It is a privilege for me and an
honor to address you.
I have not earned, and that I don't
deserve, but whom I'd argue that you're bored.
They invited me, I accepted, and now there's
one very happy circumstance surrounding my little talk
here this morning, and that is that I
present this talk, Forward with Christ, in total
commitment.
And if I had chosen, I would have
chosen.
So when you get a sympathetic audience before
a man, please, you're speaking on a topic
chosen for him, but one that he would
himself have chosen.
A man should be at least a passable
sermon under those circumstances.
If he couldn't, I assume he wasn't called
a priest anyhow.
I believe the ministry can go back to
selling real estate or raising room for beggars.
Willed or best, and we'll try to keep
it in the time.
I quit when it's time, whether I'm finished
or not.
Now, in the book, the first chapter, it
says, Jesus, who is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.
For by him were all things given, and
that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether
they be thrones or dominions or principalities or
powers created by him and for him.
And he is before all things, and by
him all things consist.
And he is the head of the body,
the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn
from the dead, that in all things are
preeminent.
For it pleased the Father that in him
should all fulness dwell.
Then in Ephesians, in the concluding verses of
the second, Paul says that God's power wrought
in Christ, his Son from the dead, set
him at his own right hand in the
heavenly places, far above in power and might
and dominion, and every name that is named,
not only in this world, but also in
that which is to come.
All things under his feet gave him to
be the head over all things to the
church, which is his body, fulnessable in all.
And then, second chapter, we are no more
strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the
Saints in the household upon the foundation of
the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being
the chief cornerstone.
All the buildings fitly framed together grow unto
one holy temple in the Lord, in whom
ye also are builded together for inhabitation of
God through the Spirit.
When we talk about our union with Christ
and our conscious and volition in Christ and
total commitment, we must look at who Christ
is and what his relation is to the
redeemed company, which we call the Church.
In one of the passages which I have
read to you, you will find this truth
imperfectly condensed into three words, the words being
centrality, body, and preeminence.
It says that Jesus Christ the Lord is
central.
The old writers used to say that Christ
is to the Church what the soul is
to the body.
It is that which gives it life.
When the soul flees the body, there is
nothing that can keep the body alive.
When the soul takes over, and in the
Church of Christ, any church, anywhere of any
denomination, whatever it may call itself, there is
one there imparting life, building the life of
that redeemed body.
For Christ is central, he holds it together,
and in him it adheres.
Then there is the next word, basicality.
I do not know whether there was such
a word.
I made it, but if there isn't, there
ought to be.
I know this sounds like a religious cliché,
but I'd like to say it at least
in such tone of voice that the cliché
element, and you'll hear it as though you
were hearing it for the first time, that
the whole Church of God rests down upon
the shoulders I think we might be able
to go around the world and simply cry,
Christ is enough.
Jesus Christ is enough.
What weak evangelical circles, and that's all I
shall speak to, I never speak to liberals
on the general ground that it's not fair
to kill a shoot-at-a-deadline.
Remember, it's always the role in our spiritual
lives personally, and it's always the additions, or
the adding.
Let's remember that God has declared that Christ
is the truth and the light, he is
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, he
is the wisdom of God and the power
of God.
He gathers up in himself all things, and
in him all things consist, so that we
do not want Jesus Christ to be something
else, or Jesus Christ and something else, and
whenever you want to put a comma after
Christ, not Christ with a comma on something
else, or Christ with a dash leading to
something else, but we must preach Christ period,
for Christ is basic to the Church of
Christ.
Oh heaven and give your all for the
rising of the sun thereof, and what bearing
in him, so the Lord Jesus Christ is
enough.
That we of the evangelical faith, which is
I believe to be in the long, long
-term faith, that we should not preach Christ
plus science or Christ plus education or Christ
plus civilization, but Christ alone and Christ enough.
These other things may have their place in
the city, just as you can throw sand
into a vat where they may go and
melt up, so includes all these things, but
we're not leaning on any of them, but
we're resting down on him who is the
faith of our Father.
And then there's that word preeminent, that he
might have, that he might be preeminent and
have a thing.
So let's think of Jesus Christ above all
things, and underneath all things, and outside of
all things, and inside of all things.
He's above, pushed up, as the old Bishop
said, and he's beneath all things, but not
pressed down.
He's above all, presiding, and beneath all, upholding,
and outside of
all things, and in the true Christian faith
as an attachment to the person of Christ.
An attachment to the person of Christ, and
total commitment to Jesus, or is this, there
are four or five things I'll talk about
if I have time to get through them.
That's the attachment to the individual person, and
the volitional attachment, and the exclusive and inclusive
attachment, and the irrevocable attachment.
Let's look at the first one, that to
follow Christ, for complete, committal, and total commitment,
means there's got to be an intellectual attachment
to Christ.
That is, we rely on our feelings, or
our notion about Christ.
There's a lot of us among us these
days, and I believe that you and I,
and then point to the left, you know
that it was old John, and Warren Pinkle
in his day, the old Puritan, he said,
we bury Christ, and I warn you, that
if you're satisfied with an imaginary Christ, and
the really saved man, and the man who's
following, the romantic Christ of the
female novelist, and for
as the reasonable soul, and soul, God, and
this is the Christ we adore, that
doesn't begin with Christ.
He is the one, intellectual attachment to Christ.
You can't simply let your heart run out
to Christ, as the Catholics let it run
out to Virgin Mary, in a kind of
a rousing about Christ, not being sure of
who Christ is.
This is the essence of heresy.
We must believe in the Christ, believe he's
what God says he is.
Well, then I must go on, there's the
volitional attachment to Christ, an image of Christ,
for, in complete and total commitment, I must
do it by my will.
Satan, he's making a bad mistake, who tries
to live on impulse and inspiration, who hopes
to sail across the undulating sea of feeling.
You can't do it, my brother, because the
devil gets you down.
The old writers used to tell us of
the dark night of the soul, that there's
a place where God isn't going to take
us off to heaven, and
has taught us that faith and feeling are
not the same, though thank God, faith brings
feeling sometimes.
You see, I haven't heard my soul believe
in you.
Daniel determined that he would not eat of
the king's meat, and just as Jesus said,
his face like a flint, and just as
pointing, I do.
I believe that the true follower of Christ
must be a man whose will has been
sanctified, not a man.
I never believed in when we teach the
deeper life, that we take, say that God
destroys our will.
This man would be a man, like a
man without a backbone.
I mean that in our attachment, you see,
there is a polarity in the Christian life.
The nation begins at the very threshold.
These are the days when we're trying to
be positive, 100 percent positive.
The scripture says of Jesus, that thou hast
loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and that was
said of the very Christ himself, and if
he had to hate in order to love,
but they tell us negative.
People write to me and say you're negative.
Why don't you go positive?
Well, to be positive 100 percent would be
as useless, and thank God, as fatal, for
the scriptures.
That's a picture
of his infinite nature.
All that is said and all that is
promised by, I include that all, and then
in addition to that, I'm joined to him
and identified with him, so I accept him,
his friends.
I love all the people of God.
I've never been a good denominationalist.
The president of the society in which I
belong is President Riggs, but I like to
say this to you, brethren, that while I
worked faithfully along with all my brethren, I
never was much of a denominationalist.
But God has his children everywhere, and all
God's children got wings, and all through
the good brother, and he was making a
bit of a notion of himself, a preacher,
and on my way out I stopped the
striction, and his life is my life, and
that's resurrection.
What is a good definition for a Christian?
Well, I think that Paul was, and
he gave us a little text there, is
he alive or is he full of himself?
So all the members of the body of
Christ join, share in some measure in that
hypo, so that we're united with him, and
when we died on it, which
means that we are rich.
Years ago was long gone.
If you look out, well
then there's a, there's, it means that the
war doesn't want any experiment.
I never read the book.
I wouldn't be caught dead reading it.
He said one
day when he saw one coming out of
the sun, when
he had gotten in that suicide
bombing, and you know, Christians ought to be
those who are this week looking, what
is, what is, what does it mean to
be crucified?
And the old man thought a moment.
The man who's crucified is only facing one
direction.
He stopped looking back.
He's looking straight ahead, so that the crucified
man on a cross is looking, graying
hair, and said one thing more, son, about
a man on a cross.
He's not going out to dine on the
cross.
He doesn't say to his wife, oh goodbye
honey, I'll be in shortly after five.
He didn't go out to dine.
So the fellow who takes a cross and
says one thing about a man on a
cross, son, he has no further plans of
his own.
So when you say you're crucified, know that
Christ is making your plans.
I tell you gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, 20
minutes on your knees in silence before me,
teach you more than you can learn out
of books, and teach you more than you
can even learn in churches.
Put your plans lay them before you.
If the boards of the churches would only
learn to spend more time with God, then
they could save all those midnight board meetings
where everybody leans back and in the boardroom,
he'll give you, he'll give you his plans.
All right, now I think that's about all
I want to say, that we are to
be joined to Jesus Christ in telling who
he is.
We're to be volitionally joined and not try
to live on our feelings.
So thank God there'll be a lot of
feeling, everything that's contrary to him and intrusively
attached, taking in everything that he surrounds himself
in irrevocably attached, so we're expendable and we're
not going back.
Well, may God bless us all.
Now it's time to stop.
For here this is a man out of
time.