And we're at chapter three this evening, going
through from verse fourteen to the end of
the chapter.
Now, for some weeks past, we've been looking
very carefully at these wonderful, thrilling messages
of our Lord to the churches.
Somebody asked me once, did the Lord Jesus
ever write any letters?
Yes, seven of them, I said.
And they didn't know where they were.
Are we aware that these seven letters to
these seven churches are our Lord's messages to
the churches?
We began these letters some weeks ago by
looking at our Lord's walking in the midst
of the seven golden candlesticks and found out
that the seven golden candlesticks were the seven
churches of Asia.
And we've noted very carefully each evening that
these were actual, literal, local churches.
And it was most interesting for us to
see our Lord writing to these actual, literal,
local churches.
But we noticed each week as the letter
was opened up to that particular church that
the Lord turned from talking to the church
to talk to individuals.
And you'll find it's the same again this
evening, because when we get through this letter
to the Laodicean church, or the church at
Laodicea, you'll find that he comes to the
end.
He says, Behold, I stand at the door
and knock, if any man, and that comes
down to the individual.
Because I'm positively sure in these last of
the last days, God is looking for men
who will give Christ first place in the
house.
And God can do things when this is
accomplished.
And we've looked very carefully at these actual,
literal, local churches, and we've been most careful
about this individual, personal word each evening to
him that overcometh.
And of course we've noticed something else, that
these churches are not only actual and literal,
and in these messages there is a word
for every individual.
Yet we see these churches as pictures of
the church's period, and the seven is the
perfect number.
And we have had these churches bringing before
us periods of church history.
I wonder can you name them off without
looking at it now.
The first one was Ephesus, and it pictures
for us the period when the church sailed
out from Pentecost in love with the Lord,
and then she got taken up with her
doctrines, and with her governments, and with so
many other details, that she began to lose
her first love.
And it covers the first hundred years of
church history.
And the next church was Smyrna, and we
found out that the word means suffering.
And for the next 200 years of church
history, the church of Jesus Christ suffered untold
sufferings under the hand and hand of the
Roman emperors.
And then we came to the church of
Pergamos, and the word actually means mixed marriage.
And this covers the next 300 years of
church history, where the church got married to
the state through Constantine, and this was the
worst move that was ever made.
When church and state became united, and then
we come to that period under the church
of Priapanda, and this brings us to the
dark ages, when the people caught of Rome
came into power, and priest craft climbed to
the highest pinnacle in the church of Christ,
and the mass, and so many Roman blasphemies
got established, and these were the dark ages.
And then we came to the church of
Fabus, and that brought us to the period
of the Reformation, when the Protestants protested against
papal dictation, and when Luther came out and
established the full and final authority of the
word of God, established that the finished work
of Christ was all that a poor sinner
needed to rest upon, and preached the great
doctrine of justification by faith.
And these are the foundations of Protestantism.
But the trouble is that we have a
dead Protestantism today.
We have so many Protestants in this land
barging about and talking about the border, and
they don't give a hoot about the Bible.
Oh yes, we've got a great lot of
boys protesting right and left and centre, but
they don't preach justification by faith, and they
care less.
A great crowd of them, not all of
them, go to church once every year, the
Sunday before the 12th.
They call themselves Protestants.
I say they're dead.
And the trouble with the land is that
we have so many of them.
And when the Lord came to talk to
the church at Sardis, this is what he
said.
He said, thou hast the name to live,
but thou art dead.
And I think he would say the same
to me.
And when he talked to the church at
Philadelphia, the word means brotherly love, brings us
to the period of the great revivals in
Austria, in Wales, in America.
And now we come to the second one,
and it's the church of Leo de Sera.
It is very interesting because I think that
you would know that the Greek word Leo,
it means the people.
You remember we were dealing with the word
Nicolaitans the other week, when Nicola means conqueror,
and Leo means people.
And we were in the period where the
priests were conquering the people.
Ah well, we're looking at the people here
now, Leo.
And the word Garcia means rights.
Now this is the period where we're going
to hear a lot about the people's rights.
That must be this period.
We've heard more in the last three years
about civil rights than we've ever done in
our whole history in Austria.
And the trouble is that, maybe lawfully enough,
some people have certain things to say about
civil rights.
But the great many rebels climbed on the
bandwagon, and the civil rights never put them
off.
They harboured them.
But of course I'm not anxious about politics
or what happens too much in Austria in
that direction.
I want to see the church of Jesus
Christ in this last period when people are
talking about the rights.
What is the church doing is my business.
And so this is a very interesting letter
for us this evening.
It's the last letter of our Lord, and
it's the last letter to the last church.
And I think without any trouble whatsoever, it's
covering the last of the last days.
So we should listen very carefully because much
that's in the letter is for us this
evening.
On each of these seven letters, the Lord
has stamped his name in one way and
another, and there's the great name on this
letter.
We're at verse 14.
And on to the angel of the church
of the Laodiceans right.
And the word angel, of course, doesn't refer
to a shining angel.
You would know that the Lord was not
commanding John to write to an angel in
heaven.
The word angel means messenger.
And there was someone in the church of
the Laodiceans responsible to God for the spiritual
quality of the people.
And the letter is written to him.
And on to the angel of the church
of the Laodiceans right.
These things saith thee, Amen.
Capital A, of course.
It's one of the titles of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
And it's one of the titles of our
Lord Jesus Christ in relation to the church.
Remember, all the promises of God to us
believers in this church age, all the promises
in the book, are all yea and amen.
In Christ, he's the great amen to the
church.
And whatever God has promised the church in
this age, it will be fulfilled only in
Christ.
And we need to claim it there.
He's the great amen to the church.
And he goes further with his name.
These things saith thee, Amen.
The faithful and true witness.
And in some of the translations, there's a
capital F and a capital T, because this
still refers to Christ.
And I think it refers to Christ again
in relation to the church.
Because the church of Jesus Christ will always
find him faithful.
Sometimes he reduces us just because he's faithful.
You remember one speaker said to him, Far
be it from me, Lord, to go to
the cross.
And he immediately turned and he said, Get
thee behind me, Satan.
It was a faithful word.
The old devil was taking hold of Satan.
And the Lord will always be faithful to
you.
You'll not always get from the Lord what
you want, but you'll most surely get what
you need.
And he may have to rebuke you someday,
but you'll know he's just being faithful to
you.
And you'll always find him true.
His love will always be true.
It will never change.
It will never waver.
It will never grow less, and it cannot
grow more.
You know, when you look at the cross,
and you realize that the naked, battered, bleeding
figure on the center tree is God's Son,
and you learn the deep truth that he's
there to pay the price for your redemption,
and you can say from your heart, The
Son of God loved me and gave himself
for me.
Then you must know in the depths of
your being that he could never love you
more than that.
Let me tell you right now, he will
never love you less.
It will never change.
I am persuaded that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor heights of
depth, nor any other creature can separate us
from the love of God that's in Christ.
He's the brief amen to the church.
He's the faithful and true witness.
And there's a bit more of his name
here.
He's called the Amen, the Faithful and True
Witness, the Beginning of the Creation of God.
That's a great title that's there.
Well, I know the Russellites take it up
and try to twist it, as they do
many other things.
One of them said to me once, you
know right well that Jesus Christ was the
created being.
In fact, I said, I know the opposite
of that, that he was the creator.
He said, you must know that it says
he's the beginning of the creation of God.
By that you mean, I said, that he
was the first thing that God made?
Yes, he said, that's exactly what it is.
He was the first thing that God made.
He was the beginning of the creation of
God.
I said, do you believe he was the
word?
Because it talks about the word God made
flesh and breath among us.
Then he had to say, yes, I believe
he was the word.
Well, I said, this book of John begins,
in the beginning the word was.
And the phrase, in the beginning, means when
anything that ever had a beginning began, the
word was.
The word had no beginning.
The word was God.
Therefore, it couldn't have a beginning, but I
wasn't resting the argument there.
I took him down the chapter a little
bit, and I said, speaking of Christ, it
says, without him was not anything made that
was made.
Well, if he was made, if he was
the first thing that God ever made, you
cannot say of him, without him was not
anything made that was not.
In the message to the Colossians, it says,
all things were made by him, and all
things were made for him.
You see, he's twisting this, because one of
the oldest translations of this phrase here is
this.
It says, these things hath the Amen, the
faithful and true witness, the beginner of the
creation of God.
And that's what all, all scripture teaches, that
he's the beginner of all the creation of
God.
But I think it's deeper than that, you
see.
I think the Amen shows his relationship to
the Church, and the faithful and true witness
shows his relationship to the Church, and the
beginner of the creation is referring to the
beginning of the new creation.
The Church is his new creation, and he's
the one who builds the Church.
Upon this rock I will build my Church.
So that what we're learning just now is,
that along we're away at the very last
of the last days, the Lord is just
the same, he's the Amen, he's the faithful
and true witness, he's the one who began
the Church, and he's here with us still,
and he has never changed.
I think we need to learn this as
we get into the letter.
And then he begins to talk to the
Church, verse 15, I know thy works that
thou art neither cold nor hot.
I know thy works cold or hot, for
then because thou art lukewarm.
I wonder as we look over the whole
profession, passing Church of Jesus Christ in this
planet tonight, north and south and east and
west, would this be right this evening?
Is this 95 percent of professing Christians
lukewarm?
And I'm positively sure it's right.
You know, you can't judge all the Baptist
churches by this one.
There is a lot of Baptist churches in
this land that got a class like this
tonight.
They're sure they'll sit in the hearth with
the prayer meeting and the Bible class all
together when you can have neither at once.
My dear friends, we're having a lukewarm Christianity,
are we not?
Yes indeed we are.
You see, men and women who profess the
name of Jesus Christ, they're not so cold
that they never go to church at all.
But they're not so hot that they're at
all the meetings.
They're not so cold that they don't give
something to the Lord.
They're not so hot that they give generously.
They're not so cold that they don't pray.
They're not so hot that they're at every
prayer meeting, not on your life or not.
My, there's some old Baptist with their name
on the roll here.
I've never been at the prayer meeting since
I came here and I'm 20 years here.
And I'm not sure whether I'm going to
heaven or not.
Just having your name on the roll is
not enough.
Wonder how the Lord looks at us.
He says, I know your works.
Thou art neither cold or hot.
Thou art lukewarm.
This is their description.
And then he said this, so then, because
thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot,
I will spew thee out of my mouth.
You know, the Lord gets sick of this
kind of Christianity.
There's nothing will make you sick quicker than
lukewarm water.
Just take a mouthful and rumble it round
for a while, do you see?
And the Lord may be sick of some
of us.
Oh, we do a lot of shouting and
we do a lot of professing and we
would split hairs and we would argue about
this and that and the other.
And yet our hearts are not right with
God at all.
When it comes to the prayer meeting, you're
absent.
The Lord gets fed up with you.
You know, you just need to put your
mind down church history.
And I don't want to be severe on
anybody, but I could pick you churches out
of church history tonight.
And there was once upon a time they
were really alive and they were hot and
they were out and out for God.
And I can tell you the Lord has
spewed them out long ago.
That's hell for them.
And there are no guarantees that they won't
do it with winter avenue.
Not at all.
Your name here is not enough.
The Lord could get fed up with you
and spew you out.
Is that the danger?
You can see the description and you can
see the danger.
Have a look at their delusion now.
The Lord was really looking into this church,
verse 17.
Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased
with goods and have need of nothing and
knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.
And there's a special figure of speech in
the Greek there.
Knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor and blind and naked.
The Lord's not worried about good English, you
know.
We were saying that we'd have to say
it wretched, miserable, poor, blind, armed, naked to
make it nice.
The Lord is emphasizing everything that he's saying
here.
When wouldn't it be a dreadful thing if
the Lord walked down the aisle tonight and
just stopped beside you and looked into your
eyes and said, thou art wretched.
You know there's one thing that's absolutely sure
in life and it's this.
The true spiritual index of spiritual poverty is
spiritual pride.
When you get people saying, we have need
of nothing.
You hear people saying, I've got it.
Ah, you can defend your life, they've got
nothing but self.
It's all I, you know.
And it's a big capital I too.
The Lord might come round and say, thou
art wretched.
This is a dreadful word that's here, this
word miserable.
You know, I preached one Sunday morning here
on miserable Christians.
You remember the day when Peter denied his
laws to those who trusted him.
And the Lord just turned and looked at
him, withered him up.
And he went out, sat down out on
the hedgeway somewhere, weeping.
You know he was miserable.
And if you're denying your Lord and he
looks into your eyes, you ought to feel
how miserable you are.
You know there was once upon a time
that Thomas, the great Thomas, one of the
apostles, walked about the whole week filled with
unbelief.
Oh, he just couldn't believe what a miserable
character he was.
It was the best week that Christians ever
had.
It was the week the Lord rose from
the dead and he was miserable the whole
week.
You remember the two going down the road
to Emmaus.
My, they just didn't know where they were.
They didn't know if Christ had risen or
not.
They just didn't know anything.
They were in a fog.
They walked and they were sad.
They were miserable.
You remember when John Mark ran away from
the work of God, go out of the
heavens and find miserable followers of God?
Elijah under the juniper tree.
Samson at the treadmill.
Achan standing condemned in the line of his
family.
Where are we tonight?
What would the Lord say?
You can see their delusion.
Yes, he underlines their description.
And their danger.
And their delusion.
And then we come to their deficiency.
He says, I counsel thee to buy of
me gold tried in the fire that thou
mayest be rich.
You know, gold is something of great value.
And he's using this metaphorically here to show
this church that was cold, that was lukewarm.
This church that was so wretched and miserable.
This church that was so proud and yet
blind.
He was showing it that it had no
value before the world.
I think this is how we need to
test the local church.
Are we helping the folks around us?
Are the folks getting saved?
We had another wee girl came after Sunday
night's meeting, weeping to me.
God dealt with her through the night.
You know that from last new year till
now, we've had about 94 conversions.
Then let's test the local church by value.
It's not the house you split.
It's not the profession you make.
What work is being done?
That's the bit that matters.
You get a lot of old chap, but
I don't know whether there's anything being done
or not.
You know, I was coming down the main
street one day, and a gentleman stopped me.
He said, is little soul soul a member
of your assembly?
I said, no she's not.
Oh, he said, I'm glad to hear that.
And then he was going to walk on.
I said, here we met.
What are you chatting about?
Whatever you've got to say, say it like
a man and don't fiddle him.
I said, I just was going to say
to you, she was a member of yours.
She owes me about 200 pounds for the
last six months.
And I know a lot of traders around
the town, she owes them a lot of
money.
And she's running around prayer meetings saying amen
and hallelujah and all the rest of us.
And she's of no value in this town.
And I think he was right.
It is no use saying amen, you know.
You need to have a bit of value.
You know what W.P. did on one
occasion?
Coming down York Street, the button came off
the coach.
So he lifted the button up and walked
into the first tailor's.
He said, so long.
And the retailer's sewing it on, and he
said, you're W.P. Nicholson.
I said, that's right.
He said, were you ever at the meeting
yet?
No, I have no notion of going.
I said, why?
He said, there's a couple of boys up
in that church that you're featuring in that
owes me for two suits for about four
years.
Oh, well, he says, I'll get you your
money before the weekend.
So you see, he gets up and he
said, there's a couple of gentlemen in this
church and they owe me a tailor up
the road there for two suits for so
long.
And if it's not paid before Friday, I'm
giving their names out on Friday night.
And they tell me there were more suits
paid.
Yes.
Well, you see, the church here had no
value at all.
And you can see this, he said to
them, verse 18.
I constantly survived me gold fired in the
fire that thou mayest be rich, and white
raiment that thou mayest be clothed.
You know, he's using this symbolically too, as
something that attracts men and women.
Because we need to have not only value,
but virtue.
We need to attract men and women to
Christ.
I led a young fellow to the Lord
not so long ago in the bestery there,
you see it tonight.
And I said to him, John, how did
you become convicted to this state you're in
tonight?
He says, mind you, it wasn't you preaching.
I said, well, John, tell me what it
was.
He says, there's a fellow works with me.
And he says, that fellow lives for Jesus
Christ from morning till night.
And I have watched him.
And I have seen him under every possible
kind of persecution, and things that were said,
and things that were did to annoy him.
And he just shone like Jesus Christ.
He adopted me.
He says, that's good God.
There are people one like that, you know.
The church needs to have value.
And the church needs to have virtue.
And he said this to the church.
I constantly survived me gold fired in the
fire that thou mayest be rich, and white
raiment that thou mayest be clothed.
That the shame of thy nakedness do not
appear, and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that
thou mayest see.
I think the church that's going to be
for the glory of God needs to have
value.
It needs to have vesture.
It needs to have vision.
There are two things I think we believers
need to see all the time.
We need to have a vision of him.
My, on Sunday morning we were looking at
our Lord in this church.
And this the thrones prayed at our table
afterwards.
Lord, keep us looking at thee.
Because it does you good when you look
at him.
The whole thing is in the glass, the
glory of the Lord.
You know, it changes you.
Well, we need to have a vision of
him.
But we also need to have a vision
of hell.
They'll put you under.
They'll go to hell, you know.
And some of them get shot one of
these days.
Be in hell.
Some of your friends are on the edge
of hell.
You would need to have a vision of
the Lord.
The Lord would need to anoint our eyes.
King and hell.
I believe it would do us good.
You can see their deficiency.
And then we come to this most important
bit of the letter to them.
Verse 19.
He said, As many as I love, I
rebuke and chasten.
Be zealous therefore and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man, and I want to underline
that, I believe with all my heart and
soul that the Lord is looking for men
and women.
You know, the whole structure of the church
is in such a chaotic state that names
don't matter very much.
Some people are proud of Baptists.
Well, I can take you to Baptist churches
where you wouldn't be found dead in.
Baptist church in England, where one of our
men went for holiday and thought he would
go into the meeting in the morning.
And the preacher was late and he came
up the aisle with golf clubs on his
shoulders.
And up in Cotswold up there, he says,
I'll have to hurry up with this.
I've got to play a golf match.
Baptist church, you wouldn't be caught dead in
it, would you?
And there are gathering halls in England where
they sell tickets continually for dues.
And you wouldn't like to be mixed up
with them either.
Friend, let's get this, the Lord needs you.
And we need to get in with an
association of people who are going to stand
up for what this book teaches.
And this book teaches us that we need
to remember the Lord on the first day
of the week, because that's what the early
church did.
And this book teaches us that believers need
to be baptized, not sprinkled with popish nonsense.
This book teaches us that we must preach
the word.
And that's why this class is here this
evening, after 20 years.
And we're having problems with barriers and everything
else.
But in spite of her, it's still here.
This book teaches us that we need to
preach the gospel.
This book teaches us that we need to
get together to pray for men and women,
and for all who are in authority, miserable
as they are.
Friend, you find some place where they do
what the Lord wants them to do.
And remember, the Lord needs you too.
You know, he's talking to individuals.
And if you've found out as we went
down the chapter that this is your description,
you're neither cold nor hot.
You need to own up to it, you
know, and repent.
And if this is your delusion that you've
been all right when you've been miserable, and
if this is your deficiency, then tonight, you
know, you can put things right.
You know, this opening the door, I know
you know that this was preached to sinners
at times.
I can tell you it wasn't written for
sinners.
Oh, I know there's an interpretation and application,
and I'm quite prepared to accept it, but
this is the interpretation that we're at tonight.
It was written to the church of the
laity fiends.
The Lord was wanting believers to let them
into their life in a way that they
had never done before.
And he may be talking to you.
And you know, this is very wonderful that
you can be so convicted in a meeting
like this to know that, well, it's true,
I'm neither cold nor hot.
Lord, I've been going around thinking I'm the
whole cheese when I'm poor and blind and
miserable and naked.
Oh, God, I've had no value for me,
and I've had no attraction for poor lost
sinners.
And it's true, I never see heaven or
hell.
My life would need to change.
The Lord would love to change a lot
of us.
And in these last of the last days,
we would need to change.
If we're going to make a mark on
this generation at all, we'll need to open
the door and let the Lord in.
I want to show you what it really
means to let the Lord in.
Then you'll know whether you've let the men
or not into your life in a real
way.
Let's go to Matthew's gospel for a moment
or two.
And we're at Matthew 21.
Matthew 21, verse
12.
Matthew 21, verse 12.
And Jesus went into the temple of God.
Now, I know what it means perfectly, that
he went into that big stone temple, Solomon's
temple it was called.
But I know that this body of mine
is also called the temple of God.
Know ye not that your body is the
temple of God?
This is the temple of God.
And I think that this illustrates exactly what
happens when Jesus has his own way in
the temple.
Jesus went into the temple of God and
cast out all them that sold and bought
in the temple.
Do you know, he interfered with the business.
Did you get the hold of that?
Because sold and bought means business.
Do you know, there are some Christian businessmen,
and the whole truth is that the business
runs them.
They don't run the business.
And I'll tell you, if you let Jesus
into your life and change it, he'll upset
a part of your business.
Because if you're too busy for which you
can't come to the prayer meeting, then you're
far too busy.
It's running you.
And did you honestly let him in?
Then he'll upset all of us.
That's what he'll do.
And it goes further than that.
It says he cast out all them that
sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew
the tables of the money vendors.
You know, he overthrew this going full rich
after money business.
Because this is the curse of some Christians.
Because you know that the love of money
is the root of all evil.
Some people couldn't come to this class, you
know, because they would lose a pound.
Well, the Lord will upset that.
He'll upset it.
He'll overthrow that when he gets in.
And watch this.
It says, and overthrew the tables of the
money vendors.
And the speech of them that sold us.
You know, these boys brought doves into the
temple because they were offered in sacrifice.
And it was this sort of religious bargaining.
You know, a man confessed to me once
in the middle of that street, I only
go to church because of what I can
make out of it.
The Lord will upset that.
You don't come to church to get clients,
you know, for your business.
The Lord will upset all that.
If I can tell you that he will
interfere with your business, and he will overthrow
this money making racket, and he'll upset this
religious bargaining, pharisaical nonsense.
Now, what's this?
Verse 13.
And said unto them, it is written, my
heart shall be called the house of prayer.
This is the bit I want to kneel
down.
It is something that I'm sure about tonight.
I'm very sure about this.
It's a conviction with me.
I believe that if Jesus Christ gets the
first place in your life that he's really
essential to, that you'll become a man of
whom I'll swear.
Wait!
This house will become a house of prayer.
You can't block me or beat me on
that.
And if you've never been to the prayer
meeting, there is something wrong between you and
the Lord.
You haven't let them in properly, man.
You're only fiddling about.
You're near.
Close my house.
You'll look wrong, and it needs to be
changed.
This house becomes a house of prayer.
You know, when I got changed almost 40
years ago, I didn't know the way to
go into a prayer meeting.
Sure, I was never in a prayer meeting.
I didn't even know what they did.
Nobody knew I was as ignorant as when
I was.
But there's nobody who could keep me out.
In my rag, with my toes sticking through
my shoes, I went to the prayer meeting.
Oh, Lord have mercy.
Yes, it becomes a house of prayer.
But watch this very carefully.
He goes walking.
And the blind and the lame came to
him in the temple.
And he healed them.
It becomes a house of power.
Yes, it does.
You know, I look back through my life.
Poor wee fellow brought up in a backstreet.
I've led thousands and thousands to know the
Lord.
If it has become a house of power,
there's nothing in me, only the Lord that's
in me.
There's a wee man sitting in the front
seat there.
I led that fellow to the Lord.
How long ago?
Nine months.
Good.
And I can tell you that he has
led six or seven or eight.
Oh, it might be one a month, it
might be more for all I know.
Because the Lord has got the whole room.
Some of you old babs have never made
a move in your life.
But we're getting it over to you.
Because that's what's intended.
It's all been broken the way we should.
I can tell you things would happen.
And your family would be blessed too.
Watch, look at verse 15.
And when the chief priests and scribes saw
the wonderful things that he did, isn't that
a great phrase?
Because I can tell you that when he
comes in, the house becomes a house of
prayer, and a house of power, and a
house of performance.
Wonderful things happen.
I was at Queens the other day, and
an old Jewish professor said to me, how
long has the class been going now?
20 years, I think.
He said, are you attracting people for 20
years every Tuesday without obligation?
No, I'm not.
The Lord's attracting them myself.
Well, he said, that's what you say.
He said, you know, they couldn't put God
with the wind on for 20 years and
keep the class.
No, they couldn't, you know.
And it cost them a million or two
to make.
Oh, but the Lord can do wonderful things.
Yes, that's the Lord that does those wonderful
things.
The Lord hath done wonderful things for us.
He said, you let them in.
The house becomes a house of prayer, a
house of power, a house of performance.
You see this bit?
Verse 15, and when the chief priests and
scribes saw the wonderful things that he did,
and the children crying in the temple and
saying, how darn up to the son of
David!
You know, it becomes a house of praise.
You see this?
You know, he can take everything within you,
your imagination, and your memory, and your understanding,
and your affections, and your will, and your
heart, and your soul, and your whole being,
and every ounce of your strength.
He can make it all praise his name
if you let him in.
Would we like to see people say it?
Would we like to see his name glorified?
Would we like to be at our best
for the Lord?
And I'll tell you this, you'll need to
let him in.
Even if you upset the business, Lord.
Lord, even if you stop this money-making
race, Lord, take me over, and take control,
and stop this lukewarmness.
You see, here's what he promises.
This is the promise that comes out in
this book.
We're back at Revelation chapter 4.
Have a look at it now.
Chapter 3, and here's what he says in
verse 21.
For him that overcometh, mind you, that's only
to him that overcometh.
You see, you'll have to overcome this lukewarmness,
and you'll have to overcome this wretchedness, and
this miserableness, and you'll have to overcome this
proudness, and you'll have to overcome this blindness.
And the only way you can overcome it
is let Christ say, come, take control.
That's the only.
I preached once, and an old fellow came
to see me in the vest.
He said, you hit me below the belt
this morning.
I said, if you were hit to throw,
it was the Lord that hit me, and
if he hit me, it wasn't below the
belt, that's why you felt it.
What's wrong?
He said, you know, there's a play on
every Thursday on the TV, and that's terrifying,
man, and I just want to see the
play, and that's the thing you came up
with this morning.
The Lord didn't have no hypocrisy.
The Lord hit you when you're lukewarm, or
you're blind, or you're miserable, or you're active,
or you're naked, or you're strong.
You don't have any need of it.
The only way you'll overcome this is to
say, Lord Jesus, take my life over again,
and take it now, and do whatever you
like, and I'll be what you want me
to be, and I'll do what you want
me to do, and I'll go where you
want me to go, and I'll say what
you want me to say.
And he promises you this.
Listen to it.
He says, to him that overcomes will I
grant to sit with me in my throne.
What a wonderful place to sit.
What a destiny for me.
You know, sometimes I look at heaven, and
I see the vast crowds that no man
can number standing around the throne, and I
know that if I'm right on the very
outside of the crowd, as it were, looking
over the shoulders, that will be glory for
me.
There's no doubt about it.
I'll be there.
But wouldn't it be nice if you were
brought forward?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were seated
on the throne with him?
Ah, well, you'll need to let him on
the throne of your heart first.
You're not sitting on his throne in that
familiar, honored spot, unless you open your life
and let him sit on the throne of
your heart now.
Take a moment before we go tonight to
think about it.
Get that life of yours right with Christ
before we move.
Let's bow together.
Just take a moment now while we sit.
Don't bother about the picture or the baptism
or anybody.
Just between you and the Lord.
That's all.
If he's saying to you, you'll look wrong.