We are continuing this morning with the theme
that has now been occupying us for some
months, a theme which we have entitled, From
Simon to Peter.
And the subject this morning has been billed
as forewarned but not forearmed.
Our message will be based on passages that
you'll find particularly in Matthew chapter 26 and
in the other Gospels which serve to bring
before us the same main theme.
Once again we come to a narrative which
serves up to show up, to show and
to bring to the fore the objectivity and
honesty of the scripture writers.
You have noticed this phenomenon I'm sure, over
and over again.
They never blush in showing up the faults
and the failures even of the most important
people in scripture.
There is only one person in scripture who
is presented as flawless and faultless and sinless,
only one.
And I've no doubt but that the honesty
of the writers is such that had they
seen a solitary flaw in him, they would
have recorded it.
Here, the leader of the twelve, Simon Peter,
again appears before us in a fairly humbling
light.
Great man that he was to become in
the fullness of the time by the grace
of God, he trudged wearily toward that goal
and he faltered and he failed and he
sinned over and over again before he became
the leader that we encounter in the book
of the Acts of the Apostles and the
great writer of the epistles that bear his
name toward the end of our New Testament.
And the New Testament speaks of his sins.
The genius of our Lord's ministry is not
to be confined or limited in any way
to his high priestly work.
Our Lord was high priest and he was
king and he was also Andy's prophet.
He as high priest made atonement for the
sins of men and now intercedes for us
at the right hand of God.
As king, he rules over all things so
that we can say that all things work
together for good to them that love God.
He is king and we can only say
that because our Lord is king.
But he's also prophet.
He is the infallible teacher and counselor.
Do you remember Isaiah's word?
His name should be called wonderful counselor.
Now in this context, as well as referring
to his essential death upon the cross to
be followed by his resurrection, Jesus has been
the counselor.
And he has been advising his disciples as
to certain things they should do and should
expect and certain things they must be very
careful not to do on any account.
He is not only the redeemer of the
sinner, he is the redeemer of the father
and he is the teacher of men.
Now we need to remember this because at
this point Jesus was forewarning.
Forewarning in order to forearm his disciples.
He wanted to tell them certain things because
he wanted them to be prepared he was
going to be slain.
And he knew that this was going to
cause tremendous commotion of mind and of heart.
And he wants them to know the kind
of thing that's ahead of them.
And especially as far as Simon Peter was
concerned.
You see, if God has a special place
for you in his purposes, so does the
devil have a more sinister purpose for your
life.
It's always the same.
If God has a plan, the devil has
a counter plan.
And the greater your place in the purpose
of God, the more terrifying the trials and
the temptations that the devil will bring about.
And so Jesus had a special purpose in
advising and counseling Simon Peter.
But the remarkable thing is this, the tragic
thing is this, that Simon Peter seems as
if he were blind and deaf and utterly
insensitive to everything that Jesus is telling him.
So that even though he was forewarned, when
the tragic hour arrived he was utterly unarmed.
Now I want to consider in turn three
things that emerge in the course of this
great chapter.
Only three things because they relate to our
main theme this morning.
I would like us to consider in turn
the warnings that Simon Peter disregarded, then the
wretchedness of his ensuing experience.
And I want to say just a few
words in concluding about the witness that Peter
bears as a man who walked this way,
who failed miserably and then was retrieved.
The witness he bears to us today.
First of all then, the warnings that Peter
disregarded.
My friend, are you disregarding a divine warning
this morning?
I would say that this is the most
important question for us to ask ourselves and
to ask one another in the name of
the Lord.
What do you do with the divine warnings?
Gloss over them?
Put your hand over the Bible page that
addresses you and challenges you and says thou
shalt not?
This is a very serious question.
If this book is the book of God,
then the warnings of the Lord need to
be taken seriously.
What are we doing with them?
There was at least a two-fold warning
which has particular reference and relevance to our
present study, that is, warnings addressed to Simon
Peter.
The first was that concerning Satan's very insidious
plan for the disciples generally, but especially for
Peter.
I have to refer to it this morning
because it is relevant and germane to our
subject.
We've dealt with it before, so I don't
need to go into it in any detail.
I'm referring to that incident when Jesus turned
to Simon and said, Simon, Simon, Satan has
desire to have you, in the plural, you,
all of you, the disciples.
Satan has desire to have you that he
may sift you, all of you, as wheat.
And then he changes from the plural to
the singular and he says, but I have
prayed for you that your faith should not
fail.
But he doesn't stop there.
He goes on and he says, and when
you were converted, you strengthened your brethren.
Now, you notice the point.
He says, Jesus, Satan has a most sinister
plan for all of you.
My friends, you know, I would not be
at all surprised if Jesus stood in this
pulpit this morning, he would say exactly the
same to us.
Let there be no man, let there be
no woman here in the convocation hall this
morning who thinks that he can escape the
snares and subtleties of Satan.
If you think that, you're living in a
fool's paradise.
Satan has desire to have you, all of
you, that he may sift you as wheat.
Get the grain for himself and leave only
the chaff for your Lord.
That's what he's after.
Get the best of your time, the best
of your talents, the best of your money,
the best of everything for him and leave
only the chaff for your Lord.
But then he turns to Simon Peter and
he says, but now, Peter, and he doesn't
enlarge upon it.
Oh, our Lord was the master psychologist.
You see, if he enlarged upon the danger
for Peter, Peter would be unnerved, and an
unnerved Peter might have done all sorts of
wretched things, and yet he gives him this
sufficient warning.
But Peter, he says, I have specially prayed
for you that your faith should not fail.
As if to say, I'm not going to
say too much about it, Peter, but listen,
your faith is in danger of failing.
You have a special, a special danger here,
and in order to counter that special danger,
I, Peter, have prayed for you.
But what happened?
How did Peter take it?
What did he do?
Wouldn't you be grateful if the Lord spoke
to you like that?
And now don't speak too soon, because you
and I may be doing exactly what Simon
Peter did.
What did Peter do?
What was his reaction?
He disposes of his Lord's counsels and warnings
with a carnal, cocksure boast.
Here are his words.
Who are this?
I'm ready to go with you both to
prison and to death.
As if to say, what are you talking
about dangers for me?
There's no possibility of my letting you down.
You can tell these folk if you like,
these others that are around me.
They're a very feeble lot.
But, but, but, but me, Lord, you know
me.
I'm ready for anything.
I'm ready for suffering.
I'm ready for persecution.
I'm ready for death itself.
I'm ready, and you can count on me.
Now you notice what's happening.
He dismisses the divine warning with that faultless
affirmation, and baseless, of his own self-sufficiency.
Now we cannot doubt his sincerity.
Let none of us do this.
We've no right to do it.
No basis for doing it.
I've no doubt whatsoever that Simon Peter was
utterly sincere when he said that.
This is the kind of man he was.
You see, he was so impetuous, but he
was sincere.
He meant it.
Not the point is this.
Even if we can't doubt his sincerity and
his good intentions, we must expose his willful
rejection of the divine counsel and his total
ignorance of himself.
Oh, Simon Peter, are you suggesting for a
moment that you know yourself better than your
Lord knows you?
You see, that's what we do when we
turn down the divine counsel.
We're saying, in effect, just as Peter said
here, it's all right, Lord.
Don't have your worries about me.
I can cope.
You know, my friend, we can't cope.
And the man or the woman that thinks
that he or she can is a miserable
wretch, self-deluded.
Good intentions are not good enough because the
Lord knows us better than we know ourselves,
and his prohibitions are given us in the
awareness of who and of what we are,
not in ignorance.
Take another illustration of the warning he disregarded.
The second one relates to Peter's desire to
follow Jesus into the events that follow the
episode in John 13 that we were considering
last in this series, the events of John
13 or the events of the feet-washing
particularly.
Now, Jesus realized that Simon was wanting to
come with him, well-intentioned, you see, loyal
in his heart and in his spirit, within
certain limits, but impetuous still.
He wanted to come with him and he
wanted to follow him.
Jesus knew that.
And so our Lord said to him, now
look, Simon, listen, where I am going, you
cannot follow me now, but you shall follow
me later on, afterward.
That is John 13, 36.
Now, please let us get that because there's
a lot of misunderstanding about Peter following or
not following.
And I've heard Peter being blamed for a
lot of things for which Peter should never
be blamed.
Jesus told Peter not to follow.
Therefore, when Peter followed afar off, the wrong
thing was that he followed at all.
He should never have followed.
He shouldn't have been there because Jesus told
him not to.
Now, you know, I know it makes a
lovely text and those of us who are
preachers love texts that are appealing.
Peter followed afar off.
It makes a wonderful text.
But, you see, the fault was that he
should not have followed at all.
He had no right to be following because
Jesus had told him not to follow.
He would tread the winepress of the wrath
of God alone.
It was written of him.
Peter has obviously learned some lessons from the
feet washing, as we see from other evidence
here, but once again he shows his indomitable
self-will with trust, self-confidence and a
refusal to take his Lord's word seriously.
You remember how he replied to that?
Let me give it to you.
Lord Jesus, why cannot I follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you,
John 13, 37.
When Jesus retorted by forcefully foretelling Peter's pending
threefold denial before the cock would crow, John
13, 38, both Matthew and Mark say that
he went so far as to insist over
and over and over again that on no
condition he proved disloyal.
Now you know what is happening.
Jesus says, don't follow me now, you shall
follow me hereafter.
He says, Peter, most of you don't know
me.
I not only mean to follow you, but
I can follow you and whatever you say,
I'm ready for it.
He simply asserts and reasserts his dogged determination
despite the prohibition.
You know many Christians do this.
The Bible tells them not to have certain
things to do with the world especially.
This is an area where this kind of
sin abounds.
Don't do this, don't do that.
But we say, but Lord, I can do
it and I'll not fall.
I can try it and I'll not sin.
I can get away with it.
Don't you believe it?
Peter, believing his own estimate of himself, of
his wisdom and capacity to cope with any
eventuality, despite his Lord's warning, defiantly set his
sails to follow in the proscribed way.
And he had no right to do so.
Now that rejection of Jesus' warnings was a
fatal folly on all counts.
It was especially so, however, in the light
of Peter's history of sheer impetuosity and indiscretion.
One of the saddest things about Peter up
to this point is this.
He seems to have been quite unable to
see what his past history had to say
about him.
You see, Peter's history makes a picture as
your history and mine makes a picture.
This is why it's so good sometimes to
remember the way the Lord has brought us
and the way we've walked.
And if you and I honestly look back
over the weeks and over the months, honestly
I say, in the light of God's word,
we'll see a picture emerging of ourselves, what
kind of people we are.
And if we've got any little grain of
wisdom, we should learn something about ourselves.
This is why it's good to keep a
diary, preferably in a language that other people
can't read, of course.
It's the joy of being Welsh in Canada.
Or you are Arabic people, you know, you're
very greatly blessed.
You can keep a diary and you can
be honest, and very few people can understand
Arabic.
But when you write down honestly how things
have been with you, and then you can
look back and you can read it and
you can assess the situation.
History tells a story.
It reveals a man, it reveals a woman.
But you know the sad thing about Peter?
He never saw himself.
He never saw the wood for the trees.
In all the that have happened to him,
even though they make one impressive picture of
a self-willed, arrogant, impetuous man, who's in
constant danger because of his self-will and
arrogance, Peter never saw it.
You see, he was so well-intentioned, he
knew that his motives were good, so he
did not take himself seriously.
He seemed to have learned nothing, for example,
from his Lord's sharp disapproval after Caesarea Philippi,
when he tried to dissuade his Lord from
going to the cross, and Jesus had to
say to him, get thou behind me, Satan,
for thou savourest not the things that be
of God, but the things that be of
men.
Peter shrugged it off and said, it's all
done now.
And he didn't learn from it.
Neither did he learn from the fact that
he wanted to stay on the summit of
the Mount of Transfiguration, forgetting his commission, forgetting
the fact that the Lord had put the
keys of the kingdom into his hands.
There was work to be done, there were
souls to be served, there was a church
to be built.
He wanted to build his camp there on
the top.
We've been in camping territory this morning.
Well, here's Peter's camp, and he wanted to
stay there and forget everything.
You see, that's impetuosity, self-will, ignorance.
And then again, the same goes about the
episode of the feet-washing.
It goes from one extreme to another, self
-willed, thou shalt never wash my feet.
And then when he sees how terribly dangerous
a thing it is to say that, all
right, Lord, he says, not only my feet,
but my hands and my head, all of
me, bath me.
Poor Simon.
And yet he never saw himself.
My dear Christian brother and sister, listen.
Do you know yourself?
Have you taken, first of all, what the
Bible says about you seriously?
And then, have you seen that corroborated by
your history and accepted it?
This is true about me.
There is a sheer streak of dishonesty about
us men and women who say we believe
the Bible, and we simply don't believe the
Bible.
And this is what is turning off our
20th century young people, who, whatever their thoughts,
want to be honest.
And I know men and women here in
Canada, as the other side of the Atlantic,
who swear that they believe the book and
want to obey it, and simply do not
do so, and have enough blind spots to
turn the whole world against our Lord.
Men and women, this is a serious day.
You and I have no time to trifle
with God, either about His day, about our
loyalty to the Church and to His Son,
nor any other serious issue.
And we're doing it, many of us.
We're not taking it seriously.
His prohibitions, His thou shalt nots, we are
not taking seriously.
You know what we're doing?
We're telling the Lord that we're wiser than
He is.
The warnings He disregarded.
If the Lord has seen fit to incorporate
a warning into holy writ, He has done
so because He knows you and knows me
better than we know ourselves.
Now come with me to the second thing
here, the wretchedness of the experience that ensued.
Peter lived through the arrogance that dared presume
that he knew himself better than his Lord.
The path of disillusionment, as always, was very
stony, very cruel, very harrowing, very breaking.
Isn't it sad that we all somehow have
to go this way?
And it's just because we don't take the
Bible seriously.
You know, friends, you and I would say
many a heartache, many a divine chastisement upon
us, if only we took the Lord's Word
seriously the first time we read it.
And many of us come under the rod
of God and His chastisement simply because we
are very much the same as Simon was.
We rebel.
Now, three outstandingly humbling episodes bring Peter's knowledge
of himself to fruition.
In order for him to come to know
himself and thereby to be broken.
Because, you see, God can do nothing with
a man until he's really broken.
I say that reverently.
A trouble with us is not that we
haven't got enough self-will.
A trouble is with us that we've got
too much.
And we've got to be broken.
And you believe me, my friend, as sure
as I'm standing on this rostrum this morning,
if you're a child of God, God will
break you sooner or later that you should
come to yourself.
And He will break me.
Because He loves us.
You must be broken.
Standing corn can be no use as food.
It has to be crushed.
And it has to be broken before it
can become a meal for someone.
And the trouble with men and women in
the church, even the evangelical church, is this.
We are like standing corn, erect and cocksure.
We've not been broken.
And we're arrogant one with the other.
And with the Lord, we have to be
broken.
And you believe me, the mill of God
grinds slowly.
But grind it doth, and with that exceeding
small.
Now, what are these three episodes in which
Simon Peter was broken?
Well, look at them.
He has to fail.
And the Lord allows him to fail.
But notice there's a divine purpose behind even
God allowing him to fail.
Now, the first episode was that in which
he so miserably failed to watch and pray.
This is invariably the first vital failure of
preceding a major spiritual or moral disaster.
Confiding in Peter, James and John, Jesus spoke
of His overwhelming sorrow, you remember, and He
bade them watch with Him in Gethsemane.
My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.
Carry ye here and watch with me.
I have no time at my disposal to
try and expound the unfathomable depths of that
sorrow.
Himself then moving beyond that point into the
interior of the garden somewhere, He spent an
hour or so in ardent prayer before God.
And then He returned.
And what did He find?
Where was the cocksure Simon?
Where was the proud, self-sufficient Peter?
Where is the man?
Where is the man who's ready to die,
ready for imprisonment, ready for anything?
Where is he?
Oh, my dear people, I'm sorry we have
to say it, but he was asleep, fast
asleep.
And said our Lord, so you could not
watch with me one hour.
Watch and pray that you do not enter
into temptation.
Three times our Lord went back to engage
in His own ardent intercessions and supplications.
Three times He came back to these three
men and found them sleeping three times over.
They could neither watch with Him nor more
than they could watch for themselves.
Oh, men and women, I speak to you
earnestly this morning, not without much wrestling with
my own soul.
You who pledge your loyalty to your Lord,
be sure of this, your dreamy drowsiness, your
dreamy drowsiness and absence in the hour of
prayer bespeaks of a terrible state of soul,
and I cannot withdraw my words.
We may say that we are true to
Him and we're ready to die for Him,
but I tell you, if you sleep in
the hour of prayer, the landslide has begun.
It begins for the individual, it begins for
the church, it begins for the community.
We cannot, we dare not sleep at prayer
time.
The failure to watch and pray.
We don't believe the devils abroad.
Oh, yes, oh, we believe the Bible from
cover to cover.
And if you dare preach in that pulpit
that you don't believe in the Bible, we'll
soon dispense with you.
Ha ha, all right.
But do we believe?
If we do, my friend, we must do
something about it.
You see, it's inconsistent, isn't it?
I speak, I speak with a heart of
compassion this morning, but with a heart of
concern.
The doctrine of sin and of the devil
is not here simply for the mind to
grasp, but for life.
The failure to watch and pray is followed
by the failure to walk by faith.
Wakened out of his sleep to the shrill
realities of that momentous hour of which his
Lord had foretold, Peter was entirely unnerved when
he saw, who would you think, the temple
guards coming into the Garden of Gethsemane?
We call them soldiers, guards they were.
Kind of soldierry, of course.
And Peter was quite unnerved.
What are these fellows doing in the Garden
with their staves and their lanterns?
What are they doing here?
And then suddenly it dawned.
He saw Judas at the head.
Judas proceeded to his master, kissed him, and
saluted him.
And then they were about to put their
hands upon the Lord himself, and Simon couldn't
take it.
And in an hour when a man is
unnerved like this, you see, he always falls
back upon what he deems really in his
heart to be a strong point.
The last line of defense, my strength.
Well, now, what does Peter do?
Oh, naturally, he's got a sword.
Jesus, who had spent the hours in prayer
and intercession, has nothing to do with a
sword.
No intrigue, no lines of defense, no regiments
even of angels to stand between him and
the foe.
He bears it because, he bears himself to
them because it is the will of God.
But Simon Peter, you see, who's been sleeping,
is unaware of spiritual realities.
And so what does he do?
He gets hold of his sword, and there's
blood flowing, and one of the temple guards
loses his ear.
There's something laughable about this, but you know
there's something terribly serious about it.
In the hour when a man is unnerved,
he always falls back upon that which he
really deems to be the strong thing in
his life.
For a man like Peter, masculine and strong,
of course it was to fight his way
through.
It was to take a sword.
It was to make a battle for it.
He was a big bovine man, so it
would seem, full of physical strength and fury.
So let's make a fight for it.
They mustn't take my lord.
But the weapons of our warfare are not
carnal.
And whenever a man condescends to carnal methods
of any kind, physical or intellectual or what
have you, it only means that he's lost
sight of the spiritual realities and power that
Jesus knew.
If you have to engage in intrigue of
any kind to get your way, believe it
my friend, you've lost sight of the spiritual
power of prayer.
The failure to watch and pray leads to
the failure to walk by faith.
You know this thing has been duplicated over
and over again in the history of the
church.
When we fail to watch and pray, a
landslide begins, and we fail to walk by
faith, and instead of faith in God, we
bring in some prop or other.
It's always through my friends, and yet we
don't learn the lesson.
Oh, the evil of sin in our hearts
is such.
We can never, never learn, it would seem.
Can I say a word about the other
here?
The failure to watch and pray, the failure
to walk by faith, and then the failure
to witness as a disciple.
Peter disobeyed his lord's command not to follow,
and he decided to pursue the temple guards
as they led the prisoner from the garden
to the city, and he followed them, we
read, afar off.
He didn't come too near to his lord,
but he followed him afar off, and in
the courtyard he could see what was going
on over yonder.
He could see, if not hear his lord
being interrogated, but he himself was cold and
shivering, not only from the elements in the
early morning hour, but from a fear of
soul.
You do shiver when you're afraid, don't you?
And your teeth begin to chatter.
Haven't you had that?
Now it was early morning, and it may
have been very cold, but there was more
than the outside cold, more than the cold
of the elements.
There was a shuddering of the soul, the
fear of the soul.
He was passing through a way that he'd
never been before.
He saw a fire of cold, and instinctively
he draws near to it to warm his
hands and warm his body, and hoped that
this would make something, make things just that
little bit better.
And then, as he was warming himself, there
came this shaft.
Aha, says a little girl, you were also
with Jesus, the Galilean?
Don't know him, says Peter, don't know him.
Just a few moments passed, and they must
have been like a millennium to Peter, when
somebody else probably came along and said, aha,
but you were with him.
Your speech betrays you.
Ah, I don't know him, says Peter.
And at that time a similar question is
put, and then he begins to invoke an
oath upon himself and say, I veritably do
not know what you're talking about.
I don't know this man.
May the curse of God be upon me
if I know him.
And the cup grew, and he remembered.
He remembered the command that made him a
rebel.
He commanded, remembered the command that brought to
his memory the fact and the realization to
his mind that he was a self-willed
sinner.
And we're told that he went out and
wept bitterly.
Can you see the pathway, my friends?
Forgive me for spending so much time on
it.
You see, I believe there is a progress
here in evil which is found in most
of our lives, if not in all of
them, the failure to watch and pray.
That's the basic.
I've yet to meet a man or a
woman that sinks into sin who really knows
what it is to watch and pray.
Fail to watch and pray, and anything can
happen then.
The failure to watch and pray, the failure
to walk by faith.
The failure to walk by faith, and then
the failure to witness as a follower of
Christ.
I become ashamed of him.
I want to save my own skin.
I'm more concerned with what I am or
what comes to me than the truth itself
and my loyalty to him.
The man who was prepared to talk about
prison and death denies him with oaths and
with such as the almost inevitable wretchedness to
which men and women slide who fail to
watch and pray.
So then we pass through the warnings he
disregarded and the wretchedness to which he gravitated.
And I'm only saying a word about this,
the witness that Peter bears to successive generations.
Ah yes, Jesus died as it was foretold
and as he had decided to do, had
purposed to do, but he rose again.
And he's alive forevermore.
And he was no longer risen from the
dead than he appointed that someone should go
and tell Peter especially that he was alive.
And then later he himself appeared to him
directly, personally, face to face, privately.
1 Corinthians 15.5. Then many times he
appeared to Simon Peter along with other people
with a ten, then with a nine first,
then with a ten.
Then John 21 and other incidents in the
Gospels when Jesus appeared to Simon Peter.
And when we come to the book of
the Acts of the Apostles, we see this
man that was so broken would come to
the end of his tether, would now see
himself as a failure.
We see him an altogether different man.
What has he got to say to us
today?
I think he wants to say three things.
One, I believe he would bear witness today,
for example, to the saving intention and wisdom
of his Lord's prohibitions.
I believe if Simon Peter stood in this
pulpit this morning he would say, you good
people of Knox and those that are worshipping
with you in Convocation Hall today, listen, if
your Lord sees fit to say thou shalt
not, he has good reason.
Time was when I thought it was unnecessary
to listen to divine prohibition, but I learnt
to rue the day.
The second thing I believe Peter would tell
us is this, I believe he would also
bear witness to the fact that sincerity in
our desires to be faithful to Jesus Christ
is no substitute for obedience and submission to
him.
Now you say, I am sincere as Peter
was sincere.
I mean the best, my friend.
I think Peter would tell us, preacher and
people this morning, mere sincerity is of no
value at all unless I am prepared to
obey what my Lord tells me and do
what my Lord commands me.
Sincerity loses its virtue when it violates a
known command.
And lastly, I believe Peter would witness to
us also of the patience and the persevering
grace of his blessed Lord.
I believe Peter would want to stand in
this pulpit this morning and look into all
your faces on this lovely day with the
sun coming through and say, look my dear
people, I know you may do as I
did and you may fall as I fell,
but listen, there is something which is bigger
and greater than my sin and that's the
grace of my Lord.
He did not give me up.
He would not let me go.
He did not abandon me to my sin
and rebellion.
He came after me.
Through him, he let the mess vessel be
broken to shred.
When I came to myself and to my
senses, he made of me a new man,
a man that could take in all the
fullness of the Pentecostal blessing and who could
start now to act as a rock man,
the man he promised I would be at
the very beginning.
And a new chapter emerges and I became
an altogether different person.
He is faithful that called you.
And somebody needs to be told that this
morning.
I do.
Are you aware of self-will and arrogance
and folly and dependence upon carnal methods in
the Lord's work?
You see yourself for what you are and
I see myself for what I am apart
from him.
The temptation is to feel that he must
abandon us.
Never says people.
Never.
He is faithful.
Oh, may God grant us to learn from
the folly of this great man and to
look with him from whatever situation in which
we find ourselves today that we may learn
more about ourselves and learn this one thing
about him.
He is wise in his counsels and he
is full of grace in his pursuit of
the errand that he may fulfill in every
man and woman whom he's called to himself
the original purpose of his calling.
God grant it for his name's sake.