
mentioned.
78 times in this particular gospel.
You see the, the world and the church
used to be going that way.
Now they're going side by side, you can't
tell the difference.
There used to be antagonism, opposition, hatred, bitterness.
As I said yesterday, Jesus gives you a
guarantee.
Oh you know, if you get through with
the spirit, it will be all joy and
peace and love.
Well the man who told you that's a
liar anyhow.
You better believe Jesus.
Do you know what he said?
He said in the world he shall have
tribulation.
That's a promise.
And he keeps his promises you say, don't
he?
So in the world he shall have tribulation.
Oh yeah, Ephesians, our pastor quoted it the
other morning, very beautifully, and expounded it a
little while for us.
Where it says there, Ephesians 5 18, be
filled with the spirit.
It also, the same scripture, also said be
angry and sin not.
Trouble with us, we get angry about things
that shouldn't disturb us, and we go to
sleep over things that ought to make us
blazing mad.
For God, we suggest a spirit-filled life
is, is all fruit and beauty.
Oh there's an awful lot of fruit and
beauty in it for sure.
And all the, some people will emphasize, overemphasize
truth, that by the hair of your head
will he touch.
Have you been to Vietnam this morning?
Have you been to the Gulag archipelago?
Have you been in China this morning before
you did your pretty hair or made your
tie get straight?
Or what about folk that don't have a
shirt to change, or a blouse to change,
and they love Jesus as much as we
do?
They've suffered pretty much.
Maybe the reason he lets us be mollycoddled
is we're not strong enough to take it
anyhow.
See truth must be balanced.
Well, again as I said yesterday, this, this
gospel as recorded by John, that ninety-two
percent of what he says is, is his
own.
And in my judgment it is the most
majestic interpretation of the gospel.
In a sense it's, it's, it's biographical as
well as a commentary.
The emphasis I want to leave this morning
is, let me, let me just go back
where we were yesterday.
When Jesus said that the one desire that
he has was not to fill our heads
with theology and doctrine, he says the whole
purpose of my life is that you may
know the Father.
Now you can't trust anybody you don't know.
And if you're going to know him, you'll
learn about him here, but you'll get to
know him out there.
You'll get the theory here, you'll get the
practice out there.
You'll store it up here, but it works
out of here.
And Jesus said his supreme desire was that
we may know the Father.
You see, that was the whole strength that
Jesus had.
He knew his Father.
And one of the sections, you remember we
said this prayer is divided in three sections,
verses one to five he prays for himself,
verses six to nineteen he prays for the
disciples, and verses twenty to the end he
prays for the world.
All right, let's, uh, I want to try
and wrap it all up this morning and
then we change the subject tomorrow.
Um, let's take from verse nine here.
I pray for them, I pray not for
the world, but for them which thou hast
given me, for they are thine, and all
mine are thine, and thine are mine, and
I am glorified in them.
Now I am no more in the world,
but these are in the world.
Well he was there, but he's telling them
the chapter has ended.
As I said yesterday, this is one of
those awesome periods again, where from here on
Jesus doesn't touch the world, he doesn't bother
with the world.
There were times when Jesus would not speak
to men, when he stood before kings and
kept silent.
If you walk with the Lord long enough
he'll shut you up.
It may take him a bit of a
task, but he'll do that.
He'll ask you not only to fast from
food, which is fairly easy, but fast from
speaking.
In the middle of the Welsh revival, the
young man that had the revival that stirred
Wales was 22 years of age, Evan Roberts.
Sure he inherited a lot of amazing prayer,
but right in the middle of that revival,
when one city had been shaken and he
was moving to another city, the photographers came,
the press reporters came, and they wanted to
see the young man.
And he was a bachelor, and the lady
in the house where he lived went up
to his room and said there are press
reporters and photographers and they all want to
see you, and this is a chance to
get on the front page free, you know,
a million dollars worth of advertising around England.
And he wrote on a piece of paper,
God has told me to fast for seven
days, I can't speak for anybody.
Hmm?
Does God ever get to you like that?
Dr. S.B. Meyer, one of the greatest
preachers ever, was in London at that time,
respected the great convention speaker, great speaker at
Keswick Convention.
And he went to see the young man
that God was using in the Welsh revival.
The lady again knocked to the bedroom door
of young Evan Roberts and said Dr. S
.B. Meyer is here.
Thank you.
I said Dr. S.B. Meyer has come
all the way from London to Wales to
speak to you.
Well, I'll be down in an hour or
two.
Oh, doesn't the scripture say that you have
to be courteous?
Yes it does.
We have to be courteous to him first.
The Lord hasn't done speaking, so he said
I, I can't come.
Maybe an hour or two I'll come.
I think sometimes many of us want a
spiritual life, God bless what I'm doing.
God is not obligated to bless anything you
do if it isn't in conformity with his
will.
God is only, God is only obligated to
bless his word, nothing else.
Not our opinion of it, not our zeal
for it, just his word.
Now that is, that Jesus hasn't gathered very
much.
After three years ministry he's only got 11
disciples, he had a drop out, and there's
not much at the end of the trail.
That he's praying this high priestly prayer again.
Again I say of all the things Jesus
did, raising the dead, knocking the devil out
of people, unplugging their ears, putting sight in
blind eyes, of all the things Jesus did
I'd love to have heard him pray more
than, more than even seeing him walk on
the water, that would have given us all
goose pimples.
More than seeing, pinching all those old rascals
out of the church.
You know, the money changers and all the
rest of them.
I would love to have crept up to
Jesus and heard him pray.
I'd like to have slipped behind the rock
when he was, when he was praying with,
with sweat and blood and tears.
As he says in Hebrews, with strong crying
and tears.
You've got to be strong to weep.
I don't mean emotional tears, when you get
upset, somebody hurts you and you know, pastor's
been twice to that house down the street,
not one two hours.
What a world we live in.
Well everybody has persecution, take your share.
But uh, when it comes down to the
business of really travailing and burden for the
lost world, it takes strong men to weep,
not weak men.
The apostle Paul was, was, he was made
of iron.
Somebody once said to, a Sunday school teacher
said, why didn't they, why didn't the lions
eat Daniel?
Little kid said, because he was all grit
and backbone.
Well that was true of the apostle Paul
too, he was all grit and backbone.
Oh in weariness, in painfulness, you tie him
to a whipping post and lash him 195
times.
In tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, sword, in
perils of the deep, in perils of mine
own countrymen.
And he takes the whole bundle that would
have killed a thousand people and he says,
our light affliction which is but for a
moment.
I bet the devil got mad when he
said that.
The devil had done everything he could to
break his body, break his spirit, break his
mind, discourage him, despise him, distress him.
And he shook it all off like a
water terrier shakes water off when he's been
for a swim and he says, our light
affliction.
You expect that and that's nothing.
Do you know what he said broke his
heart?
Not being starved in a lousy prison with
filth in it.
Not being whipped at a whipping post.
Not wanting to have to stand up against
demon fire, he said, the thing that comes
and breaks my heart is the care of
the churches.
The blindness of people, their pettiness.
I noticed an advert somewhere there for pampers
and I thought, why in the world are
they boasting about pampers are new.
My pastors have had them in the church
50 years, just to pamper everybody.
If you don't, there's another church down the
road.
Boy, I'd write you a bill of divorce
right away, I said, get to it.
Go join the weaklings, go on, get off
with the cripples if that's all you want.
It's time you went into business in the
church to raise some saints, soldiers as well
as saints.
It's going to take it for the hour
into which we're coming.
And this is why Jesus prays like this
for these disciples.
He says, you're going into the world, you'll
have tribulation, I won't be with you, I
will have gone from you, but the comfort
of the Holy Ghost, again the comforter.
Not a comforter in the sense of you
nursing a sick child, the comforter.
The word is a Latin word, it's two
Latin words, comfortis, with strength.
The God of power is going to indwell
you on the day of Pentecost.
Not so you can have exposes and kicks
and joys and sit around and clap your
hands and have a wonderful time.
That may be part of it.
But you're going into a demon infested world,
you're going into a world that's going to
get worse and worse and worse.
And if you don't have the abiding of
the Holy Ghost, you'll not only not make
it yourself, you'll be no good to God
anyhow.
You know when that great ship the Andrea
Doria sank a few years ago there in
New York, I'd just come through that area
before on the Queen Elizabeth, Mary or something.
And I remember that great big hulk of
a ship that was sinking and, and you
know what happened?
What always happens.
Some people ran for the lifeboats, some people
jumped in the water and tried to rescue
some other people, some people forgot everybody and
tried to swim for themselves and some couldn't
even make it themselves.
And I think it's very much a picture
of believers, either they're fighting to get everything
they can or they're concerned to rescue others
and else they don't have strength to go
on and you feed off the pastor.
All right, verse 11, now I am no
more in the world but these are in
the world.
I come to thee Holy Father, keep in
thine own name.
I like that word, it's a very precious
word.
Keep, preserve.
While I was with them in the world,
he says, I kept them.
I'm not being the world, you keep them.
In my office I have a few books,
a couple of thousand maybe, and I have
a sign over the middle so that when
any preacher comes in he has to sit
there and look at my books.
And right across the top it says eternity.
In my chair where I write, right in
front of me I have a file by
that wall, a nice you know four or
five stacked file, nice green file.
And I bought some plastic, there is gold
plastic letters, figures and letters.
And every morning I look at that, H
-E-B, Hebrew, one one dash six, Hebrews
11 6.
And then I spell it out in those
gold letters, God is.
If you're sure of that, you've got no
worries.
God is.
God is what?
Well the Father says, Jesus says, I commit
everything into the hands of the Father, because
of what?
Because God is.
God is what?
Because God is all he says he is.
He's able to keep you from falling, he's
able to save to the uttermost, he's able
to present you faultless before his Father with
exceeding great joy, he's able to make all
grace abound to you.
What more do you want than that?
As the hymn said the other morning, what
more can he say than to you he
has said to you who for refuge to
Jesus have fled.
God is.
When we were in the Bahamas a few
years ago, we got some friends there and
they're rather nice people.
They got yachts and homes and mansions and
servants.
And Martha doesn't like fishing too much.
If she fishes, she always gets better fish
than I get anyhow, so I'm glad when
she doesn't go.
But occasionally we'll go fishing.
I preached in a meeting once and I
was chiding the preachers that they don't have
time to pray, but they have time to
fish.
And one preacher says nothing wrong with fishing
is there?
I said no, Peter did it when he
was back swimming.
But if you're on vacation, fish.
If you'd rather fish than pray, you're sick.
If you'd rather golf and goof than pray,
you're in trouble.
But this day I happened to catch a
fish.
Evangelically it was about that length, actually it
was about so big.
It was a real nice fish.
And we took it home and the cook
at the house is a, she's, she's a
wizard, beautiful, colored lady.
My, I sometimes think she could cook an
old shoe and make it delicious.
She is a cook and she served it
up and, and did it all nice with
parsley and trimmings, you know, it looked as
though it wanted to be photographed instead of
eaten, it was beautiful.
And she put it on the table and
they said now cut it and give the
preacher the first slice because he caught it.
So they gave me the first slice of
the fish.
I hadn't eaten that kind of fish before
and I ate it.
Did you like it?
No.
Did you season it?
Season it.
Why?
She, she rubs the thing with, with all
kinds of things before she cooks it.
She gets the skin off it and then
she rubs it with what, I don't know,
lemon and rubs it with something else and
seasons it.
Did you put any salt on it?
Salt on it.
A fish that length is about 12 years
of age.
It's been living in salt water all its
life.
What did you want salt on for?
Every time you get Morton salt, you get
Morton salt from down there in the Caribbean.
That's where they, they gather it out of
the sea.
That, that fish has a skin about as
thick as the paper on your bible and
yet the salt can't get through it.
Is there anything more tasteless than fish without
salt?
So God can put a fish in the
sea in all the storm and stress and
the salt never gets through that little, little
bit of thin skin on it to put
any salt in it.
So he can keep a fish in the
sea for 10 or 20, 30 years and
it doesn't get any salt in it but
he can't keep you in the world without
getting any sin in you, eh?
I have a little picture in my office
and in the center there's a bit of
film, an inch and a quarter by an
inch and a quarter, little less, inch and
eight by an inch and an eight.
It has every word of the bible on
it.
It was a microfilm of the bible by
national cash register folks.
Underneath it says that this little thing was
given to brother Ravenhill.
It came from the NASA people in Houston.
One of the Apollo men put it in
his shirt pocket there and he walked on
the moon and it says this is the
first bible to go from planet earth to
another planet.
Now you can buy that in any shop,
bible shops sell them.
Usually you can't, you can't buy mine for
a hundred dollars.
It's a very unique one.
Give me a thousand I'll think over it.
That he carried it on the moon.
Carried this bible on the moon.
And then they sent me all the pictures
that they shot on the stages up to
the moon of the earth and all the
other.
They're beautiful, oh my.
And I want to thank you for paying
your taxes for them.
They're all colored and large and gorgeous pictures.
And one of the astronauts said that the
amazing thing when we got up in space
was to see the world hanging on nothing.
The world just like a big orange hanging
in space.
And I look at that picture sometimes, you
know why?
Because down here is Australia.
I've been in that country many times, beautiful
country, not as nice as New Zealand.
And here's Australia and at the side of
it's the ocean and by my logic that
ocean ought to drop off.
And there's a ship going past there, that
ought to drop off.
And if you don't think it's difficult to
get water to stick on a thing like
that, try sticking out a handful of water
on a bucket and see how you get
on anyhow.
There is the world hanging on nothing.
Well Job said that.
Why do you need NASA or a boys
over the Cape to prove that?
In any case if they asked me I
could say the millions of dollars.
They don't ask me so I won't tell
them.
All we had to do was to make
the first rocket, send it to Japan and
let them copy it, we could shoot them
every day.
They could make rockets for a fraction of
the money that we spend on them.
But again you see in his omnipotent power
God hangs the world on nothing.
He keeps the fish in the sea without
salt getting into it.
Can he keep you without sin?
As soon as you say that somebody says,
oh he preaches sinless perfection.
Well what do you preach, adultery?
Huh?
Why do you go crying on your brother's
shoulder and say, I think I've got the
most carnal bunch of deacons anybody's got in
there.
Well you've told them they've got to live
in sin and sin will have dominion over
them and the old man will drag them
to the grave.
So what are you doing?
You're reaping what you've sown.
Bless you.
Go do it again if you're stupid enough.
Find a gospel that's big enough to answer
the sin problem.
Mohammedanism doesn't have it.
Sun Moon, the old clown that's come in
the country, he doesn't have it.
If this book doesn't have it, there is
no answer.
Heresy very often is truth you push too
far.
I do not believe in sinless perfection, I
do believe in sanctification.
And again heresy is often a truth you
push it beyond what God says.
As a matter of fact, John is devastating
when he writes later.
I enjoy reading John.
You know why?
Because he's like me, except I'm worse than
him.
Why was he like me?
Because he's very ignorant.
Very ignorant.
One day he was going into church and
a fellow shouted out, Hey!
And he looked at him.
And he said, give me some money.
I know you had a big revival the
other day because you had 5,000 converts,
you and Peter, so you must have got
a big love offering.
After all, with these evangelists, it seemed that
their creed is greed and their God is
gold, so you must have got stacks of
money the other day.
And Peter says, and John says, silver and
gold I have not.
But I'll tell you what we do have,
we just haven't had a little of the
power of his resurrection.
And if you take my hand man, you'll
jump up and run for your life.
And he believed and he did and he
went and he disturbed the sleep of death
in the sanctuary.
Everybody was amazed and they said, well a
notable miracle has been done.
And then they called all the big shots
together, Alexander and all the rest of them,
in the third chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles.
And what did they say?
They questioned Peter and John, you couldn't blame
them, they haven't stolen anybody's money, they haven't
fooled anybody, they haven't made any false prophecies,
they haven't been running some clowning system.
All they wanted to do was demonstrate this,
as I said last night, when you get
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, you get the
four Gospels, you get the Acts of the
Apostles, and in the Acts of the Apostles
the church does everything that Jesus did.
And if the church isn't doing that today,
she is not the true church.
Now you read that second chapter there in
Hebrews, and what does it say about the
Gospel?
It talks about the Gospel which came by
Jesus Christ and then to the Apostles and
others.
And it came down to us and he
says, this is the Gospel with signs and
wonders and divers, miracles and gifts of the
Holy Ghost.
That's what God says and you better believe
it.
And if it isn't happening, we better get
on our bellies, on our faces and get
some sackcloth and glasses and cry to Almighty
God till it does happen.
Because without it Christianity is not a faith,
it's a philosophy.
Christianity is not a philosophy, it's a faith.
It's a life.
So they look down their noses at Peter
and John, sure they'd shaken all Jerusalem and
the synagogue and the temple and the man
was having a whale of a time leaping
and praising God.
And so the big shot says, ladies and
gentlemen I want to tell you this, we
can't dispute this great miracle, but please be
advised that Peter and John are unlearned and
ignorant men.
That's what it says, I've got notes on
it right here.
They're unlearned and ignorant men.
Isn't that delicious?
That's sweet to my taste.
That unlearned man wrote this gorgeous Gospel, this
Gospel of John.
And then to show how ignorant he was,
he wrote the first epistle of John and
the second epistle of John and the third
epistle of John.
That's four good books, all best sellers.
And then to really put the capstone on
and make you really know he was ignorant,
he wrote the book of the Revelation that
still baffles all the wise men.
Isn't that nice?
Wouldn't you like a baptism of ignorance like
that?
Right ladies, he's nodding, right so would I.
Do you think the world's going to think
you're smart just because you try and pursue
a life of holiness?
You better watch out.
If you're, if you're going to be the
person God wants you to be, you might
get more spiritual than your pastor and that's
awfully dangerous.
If you get more spiritual than the pastor
you'll get fired.
They find some way to get rid of
you.
Jesus says that, don't worry, Jesus said it.
They'll put you out of the synagogue.
As I said yesterday, who tried to kill
Lazarus after he was raised from the dead?
The Jews?
No, not as Jews.
The Romans?
No, no, not.
The Sadducees?
No.
The Pharisees?
No.
Who?
The high priest tried to kill him.
He'd done nothing except he'd been raised from
the dead.
But every time they saw him, they, argh!
The worms should be eating him, but Jesus
touched him.
Oh you can, uh, you can be spiritual
and pharisaical true enough, but on the other
hand even if you're deeply spiritual and walk
with God, you get plenty of enemies.
I like the song we sang this morning.
These English hymns are lovely aren't they?
Francis Ridley Havoc, it was a lovely hymn.
Like a river glorious, hidden in the hollow
of his blessed hand, never folk unfollowed.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe the psalmist was right when
he said, my times are in thy hands?
And the hymn writer says, my God I
wish them there.
Do you remember the last part of the
verse as you sang it?
They who trust him wholly, w-h-o
-l-l-y, they who trust him wholly
find him wholly true.
The measure of your yieldedness to God is
the measure of God's yieldedness to you.
If you only trust him a little, that's
all you'll get.
If you trust him much, you'll get much.
If you trust him wholly, entirely, you'll get
all that's coming, as long as you're obedient.
So he says, I pray that you'll keep
them.
Verse 12, while I was with them in
the world, I kept them in thy name,
these thou gavest me.
I have kept and none of them is
lost but the son of perdition.
Now, verse 13, I come to thee that
these things I speak in the world, that
they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
He mentions joy three times in this chapter.
The joy, the joy.
What joy?
This was the darkest situation he'd ever gone
in.
These very men were going to fail him.
Jesus knew what was in man, therefore he
knew that these men, after three years of
tuition, did not believe him.
Prove it, I'll prove it, because they weren't
there on the resurrection morning.
If they'd believed him, they'd have all been
standing in line shouting, Hallelujah, here he is!
When Mary got to the grave, the stone
was moved.
Why?
To let Jesus out?
No, he was out a to let the
disciples in.
They couldn't have gotten in.
Jesus, the stone was moved.
And Jesus is praying here.
Like again, this amazing apostle is in a
lousy, rotten prison with food only fit for
a dog, and he writes to the Christians.
He's afraid they'll get discouraged, and so he
writes there in Colossians, Rejoice in the Lord.
And again, I say rejoice.
They should have all been singing Hallelujah outside
of his cell window, but they were all
so worried and discouraged about their little selves.
And here is this great man of God
saying, Hey, you weak folk, get up, you,
you, you sorrowful folks, sing for joy.
I sometimes feel this, I, I wish that
when people come and say they want to
get saved, and you tell them all the
benefits of salvation, I wish you'd whisper in
the other pink little ear that they have,
listen, you're a soldier of Jesus Christ, and
you've got no rights of your own.
Hmm?
I heard many a man say, Well, I've
got a sweet wife, but she's rather nervous,
and she can't stay in the house by
herself.
I'd like to come to the night of
prayer, you know, but I, I wouldn't like
my wife to have a breakdown, or, you
know, she's troubled.
If a window creaks, she's probably trying to
get in the house.
But I noticed this, when they got their
draft papers, they didn't write to the government
and say, Well, I'd like to fight for
the country, but my wife's nervous.
I can't be a soldier, unless, of course,
I can come and sleep at night, come
home at night and sleep.
They say, Well, sonny boy, you're going to
Vietnam or somewhere, and we just couldn't get
a shuttle service to get you home at
night to sleep, and get you back to
Vietnam for breakfast, so, uh, what are you
going to do?
Oh, my wife won't like it.
Didn't ask you if your wife liked it.
We've just got into business, it's going to
fall apart.
They didn't ask you that.
They said, We've a right to draft you
where we like.
All right, Jesus has a right to do
the same.
People say, You know, I would have gone
to the mission field, I never got a
call.
You didn't have to have a call, he
commanded you to go, your call is to
stay at home.
If you claim the promise he shall baptize
you with the Holy Ghost and fire, he
wasn't talking to you anyhow.
No, you say, But he was really in
the, in the larger dimension.
All right, then he was also telling you,
go into all the world and preach the
gospel.
Who are you to start chopping it up,
this is for us, and that isn't for
us, and this is.
We were, we were in the house a
while ago, I started teaching on Hebrews, and
the lady said to me, We never teach
Hebrews in our church.
You don't?
No, no, the pastor says it's very obvious,
people are stupid, which they can't read, that
the epistle to the Hebrews is to the
Hebrews.
They were Jews, so you can't teach it.
Oh, is that why, yeah, yeah.
Are you Romans?
Romans?
They're American.
Oh, well you can't read the epistle to
the Romans, it wasn't written to you.
Are you Ephesians?
Are you Colossians?
If you start that process of elimination, all
you have is the Amen at the end
of Revelation.
Hebrews is to the Jews, so is the
most used chapter in the Bible in America
and the other country every Sunday.
Who did Jesus say you must be born
again to?
Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
Well what's he got to do with you?
Sure logic can be cruel.
But you see, immediately I become a child
of God by faith.
I have no rights of my own, I
have no rights of my own.
But you have to guard your reputation, it'll
take you all your life to do it
and break your heart.
Best thing to do is get rid of
your reputation.
You see, reputation is what people think you
are, and character is what God knows you
are.
And all you have to be worried about
is character, not reputation.
Jesus made himself of no reputation.
Everybody's clamoring, people get filled with the Spirit,
and right over the weekend they want to
take the church over and baptize everybody into
what they got.
They don't know a hill of beans, at
the end of two weeks they break the
church.
One of the great proofs to me of
spirituality is you have a teachable spirit.
You may not always like the way it's
served up, except when I do it, but
apart from that.
You may not always weigh that, and you
may differ in certain points.
If you're looking for somebody that hits every
nail on the head exactly as you do,
what's the good of having that kind of
teaching?
Provocation is a legitimate Christian exercise.
I like to provoke people to good works.
Sometimes I provoke them to anger.
I don't mean to, but I do, and
I'd rather do that than do nothing.
Anyhow, some of you haven't been shaken up
for years.
The most comfortable hour you have is in
church Sunday morning.
Boy, isn't this relaxing.
I think of the scripture that says, we
shall not all sleep.
I even have my joy.
Oh, I like that.
I like that.
The same joy that characterized the life of
Jesus.
When they tried to push him over the
precipice, he still kept his joy.
When the world fell apart and every disciple
was going to fail him, he was still
dominated with joy.
Yes, it does say in the 12th chapter
of Isaiah, with joy shall he draw water
from the wells of salvation.
It's Peter, isn't it, that talks about having
a joy unspeakable.
There's a joy unspeakable.
There's a joy so deep that you can't
even explain it, you can only experience it.
We had a great Nazarene preacher in England,
an old man being the biggest drunken liar,
thief in the British army.
He got saved, he was the most joyful
man I ever met.
Now you talk about hitting heights of rapture
and praise and adoration.
There is nobody in the New Testament, however
spirit-filled they were, that ever hit the
heights of the psalmist.
Their greatest expression, sometimes I sing.
I sing to myself, I'm too kind to
sing to others.
I have a fantastic voice.
Inside it gets spoiled coming out, but inside
I sing.
And I like the psalm that says, lift
up your head so ye gates and be
lifted up the everlasting doors, and the king
of glory shall come in.
My, that's wonderful.
The psalmist was it said, he has put
a new song in my heart, even praise
unto God.
I'm sure, I don't know that, yes Jesus
did sing, there's one record, he sang going
into Gethsemane, he sang a psalm.
And again I say there's no high appeal
in the praise anywhere in the Word of
God than in the psalms.
You read some of those phrases, you get
them, and meditate on them.
They're majestic.
And Jesus had a joy that was unspeakable,
and he had a song.
And this old dirty rascal that had been
saved, he'd been pitched out of the British
army, they sent him up home, tied him
up in a jacket, in a straight jacket
from India years back.
I'm talking now about when I was a
young man and he was a very old
man.
But he was the most delightful man, the
most, the only thing he was so embarrassing.
Could you believe he got blessed on a
streetcar?
You do all your shouting in church don't
you?
You sing and show off and raise your
hands and want to prophesy or speak.
You ever do that in the home and
there's nobody there to applaud you and give
you any credit for it?
I'm sitting on a streetcar with John Thatcher,
just as quiet as could be, dignified English
people, and the streetcar has a seat right
down that side and right down this side.
And suddenly John bursts out, I've got a
blood-red, snow-white, sky-blue, oh boy.
Oh brother, did he praise the Lord.
I've got a blood-red, sky-blue experience,
and as happy as a lark, and as
free as an eagle, and it's sunshine and
smiles, and strawberries and cream, and people looking
like this over the newspapers.
And old John went on and they were,
must have got a lunatic.
That wasn't so bad, I had to sleep
with him in a big old bed.
Two o'clock in the morning he'd jab
me in the ribs, he says, come on
let's praise him.
I said, it's two o'clock, doesn't matter,
he doesn't say you can't come at two
o'clock, let's praise him.
He had a night shirt like a wedding
dress, it fit round his neck and it
was about two yards long behind, and he
gets up and he's going round, I said,
there are people in the next bed, it
doesn't matter, they can join in the next
room if they want, that's all right he
said.
Oh, you should have heard that old boy,
and he meant it, it wasn't a put
-on thing, he meant it.
That's why I loved him, if he got
blessed in a shop, he got blessed in
a shop.
He didn't say, holy ghost don't boil over
now because it's embarrassing.
I mean here I am, right in the
middle of a shop, it would be terrible.
Boy, he let it rip.
Yeah, I'll tell you how he let it
rip too.
He was preaching in London and God said
to him, listen you've been telling me such
a lot of stuff this morning.
You were praying there and saying, if ever
I love thee Lord Jesus, this now.
You really love me?
Yes, I do.
You lifted me out of a horrible pit?
All right.
There's a factory down the street, and he
was always dressed immaculately, being a soldier, you
could see your face in his shoes, his
trousers were creased, he wore beautiful linen and
ties, and the Lord said, you get on
your hands and knees and walk round the
front of that factory where the men are
smoking and spitting and telling lies and all
the other junk.
Right at half past twelve in the dinner
hour, there'll be hundreds of men lined up,
and you stay on your knees and give
them your testimony.
How you're the biggest wreck in the British
army and God saved you.
And I've heard him say many times, you
know folk, I fought men, I think he'd
actually kill the men, and I fought in
wars, and I've been in many foreign countries,
and I've done a lot of things.
The hardest thing I ever had to do
was get on my hands and knees to
prove to God, because he demanded it of
me.
And he walked round that factory, and he
knelt there, and he started up his old
theme, I've got a blood red, snow white,
sky blue experience, and he went on to
say he was the biggest liar, the biggest
drunkard, they turned him out of the army.
He'd had delirium tremens three times and so
forth and so on.
And the bell rang, and all the men
went back.
There was a man there, his name was
Briggs too, six feet two.
Many of you have read Streams in the
Desert by Mrs. Calman.
Mrs. Calman said he was the finest evangelist
they ever had in China.
He had revivals in China.
This is the man that was saved as
a result of the eccentric old friend of
mine.
He went back in the factory, and men
were saying, wasn't he a nice looking man?
Boy religion can send you daft can't it?
Send you crazy.
And Briggs said, I'll tell you what, when
a man has the guts to kneel in
a London gutter, and they were dirty gutters
then, there was horse manure blowing around, and
they were wet, and when he got up
his beautiful trousers were all dirty and soggy.
And his shoes were all rubbed at the
toes because he'd walked right round the gutter.
Briggs got saved the night he went to
hear him preach, and became an outstanding missionary.
I preached once with Dr. Hines.
He founded the great Nazarene hospital, one of
the finest in Africa at Bremersdorf.
He has every degree he could get for
tropical medicines in America or England.
He got saved one night in a meeting
that John Thatcher, that didn't know a difference
between a Greek root and a rhubarb root,
but he got saved in his meeting.
And it all began when little John was
in a hospital full of the devil, and
acting up.
And every time a preacher came in, the
nurse would say, don't talk to that man
in bed 21, he's an idiot, he's mad,
we have to time him.
A little woman went in one day with
some scriptures, and the nurse told her the
same, and she looked at this strange man
in bed, fiery eyes, horrible looking man, and
the dear little soul waited till the nurse
went out of the room.
There were about 30 men in that, in
that hospital ward, and she waited till the
woman went out, and she went up to
him, she said, this is, this is a
scripture, this is a bible, and listen, I
want to tell you something.
It says here, if you confess your sin
and tell God you're sorry, he'll forgive your
sin, make you a Christian, take you to
heaven.
Isn't that wonderful?
Yeah.
Oh, the nurse is coming, I'll leave it
for you.
And off she went.
You talk about a chain reaction.
Did anybody ever tell you that there's an
oak tree in an acorn?
If they did, they were silly.
There isn't an oak tree in an acorn,
there's a forest in it.
A man goes and spreads the gospel, has
great revivals in China through this broken old
drunken life.
Uh-huh.
A man builds a super hospital there for
thousands of people and has miracles of healing
in central Africa out of this derelict old
preacher, which all came out of a little
nervous woman that gave him a scripture one
morning.
And when he went to bed, at least
before he went to sleep, hey, that woman
said, if you put your hands together and
say, Jesus, I'm a sinner, save me, he'll
do it.
Okay, Jesus, I'm a sinner, maybe the worst
you ever had, but I'm a sinner, save
me.
And he said, the fellow sleep like that.
And he woke up in the morning and
they shifted all the bells out of heaven
and put them in his heart, they were
all ringing.
And he heard somebody say hallelujah, didn't know
what it meant, whether it was Japanese or
Chinese, but it felt good anyhow.
So he woke up about six o'clock
in a military hospital, he says hallelujah, and
all the guys say, oh, they got a
little bed, clothes and head.
A nurse was coming in, he said, nurse,
nurse, Mr. Thatcher, what do you want?
I want my trousers, going home, going home.
Oh, I should have told you this.
When he woke up, he said, well, I
must be saying because the burden's gone, I
feel new, I'm a different man.
And he said, he just reached for that
New Testament and he opened it like that
and read it.
Do you know what it said?
The prayer of faith shall save the sick.
My word, he said, this is from God.
I never knew there's a God like this.
He said, last night I just said, Lord,
save me and he saved me.
So all I do now is say, Lord,
heal me.
He said, Lord, last night I said, save
me and you saved me, because I'm not
the man I was last night.
Now, Lord, heal me.
Thank you.
Isn't it a blessing he hadn't been to
Bible school.
It's no offense to have any unbelief.
He thought God meant it.
So he read it and believed it.
Two things you should do with this Bible,
you know.
Believe it and behave it.
Everybody does the first part, not many do
the second.
John said, bring me my trousers.
The nurse said, you can't have them.
I said, John, if, if, if younger brought
them, what would you do?
He'd gone home in my nightshirt, he said.
Would you have walked through the streets of
Perth?
Sure, sure, sure, sure.
It was that heavy flannel.
It would have had to rest on the
way home anyhow.
Big thick army flannel shirt, two yards behind.
He'd have been a picture, wouldn't he?
But he's the kind of guy that would
have done it.
Finally, they brought the doctor of the hospital,
they brought the matron of the hospital, they
made him sign his own release and told
him to go home and not eat any
solids for six months, because his body was
in such a bad condition.
He'd been drinking liquids only for six weeks.
And going home, he fiddled in his pocket
and just as you call a dollar a
buck, he found a sixpence, which in our
English vulgar, vulgar language we call a And
he went in the shop and the lady
said, oh, I thought you were in hospital.
He said, I was.
You know what?
Jesus saved me last night and healed me
this morning.
Isn't that great?
Yes.
What do you want?
He said, anything, anything you can give me.
I've eaten nothing for, I'm hollow, my legs
are hollow.
Could you give me something?
And you know they make a triangle thing
they call a bannock there.
It's about that size and it's about that
thick.
And when they're they're lovely.
When they're a day old, you could pave
the backyard with them.
And she had a flower bag full of
them, there were 20 of them.
And without a drop of water or coffee
or tea or butter or anything on them,
he sat on the step of the shop
and he says, I scoffed a lot.
That's pretty good going, isn't it?
He ate 20 of those bannocks, enough to
kill anybody.
And when he got home, his landlady said,
oh, I wish you hadn't come.
I don't know how to take care of
you, you're going to die.
Die?
Well, I can't afford to give you all
the things.
Listen, he said, do you know what I've
got in there?
Yeah, I think you've got a sore stomach.
Sore stomach?
Man, he said, I got 20 bannocks in
there.
You don't mean that.
Huh?
I said that to say this.
Do you wonder the man was great, full
of great gratitude?
He'd been rescued from hell.
You see, some of us were never far
in the pits.
We don't really know too much about salvation.
It cleaned us up a little bit, made
us a little bit nicer.
We read, uh, streams in the desert or
squirts in the wilderness or something every morning,
and, and we feel so nice after it.
You couldn't keep that man quiet if you
tried.
I tell you more than once, on a
streetcar, he made me wish the bottom had
gone.
I thought I was a good spirit-filled
preacher, but when he got cracking in the
streetcar and everybody's like, ooh, ooh, ooh.
When he won't let you sleep because he
gets blessed and says, come on now, now
don't get back in bed.
Let's sing it again.
Ten thousand thanks, ten thousand thanks, we'll praise
him o'er and o'er.
And for the life with him to live,
ten thousand, come on, now you're getting in
bed, get out, come on, sing it again.
But I'll tell you what, wherever that man
went, it was tremendous blessing.
You could see that man was pure gold.
There was nothing artificial, there was nothing put
on, he didn't rehearse, he didn't, he didn't
try to impress.
He was so impressive he didn't even have
to try.
He was so spiritual he didn't even have
to wear a badge to let you know
who he was.
Well you know, in a different dimension, Jesus
had joy.
Do you know what his joy was?
Do you know what the joy of God
is?
Number one, to do God's will, to do
God's will.
Go labour on, spend and be spent, thy
joy to do the master's will.
It is the way the master went, should
not the servant tread it still.
Toil on and in thy toil rejoice, for
toil comes rest, for exile home.
Soon shalt thou hear the bridegroom's voice, the
midnight peal, behold I come.
He did the will of his father.
He begins this very chapter with the most
delightful thing imaginable.
He says, father I have finished the work
which thou gavest me to do.
John Wesley died at 88.
The young man that first stirred my heart
about America and broke my spirit, was a
young man that died at the ripe old
age of 28.
David Brainerd died at 28, burned his life
out for God.
Does God reward you for the length of
years?
If he does he's not a just God.
If you get a bigger reward because you
serve God, but Wesley served God 60 years
more than David Brainerd, then Brainerd was handicapped.
No he wasn't.
He'll have as big a reward as John
Wesley.
Why?
Because he did God's will.
He did the job that God gave him
to do.
Everybody has criticized this marvelous young man Evans,
over the Welsh revival, because he only had
revival in 1904 and 5.
It stirred the whole nation and then he
went out of the picture and he didn't
minister after that.
Lived to be about 70 years of age
and for 50 years did nothing.
And people criticized him.
But he did more in those two years
under God than those men doing 50 anyhow.
He had a revival that cleansed the nation,
closed the taverns, closed the dance halls.
Nobody does that today.
You go in a lot of hullabaloo, put
a personality up, get every Tom, Dick and
Harry, backslidden or otherwise, to come and support
your platform.
Have a big big shin dig and get
a few converts and shout about it.
And the hell halls down there are as
bad as ever.
People near us, we live outside of San
Anton and they talk about what blessing there
are in the churches.
But more and more we're getting strip joints.
They're total naked dancing now at night.
They've got beyond the place where the strip
girls do it.
In France nobody goes to see the strippers
now.
They go to see the homosexuals.
Stripping's got down.
There's a saturation point on everything.
And this again is a reason why if
ever we prayed in our lives we ought
to pray now.
I've said it before, I'll say it in
this church, I've said it in all kinds
of churches around the world, that no church
is greater than its prayer life.
Don't care how big your missionary budget is.
After your prayer life the proof of the
church is how many people you send out
to foreign fields, or send out into full
-time work for God.
Now it doesn't mean everybody has to quit
the job, I'm not thinking that.
But the supreme task of your life is
not to live in a better house, wear
better clothes, be a nicer person, be more
acceptable.
It's to know deep, deep down in your
heart you're doing God's will.
You hear an awful lot these days about
Northern Ireland.
I preach there a lot and there's a
town called Porterdown.
There's a little lady there, she's not much
to look at, heaven knows.
She was in the back row when everything
was given out, features and everything else, but
she is a saint.
And in Walthorn, Northern Ireland, a friend told
me it was over not too long ago,
he said Len, you know that little woman
in Porterdown?
People still line up at her door at
five o'clock in the morning for prayer.
Nobody's ever written a book about her.
She won't let you photograph her.
She doesn't ask for the front page of
Decision magazine.
She doesn't run after the big evangelist.
She doesn't collect autographs in the Bible.
She doesn't have to chase to every meeting
to get kicks.
She's learned to pray.
And every morning at five o'clock that
little woman goes as she's already been in
the secret place and thought, knock at the
door.
And they knock at the door maybe till
12 o'clock and they line up in
the street.
Pentecostal people don't go to the past as
often.
They go to her.
Presbyterians go to her.
Methodists go to her.
Salvationists go to her.
Baptists go to her.
You know, I think that's greatness.
Used to chase Miss Kuhlman.
I know Miss Kuhlman.
I preached a series of sermons for her
in the Carnegie Hall.
Took a Bible class very often.
Preached for her on Sunday sometimes.
She's a very fine woman, but she had
a different display.
This little woman's heading away.
Dear old Van Tavener says, it's going to
be wonderful when God begins to read his
who's who.
Huh?
God's who's who.
People say sometimes to me, are you in
who's who?
And I say, well who's who?
I won't want to be in with that
who's who anymore.
I want to be in your zoo.
What a human rating.
As I said this morning again and finish,
you see reputation is what people think about
you.
Character is what God knows about you.
As I said before, if you, if you
voted me the, the greatest Christian in the
world, I know there's no hope.
But if you did, the Lord wouldn't say,
well my, my, my.
I hadn't noticed that.
I've been so busy holding the world up
and Ravenel is the greatest saint.
Hey, I got your name down here son.
I'll rub it out.
You're right at the top there.
You're number one saint in the world.
And then a couple of years after, because
I did something you didn't like, you rub
my name off and forget it.
You think the Lord, you see, you could
change everybody's opinion in the world about me,
but you couldn't change God's opinion.
The only person who can change God's opinion
about me is me.
Huh?
That should come to you.
Whether the pastor likes you or he doesn't
like you, as long as you're doing God's
will.
The holiest man that ever lived.
And they said he cast out devils because
he's the devil himself.
And our dear pastor reminded me, I, I,
I just delighted in that because it reminded
me of what I've been saying the other
week.
We talk about being filled, you know what
happened when they were filled with the Holy
Ghost and they came out of it.
Well tell me, tell me, come on I'm
listening.
What did happen?
There were a hundred and twenty went in
the upper room.
Can you trace the lives of any of
them?
You can't trace the lives of more than
three or four of them.
What happened to the others?
Did it just become sanctified mothers and godly
fathers that raised their children?
I'm not interested in listening to preachers whose
kids have gone to the devil.
I talked with a boy in the, in
the, in the drainage of New York when
I was living with, working for Teen Challenge,
working with Dave Wilkerson.
I walked in the place one night where
we, we looked after these folk and this
kid came in, big barrel-chested boy.
And I said would you take coffee?
Yeah.
Want a donut?
Yeah.
What kind?
Plains.
Took cup and saucer and the donut to
him.
And before I sat down, he started like
this.
There was a certain man named Nicodemus, ruler
of the Jews.
The same came to Jesus by night and
said, Master, good Master, what must I do
to inherit eternal life?
I said, hold it, hold it, you know
all the answers.
Sure.
Ah.
Where do you come from?
Just got off a boat in the dock.
Came in from Australia.
Where's your home?
Don't have one.
No parents?
These, these are his exact words as a
Lord Bear's Witness.
He said, yeah, my daddy's a missionary.
He's in Africa chasing niggers so they won't
go to hell.
But his family's going.
I'm going.
My sister's going.
He, he, he dumped me in a, in
a school when I was five years of
age and said, sonny be good, I'll send
you some spending money and I'll be back
in five years when we have furlough.
And he came back and saw us a
little while and he went to raise money
to support him in Africa.
And before he got on the boat, he
bought me a new suit and a pair
of shoes and he said, be a good
boy till I come back, see you in
five years.
And he came back when I was 10.
He came back when I was 15.
The last time he came he said, son,
you're doing something I don't like.
He said, I said, dad, you're doing an
awful lot I don't like.
As a matter of fact, I don't have
a daddy and mommy.
Amazing how many people get filled with the
Spirit and suddenly get a call to start
traveling.
Much easier than get a wrestling at home
with a bunch of rebel kids, isn't it?
Hmm?
You think it's all glamour?
Nothing on your life.
These such distorted views of what greatness is.
When God who's who is read, do you
know what the book says, I wouldn't dare
say, God says some of the last will
be first and some of the boys at
the head of the parade right now that
beg your money with their tears every Sunday
morning on the big t-boat back.
So they can live in quarter million dollar
homes and and say everything my wife wears
of course is pure gold and genuine jewels.
These are diamonds, yes, out of somebody's tithes
and offerings.
When God opens the books, let me suggest
that for the next week only perhaps, you'll
do it maybe after you get a nice
piece of paper, put it right over that
vanity mirror you have and write on it
eternity.
Go to bed in the light of eternity,
get up in the light of eternity, speak
over the phone in the light of eternity.
It might change a bit of conversation.
Pray in the light of eternity, prepare your
sermons in the light of eternity.
Now Jesus says, I pray that you'll keep
them.
And then he says, I'm going up there
to the right hand of the Father and
I'll be praying for you.
People say that to me and I sometimes
wonder if they remember, but I know Jesus
does.
And he says, I pray not that you'll
take them out of the world, that will
be easy, keep them in the world.
He prays not for our transportation, for our
preservation.
He prays for our sanctification, sanctify them through
thy truth.
He prays for our jubilation because he says
they may have my joy.
He prays for their unification.
Ah now you're getting to it.
We've all got to be one.
You know it doesn't matter whether you believe
in the virgin birth or not.
Doesn't matter whether you believe the Virgin Mary
died to save you as much as Jesus.
You just put your arms around anybody these
days, as long as they're not communists.
And we'll have a big shindig that you
can call by any name you like.
I expect it has no scriptural foundation.
Well you said Jesus says that we may
be one.
Sure he did.
What kind of a one?
Who was he talking to?
He said, Father that they may be one
as you and I are one.
It was vertical not horizontal.
You're to be one with him.
Didn't the brother get us to sing, breathe
on me breath of God two nights ago.
And Hatch says in that hymn, until with
thee I will, one will.
Two streams coming down the side of a
mountain spoke to me one day.
God's will, my will, and suddenly to become
one.
And you can't tell the one from the
other.
God wants me to be one with him.
No rebellion.
He can ask what he likes, when he
likes.
And I say yes.
The last simple thing.
A friend said to me one day, I've
read many stories of heroism.
I think perhaps the greatest was about a
French king who was in debt to a
man in his court, a man had done
something for him.
And he said listen I want, I want
to do something for you.
And he took a sheet of paper, and
he just signed in the, in the corner
of it, give him whatever he asks.
And he signed his name Louis the 15th
or whoever it was.
He said now go use it.
Supposing he'd filled it in and said give
me your kingdom, what would he have done?
You know the Christian life is?
I'll tell you.
It's process, crisis, process, crisis, process, crisis, except
it's not on the level, it's all uphill.
It's progress, and then the crisis.
And you say oh I've got it made
here, there's nothing beyond here.
And you settle down on a plateau, and
the Lord says get going.
And the next thing is Mary Jane gives
up on you.
She says I can't come and pray with
you.
Oh Lord I need her.
No you don't, you need the Lord.
You've been leaning on her long enough.
Well I've been doing so and so, and
the Lord says give it up.
Well Lord that's my supply.
No he says I'm your supply.
If you trust him wholly, you'll find him
wholly true.
So the Christian life is, is not just
this way.
It's progress and crisis, process, crisis.
It is in the life of Jesus.
It is in the life of all of
us.
Isn't it wonderful to know that he is
the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Great to be in the school of God.
He never makes any mistakes.
He never has to correct anything he's done.
He's never lost a battle.
Phew.
But a God like that, we ought to
turn the world upside down.
But before he turns it upside down, he'll
have to turn us inside out.