I turn tonight for our reading to Revelation
chapter 1, the first chapter of the book
of Revelation.
Revelation chapter 1, beginning with verse 9.
I, John, who also am your brother and
companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and
patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle
that is called Patmos for the word of
God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
I was in the spirit on the Lord's
day and heard behind me a great voice
as of a trumpet.
Verse 12, and I turned to see the
voice that spake with me.
And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks,
and in the midst of the seven candlesticks
wand light unto the Son of Man, flowed
with a garment down to the foot, and
girt about the path with a golden girdle.
His head and his hairs were white like
wool, as white as snow, and his eyes
were as a flame of fire, and his
feet like unto fine brass, as if they
burned in a furnace, and his voice as
the sound of many.
Verse 17, and when I saw him, I
fell at his feet as dead.
Chapter 3, please, beginning with verse 14.
Chapter 3, verse 14, and unto the angel
of the church of the Laodiceans write these
things, saith the Amen, the faithful and true
witness, the beginning of the creation of God.
I know thy works, that thou art neither
cold nor hot, I would thou art cold
or hot.
So then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither
cold nor hot, I will spew thee out
of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich, I am
rich and increased with goods, and of need
of nothing.
Knowest not that thou art wretched and miserable
and poor, and blind and naked?
I counsel thee to buy of me gold
fried 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 eyesars, that
thou mayest see as many as I love.
I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore, and
repent.
I'd like to talk to you tonight on
the subject, Discipleship in an Affluent Society.
This is a subject that is exercising the
hearts of many of God's people today, and
causing considerable turmoil of soul.
And I'd like to introduce it to you
by telling you a simple little anecdote.
Some time ago, a young disciple whom I've
known for some years, a young fellow, who's
really dedicated, devoted to the Lord, every fiber
of his being, sold out to Jesus Christ.
He called me up on the phone, he
said, when are we going to get together?
And I said, well, I don't know, I've
been wondering how long you'd be.
Well, it'll be interesting to stay in the
apartment of the man who wrote True Discipleship.
And I felt as if I had been
engulfed in the bath of...
I immediately began to think of my apartment
and what he would see there, and whether
it would be to the glory of God
and to the blessing of souls at home
and in foreign lands.
It was a most searching experience.
Then as I was trudging up the stairs
with him, I thought, well, what are you
worrying about this disturber of the peace?
The Lord Jesus sees your apartment all the
time.
What does he see when he goes into
it?
And that didn't make me any more comfortable.
In fact, it made me all the less
comfortable.
And I couldn't help thinking then of a
statement that F.W. Grant made one time,
and I hope I'll never forget it.
He said, there is no other test for
anything but how it looks in his presence.
There is no other test for anything but
how it looks in his presence.
So then I began to imagine the Lord
Jesus Christ in my home.
And what did he see?
And how did it affect him?
That's why I read that passage from Revelation
chapter 1.
There you see the Lord Jesus as the
scrutinizer.
There you see the Lord Jesus as the
judge.
In chapters 1 through 3, and in chapters
4 through 19.
But that day he was my scrutinizer.
I came before the Lord Jesus, and I
began to see things as I had never
seen them before.
And so I'd like to take a trip
with you through the apartment, and you'll understand
that some of these things I've transferred to
Apollos and myself for your sake.
I think you'll understand as we go on.
And I hope that each one of us
will be able to make the applications.
We go into the apartment, and the desk
is the first thing I see, and stupidly
enough, before I left, I had forgotten to
put away the bank books, and the stocks
and bonds, and the insurance policies.
And they were all lying up there in
the desk.
I had taken them out of the safe,
you see.
I mean, I like to go over them
once in a while, because they do give
me a certain measure of security to know
that they're there.
And there they were sitting out in the
desk, and the Lord Jesus was standing there.
There was something else on the desk too.
And then there was my choice gleaning calendar.
It was there too.
And strangely enough, that day on the choice
gleaning calendar, the scripture, the first scripture, lay
up for yourselves treasures in heaven.
And it went on to say, for where
your treasure is, there will your heart be
also.
And I somehow felt very shriveled up by
the whole procedure.
And so I gathered the things up, and
put my heart back in the safe.
And when I came back to the desk,
the Lord Jesus was standing there, and he
was looking down at the globe of the
world, looking over the countries of the world.
And in that moment, I couldn't help thinking
of what those securities of mine could be
doing for the worldwide outreach of the gospel.
Because I was sure, as he was looking
at the globe, he wasn't just looking at
countries.
He was looking at the souls of men
for whom he had died on Calvary's cross.
And then he said to me, Bill, are
you living by faith?
I always thought I had been.
I've been commended to the work of the
Lord.
I thought I had been living by faith.
And I began to splutter some excuse.
And he said to me, how is your
life different from the lives of the bankers
you left back at the First National Bank
of Boston?
Isn't that the way they do too?
And I had to admit it was.
I had to admit it was.
It was a searching thing for him to
come there into the living room.
And then above the desk, I saw my
diplomas there.
I'd always been quite proud of them until
that moment.
And he said to me very softly, why
did you go after these?
I had never suspected before in my life
that I had been seeking great things for
myself.
And as the words of Jeremiah came to
me, seekest thou great things for thyself, seek
them.
And as he was standing there looking at
them, I couldn't help remembering what Rudyard Kipling
said one time.
He was speaking to the graduating class at
McGill University.
And he said to the young people, as
you go into life, he said, don't seek
for fame or for money.
He said, because one day you'll meet a
man who cares for none of these things.
And then you'll realize how poor you are.
And somehow in that moment, I felt I
had met that man.
But I realized how very poor.
And we went along to the, down the
corridor.
And I, my eye just happened to go
into the, the washroom there.
And I saw all the bottles and jugs
and jars and all the gadgets.
And I saw my electric toothbrush hanging on
the wall.
Electric toothbrush.
It always seemed quite modern to me before.
But then I thought, for just a few
strokes of a common, ordinary toothbrush, somebody could
be, could be hearing the gospel in far
off Malaysia today.
I mean, I had never seen it before
until the Lord Jesus came into the picture.
And then I was, got my own unworthiness.
As John said, I fell at his feet.
It was terrible.
We went on to the dining room.
There was nothing in the dining room.
There was no food on the table or
anything else.
And yet I couldn't help think of the
times back there when at the holiday season,
we'd sit at that table and gorge ourselves
with food from that table.
And I thought of 7,000 people dying
each day in the world without the necessities
of life, dying daily from starvation.
And it was as if I was in
a sea of molten lava at that moment.
And as the Lord Jesus stood there, I
couldn't help remembering that there were verses in
the Bible about fasting that I had always
put off for the dispensational flavor some way
or other.
And I just dismissed them from my thoughts.
They made me altogether too uncomfortable.
And we went to the bedroom and I
had awkwardly left the closet door open.
And as I looked at my closet, I
thought for sure I was at the Hills
Clothing Center.
In fact, I wished I were.
I thought of all the clothes, clothes that
I didn't really need, clothes that I expended
the Lord's money on in a world of
need.
And the Lord Jesus didn't say anything to
me.
He didn't have to.
Just His presence there.
And then on top of the dresser, of
course, all of the jewelry gadgets, all of
the jewelry gadgets.
And I wondered whose they would be if
the Lord required my soul at night.
I wondered who would get them.
And I thought, well, I could use them
for the Lord now.
I remembered one day at a mass that
I got an envelope in the mail.
And it was kind of a thick envelope.
It was thicker than most of the envelopes
that come.
It had some larger objects in it.
And I opened it and it was from
one of our former students.
And as I wrote to me here, Mr.
McDonald, she said, she said, I don't have
anything to give him but this diamond ring.
And she said, and all of these thoughts
went through my mind.
And then I looked up to the text
on the wall, the text that I had
earned in Sunday school for memorizing scripture.
And it said, thou shall love thy neighbor
as thyself.
All the clothing, all the jewelry, thou shall
love thy neighbor as thyself.
And then we went into the family room
and my golf equipment was over there in
the corner.
And the Lord said to me, you enjoy
golf?
And I was kind of surprised at myself
how, how fluently I could speak about golf.
I was really quite surprised at the enthusiasm
that I was able to generate about that
game.
I couldn't help thinking at the same time
how hard it was for me to speak
to people about their souls.
But anyway, I went on at great length
and told him until, until he looked at
me and I began to wonder, is it
right to be that enthusiastic about golf when
there are so many souls to be saved?
It's such a wonderful savior.
Then over on the table, there was a
diary there.
It was a diary of my trip to
Athens.
I had gone to Athens in 1955.
And I always thought I was good at
scripture connections and all the rest, you know.
I never thought anything about it.
I'd gone to see the Acropolis and Parthenon
and Morris Hill.
I remember when I came home, somebody said
to me, did you have any fruit in
Greece?
And I began to think of the oranges
and the grapefruit that we did have.
But I guess that wasn't what they meant.
I guess they meant, did we have any
souls?
And you know, standing there in the presence
of the Lord and looking at the diary
of the trip to Athens, I realized I
had gone as a sightseer and not as
a soul winner.
And I surely loathed myself.
And then I remembered that Paul went to
Athens and as he looked upon the people
steeped in idolatry, his soul was burdened.
Huh.
But he didn't take a gray line to
her.
No, he didn't.
He was after souls.
And all of this came rushing in at
me like a flood with the Lord Jesus
standing there.
Also, there was a grandfather's clock there in
the family room and I had never noticed
the tick of the clock so loudly before,
somewhere or other.
I'd never been so conscious of the passing
of time.
And then I noticed the Lord Jesus walking
over toward the television set.
Once again, he didn't say anything, but I
couldn't help thinking of the hours, the hours
that had been wasted watching things of no
lasting value.
I began to think of the opportunities that
had been missed.
It was a terrible experience.
He didn't say it was wrong.
He didn't say it was a sin.
He didn't say anything at all.
As the grandfather's clock ticked, I thought too
of some of the gatherings that had been
in that family room, of the gossip and
of the just idle chit-chat, the wasted
evenings where we'd gather together and talk about
nothing of eternal profit.
It was very, very solemn.
And as we stood there in the Lord,
the Lord was in my home.
I began to look around and I saw
things that I'd never seen before.
I thought of the trips that I had
made to buy drapes that were just the
right match for the furniture and the carpets
and all the money I had had to
spend on it.
I thought of some of the hymns we
used to sing about pilgrimage.
I am a stranger here.
I do not crave a home on earth
which gave thee but a grave.
Thy cross has severed ties which bound us
here thyself.
I began to think of Abraham and his
simple life.
It was really very terrible.
Then I thought of the year of Jubilee
in the Old Testament, how property reverted to
its original owner in the year of Jubilee.
And the closer that you came to the
year of Jubilee, the less that property was
worth on the market.
I mean, if it was going to revert
to the original owner in two years, you
wouldn't pay very much.
I began to think of all my accumulation.
I thought, the year of Jubilee really is
coming, isn't it?
And I could put it to work for
Jesus now.
Then I thought of a funny story I
had heard about a man in Canada, a
very wealthy man dwelling in a magnificent mansion.
The young people had gathered the home one
night and they were having a sing.
They asked if there were any requests, and
this dear man gave out a request about
some hymn and said, I am just a
pilgrim here, dwelling in a tent.
And one irreverent young man at the back
of the group said to the fellow next
to him, and I applied it to myself,
some tent.
And right at that time my gawkward, Pomeranian
beagle hound came bounding into the room, and
I wish he hadn't come, because I was
just so conscious of the bill I had
just paid to the vet.
It was as much as if it had
been a human being.
I began to think of the ground beef
too, the canned dog food and all the
rest.
The Lord didn't say anything, and I had
never thought of it before, but the scrutinizer
had come to my apartment.
It was a terrible experience.
And then I looked over the corner of
the room and I could see my stamp
collection, stamps of Israel, all the stamps that
Israel had ever issued except two.
I guess I always thought it was pretty
nice to have it.
I mean it had certain prophetic interest.
The nation of Israel had been formed and
I could use this.
I thought, and then I began to translate
that stamp collection into soul, what it could
do for the Lord.
How it could be put to work in
the vineyard of the Lord.
You know, at that moment I had loved
it, and all of a sudden I hated
it.
I hated the wretched thing and wanted to
get rid of it the earliest possible moment.
But things began to come to me that
I had never seen before.
I looked down and I saw a bill
from a florist there on the lap table.
One of the Christians had died and I
had sent fifteen dollar spray to the funeral.
The Lord didn't say anything.
He didn't even go over and look at
it, but I couldn't help thinking of the
scriptures that spoke about the flowers of the
grass and how they spring up, born for
one brief day and then they're gone.
But the word of our God abided forever.
I couldn't help thinking, my, if I had
put it in the word of God, it
could be an eternal memorial to that dear
child of God who had gone into his
presence and my heart was...
Then as you might know, the Lord went
over to look at the books in my
library.
I have to confess to you, I didn't
need all those books, but I thought they
made a good display.
There were a lot of them I never
even looked at, to tell you the honest
truth.
But you'll have to admit that Darby's collected
writings are imposing on the shelf.
Thirty-four volumes, matched binding.
The Lord went over and just looked at
the books.
I couldn't help wondering whether some of those
books I could possibly dispose of to help
forward the work of the Lord.
I began to realize what John was talking
about in the first chapter of Revelation.
He had come into the presence of the
Lord, those all-seeing eyes, that heart that
beats with compassion for lost souls of the
world.
And so I heard the voice of the
Lord speaking to me, not to others.
That was the interesting thing about this experience.
I wasn't looking at my neighbors anymore, I
was looking at myself.
And all of a sudden the letter to
the church of the Laodiceans had applied to
me, not to somebody else.
And I wish we didn't have to go
out to the garage, but that was the
way we had to go.
And I don't think I have to tell
you what happened there.
Not only the car, but the speedboat, the
water skis, very expensive equipment out there.
As we were going outside, the Lord said
to me, you know, are you happy?
And I said, no Lord, I'm not happy.
For one thing, material things, they can never
satisfy me.
And I said, that isn't the only reason
I'm not happy, my my life lacks power.
And I said to him, Lord, you can
take anything away that you've seen tonight.
He said, no, I don't take things away,
you'd have to give them away.
He said, could we sit down for just
a minute?
And so we did.
We went and sat down by the wall
at the front.
And he said to me very affectionately, so
likewise, whosoever he be of you, that forsaketh
not all that he hath, he cannot be
my disciple.
He said to me, lay not up for
yourselves treasures on earth, but lay up for
yourselves treasures.
For where your treasures are, there will your
heart be also.
He said to me, Bill, why don't you
start living sacrificially for the spread of the
gospel?
What you put in the collection, did it
hurt?
Remember what David said, I will not offer
to the Lord that which cost me nothing.
He said, why don't you really start living
by faith for a change?
And all of a sudden my mind was
filled with a thousand objections.
I never did get them out because he
anticipated them.
He said, Bill, all you have to do
is be obedient to the word of God
and leave the consequences with me.
He said, I'll tell you if you'll do
it.
He said, it'll develop your prayer life.
He said, if you obey God in the
realm of material things, he said, you'll have
a new prayer life.
It'll add fuel to the fire, because the
best prayer comes from a strong inward necessity.
He said, one of the reasons your prayer
life has been ineffective is you didn't need
anything.
You had everything that your heart could desire.
Why do you pray?
Why pray?
He said, there's something else.
He said, he said, Bill McDonald, he said,
you've been praying for things and you had
it in your own power to answer that
prayer and you didn't do it.
He said, that's hypocrisy.
He said, launch out in the deep.
Claim some of those wonderful, have you ever
noticed those promises concerning prayer and the word
of God?
Ask anything in my name and it shall
be given you, frankly confess.
If two of you shall agree on earth
as touching anything, it shall be done.
My father, which is in heaven, he said,
you do this, he said, you can start
laying hold of God and earth for the
salvation of souls.
He said, this will involve your more and
more inactive service.
He said, things will hold less and less
of an interest to your life and you'll
begin to have a more aggressive personal witness
day by day.
He said, you'll have a burden to go
out door to door with the gospel of
redeeming grace.
You won't be ashamed to go in the
street corner.
You won't be ashamed to pass out tracts
and tell men and women about the Savior
and to start a home Bible class.
Reach your neighbors right there with the gospel.
And then he said to me, there's something
else I want to say, Bill.
You've always been pushing for the top.
I always wanted to be a supervisor, telling
other people what to do.
Even in Christian work, he said, remember that
wasn't exactly the pathway I took.
I came down to be a servant of
servants.
He said, if you want to really be
great, he said, be a servant.
He said, maintain yourself to me, yielded, yielded
to me at all times.
Just keep yourself in a state of perpetual
yieldedness to me so that I can live
my life out through you.
And he said, there's just one final thing
I want to say to you, Bill.
Remember when I talked to my disciples about
the cross?
What do you think about that?
The cross.
All through your life, you tried to cushion
yourself from sacrifice and from suffering, trying to
protect yourself, trying to save your life.
He said, remember Bill, if any man come
after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me.
That's all he said.
And then he left.
And I felt in a sense, I was
glad to be alone so that I could
get down on my knees and pray.
Maybe some of us would like to do
that tonight.
Maybe God has spoken to some of our
hearts tonight.
And I think it'd be a nice thing
if God's dealing with hearts here tonight.
Wouldn't it be nice if those whose hearts
are really moved might just get together for
a little time of prayer?
I know we don't usually do this, but
it might be a nice thing.
If God is working not to let the
voice of the Spirit of God be dissipated
by the Russian crush afterwards.
There's two doors.
One door here and one around the corner.
This is a room right over here.
If God has spoken to you and you'd
like to talk to us, I'd like you
to get down with us and pray.
Feel free to come in afterwards.
We're meeting will be over.