For these
days, I get to know lots of you,
if only your smiling faces, from this end.
It's amazing how accustomed one becomes to the
same group of people, smiling back at one
and responding to the message of grace.
And one only knows how much one has
appreciated and come to enjoy, let alone love,
that group.
When one goes to the next church, we've
got nine churches to go to on this
tour, this is but five or six.
We only know how much we've come to
enjoy and love those people when we go
to the next church and we find another
group looking up at it.
And it doesn't seem right.
That there should be occupied by the face
we've been looking at for a whole week
and so on.
And we have to begin again to get
used to another bunch of the Lord's people.
And we do trust, I'm sure you will
be coming as much as possible.
Make it every night if you possibly can.
We're going to make it every night.
We promise you we're not going to stay
home and look at any television program, we're
going to be here.
And for more reasons than one we suggest
that.
I suppose the most important one is that
whereas we do not come with themes selected
and prepared beforehand, but rather take each day
as it comes and allow the Lord to
guide us to the next theme, we do
find, however, that at the end of a
series there's been a sequence.
God has led us in a sequence and
obviously those who've come through most of the
series will get the most complete picture which
God has been giving us.
And some nights can be tremendously important to
your understanding of the message of grace for
us Christians.
And we do trust then you won't be
too disappointed.
Well, however put it, you know what I
mean.
We want your help.
And I know you don't need much persuasion.
And another pin-off from these meetings, if
you come to the whole series, at the
end you may be speaking with an English
accent yourself.
And people will say, where'd you learn that?
Oh, I was at those meetings.
Or it may be, of course, by the
end of our two-month trip over here,
we shall be speaking with an American accent,
which is quite likely.
Of course, you wouldn't call it an American
accent.
You would still call it English.
But when we go home, we have been
told you're speaking a little differently and it
lasts for a week or two.
And we pick up, no, not the full
accent, but some of the intonation that every
accent has and some of the very pungent
good expressions that you use.
I like them.
They put it much more pungently than we
do in our more sober English.
Amen.
Now let's bow our heads for a word
of prayer.
Lord Jesus, we come to Thee with open
hearts and open Bibles and we thank Thee
for that open heaven from which the Holy
Spirit has come, from Thee on the throne.
May He take of the things that are
Thine, Lord Jesus, and proudly reveal them to
us.
We ask it in His name.
Now I want to turn you this evening
to the second book of Samuel, chapter 21.
The second book of Samuel, chapter 21.
Perhaps it's a guess that we shall read
an Old Testament incident which is fairly unfamiliar
to you and that you haven't perhaps seldom
heard referred to, even, or expounded.
But this incident is a wonderful illustration of
the ways of God in revival.
It's a strange thing that for myself I
find more stories, incidents, that illustrate revival than
I do in the Old Testament than I
do in the New.
In the New you have the doctrines of
the Gospel in all its fullness.
But as you look at God's deep dealings
with His ancient people and how often they're
in great need and in need of renewal,
we see in it a wonderful picture of
God's people today.
And there are seasons when there's been decline
and when the fire has gone low, when
God needs to revive His people again.
And this is one of those incidents which
can be taken as a great picture of
the ways of God in revival.
It's an incident in the days of David.
David at this point, at long last, has
come to the throne.
Paul, his predecessor, has been slain in battle
and at last he's on the throne.
And at last God has got a man
on the throne whose ear He knows He
can catch.
It wasn't much use God trying to talk
to Saul.
He was dead.
He'd got right away going His own way.
But here was a man whose ear God
could catch.
And there were certain matters about which the
Lord wanted to catch His ear.
All right, then, here it is.
Just quietly listen, take it in, and see
if you can see the main emphasis for
us in this passage, even before I try
to explain something of it.
Then there was a famine in the days
of David, three years, year after year.
And David inquired of the Lord.
Yes, invariably that's what David did when there
was something that puzzled him.
When he needed instruction, he inquired of the
Lord.
And the Lord answered, it is for Saul
and for his bloody house, because he slew
the Gibeonites.
And the king called the Gibeonites and said
unto them, now the Gibeonites, you remember that
incident in the book of Joshua, now the
Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel,
but of the remnant of the Amorites.
And the children of Israel had sworn unto
them.
And Saul sought to slay them in his
zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.
Do you remember the story of the Gibeonites?
When under Joshua Israel were coming in so
victoriously into the land, and all the nations
in their immediate path knew that they were
doomed, those were far, well Israel might well
make some treaty with them, but not those
in their path, they were destined to destruction.
And a little nation, a little tribe I
suppose, we ought to give them that, living
around those parts, right in Israel's path, thought
of the route of sending messengers with old
clothes and broken down shoes, and food that
they were supposed to have been taking with
them for the journey, all dry and mouldy,
as if they'd come from a far distance,
asking for some sort of a treaty.
And Israel did not inquire of the Lord,
they just took them at their face value
and said, well there's no reason why we
shouldn't make a treaty with them, they're a
long way away, they're going to be no
threat to us at all.
And so they did.
And they discovered they were their neighbours.
And because they'd made that treaty, and given
that little group an oath that they would
spare them, they didn't kill them.
They did however make them hewers of wood
and draughts of water, you remember that incident.
And the people murmured at their leaders, they'd
been so foolish, but they said, we swore
unto them by the Lord and we'll stand
by that.
That was at least honourable.
And that's how it continued.
But apparently, we're not told anywhere else what
happened, Saul, when he was king, in his
zeal for the children of Israel, had massacred
a whole number of those people, and doubtless
taken their farm for Israel.
And the incident had passed.
They were powerless to do anything about it,
but they'd suffered a deep wrong.
And not even God did anything about it,
for the simple reason he knew he'd got
a king on the throne who wouldn't listen
if he did speak.
But now that Saul's gone, and David is
on the throne, God speaks to David, and
does so, by sending a strange, unaccountable famine.
The rain fails.
The crops fail.
It happened one year.
Well, it does happen, you know, it's David
sometimes, it's how it is.
It happened a second year, the rain fails.
It's strange, we'd have it two years running,
just like that.
And then, if you please, it happened a
third year.
And David realized this was God.
And this explains what he did.
Realizing here was a situation that had come
from God, it was God speaking.
He inquires of the Lord, the reason for
this famine.
And the Lord tells him, it is for
Saul, and for his bloody house, because he
flew the Gibeonites.
And the king called the Gibeonites and said
unto them, Wherefore, verse 3, David said unto
the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you?
And wherewith shall I make the atonement, that
ye may bless the inheritance of the Lord?
Because of that wrong done before.
And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will
have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor
of his house, neither for us shalt thou
kill any man in Israel.
And he said, What ye shall say, that
will I do for you.
And they answered the king, the man that
consumed us, and that devised against us, that
we should be destroyed from remaining in any
of the coasts of Israel, let seven men
of his sons be delivered unto us.
And we will hang them up unto the
Lord, in Gibeon of Saul, whom the Lord
did choose.
And the king said, I will give them.
It really is a bit gory, this story.
Terrible.
But that's the story, this is what happened.
And David had little to know.
Options.
They just couldn't go on.
With the heavens as brass.
And if this act of restitution was the
only way by which then legitimate grievance could
be met, by which God himself could be
imprisoned, then he had to do it.
So he took seven of Saul's descendants to
give to the Gibeonites.
But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of
Jonathan, the son of Saul, because of the
Lord's oath that was between them, between David
and Jonathan, the son of Saul.
But the king took the two sons of
Rister, the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare
unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth, and the five
sons of Michael, the daughter of Saul, whom
she brought up for Adriel, the son of
Baal-zilei, the meholophite.
And he delivered them into the hands of
the Gibeonites.
And they hanged them in the hill before
the Lord.
And they fell all seven together and were
put to death in the days of harvest,
in the first days, in the beginning of
barley harvest.
And Rister, the daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth
and spread it for her upon the rock
from the beginning of harvest until water dropped
upon them out of heaven and suffered neither
the birds of the air to rest on
them by day nor the beasts of the
field by night.
They were hung up on trees before the
Lord.
And it was told David what Rister, the
concubine of Saul, had done.
And David went and took the bones of
Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his son,
from the men of Jabesh-gilead, which had
stolen them from the street of Beth-shan,
where the Philistines had hanged them, where the
Philistines had slain Saul in Gilboa.
And he brought up from thence the bones
of Saul and the bones of Jonathan, his
son.
And they gathered the bones of them that
were hanged.
While he was dealing with the burial of
those that were hanged, he reminded himself of
Saul and Jonathan, who hadn't been given a
proper burial either.
But the main purpose at this time was
to deal with those bodies of those seven
men hanging on the tree.
And the bones of Saul and his son,
Jonathan, buried they in the country of Benjamin,
in Zila, in the sepulchre of Kish, his
father.
And they performed all that the king commanded
and their incest.
After that, after that, God was entreated for
the land.
So there's our incident, and I take it
to be an amazing picture of how things
can happen amongst the children of God, of
how us children of God may have a
time of famine, even as David.
As I suggested, the fact that there was
a famine for one year didn't disturb David
too much.
He accounted for it on natural grounds.
But when it happened three years in a
row, David began to take this seriously and
to ask for what reason this might have
happened.
And he inquired of the Lord.
I suppose the reason why God spoke to
his people in the Old Testament often by
sending them famine, which he did, was because
they were never led to expect famine in
that land.
It was a land of milk and honey,
they were promised.
A land of mountains, valleys and rivers, where
they would eat bread, they were told, without
scarcity.
And when they came into that promised land,
they found it even so.
But there were occasions when God, for reasons
best known to himself, shut up heaven, that
there was no rain.
And there became a terrible famine in that
land which normally produced food without any scarcity.
And the reason for which God would shut
up heaven was when his people departed from
the law and turned to other gods or
infringed his holy, beneficent commandments, as in this
case.
And then it might well be that if
he shut up heaven that there wasn't any
rain, then if his people who were called
by his name would humble themselves and pray
and turn from their wicked way, he would
hear their prayer, he would forgive their sin
and he would heal their land.
And so this is really quite Old Testament,
quite usual in the history of God's people
in the Old Testament.
But I mean to say we're really in
an atmosphere, this is something extraordinary.
They were dependent on heaven's rain and it
wasn't unusual for God to speak to his
people through withholding that rain.
Now with us, with regard to ourselves, we
were told, promised by the Lord himself, that
he that came to him would never hunger,
that he that believed on him would never
thirst.
Our experience in Christ was to be an
experience of a land that flowed with milk
and honey.
We were promised that the water that he
would give us, if we drank of it
we'd never thirst, it would become in us
a spring of water leaping up into everlasting
life.
And frankly, if you've been born of God's
Spirit, I'm suggesting to you that you found
that to be exactly the case.
You have found that the blessings of the
Gospel have not been overstated.
In those moments of proximity to Jesus which
you've known, you've found the hunger of your
soul satisfied.
You've found yourself rejoicing in him.
But there are times when perhaps you've discovered
that there seems to be a famine in
the land.
A famine that isn't just a matter of
your emotions changing.
Oh dear me, I had a late night
the other night, but I'm not rejoicing much
today.
Maybe after a good night's rest I'll feel
different.
But this is persistent.
And you may well have found there's a
famine in your soul.
You may well have found yourself in an
experience where the Bible hasn't been speaking to
you very vividly.
If you've been reading your portion, whatever system
of daily Bible reading you have, you've been
doing it very much as a chore.
It hasn't meant very much to you.
You haven't heard from heaven lately.
And the chances are that you will very
soon quit spending time over a book that
isn't living to you.
And maybe naturally there's been a famine in
your soul.
Amos talks about the famine that God would
send.
Even in Old Testament times.
Not a famine of want of water or
want of bread, but a famine, he says,
of hearing the words of the Lord.
And that's a famine indeed.
You may come to church.
You may partake of the means of grace,
but be unmoved by them.
Others are praising.
Others are melting.
There might be a tear or two that
others are shedding, but you are untouched.
And I've known experiences like that.
When my heart is cold and it's dry,
and when the word of God is not
living to me and I'm not being touched.
It may be that we've been finding prayer
not meaningful.
It has been worse.
And as a result, you've largely become prayerless.
It isn't merely that you are negligent in
keeping up with these important matters, but it
is that when you did pray, you didn't
get anywhere.
You tried again and got nowhere, and you
began bit by bit to quit.
And once again, it was because of this
famine that had come and settled down in
your soul.
It may be in the matter of witness
and concern for others.
We haven't really been sharing Jesus with other
people.
We haven't really been looking for opportunities, so
to speak.
And I believe it's because we feel we've
got so little to give.
We know the way of salvation.
We can mouth the words, but there's nothing
of reality there.
But this hasn't always been our...
There's been a famine in our hearts, and
as persistent as was that in the days
of David.
It could be a famine in David's case
for three years, year after year.
It could be as long as that.
Or it could be a famine for three
months, month after month.
Or it could be a famine for three
weeks, week after week.
Or it could be a famine for three
days, year after...
day after day.
And I ask you, are we prepared to
tolerate famine if only for three days in
our souls?
Well, David was not prepared for this state
of things to continue.
And bless his dear heart, he did this
sweet thing that was characteristic of him.
You can't help but love David for all
his failures and faults.
I love him.
And when he was in this state, and
in other situations he did it, he inquired
of the Lord.
And you know, quick as night, he got
the answer back.
It is the Saul.
And for his bloody house, because he slew
the Yiddish.
That little minority tribe had suffered a wrong
at the hands of David's predecessor.
Out of zeal for the children of Israel,
he put some of them to the sword
and appropriated their land.
The incident had passed into history, but it
had not been forgotten by God.
And now that David, that God had got
a king, whose heir he could get, he
spoke to him.
Spoke to him by sending the famine, knowing
that he had inquired of him, and sending
him the answer.
And very often, it's much the same with
us.
I wonder, however, if we're really concerned enough
at the famine to inquire of the Lord.
It could be that that goes on so
long that you think, well that's the normal
Christian life, there's nothing more to it than
that.
So you do sometimes feel as if Jesus
paid rather too much for our salvation, which
is so thin and lacking as what you're
experiencing.
If you could get to the safe, you're
so useless.
But others of us are.
God help us not to do this.
And we need to do what David did.
We need to inquire of the Lord.
For what cause is there this famine?
The famine may take all sorts of further
cause.
It may be difficult situations blow up.
And God's trying to get our attention through
those.
We may have some hard times with relationships
with others.
And my, we're not at all in a
happy state because of this, that and the
other.
And oh, happy the dear child of God
who knows in that situation to be humble
enough to inquire of the Lord.
And I want to tell you, you'll be
surprised at the rapidity with which he would
tell you for what cause it sends the
famine.
Now it's quite impossible to be dogmatic what
it'll be.
All I know it may well be something
that'll be an absolute stunning revelation to you.
Something you've never seen as likely to cause
any such famine.
It may be not some tremendous, dramatic sin.
It may be something that's much too subtle
that you would never guess it.
You've been rationalizing something in your life for
so long.
It'll only be the Holy Spirit himself who'll
be able to point it to us.
And so we need to inquire of the
Lord even as David did.
And the Lord will show us in his
own way and time, sometimes much quicker than
we think.
And very often it could be rather of
this order someone who's been wronged.
They've got a complaint against you.
And when there's a situation like that I
sometimes say we complain of the antagonistic
attitude of another.
Tell me, if they were here on their
own and I asked them about you what
would they say?
Oh, you may not think they're right.
They're true.
But what would you say?
What do you think they'd say?
Tell me.
And so slowly I encourage them to tell
me what they think their opponents, whoever it
is, would say.
Well, I suppose you'd say this and that.
Is there any truth in that?
Come on.
Any truth?
And you may well know that someone's attitude
to you is all due to something in
which they feel themselves to have been wronged.
To have been hurt.
As did these people in us.
You know the Lord's very compassionate towards and
he's called the Lamb disposition.
He's always called the Lamb.
It speaks of his humility.
His willingness to come down and not to
insist upon his life.
A Lamb, you know, is a meekest of
preachers.
You can do what you like for a
Lamb.
You can kick it, but it won't turn
round and snap at you.
It's meek, so to speak, and lowly in
heart.
That's why Jesus bears this wonderful title.
There's another reason, too, because he is the
Lamb is the antitype of that Lamb that
was slain on the Passover night.
But I think mainly because this describes his
character.
But there's a very strange phrase in the
book of Revelation.
It talks about the wrath of the Lamb.
If he's so meek and hewry, if he
humbled himself, if this name speaks of his
beneficence to all and his gentleness towards sinners,
how come do you have this phrase the
wrath of the Lamb?
It looks like a contradiction.
Oh, no, it isn't.
It's because he is the Lamb that there
is wrath.
Because he is concerned for the poor and
the needy that he takes up an attitude
of judgment towards those who oppress the poor
and needy and make them poor and needy.
It's just because he is the Lamb he
cannot but censure and deal with and have,
so to speak, on the carpet before him
any child of his who wrongs another.
And thus it says you have this extraordinary
phrase the wrath of the Lamb.
It's because he is loved for that one
who cannot but have dealings and talk to
you when you are dealing with them harshly,
wrongly, giving them cause for pain and cause
for...
And, oh, maybe many people never thought it
didn't matter about those gibbonites.
They were an alien group in any case.
We never should have made that promise to
them way back and their lands are very
desirable.
This is how Paul reasons.
And so he slew them and took their
land.
And people didn't think too much of it.
But God had heard their cries.
The voice of their blood was crying unto
him from the ground.
And when at last he got a man
who would hear he spoke to David about
it.
True, David hadn't been involved.
True, David wasn't guilty of that deed.
He didn't perpetrate the act but he was
now in a position to put it right.
And it could be sometimes happened that sometimes
God does that sort of thing.
Sometimes there's been trouble between families.
It was your dad or your mum who
was involved with that other family.
You didn't do it.
But although perhaps you didn't do it you
may be in a position now to put
it right.
And sometimes God might speak to us about
something like that.
And here am I in my time of
famine.
I'm concerned that God's smile doesn't seem to
be upon me these days.
And I inquire of the Lord and he
could be very clear and very specific about
the reason for which.
As I say, it's quite a revelation that
reason for which he has seen sin.
The reason being to bring you to inquire.
Have no option but to go to the...
And he found what about that thing.
Days like it all saw in the past.
They have forgotten it.
They have done nothing of the sort.
He was shocked at the extent how strongly...
There's no possibility of doing anything about it.
But God had acted on their behalf and
here comes...
Recognising that a grievous wrong had been done
against them.
And they were happy.
Perhaps surprised at this turn of events.
And he said, what must we do for
you?
Wherewith shall I make atonement, reconciliation that you
may bless the inheritance of the Lord because
this wrong has been spoiling our inheritance.
It's been cursing the inheritance of the Lord.
What must we do?
What will satisfy you?
And they said, we will have no silver
or gold from Saul.
Neither shall they kill any man in Israel
except that you give us seven of the
sons of the man who perpetrated this thing
for us and we will hang them up
before the Lord in Gibeah where Saul used
to live.
And he selected the sons from the descendants
with a big thing and these seven prisoners.
It's almost like a western.
When men were hung up on trees even
in those days, western.
And it's a picture to us that God
will...
wants us to inquire with Him and we've
got to be willing to repent.
In our case, to admit that the other
person was right and you were wrong.
That's very costly.
You lose your righteousness.
It's a death to die.
Even over small matters.
Day to day things that we need to
call sin and acknowledge.
Especially is the fact that these men were
hung up on trees in Gibeah.
That it was only after they were ultimately
buried that they were regarded
as bringing our sins.
It seems to note that whereas normally Jesus
is said to have been crucified on a
cross in five places at least in the
New Testament Jesus is said to have been
put on a tree.
A cross was a Roman punishment for criminals.
But the tree was something peculiarly for the
Hebrews.
As we shall see in a moment I'll
turn you to the passage.
It says Cursed is everyone that hangeth on
a tree.
And a man who was hung on a
tree was seen to be a curse of
God.
And so whereas the Romans saw one whom
they regarded as a criminal on a cross
the Hebrews saw one who inasmuch as he
was hung on a tree according to the
book of Deuteronomy was a curse of God
and therefore is a much awesome thing a
much more shameful thing to the Hebrews than
to the Romans.
And these men were hung on trees.
And it pictures the fact that Jesus was
hung on a tree who his own self
bare our sins in his own body on
the tree.
Now I want to turn you to Deuteronomy
21 where this passage is referred to.
Deuteronomy chapter 21 So that Jesus said to
be hung on a tree is based entirely
on these two verses.
And the Hebrews took it very seriously.
And if a man hath committed a sin
worthy of death and he be put to
death and thou hang him on the tree
his body shall not remain all night upon
the tree but thou shalt in any wise
bury him that day.
For he that is hanged is a curse
of God that thy land be not defiled
which the Lord thy God giveth thee for
an inheritance.
Now it says there if there is a
criminal put to death and you hang him
on a tree presumably as a warning to
others there his body hangs dangling from the
tree.
And these seven men were hung on seven
trees.
And if you do that as a warning
to others his body is not to remain
all night upon the tree.
It's right to hang that body on the
tree.
It's a warning.
But that hanging on the tree means according
to the law of Moses that that man,
that criminal is a curse to God.
But in hanging him on the tree that
curse has been pronounced of God and has
been finished.
Don't let that body remain on the tree
beyond the day.
That crime needs to be exposed.
It needs to be seen as being under
the curse of God.
But that expose is enough.
And by the going down of the sun
you must bring down that body and give
that body a decent burial.
And it's over.
Now this is lies back of something very
interesting in this passage.
But first of all let us see how
it applies to Jesus.
Will you turn to 1 Peter 2, 24.
There are sins in his own body on
the tree.
Just those phrases.
Who?
His own self.
There are sins in his body on the
tree.
Now literally and the revised I think helps
us one of the revisions does it is
this way who his own self carried up
our sins in his own body to the
tree.
Our sins needed to be exposed to the
curse of God to be shown what they
were.
That's right.
That's proper.
And that's what Jesus did.
He carried up our sins to that tree
as a symbolic act of showing that our
sins were under the curse.
But the beautiful thing is this.
It says who his own self did it.
It wasn't some angelic garbage man that took
this foul mess to the garbage pile and
had it exposed to the curse of God.
It might well have been given this distasteful
task to someone less than the son of
God who carried up our sins, his own
self to the tree.
And then it says he didn't only do
it as something outside of himself but who
his own self who his own self in
his own body carried up our sins to
the tree.
He allowed himself to be made an effigy
of this thing that God is nothing but
judgment.
And he became an effigy of this thing
and he carried up his own self in
his own body our sins to that place.
And he was made a curse for us
that you might never bear that curse.
Thou hast fulfilled the law and we are
justified so to him.
Ours is the blessing thine the curse.
We live for thou hast done.
It touches me, his own self.
And there our sins were given their due
exposure to the curse of God.
That curse had been fulfilled therefore he had
to be brought down.
And that's why the Jews were so concerned
that he should be brought down.
They knew the Lord of Moses although they
were doing a dastardly deed they were scrupulous
still about the minutiae of the Lord of
Moses.
And they were concerned that his body should
not be on the tree beyond the setting
of the sun.
And it was convenient that Joseph of Arimathea.
And this has
a great deal of meaning for us when
it comes to this matter of revival.
Now you would have thought that if they
had repented, if David and the nation repented
of that for which God sent the famine
and they had carried out this solemn act
of restitution and the gibbonites were satisfied that
that would have been the end of the
matter and the rains would have begun to
come again.
But they didn't.
Day after day those bodies swung from the
trees and the mother of one of the
boys whose body was there took a rug
and she sat on the rock to protect
those bodies from the vows.
She was all the time protecting them, protecting
them, poor thing.
And it went on and on.
And the rains and David knew that there
were things still not right.
And when he heard the pathetic story of
that mother protecting the bodies from the vows
and the birds of prey, he realized what
he failed to do.
He had not obeyed the law of men.
What had been done after the first...
He realized what he failed to do.
He had not obeyed.
Now, what does this mean to us?
It's not enough.
Even to go to that other person and
say, brother, I want you to forgive me.
And have it dangling over your head.
That sounds very humble.
Never to forget it.
Always to be chastening yourself.
But that's not revival.
You've got to see it.
I've got to see that that exposure that
was accomplished in Jesus, that exposure of my
sins that happened in Jesus at Calvary, and
I've got to believe the same.
And I've got to...
It's already had its curse.
There's no need for it to dangle there
any longer.
And it's only when that takes place and
experience when you come out of by that
failure, when you dare to believe that Jesus
did it all, it was a finished at
then, joy comes and peace.
And when the Lord sees that it caused
the famine and rejoicing in His forgiveness, that
then, He'll tell you revival isn't
merely the saints being broken or the saints
repenting.
Oh, they've been honest about it.
Oh yes, they've taken humbling steps as the
Spirit has shown them a relationship which wasn't
right, a thing that wasn't straight.
Because even after you've asked another to forgive
you, you can still be taking a stick
to yourself.
And you still haven't got a testimony.
You daren't really give it to the others.
You daren't say anything.
You say if I really told the truth,
what would people think?
And we've not got through to that place.
The old bodies are still dangling from their
trees.
But in Jesus, they've been cut down, they
have been.
What's that lovely gospel hymn?
Living He loved me, dying He saved me,
buried He carried my sins far away.
And it's when I come into the good
of that, I begin to rejoice.
And then God is intrigued for the land
and the blessing returns.
I just want to backtrack a little bit.
Pam is going to add something from her
testimony in a moment.
But I want to backtrack on something about
these things that have caused God to shut
up Heaven, that there isn't any rest.
Of some matter in which the believer has
deliberately sinned and indulged and enjoyed in doing
it.
Well, there may be cases like that, which
need confession and forgiveness intended.
It isn't quite as obvious that a person
is getting on with their business, minding their
own affairs, and they've got certain desires, certain
ambitions, and to get those ambitions fulfilled they
may not be illegitimate.
He does something.
He doesn't enjoy the doing of it, but
it's that that he wants.
But in the process to get that he
has to do a dirty tricky business.
One's child's progress at school.
I don't quite understand.
Every country has a different system.
But there may be some, you'll have to
see if this identifies this.
Could there be that parents have to make
certain declarations about certain things, and they're so
anxious for the best for their children that
a student is so anxious to get
through that exam?
That's the sort of thing I believe.
Although Saul did this, maybe he wasn't all
that bloodthirsty.
Didn't do it because he liked to have
a nice day slaughtered, don't you know what?
Not a bit.
How easily I would say, I could have
done something, so to speak, on the side.
I don't know whether I'm explaining myself very
clearly, but I think you're getting it.
You will understand when I tell you the
story of publishing a book.
And I had a book, a manuscript, that
I didn't think that the publisher that I
would have liked to have had it, would
want it.
The greatest, they were the most important publishers,
but I hadn't got the faith to offer
it to them.
And so I offered it to a minor
publisher, and sent it to him, and didn't
hear.
It took them some time to read the
manuscript.
But I was so anxious to get an
opinion on this manuscript that I thought, well,
I will show this manuscript to the other
publisher.
Now, in sending it in the first place
to the smaller publisher, I'd said, now, I'm
offering it to you, I'm not really seriously
offering it anywhere else.
And I virtually gave them what we call
first refusal.
But because I was anxious to get an
opinion, I did go to the friend of
mine, who was the head of this larger
publisher, for an opinion.
And to my surprise, it was so well
received that in a few days I received
a letter accepting it and offering a contract
with very favourable terms, more favourable than I
had known before.
But I'd already offered a first refusal to
the other man.
But he hadn't answered three weeks, hadn't got
a line.
You can wait longer than that, I can
assure you, to get a manuscript read.
And here I was, a clear cut offer,
but I'd already offered to a man, and
I don't think he'd even registered.
And oh, I didn't want to regret that.
Oh, I'd made up my mind I'd like
to do that.
And so I called that smaller publisher.
I said, have you read that manuscript yet?
No, not yet.
Well, I said, I've already had a very
unexpected offer from the other.
I'd really rather like to take it.
He said, this is no way to do
this.
Offer, put a more favourable one later on.
In the realm of real estate in Britain,
we call that gazumping, about to buy that
property and then someone else.
He would have seen a wrong was done.
And in any case, he gave me that
word about one of the psalms.
Psalm 8 is it?
It talks about who shall ascend into the
hill of the Lord.
And one of the qualifications is, he that
swears to his own mad sword.
Yes, it appeared to my own hurt.
We may not get the point.
You see, it's these sort of things you
might almost say done in ignorance, not really.
Not because you said, now let me really
have a chance to tell some lies and
break some promises.
Although, you can get away with it.
He whom
thou now have regarded that woman as rather
promiscuous, indulging that side of life without regard
to right.
But I realised that I had a first
man, she was sure she could have a
husband.
And there was another man.
Each time she wanted only and all five
had left.
And he whom thou now have, he's somebody
else's husband.
And to get that bit of happiness, you
have wronged another.
They were straight marriages, they were good takers.
He played the game of fraud.
Really should have brought those illustrations, those
budders on the tree.
It came when he saw that the curse
has power in the blood of Jesus.
Would you be free from your sin?
New life, revival for me and for others.
The usual story, there's no part of God's
word.
Now we're going to sing 46.
Would you be free then from your burden
of sin?
There's power in the blood.
We'll sing the first verse and the last
one.
Would you be free from your burden of
sin?