Tonight I do not plan to preach a
sermon in the commonly accepted sense of the
word, but rather to lay before you a
formula for spiritual success, which I've given here
and there.
Somebody asked, Virgin, if you ever preach the
sermon more than once, and he said, do
you think I'd throw away the axe after
I cut the tree down?
And I have told people in my study,
I've told them in private conversations, I've prayed
about it myself, I've told audiences here and
there, and tonight I want to talk to
you about it.
I have four texts.
They don't seem to be related, but they
are.
Psalm 40, 16.
Let all those that seek thee rejoice and
be glad in thee.
Let such as love thy salvation say continually,
the Lord be magnified.
Then the second one is Colossians 3.5.
Mortify therefore your members which are upon the
earth.
Colossians 3.22. Servants obey in singleness of
heart, fearing God.
And then a related text, Philippians 3.13.
There's one thing I do, and there's Acts
13.36 for David.
After he had served his own generation by
the will of God, fell on his feet.
Now, first thing I want to tell you
is that you can take this down, these
four points, and you can have them.
I might as well tell you that, because
you'll probably take them anyhow.
And I might as well relieve your conscience
of it.
You can have this, because I've had sermons
lifted from me beautifully, and have nothing coming
back.
And they didn't know it.
Preachers didn't know it.
But it's perfectly all right.
Nothing's copyright.
I think that everybody ought to have a
privilege, using any of the Lord's weapons belonging
to any of the Lord's people, except their
armor.
And I'll never wear anybody's armor, except mine.
Shape I'm in, no other armor would ever
fit me anyhow.
Now, I believe that life is a serious
thing, and that this is a serious world
in which we live.
And I'm encouraged to believe that there are
serious-minded people left.
Now, there are not as many as lots
of people think, but there are more than
others think.
There are serious-minded people still alive in
the world, who realize the seriousness of life,
and are honestly concerned how they can meet
and conquer life and death, and how they
can salvage something out of the wrecks of
the world, and how they can save their
own souls out of the disasters.
Don't get shocked now and follow the Schofield
Bible on this, because Peter did say, save
yourselves, didn't he, from this untoward generation?
Peter said that I can cautiously venture to
whisper it, if an apostle said it, even
if you don't find it in the margin
of the Schofield Bible.
So, I think there are some who are
wanting to save their souls out of this
untoward generation, this coming disaster, and the crash
and downfall of the world.
And such as that would welcome counsel, and
I want to give it to you.
Welcome counsel not from a perfect man, but
from somebody who's walked with God, and who's
loved and lived in the scriptures for quite
a while, and who hasn't any other motive
except to do you good.
Nobody can get my fear or my respect
if I know he's got a handout, that
he's got his hand out for something from
me.
Nobody can get my ear.
I won't listen to anybody.
I don't think it's a spiritual thing.
I haven't any conscience about it at all.
I'll plug my ears against the man that
I have suspect of being out to get
something from me.
But no man can preach too straight to
me if I know he loves me and
doesn't want anything I have.
And no man can be too eloquent for
me to walk out on if I have
a suspicion that he wants something I have.
Now, I don't want anything that you have
at all, except my car, sir, and I'll
get that, I'm sure.
But outside of that you can keep everything,
get a commission.
But there are four things that I'd like
to say to you, that if you're going
to save yourself from this untoward generation, and
salvage something out of the world, or actually
in the crash and fall of the world,
you're going to have to do four things
that I have before you here.
First is, magnify God.
Second is, mortify the flesh.
Third is, simplify your life.
And the fourth is, serve your generation.
Now, there are the four texts, and that's
what the four texts say.
Let's look at the first one first.
Let such as love thy salvation say continually,
the Lord be magnified.
Now, I'm positively sure, after many years of
observation and prayer, I'm sure that the basis
of all of our trouble today in religious
circles is that our God is too small,
that God isn't big enough.
And when he says magnify the Lord, he
doesn't mean that you're to make God big,
but you're to see him big.
When we take a glass to look at
a star, we don't make the star bigger,
we only see it bigger.
And so you can't make God bigger, but
you're only to see him bigger.
Now, it's quite popular for us to talk
about the liberals and the modernists, and you
can just name them.
All of them have a little God, and
we life people have a big God.
We do have a big God, but most
of us don't see him big.
And so my first point is, see God
big.
Magnify God.
Now, the most important verse in the bible
is not the one you think it is.
Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Lay that aside, that's not the most important
one.
Nor is it the other one you think
it is, John 3, 16.
God so loved the world, that's not the
most important one.
The most important verse in the bible is
this one, in the beginning, God.
That's the most important verse because that's where
everything must begin.
God is the fountain out of which everything
springs, and he is the foundation upon which
everything rests.
God is all in all.
The archbishop said God is over all things,
under all things, outside all things, within but
not enclosed, without but not excluded, above but
not raised up, below but not depressed, wholly
above presiding, wholly beneath sustaining, wholly without embracing,
and wholly within self.
And I'm sure that if we saw God
bigger, we'd see people smaller.
This is the day of the magnification of
slick personality, and just as we magnify slick
personalities, we minimize God.
And don't you think that we've escaped the
curse either in evangelical circles, and don't you
think we've escaped the curse in full gospel
circles, for we have not.
We are a whole mediums go by in
which we never see God at all, we
only see his servants, that is all.
And the curlier the hair of the servant,
the more we see the servant.
And if he's been pardoned from murdering his
grandmother's aunt, why, we magnify him still more.
And if he's been half converted from movie
acting, why, we magnify him still more.
We've always got some big wheel that we're
down in front of, kicking the toe of,
as the Catholic kisses the toe of the
Virgin Mary, and we wonder why the Holy
Ghost doesn't bless us.
The Holy Ghost doesn't bless us for the
same reason he doesn't bless the Catholics for
kissing the toe of the Virgin.
They've got their focus wrong.
We respect the Virgin, but we don't worship
her, and God would have us respect each
other, but not worship each other.
And yet, there's an awful lot of hero
worship in the Church of Christ.
Magnify the Lord with me, and everybody say,
be magnified.
Now, God moves according to an eternal purpose,
and he carries on after his own plan.
One time, a long while ago, when the
Presbyterians were meeting somewhere over there in the
Isles, I think in London, trying to work
up what later was called the 39 Articles.
They say that they could get a definition
of doctrine, all doctrines but one, and that
was the doctrine of God.
Nobody could seem to come up with a
definition, and I think I could guess why.
So, they were just about in despair, and
one moderator finally said, and pointed to a
young minister down in front and said, Brother,
would you lead us in prayer one more
time that God might give us light on
what we can put down in the creed
about God?
The young fellow got up and grabbed the
figurehead of him, squeezed his eyes shut, and
shook his head, and prayed with great earnestness,
and he said, O God, thou art spirit,
infinite, eternal, unchangeable in thy being, wisdom, power,
holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.
Somebody said, now that's enough, that's it, and
they wrote it down.
So, here we have it.
God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, unchangeable in
his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and
truth.
So, Novation says that the contemplation of God's
majesty all else is dumb.
He's always greater than anything that can be
said about him, and no language is worthy
of him.
He is more sublime than all sublimity, loftier
than all loftiness, profounder than all profundity, more
splendid than all splendor, more powerful than all
power, more truthful than all truth, greater than
all majesty, more mystical than all mercy, and
juster than all justice, and more pitiful than
all pity.
And yet, nothing that anybody can say about
him is enough.
Back in Isaiah the 14th chapter, there occurs
a passage, and I was too dumb to
say it, but somebody pointed it out to
me.
Lift up your eyes on high, and behold
who hath created these things, and bringeth out
their host by number.
He calleth them all by names, by the
greatness of his might, for that he is
strong in power, and not one failure.
Now, until this was pointed out to me,
I didn't see what was here.
Why, Isaiah, in a figure of speech that
was probably the loftiest ever conceived by the
mind of man, I don't think Shakespeare, Isaiah,
ever had a lofty thought compared with this
one, or David.
This man, Isaiah, saw the stars in the
heavens above as sheep on a green pasture
field, and the great God Almighty, the shepherd,
walking among them and calling them all by
name.
And if you're not afraid that your head
will split open with the effort, try to
conceive the infinite number of stars that dot
the heavens above, and then think of God
leading the stars as a shepherd leads his
flock, and calling them every one by name,
and not one of them faileth.
This is our God, and my brethren, God
calls us to magnify him, to make God
big.
The meeting isn't big because a lot of
people are present.
The meeting is big because a number of
people see a big God in the meeting,
and the bigger God is seen, the greater
the meeting is.
A friend of mine has a little saying,
I'd rather have a big little meeting than
a little big meeting.
And there are a lot of big meetings
that are little because the God in them
is a small God, and there are a
lot of little meetings that are big because
God is big in the midst of them.
I tell you, if you're a Christian and
you're getting older in God, you ought to
be getting nearer to God, and God ought
to be becoming to you more and more,
and other things less and less.
And if you still have to be chucked
under the chin so many times a month
by the pastor to keep you happy, you're
a kind old goat, and you need help
from God.
My friends, if God isn't the biggest thing
in the world to you, not all your
talk will ever seem fresh to me.
We ought to be where God is everything,
where we walk into a meeting, and we
see God, and we think God, and we
feel God, and God's all around about us,
and that God shuts down over us, and
we see him in a bush in the
cool of the day, and we see him
on the mountain in thunder and fire, and
we see him on the cross in blood
and tears, and we see him coming down
the sky riding a white horse, and we
see him sitting on a throne judging the
nation, but always we see God.
God is everything.
I want you to pray about something for
me.
While you do this, I don't often introduce
personal matters, but I want you to pray
about something.
I wish you'd pray that God would help
me and let me live long enough to
write a book on the attributes of God's
devotion reconsidered.
I have that in my mind, and I
want to do it, but I'm too busy
with the weekly to do it, and I
want to quit the weekly so I can
do it, and if I quit, oh my,
I'm all messed up.
But you'll pray for me if the Lord
will find his way, will you?
I'd like to do this.
I'd like to leave to this generation an
elevated and large conception of the great God
Almighty in his three persons.
I'd like to enjoy and let the world
say, not wasn't told he's smart, wasn't eloquent,
wasn't a witty, but to have them say,
we praise thee, oh God, we acknowledge thee
to be the Lord, all-universe, magnified he,
the Father everlasting.
To the all-angels cry aloud, holy, holy,
holy Lord God of heaven and earth, oh
for the majesty of thy glory.
It's this that I want to do.
I want to leave behind me a flavor
of God, so the triune God gets all
the credit.
When I say God, brother, I mean the
triune God.
Somebody accused me of this.
He said, you talk about God all the
time, and Simpson talks about Jesus all the
time.
That's the difference between you two.
Well, I didn't answer him.
I never answer a critic.
I'm afraid to.
I know how sharp my tongue is, so
I keep my mouth shut.
But I know this, that when I say
God, I mean Jesus, and I mean the
Father, and I mean the Holy Ghost.
For there is one God, the Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, and one Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, that
was begotten of him before all worlds, God
of God, light of light, very God to
very God, begotten, not made.
And there's one Holy Ghost, the Lord and
giver of life, who is the Father and
Son together, worshiped and glorified.
So when I talk about God, I don't
split up the Godhead.
You can't divide the Godhead, brother.
The old creed says that we're not to
compound the persons nor divide the substance, and
God can't be anywhere, partly present.
Whenever God's at all, God's all there, and
when one person's there, all persons are there,
because you can't divide the substance of the
Godhead.
So that where the Father is, there also
is the Son, and there's the Holy Ghost.
And where the Son is, there's also the
Father, and there's the Holy Ghost.
And where the Holy Ghost is, there's also
the Father and the Son.
So the blessed Trinity is here in this
meeting house tonight, and he's all here, and
he's not partially here, but he's all here.
God doesn't send representatives.
God is here, and if that isn't good
news to you, you need to be born
again.
Now, that's the first thing.
Magnify God, and your ministry will be little,
and you'll be little, and you'll die a
little unless you have a bigger God.
And God gets bigger in your eyes every
day.
Great God, I pray that he'll make himself
big in our eyes.
So, when we need it, it won't be
sharp talk.
It'll be all about God.
Well, the second thing is mortify the flesh.
That's that Colossian verse.
Now, you Christians might as well admit this.
There's a reality you've got to reckon with,
and that's your flesh.
And by your flesh, I don't mean your
body.
That old monastic idea that God is angry
with your body, just as silly as it
can possibly be.
Your body is just a donkey right around
on, that's all, and it isn't either good
or bad.
It's just your bones and flesh and blood,
that's all.
It's what the thinkers and the theologians call
amoral.
That means not moral or immoral, just negative,
just neutral.
So, your body isn't good or bad.
Your body's just a hunk of flesh.
So, when the Bible says, mortify your flesh,
it doesn't mean mortify your blood, and your
bones, and your epidermis, and your hair, and
teeth, and eyes, and stomach.
It doesn't mean mortify your physical body.
God isn't mad at your physical body, brother.
When the Bible says, mortify your flesh, it
means mortify your ego, your old man, the
self, that evil that's in you, that brunch
day present you got from the devil when
you were born.
That inward thing, that's your flesh, that's what
it means.
That's you.
Now, if the old man was something that
could be lifted out like an onion could
be pulled out of a garden bed, then
we'd all feel very proud of the fact
that we've been de-onionized and debunked.
But the terrible part about this crucifying the
flesh is that the flesh is you, that
the flesh is you.
And when the Lord says, mortify the flesh,
he doesn't mean abuse your body, starve it,
or make it to lie on beds of
nails.
It means put yourself on the cross, and
that's what people don't want to do.
The Alliance grew up and started out, went
for a while on the doctrine of self
-crucifixion, or at least crucifixion, putting of ourselves
to death, mortifying the flesh through the cross
of Jesus.
But that's all old stuff now, and it
belongs back there with the horse, and the
buggy, and the buckle, and the high button
shoes.
Nobody believes it anymore.
If they do, they don't live and I
think it's better not to believe it and
say so, like some of our good Calvinist
friends do, than to say you believe it
and then live in spite of it in
defiance of it.
Amen, and amen, and amen.
Now, there's a lot of people trying to
get away with the old man.
What do I mean by the old man?
I mean your pride, and your bossiness, and
your nastiness, and your temper, and your mean
exposition.
And what do I mean, man?
I mean your bearishness, and your ghostishness, and
your lustfulness, and your wolfishness, and your quarrelfulness,
and your pride.
What do I mean, reverend?
I mean your strife, and your hunting for
a bigger church, and your being dissatisfied with
the offering, and blaming the superintendent because you
can't get called, and when the reason you
can't get called is nobody wants you.
That's what I mean, reverend, and you deacons,
what do I mean?
Sitting around the wall of the boardroom, putting
steak, comb, and Vaseline, and tonic on the
wall, into the fire, into the night, when
you're too past your hour, because you're too
stubborn to humble yourself and make you wrong.
That's what I mean, Vicky boy, that's what
I mean.
What do I mean, you musicians?
I mean that jealousy that makes you hate
somebody that can sing a little better than
you can.
I mean that jealousy that makes you want
to play the violin, and when everybody knows
that you couldn't play the violin, and facing
the choir director, and you hate him, wish
he was dead, because he couldn't play, then
you'd get called upon to Tony, when the
trouble is you just can't play.
Now, that's what I mean, and all of
this may be under the guise of spirituality,
and we may learn to put our head
over on one side, fold our hands gently,
put on a beatrific smile like Francis of
Assisi, and still be just as kind as
they come.
My brother and sister, I don't know what
your theory is about sanctification.
I don't care about that, but I do
say this, that you'd better modify your flesh,
or your flesh will do something terrible to
you.
These terrible days in which we live, we've
not only accepted the flesh in its more
refined manifestation as being quite copper, but we
have created a ignoble theology of extenuation, and
we've used the flesh.
People don't hesitate anymore to say, oh was
I mad, was I mad.
All right, leave him there brothers, and one
minute after he told somebody how mad he
was, he'll leave him there.
He'll get mumbling words.
I have no confidence in a man who
loses his temper, and I don't believe that
the man who blows up and loses his
temper is a spiritual man.
I don't care if he's a preacher, a
bishop, a pope, or what he is.
He's a carnal man, as carnal as a
goat, and needs to be cleansed by fire
and blood.
Well, we've excused it.
People say I was mad.
Well, if we were mad we were sinning,
but we've incorporated the flesh into our orthodoxy,
and instead of being humble, we magnify the
cloud, fellow.
You know, years ago God gave me an
ice pick, and he said, now son, among
your other duties will be to puncture all
the inflated egos that you see.
Go stick an ice pick in them, and
there'll be more pops than hitting around as
the air hits out of egos.
People hate me for that, but I love
them for the privilege of whittling them down
the side.
Because if there's anything that we ought to
forget to say is how little we are.
When I was a young fellow, I always
loved guns.
I got a .22 revolver, and loved to
shoot.
This was fun, you know, and nothing else
to do, and that rarely.
But I was out shooting with another fellow,
and we shot at what they called a
mud hen.
Now, I'm not sure what a mud hen
is, actually, but they call it mud hen
out in Ohio.
We thought it was a great big duck,
and we peeled the thing, you know, fixed
it, plucked it, got rid of its feathers.
It was the biggest piece of trick you
ever saw.
It was practically all feathers.
It wasn't much bigger than an oversized robin
when we got down to the real duck.
But when you looked at it, it was
all puffed up and swollen out, and that
describes most Christians.
We fanned our feathers on in, so people
don't know how small we are, you know.
Listen, mama, did you ever give your dog
a bath?
You know how your dog, your woolly dog,
your little fluffy fellow, shakes himself and stands
up there, he's so soft and fluffy, and
you give him a bath, and boy, he
shrinks down two-thirds.
Well, that's most of us.
There's this fur we got, this fluff, this
exterior.
It just needs to be reduced, that's all.
Mortify your flesh.
And mortify comes from the same Latin word
mortuary, comes from a place where you put
dead people.
It means to die.
But we don't talk about that much anymore.
You can get by it, you're just able
to tell the board of examiners what Nyack
teaches about it.
The only word they can give you is
church, unless you ruin another congregation.
But we don't believe much in it anymore.
We just talk about it, but we don't
believe in getting a result.
But you will never be a spiritual man
until God reduced you to your proper size.
He cuts you down to your right size.
Mortify is a New Testament word.
Turn your back upon yourself, and reckon yourself
to be dead indeed, and crucified with Christ,
and then expect the blood and the power
of the Holy Ghost to make real what
your faith has reckoned, and then begin to
live it.
Some people go to an altar and get
sanctified, but they're still resentful, they still have
a chip on their shoulder, they still love
money, they still got a temper, they still
look where they shouldn't, and then they're sanctified.
No, my friend, they're not.
They are just pretenders, or worse than that,
they're deceived persons.
So, either we'll mortify the flesh, or the
flesh will want to harm us to a
point where we'll have no power, no joy,
no fruit, no usefulness, no victory.
And now, third is simplifying your life.
Now, practically everybody has too much, knows too
much, sees too much, goes to too many
places, and comes back from too many places.
I'm writing an editorial just now on this
very subject.
We've got to simplify our lives, or we're
going to lose terribly.
But most people won't simplify themselves.
Life has a center and a perimeter, you
see.
At the center of the soul is God,
and then as we grade out from the
center of the soul, we get out into
what's just like a great temple, with God
glowing in the middle of the temple, and
then there's the outer courts, and then there's
the fields, and then there's the woods, and
then there's the deserts beyond.
And most people do not live in the
center of their lives.
Be still and know that I am God
is the great Bible word, but most people
would be afraid of backsliding if they could
yell it.
If they got still just long enough to
listen for the voice of God, they'd feel
that there was the coldest meeting in all
the wide world.
You know, brothers, some of the most wonderful
meetings in the world is where God is
there in such awful power, people are afraid
to speak.
Some of the most wonderful meetings I've ever
been in have been meetings where nobody could
even whisper.
The mighty power of God was there, and
nobody dared open his mouth.
He was breathless.
When I'm praying the most eloquently, I'm getting
the least accomplished in my prayer life, but
when I stop getting eloquent and giving God
a lesson in theology, shut up and just
gaze upward and wait for God to speak
to my heart, while then he speaks with
such power that I have to grab a
pencil and a notebook and take notes on
what God's saying to my heart.
Oh brother, we can only simplify our lives.
Now, the further we get out from the
center of our lives, the more speed we
get, and the less power.
Everybody knows machinery, that if there's a moving
power shaft, you know that if you have
a little wheel on that power shaft, you
have less speed, but you have more power.
But if you have a big wheel on
the power shaft, you have more speed, but
you have less power.
Now, that's why you shift gears in your
car.
You have more power when you're in low
gear, but you have more speed when you're
in top gear, because you're out further from
the center.
It's always so with God's people.
The further you get out from the center
of your heart, and from the presence of
God, and from the sanctuary of your soul,
the faster you go, but the less power
you have.
Most people like to go fast.
They don't care for power.
I remember old Socrates, God bless his old
bald head.
Old Socrates was in Athens.
Somebody took him around.
You know, he didn't have any shoes.
He went around barefooted, trying to prove to
people he didn't know anything.
That's what they finally killed him for.
And they took him around Athens, ten cent
stores, you know, and after half a day
of it, paddling around in these old bare
feet, they let him out after seeing all
the marketplaces, and they said, well, Socrates, what
do you think of it?
He said, I never knew before how many
things there are in Athens that I don't
want.
I like that, don't you?
He didn't want it.
He was looking for things he didn't want,
and that's the way it was.
Well, we were too busy, we know too
much, we lived too many things.
There's something, let me give you some advice.
Now, some people would like this.
You're saying I'm radical, but I've been called
radical now since I was 19.
But, let me give you some advice.
You ought to know how you can have
a stepped-up revival in your soul.
Go home and pull the plug out on
your radio and tv set, and leave it
out for 10 full days.
Go home, pull it out.
Now, I don't say throw out these things.
I don't have a tv.
I wouldn't have run around the place.
I have a little radio.
I get the news and a few things
on it.
But, if you really want to meet God,
I almost said go home and pull the
plug out of the telephone, but I won't
say that.
Maybe that's a mistake.
But at least go home and pull the
plug out on your tv and radio.
Listen to yourself.
You touch with your own voice.
Most people don't know what their own voices
sound like anymore.
They're so used to somebody else's voice cutting
in on them.
Why, some people are so exquisitely dumb that
they won't even pull the plug on the
tv when the pastor comes.
Ed Maxis, who was the third man on
the totem pole over at our church, third,
second to third from pastors, he went somewhere
to visit a man, and the fella left
the tv on.
And Ed stood there in the midst and
said, I'll come back at a more convenient
time, sir, and walked out on him.
I like that.
That's the way to do it.
Don't play second cedar to a shadow.
And that's what he wanted him to do.
Well, anyhow, I'm sure that some of you
women, that the faith, faith of Asher Godfrey
is more familiar to you.
Sure.
You know, what an old redheaded artist.
Pray for your husband, sister.
Why, you're a stumbling block in his way.
Now, you have to pray for him until
you get right.
Now, in the gifts and many things we
don't need to know, you don't have to
read everything, not even all that's in the
last weekly.
Read more Bible, less reader's digest, less Pittsburgh
Sun-Telly, and less Time and Life and
Newsweek and all that.
Just read less on that.
I don't say it's bad, I just say
that all it does is confuse you and
fill your head with spun yarn, or just
win.
Just take a little time out to talk
to God all by yourself.
Never try that, brother.
Simplify your life and get back to the
simple things of life.
Be still and know that I am God,
and learn how strong simplicity is.
To be simple, not to push and boast
and bloat and puff out.
You heard, didn't you, about Toad, about the
mama Toad that came home and said, I
think it was a frog instead of Toad,
and said to the father Toad, now this
isn't anything funny, this is real, and this
was the old Aesop's old day, and she
said, you know, honey, said to her frog
husband, she said, you know, honey, I saw
a bull today.
Said, you did?
Was he bigger than I am?
She laughed, said, bigger than you are.
I should say he was bigger than you
are.
Oh, he said, I'm not too sure about
that.
He said, was he this big?
And he puffed himself up, and she said,
bigger than that.
He said, was he this big?
And he puffed himself up still more, and
she kept saying, ah, you're a bunny, you're
no size compared with him, and he puffed
and puffed in front of me, and it
was a loud bang that she was a
widow.
Old Aesop told that back before the time
of Christ.
Even that old goose saw through a lot
of this, and he'd come here and smile
at a lot of us, thanks if I'd
puffed up frogs.
Full of unfragrant wind and confusion, and a
million things we don't need.
You don't need to know so much, brother,
and you don't need to have so many
things, sister.
You just have to dust them anyhow.
So, simplify your life.
The use of things gives me a single
eye looking alone into thee.
All for a single eye.
Not want very much.
For twenty-some years I haven't owned an
automobile, and I'm the only man in the
United States of America except two bums down
on Skid Row that don't have one.
And they won't believe it, you know.
They say, what?
An intelligent man living in the United States
of America in 1956 doesn't own an automobile?
Well, they're more trouble than a pair of
twins.
You have to be always scrubbing them, gassing
them, oiling them, and putting tires on them,
and having licenses for them.
Well, I know people that actually think more
of their cars than they do of their
wives.
And I've got so many friends that have
cars that are going where I want to
go, why should I bother with one?
Well, this will probably slip over your head,
but I am telling you, simplify your life.
Come home and decide before God.
Now, don't come to the altar and try
to do this here while somebody beats you
over the head.
Don't do it that way.
Get somewhere with your Bible and God.
Get alone.
Get after God free, and then let some
out of your living room, and give yourself
a chance to be still and know that
I am God, and talk to God about
things.
Then the fourth is, serve mankind.
David, after he had served his own generation
by the will of God, he fell on
his feet.
Now, David was a man in life's fashions
the same as we are, but when David
died, God blew the whistle and rang the
bell.
Because he served his generation by the will
of God, and then he fell on his
feet.
Christ became a servant, for the Son of
Man has come to speak and to say
that which was lost.
And when Jesus said it's finished, he didn't
mean only that his preaching ministry was finished,
but he was helping, and healing, and feeding,
and comforting, and blessing everywhere that he went.
Jesus was a servant.
He came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister.
You know what you are?
You're a servant.
You ordain men that now like to think
of themselves as a minister.
You know what the word minister means?
It means a servant.
It doesn't mean somebody to be looked up
to.
It's somebody that's to be there to help
out.
You're a servant.
Serve your generation.
Now, no man has any right to die
until he has served his generation.
No man.
A lot of us would say we'd like
to die.
Even Paul wasn't willing to die.
Paul said, I'd like to die and go
to be with Jesus, which is far better.
But he said, I'm not going to yet,
because there are people down here that need
me.
And he was a debtor, and until he
squared the debt, he wasn't going to die.
No man, no Christian has any right to
die until he's put the world in debt
to him.
When Charles Wesley, John Wesley came into the
world, they were in debt to their mother,
they were in debt to their father, they
were in debt to the nurse, they were
in debt to everybody that served them.
But they didn't die until they turned the
tables on the world.
And now the world's in debt, and the
Church of God's in debt to Charles and
John Wesley.
You can hardly have a service if somebody
doesn't lead off being one of Charles Wesley's
hymns.
The world is in debt, the Church is
in debt to Charles Wesley.
He'll live until he'll reverse the tables and
put the world in debt to him.
When Livingstone came into the world, and the
Livingstone at home, Mama Livingstone hugged the little
fellow to her chest and said from her
breast and loved him, and looked after him,
and helped him on to grow up to
be a little man.
And he was in debt to her, and
in debt to his father, and in debt
to everybody.
But when Livingstone died kneeling in prayer in
a little hut over in Africa, he had
made the world to be his debtor.
And a grateful world remembered him and buried
him in Westminster Abbey among England's great.
And when Jaffrey, R.A. Jaffrey, was born
in a Canadian home in Canada, by his
well-to-do parents had it all fixed
up for little Robbie.
They had a little lair for him, and
beds, and bottles, and all that he needed.
He owed them everything.
But when he lay quietly on the cot
there in that prison above Newcastle, and breathed
out his last in the service of his
God, whole sections of the world were in
debt to R.A. Jaffrey.
And so was Simpson, and so was so
many more.
So was Daddy Whiteside that watched grace this
platform with his little quiet holy presence.
When he was born into the Whiteside home,
of course he was in debt to everybody.
But when they laid him away, everybody was
in debt to him.
He served his generation by the will of
God before he fell on sleep.
The trouble with a lot of lazy Christians
is they want to fall on sleep before
evening.
They're quick before the whistle blows.
Well, I'll tell you this too.
If you'd serve your generation, you'd better get
at it, because your generation isn't going to
be around very long.
You can't serve last generation, and you can
only indirectly serve your next generation, but you
can serve this present generation.
Some of us are just religious sponges.
We absorb and absorb and absorb, and that's
about all there is to it.
But the Lord wants us to serve, to
do things for people, to put people in
debt to us.
Why I have people, now this gets back
to my church, I don't mind at all,
but I have people in my church that
give to missions very heavily, and they pray
for missions very faithfully, and they know the
names of the missionaries, and the new babies,
and all the problems of the missionaries, but
they've never washed anybody's floor, nor washed anybody's
feet, nor carried a bowl of soup to
a sick widow.
They've never done anything like that, and they
wouldn't speak to it.
They buy their way out by giving heavy
to missions.
It's termed God by proxy.
A lot of us Alliance people, we buy
our way out by giving to missions and
putting the pictures of missionaries on our walls,
but you couldn't get us to do anything
really humble.
We had a little girl who's three years
with us in Chicago who was a deaconess,
Beatrice Shrum.
She's now Beatrice Cottmell of India.
She married Mr. Cottmell after she got to
India.
Well, Beatrice is from around this area somewhere,
isn't she?
Yeah, out there somewhere, out somewhere in this
area.
But anyway, Beatrice came to us, and she
visited, and she did all sorts of things.
You know, the intangible things you can't pin
down.
You're not sure whether you're accomplishing anything or
not.
So a blue baby, she'd grown up to
be about, I think, maybe 14 years old,
but she was still a blue baby, and
she was nine.
And Beatrice went out to see her.
Somebody went out, and here was Beatrice down
on her hands and knees in the kitchen
scrubbing the floor.
And I said, Now listen, Beatrice, we didn't
call you to Chicago to scrub floors.
She said, Oh well, you know sometimes I
like to see, to do something that you
can see you've accomplished something.
I like that.
And so Beatrice went to the field, and
there she is, and they say one of
the finest missionaries that ever went to India.
But she wasn't too proud to get down
on her knees and scrub a floor in
a home where the sick girl lay.
Now, you can't buy yourself off by giving
$181.30 commission.
You can't buy yourself off by playing regularly
with that blue book in your hand, naming
the names over it that you don't know
anything about.
That's all right if you want to do
that, but that's an awfully poor way of
serving your generation.
Serve your generation with your lily white hands,
honey, and God will believe you mean what
you say.
You know, there are people that need your
help.
Tomorrow morning I'm going to preach to the
prisoners out here.
I go occasionally preach to bums, where you
almost have to hold your nose.
I do it because I don't want to
become a white-handed pastor, one of these
smooth-cultured fellows with a smooth hand and
a proper word.
I like to get down to the grassroots
and serve people where they really live.
Serve your generation by the will of God.
Sisters or anybody that needs a bowl of
soup out your way, or anybody, man, that
needs your actual, needs your help out your
way, you're better thinking about serving your generation
now while you can.
For time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears
all its sons away.
This life forgotten as a dream dies at
the opening day, and your generation's passing fast
away, fast, fast away, so you'd better get
at it.
Now, I'll summarize these four points.
Magnify God, or all you do in religious
circles will be wood, hay, and stubble.
Mortify the flesh, or you'll shrink and shrink
and get smaller and smaller, trying to get
bigger.
Simplify your life, or you'll waste it.
Serve mankind, or your existence hasn't been justified.
If you want to justify your existence, get
some calluses on your hand, get out and
serve your generation.
Don't be a parasite.
You've got a good preacher now here in
this city.
You've always had good preachers, but you've got
a specially good-acted man.
Now your temptation is to be a parasite.
Fasten yourself onto him like a tick on
a dog's ear, and drink his blood, and
live off his spirituality and zeal.
Don't be like that.
Get your own feet down on the ground,
and get a sucker down onto that earth
so you can get something for yourself.
Serve your generation.
Don't be a spectator, be a participator.
Nobody can give an order call after a
talk like this, but if I didn't talk
like this, I'd be unfaithful to my own
soul.
So, I've told you some things, and you've
been remarkably quiet, but it won't hurt you
a bit.
So, amen?
Tonight, I do not plan to preach a
sermon in the commonly accepted sense of the
word, but rather to lay before you a
formula for spiritual success, which I've given here
and there.
Somebody asked Spurgeon if he ever preached a
sermon more than once, and he said, Do
you think I'd throw away the axe after
I cut the tree down?
And I have told people in my study,
I've told them in private conversations,