Amen.
Well now, good evening to you.
And God's richest blessing upon you as together
we study afresh the Word of God.
And I've got a great theme to present
to you tonight.
Is Christianity practical?
And I want you to listen to me
very carefully because I can't help feeling in
my soul that the sheer simplicity of what
I want to say tonight may be the
key that's going to open the doors of
many hearts that have been held tight up
until now.
And that presently when we sing that wonderful
hymn, Just as I Am, I Come, my,
I'm going to see what I've longed to
see in these meetings night after night.
I'm going to see people spontaneously, gladly, just
move right out to take their place in
open confession of the fact that they've asked
the Lord Jesus to come into their hearts.
You'll be praying for me as I preach
that I may be given the strength and
the emphasis and all the power of the
Holy Ghost upon me, even though it's such
a very hot night.
I'm not used to your humidity.
Oh, I don't know anything like this in
my country.
And by the way, braces means suspenders.
Dr. Reeves remembers where one of our greatest
preachers, probably the greatest preacher in Great Britain
so far as preaching itself is concerned, told
a story about finding it so hot over
in this country that he actually saw a
dog following a cat, or rather chasing a
cat.
A dog chasing a cat, and they were
both walking.
Well, I looked all over to see that
spectacle today, and quite expected to see it
too.
Well now, let's look at the Word of
God together.
And we're going to the last book in
the Bible, the book of the Revelation, and
chapter three, and some very familiar verses.
But I want to take the whole letter,
that is, the letter to the church at
Laodicea, commencing to read at verse fourteen.
And unto the angel of the church of
the Laodiceans write, These things saith the Amen,
the faithful and the true witness, the beginning
of the creation of God.
I know thy works, that thou art neither
cold nor hot.
I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then, because thou art lukewarm and neither
cold nor hot, I will skew thee out
of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, I am rich and increased
with goods and of need of nothing, and
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, and
that the shame of thy nakedness do not
appear, and anoint thine eyes with eyesalves, that
thou mayest see 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 hear my voice and open
the door, I will come in to him
and will sup with him, and he with
me.
Glorious words.
Oh, may they be blessed to your heart
tonight.
Whenever I visit London, that is to say,
the center of our great metropolis, and I
have a few minutes to spare, I love
to go into St. Paul's Cathedral.
And I always love to pause in silent
wonder before that wonderful portrayal of Holman Hunt,
of the Lord Jesus as the light of
the world.
There has been some recent controversy as to
whether or not that is the actual original.
It is true that a small original hangs
in Keeble College, Oxford.
Those of you who know the picture will
have seen it reproduced in many places.
Some of you may have it even in
the flyleaf of your Bible.
It is the picture of the Lord Jesus
standing at the door of the human heart,
knocking, knocking.
John Ruskin once said of that picture that
it was the noblest work of art ever
produced.
When I ever look at it, I tell
you, I'm always moved to worship.
My sense of interpretation and appreciation of art
moves me deeply as I look at that
picture.
But as someone has said, it isn't the
beauty of the picture which seems to attract.
Its eternal message is that which seems to
challenge the man or woman who looks at
it intelligently.
Indeed, it has been called the continual challenge
of Jesus Christ in oil and color.
You know it, don't you?
There he is standing there, Godless prophet, priest,
and king.
Down there on the ground are apples, just
a pure material symbol of the stolen fruit,
sin.
Jesus holds in his hand a lantern.
It burns with a searching red flame.
If you look very carefully, you can see
the thorn-pierced hand of this wonderful Savior
Christ.
His eyes are full of love.
His face glows with a radiance.
Across that door, there is ivy, there are
brambles.
It's a long time since it was opened,
and he stands and he knocks as the
light of the world.
My dear young friend, older friend tonight, I
want you to take that picture, and I
want you to frame it.
I want you to frame it in the
words of our reading here tonight, as I
seek to expound them to you.
Because in presenting to you the relevance of
Christianity to everyday life, I want us to
see tonight that Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, stands
at the door of your life, that represents
every other door of life.
He stands at the door of your life
in a threefold capacity.
I want us to look at him, first
of all tonight, as the authoritative Christ, as
the authoritative Christ.
He is prophet, priest, and king.
He is dressed like that.
Holman Hunt has caught him as prophet, priest,
and king in his oils and color.
And listen to his language, I am the
Amen, the faithful and the true witness, the
beginning of the creation of God.
What a tremendous utterance.
My, how that thrills my heart and challenges
my mind.
I am the Amen.
Here is one who speaks with the voice
of finality.
I am the Amen.
When Jesus Christ, the Son of God, speaks,
ladies and gentlemen, nothing can be added to
what he says and nothing can be subtracted
from what he says.
He is the Amen.
When I hear a word from London, whether
it comes from Macmillan, or whether it comes
from the elder statesman Winston Churchill.
When I hear a word from Washington, even
if it comes from your great president, President
Eisenhower, there is something that can be added
to it.
There is something that can be subtracted from
it, for it is the word of a
fallible man.
Here is the only one in the universe
who speaks with total finality.
And that challenges me as a reasonable individual.
I claim to have the normal intelligence of
anybody, and I read my paper very carefully,
especially when I'm home.
My times is studied every day.
I listen to the BBC very carefully.
I listen to radio broadcasts calculated to make
people think.
I try to weigh up the issues of
our country and of the world.
But I'm going to tell you, as an
intelligent young man, in a world of speculation,
nebulous discussion, and a lot of hot air
that doesn't amount to anything, I'm prepared to
listen to somebody who speaks with finality.
That's Jesus Christ, the authoritative Christ.
And how intelligent men and women, fellows and
girls, can be bothered with a lot of
stuff that's spoken of over the radio today
and spread across our papers and yet resist
from this word of finality is something which
completely perplexes me, unless I interpret it as
blindness brought about by the God of this
world.
But here is someone who not only speaks
with finality, here is somebody who speaks, listen,
with vitality.
He says, I am the beginning of the
creation of God.
Here is somebody who speaks with life.
When he spoke in the very beginning, why?
The very world came into existence within this
universe of ours.
And you know, my friend, that that outgoing
of energy still holds that world together.
The entire world persists and consists by the
outgoing of this divine energy.
There is no blade of grass that stands
erect today.
There is no leaf that flutters in the
wind today that isn't kept in its place
by the continual outgoing of the life of
this divine One, God's Son.
But what is true in the material, what
is true in the physical, what is true
in the natural realm is even more a
fact and a truth in the spiritual.
For when he speaks, the wonder of it
is men and women live.
It's happened here, it's happened right down through
the centuries.
They that hear the voice of the Son
of God shall live.
My prayer all day has been that that
voice will break right through to your foe
tonight and you shall live.
Here is one who speaks with vitality.
But here's a word especially to some of
you young people who are looking up into
my face tonight.
Here is one who speaks with reality.
He is the witness, he is the faithful
and the true witness.
And that word, true witness, is a favorite
word of John.
It occurs in his gospel and his epistles.
It's a word which means not just the
opposite of false.
It's a word which can be translated quite
legitimately as reality, reality.
Here is one in whom is combined all
the qualities and characteristics of reality.
And I know I'm looking into faces tonight
and I don't catch the glow and radiance
of an indwelling Christ.
And I know why it is.
Listen, my friend, listen, my friend.
You're completely fed up and bound off with
the emptiness of the world.
You are dissatisfied with nominal religion.
And you're confused and perplexed with the utter,
utter emptiness of your own life.
And you long for reality, you long for
reality.
Here is one who speaks with reality.
It is Jesus who said, I am the
way, the reality, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father but by
me.
Now, I don't know what that means to
you.
I don't know how that strikes you.
But as I look into the face of
this authoritative Christ tonight, my young heart is
challenged and my mind is challenged.
For here is somebody who speaks with finality,
reality, and vitality.
And he's standing at the door of your
heart, and he's knocking.
But I want you to catch another picture
of him before we go any further.
And it's the picture of the analysis, analyst,
diagnostician, psychiatrist.
Here is the analyzing Christ.
He looks down deep into our souls.
Remember the lantern I was talking to you
about.
He carries it in his left hand, and
its red flame burns fiercely as it searches
down into the deepest recesses of our heart.
And here is his language.
Listen to it carefully.
I know thy works.
I like that more literal translation.
I know where you live.
I know your uprisings, your down sittings.
I know your outgoings.
I know your incomings.
I know you all together.
Here is somebody who reads you like a
book.
Here is somebody who understands you better than
your husband, better than your wife, better than
your girlfriend or boyfriend, better than your relatives.
Here is somebody who sees you through and
through and knows you all together.
I know your works.
And there's a solemn word here because he
sees three things about men and women.
And I'm wondering just how you represent that.
I'm wondering if I'm going to strike a
chord here.
In the first place, he sees our half
-heartedness, our half-heartedness.
He looks down deep into our hearts and
he says, I wish, oh, I wish, I
wish you were frozen cold with your hostility
against me or that you were boiling hot
in your fervency and devotion to me.
But what I cannot stand is this half
-heartedness that you're neither cold nor hot.
And because thou art neither cold nor hot,
I will spew thee out of my mouth.
Men and women, I want to tell you
this this evening, that if there is nothing
that nauseates the risen Lord in heaven tonight,
then this lukewarmness, this half-heartedness, this indecisiveness,
which never comes down clean one side or
the other.
There are some of you who've been sitting
on the fence ever since this crusade started.
You've never come down one side or the
other.
And I want to say quite solemnly and
seriously, I want to say it quite solemnly
or seriously, whether it's in the saint or
whether it's in the sinner, God's Son, the
lover of our souls, hates half-heartedness.
And he's going to spew you out of
his mouth.
And he said it, I will spew thee
out of my mouth.
And if you want my considered opinion, if
you want my way judgment as to why
our whole evangelical and religious world is littered
with also rams, weak-kneed, jelly-spines, useless
Christians, and churches that are very similar, I'll
tell you the reason.
The Lord in heaven has spewed them out
of his mouth, awaiting the day of the
judgment feet.
And if you're in that category, I just
say this to you tonight, God have mercy
upon your soul.
But he sees something else, and he sees
this very clearly.
He sees not only the half-heartedness of
men and women who won't come clean, who
won't make a decision, who, when the invitation
is given, stands hollidly with bovine solidity as
if, as if, as if we were praying
at religion.
And they won't come clean, they won't come
down off the fence.
He not only sees that and wants to
judge it and will judge it and judge
it in your life sooner or later, but
he sees something else.
He sees high-mindedness.
He sees a people in this church who
say, I'm increased with good and have need
of nothing, and they don't realize that they're
wretched and miserable and poor and blind and
naked.
I'm telling you, my friend, if the half
-heartedness of people nauseates the risen Christ in
heaven, here is something which causes his holy
soul to burn with indignation, because there is
nothing at which God flares in anger more
than pride and high-mindedness.
When Babylon lifted itself in great pride, God
declared, I will bring the haughtiness of Babylon
low.
I will cause the arrogance of the proud
to cease.
And Paul, writing to the Romans, says, Be
not high-minded, but fear.
Why?
Because unless we humble ourselves under the mighty
hand of God so that he may exalt
us in due season, my, he will have
to humble us himself, and it's a fearful
thing to fall into the hands of the
living God.
Listen, my friend, listen.
On the very first, practically the very first
night of our crusader, a dear young woman
trusted Jesus Christ.
She trusted Jesus Christ in the after-meeting.
I asked her a simple question.
I said, Why didn't you come forward in
the invitation?
Why didn't you come forward in the invitation?
And she was the last person in the
world to say a thing like this, so
far as I was concerned.
She said, Do you want me to be
plain?
Shall I give you the answer straight from
the shoulder, so to speak?
She said, I'll tell you, it was pride.
Thank God it was broken.
Thank God it was smashed.
Thank God holy water flowed from her eyes.
Thank God she got right with God.
But you know, my friend, that hell is
going to be people with the unbelieving, with
the proud.
The proud!
Be not high-minded, but fear.
Now, you may have been able to, you
may have been able to have camouflaged all
that by the way you have dressed, by
the way you have sung, by the way
you've responded to choruses, to the solos, to
the jokes, to anything.
But God in Jesus Christ sees your half
-heartedness.
God in Jesus Christ tonight sees your high
-mindedness.
And both are going to come under the
severest judgment.
But I am glad that I've got a
wonderful Savior, such a diagnostician, that He goes
deeper than half-heartedness, deeper than high-mindedness.
Beneath it all, we're all afraid.
And thank God Jesus Christ sees our deep
spiritual hunger.
That's why you're here.
That's why you're here, my friend, tonight.
That's why you're here.
That's why there's an assurance in my soul.
That's why there's such a confidence in my
preaching tonight.
Because I know that however half-hearted you
are, however high-minded you are, and however
that may come under judgment, down deep in
your soul there's a hunger.
And that's what I want to get at
tonight, and that's what the Savior wants to
get at.
He says, I counsel thee to buy me
gold tied in the fire, that thou mayst
be rich, and white raiment, that thou mayst
be clothed, and that the shame of thy
nakedness do not appear.
And I fall, that thou mayst see why
the Lord Jesus comes right down to your
heart.
And He talks to you in language that
can be understood, the language of the street.
For everybody in Laodicea would have known what
the Savior was referring to.
Laodicea was known for its great banks.
It was a city of banks, of currency.
And gold ever spoke for true values, true
values of life.
My dear friend, I know, I know that
we live in an age of devaluation.
And some of you have begun to see
during these days of convention and crusade here
that the true values of life are those
which are eternal, eternal.
Jesus says, the true values of life, I'm
prepared to give to you tonight.
Not only the true values of life, but
here is the white raiment.
Laodicea was known for its white linen, sold
in the city, always speaking in symbol as
the true virtues of life.
I'm talking to fellows and girls who long
to recapture the virtue, the purity, the victory
that can be found in Jesus Christ.
You're just fed up with a defiled mind
with which you wake and sleep night by
night.
You know the horrid things that are caged
up in that life of yours.
You have there unclean beasts and animals that
you want cleaned out of your life.
You want to be made pure and white
in virtue in Jesus Christ.
He offers it to you in the symbol
of the white raiment.
I'm talking to people here tonight who long
to know a vision beyond their noses.
Why Laodicea was known for its eye hospitals
and its eye cure and the anointing of
eyes there was one great traditional and healing
process known by any Laodicean.
Listen, my friend, there is one standing amongst
us here tonight who can so anoint your
eyes that you'll be able to see beyond
your nose into another dimension.
You'll be able to break right through into
the realm we call the kingdom of God.
You'll be able to look into the face
of God in Jesus Christ.
You'll be able to see truth in this
book you've never seen before.
You'll be able by the eye of faith
and prayer to pierce right to the throne.
You'll be able to go deep into spiritual
truth.
Why?
Because you've been given new sight.
And you know the more I think about
it, the more I'm convinced that those three
great things, the values, the virtues, and the
vision of life, constitute all that there is
in Jesus Christ for me if we're prepared
to analyze it.
And He knows your hunger, and He's standing
now waiting to bring this into your life.
But you know, my friends, the thing that
thrills me most about this passage isn't that
Jesus Christ is only the authoritative Christ challenging
my mind.
Not only the analyzing Christ challenging my heart
and searching it to the depth and realizing
that there's nothing in my life that He
doesn't see and nothing in my life that
He cannot meet.
But all the wonder of this chapter is,
this passage is this, that the Lord Jesus
in the last analysis is the appealing Christ.
For as I lift my eyes from that
burning lantern that gleams into my deepest recesses,
I catch the radiance that glows from His
face, and I hear these wonderful words, wonderful
words.
As many as I love, I rebuke and
chasten.
Repent therefore, for behold, I stand at the
door and knock.
If any man hear my voice, it's open
the door.
I will come in to him, and will
sup with him, and he with me.
Here is His appealing, listen, here is His
appealing reminder.
As many as I love, as many as
I love, I rebuke and chasten.
Be zealous therefore, and repent.
Enthusiastically change your mind about me, for I
love you.
I love you the reason why I've probed
deep, the reason why I've discovered to you
your half-heartedness and your high-mindedness and
your deep hunger is because I love you.
But not only is there this reminder, there
is an appealing relevance about Jesus, an appealing
relevance about Jesus.
He says, behold, I stand at the door
and knock, and I'm prepared to defy any
other religion or philosophy that was ever invented.
I'm prepared to take anybody up in a
debate as to the relevance of Christianity.
In the light of that text, for here
Jesus stands right at the door of your
heart, and He represents therefore every other door
with which you're associated.
I could name scores of doors, but time
only gives me a chance to name one
or two.
He stands at your spiritual door here tonight,
your spiritual door.
That is your whole religious life.
And the moment He steps into your spiritual
door, He changes dead formalism and convention into
life-transforming Christianity.
He quickens dead men and women to life.
Isn't that wonderful?
He stands not only at your spiritual door,
my friend, He stands at your secular door.
And I'm prepared to emphasize that much tonight.
He stands at the door that represents your
workaday life.
And I want you to hear this, my
friend.
He wants to step into that life of
yours.
Listen, I don't care if you are studying
for your career, I don't care if you're
pursuing it or whether you're ending it.
He wants to come right into the center
of that business life of yours, and He
wants to change, listen, daily monotony into glorious,
momentous living.
Do you ever realize that Jesus Christ was
thirty years at a carpenter's bench?
Do you realize that in relation to His
full, redemptive ministry, three and a half years
were in the public ministry of the gospel,
as we would call it today, thirty years?
Thirty years, practically.
As from a little boy upwards, anyway, He
was in a carpenter's shop.
I believe there's a purpose in that.
I believe that God has hallowed all vocation
in the Son of Jesus Christ, in His
Son, Jesus Christ.
And I believe that the great message of
the hour is to bring Christianity, dynamic Christianity,
bang into the center of industry, politics, economics,
every single side of life, not only the
home, but every business aspect of life.
And I believe that there's a relevance, there's
a relevance in Christianity that can't be associated
with any other philosophy of life which has
ever been invented.
And I'm telling you, I've proved it.
I was once an engineer myself, and I
know the difference that Jesus makes in life
when He changes the monotonous into the momentous.
And you go forward every day not just
to do a job, but to launch out
into a vocation.
Not just to get a pay packet, but
rather to bring Christ into the very center
of life.
But I'm telling you something else, He stands
at your social door.
He stands at your social door.
And were He to enter that social door
of yours tonight, my, some changes would come
into your life.
Do you know, my friend, that men and
women are completely unknown personalities until Jesus Christ,
who knows all men, enters your life and
begins to interpret other personalities to you?
I know husbands here who don't know their
wives tonight.
I can see, rather, husbands here tonight who
don't know their wives, wives who don't know
their husbands, parents who don't know their children,
and children who don't know their parents, so
-called married couples or courting couples whose friendship,
whose friendship, so-called, is so strained and
unnatural that it cannot possibly be called love.
You say, why is it, why is it,
why am I in such a tangle?
Why is my home so complex?
Why is it such a mystery?
I'll tell you, Jesus Christ has never stepped
into your social life.
Now, I know what I'm talking about.
I know what I'm talking about.
You wouldn't believe it, but you can send
a telegram or a cablegram to my own
mother down in Cardiff without my knowledge and
get her reply tonight, and she will tell
you that her boy, Stephen Oldford, her boy,
Stephen Oldford, was a socially deceitful lad right
up into his teens.
If Mother told me that people were being
brought into our house to have a tea
party with us, I was out of the
back door, disappeared.
I couldn't stand people, just couldn't stand people.
If you had ever told me that I
was going to counsel people here tonight, if
you were ever going to tell me that
I was going to preach or that I
would be interested in people, I would have
called you absolutely crazy and mad.
You say, what made the difference?
Jesus Christ broke into my life and opened
that right up.
And the most interesting thing to me today,
outside of reading the Word of God and
getting to know God and getting to know
people, I love to talk to people.
I love to know people.
People are an interest to me.
I am no longer, I am no longer
defeated socially.
And I'm not talking merely about your country.
I'm talking about our country when we've got
all sorts of classes and societies of people,
and we look down on some and look
up to others.
God forgive us.
But I don't care in what class I
am.
I'm completely happy now because God's given me
an answer.
I've got no sense, no sense of inferiority
complex about that.
No self-consciousness.
God is completely cleared out of my life
in Jesus Christ.
But not only does He stand outside of
our social door, He stands outside, listen, He
stands outside of our cultural door.
I believe the Lord Jesus is the Lord
of all culture.
I believe music.
I believe poetry.
I believe art.
I believe all these great gifts of God
can be wonderfully sanctified to His purpose, but
only when Jesus comes into that door of
your life.
I believe the Lord Jesus is even interested
in my recreational life.
I believe the Lord Jesus is interested in
my play as He is in my work.
And I know that only when Christ came
into my life did He redeem and reclaim
my recreational life from all the thwarted associations
of a commercialized world and give me a
real sense of kick and lift in playing
a game, in playing it just for sportsmanship's
sake.
Can you tell me anything more relevant than
that?
Can you?
I defy you.
Jesus says, I am standing at the door
of your heart.
How people, intelligent people, can keep Him outside
is more than I know.
But you know that's not only a relevance
about His appeal, there's something else, there's a
reasonableness about His appeal.
For the Lord Jesus stands there and He
says, Behold, I stand at the door and
knock.
If any man hear My voice and open
the door, I will come in, I will
come in.
The Lord Jesus has made His incoming to
save and to redeem and to cleanse and
to transform and to bring the power of
His blood to relate to my sin on
the basis that's simple to the child here,
aged five, six, seven, or even younger.
He says, If any man hear My voice
and open the door, hear My voice and
open the door.
He's made the conditions of entree so simple,
sublimely simple and reasonable that anybody can ask
Him in tonight.
Hear My voice, recognize Christ.
Open the door, receive Christ.
Hear My voice, recognize Christ.
By faith, look after Him and hear Him
saying, Behold, I stand at the door and
knock.
Behold, look at Me, look at Me.
I am your Redeemer, I am your Savior,
I am your Friend.
I carry in My hands the very marks
of My passion.
Don't you recognize Me?
You see, the voice of the Gospel is
the voice of Christ and the voice of
Christ is the voice of the Gospel.
God has spoken unto us in His Son,
finally and forever.
And that's the voice we're to recognize.
If any man hear My voice, will you
recognize that Jesus is speaking to you right
now?
The Christ of Calvary and the Christ of
victory is standing at the door of your
heart.
But having recognized Him, will you do something
else?
Will you receive Him?
A little child can do that.
If I were to come to your house
tonight and gently knock on your front door
and one of your little children was awake
and peered through the door and recognized that
it was Stephen Olfert, at least I hoped
she would do this or he would do
this, she would come straight to the door
and lift the latch and say, Come in,
Stephen Olfert.
It's as simple as that.
Will you lift the latch of your heart
and your life and let him in tonight?
The story is told, and I believe absolutely
true, that after the painting of that wonderful
picture to which I've made reference tonight, Holman
Hunt himself was in an audience of admiring
people who were studying that great painting.
And the little boy who looked at it
very carefully suddenly looked up to his father
and said, Daddy, Daddy, the painter has forgotten
something.
The painter has forgotten something.
And what's that, asked the father.
Said the little boy, There's no handle on
that door.
There's no handle on that door.
And the little lad, he said it loud
enough for the great Holman Hunt to hear.
And going over to the little boy, Holman
Hunt bent down and said, My little friend,
may I tell you something?
The handle of that door is on the
inside, and he's dead right.
Even the omnipotent Son of God will not
break in upon any life uninvited.
However insignificant you are, he will respect your
personality and your individuality.
He will not break in upon your life.
You have to lift the latch.
You have to turn the handle.
You have to open the door.
If any man hear my voice and open
the door, the relevance of his appeal, the
reasonableness of his appeal, and thank God the
reassurance of his appeal, for he says, If
any man hear my voice and open the
door, I will come in and will share
my life with you, and you share your
life with me.
I say, my friend, could you get any
words to express the faithfulness of his reassurance?
He says, I will come in.
I will come in.
I heard one of the greatest preachers that
our country has today outside of W.E.
Sankster, a great evangelist, get up the other
day and say this tremendous statement that rather
was dramatic and struck me.
Struck me.
I thought about it a lot.
He said, Ladies and gentlemen, as I present
you with the wonder of Jesus Christ and
His desire to enter your life, I want
to quote a text.
And he quoted this very text.
He says, Jesus says, I will come in.
Now he says, my friend, if you invite
Jesus Christ into your life tonight and He
didn't come in, you might go away disappointed.
You might go away perplexed and bewildered.
But something far worse than that will have
happened.
The entire universe will have collapsed.
Why?
Because God has said something He hasn't kept.
He will come in.
You can trust Him.
You can trust Him to come in tonight.
Not only the wonderful reassurance of His faithfulness,
but the wonderful reassurance of His fellowship.
I will sup with you and you with
me.
Did you ever see anything so beautiful?
Can you catch the picture?
It's night time.
The lights are burning.
The sun has gone down.
And an Easterner has invited you into His
home.
And you sit there and He spreads before
you a meagre little meal and you discover
presently that this visitor is a rich visitor.
And He suddenly unfolds from His treasure that
with which He spreads a great banquet, a
luscious feast.
And He sits down and says, now share
this with me.
Let's have supper together.
Could fellowship be sweeter or described more adequately
than that?
Jesus said, that's just what I want to
be to you.
I want to spread before you a feast
and there's forgiveness and there's pardon and there's
cleansing blood and there's life, there's power, there's
victory, there's peace, there's joy.
All this.
And heaven too.
If only you'll let me come in and
share my supper with you.
Will you let Him in?
For this authority, this Christ, this analyzing Christ,
this appealing Christ is standing at the door
of your heart.
And with an appeal which is relevant, which
is reasonable, which is reassuring, He says, open
the door of your heart and let me
in and I will come in.
My beloved friend, He's been standing there for
years and years and years.
The ivy has crept over the door.
The brambles have hidden practically a whole part
of it.
I don't know if it's been 5, 10,
15, 20 or 30 years, but He's been
knocking, knocking, knocking.
And if I understand that picture rightly, His
patience, His patience is still there.
His love is still there.
His grace is still there.
But just how long He's going to continue
to stand there, I don't know.
For His posture is one about to leave.
He's knocking, but He's on the turn.
I say, will you draw that rusty boat?
Will you lift that heavy latch?
Will you push open the door tonight and
let Him in?
Let Him in!
And will you look up into His blessed
face and say, Oh, come.
Oh, come to my heart, Lord Jesus.
There is room in my heart for thee.
Will you?
Will you do it now?
Simply?
Believingly?
Faithingly?
Will you ask Him in right now?
Do it as we bow in prayer together.