But we're going to make the most of
it, and tonight I want to address your
attention to some words in the end of
the Sermon on the Mount, and then an
additional reading in Luke's Gospel.
I refer then to Matthew chapter 7, and
at verse 24, Matthew 7, 24, and then
from Luke 6.
Our Lord Jesus has completed that wonderful Sermon
on the Mount, as we call it today,
and at verse 24 we read, Therefore whosoever
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them,
I will liken him unto a wise man,
which built his house upon a rock.
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house.
And it fell not, for it was founded
upon a rock.
And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine,
and doeth them not, shall be likened unto
a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand.
And the rain descended, and the floods came,
and the winds blew, and beat upon that
house.
And it fell, and great was the fall
of it.
And it came to pass when Jesus had
ended these sayings, that people were astonished at
his doctrine, for he taught them as one
having authority, and not as the scribes.
And in Luke 6, verse 46, Luke 6,
46, we get just an additional word by
the doctor, Why call ye me Lord, Lord,
and do not the things which I say?
Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings,
and doeth them.
That's the key.
Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings,
and doeth them.
Cometh, heareth, doeth.
I will show you to whom he is
like.
He is like a man which built an
house, and digged deep.
I like that.
And laid the foundation on a rock.
When the flood arose, and the stream beat
vehemently upon that house, he could not shake
it, for it was founded upon a rock.
But he that heareth, and doeth not, is
like a man, that without a foundation, built
an house upon the earth, against which the
stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell.
And the ruin of that house was great.
Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings,
and doeth them, I will show you to
whom he is like.
He is like a man that built his
house upon a rock.
My theme tonight is, does it matter how
a man or a woman really lives?
And I want to take this parable of
our Lord Jesus, and answer that question in
picture form.
I want to catch up that wonderful solo,
which again, is a famine in itself.
Bless you, Ray.
And bring it right home to our hearts.
And I'm expecting two classes of people here
tonight to be following me very, very clearly,
and giving their verdict and their open confession
about this at the close of this meeting.
I'm speaking to people who have never built
upon the rock at all.
You've been building upon the sand.
Tonight you're discovering how dangerous, how perilous, how
futile that is.
And you're going to change that.
I'm going to talk to some people who
have been building upon the rock, but my
word, you haven't got very far.
Your life of obedience to Jesus Christ has
broken down.
And although you're on the rock, that superstructure
isn't going up.
There isn't a house that is glorifying God.
You're going to do something about that tonight.
You're giving an answer, and you're going to
give an answer courageously.
You're not going to slip away in a
sort of snaky, subtle, fearful, cowardice, or cowardly
way.
You're going to face right up to the
challenge of Jesus Christ.
And you're giving your answer.
Now, my dear friends, as we look at
this tremendous passage, I want to remind you
again that our Lord Jesus Christ had just
completed one of the greatest utterances of His
entire ministry.
He had preached what we now call the
Sermon on the Mount.
And this story about the two houses and
the two foundations constitutes His conclusion.
It's a dramatic, it's a startling, it's a
vivid conclusion.
I'm going to go as far as saying
this is the sort of conclusion that isn't
popular today.
Preachers who preach like our Lord Jesus Christ
preached are talked about as fear-mongers, are
talked about as dramatic and over-emotional and
sensational.
But not so our Lord, for this is
the way He concluded His sermon.
And as Dr. George Buttrick has remarked, He
sent His hearers away with the crash of
doom reverberating in their ears.
Our Lord Jesus never sent His people away
with a sense of false security.
He didn't pat them on the back and
make them purr like a lot of pussycats.
As they walked home after that memorable occasion,
the analogy of the two foundations, the analogy
of the two houses became something very personal.
People went of their way home and they
knew exactly where they stood.
The people who knew that they were building
on the rock went away with a wonderful
sense of assurance and security and certainty.
And they went away glorifying God that they
knew they were on the rock, Christ Jesus.
There were others who went of their way
home with heads bowed, trembling in every nerve,
because they discovered from the speech of our
Lord Jesus and the figure of our Lord
Jesus that they were on sand.
They were on sand and not upon the
rock.
And the vision with which they went back
home was that of crashing timber, rending masonry,
reverberating crashes, doom and death and damnation.
And my friend, I don't care who reads
this Sermon on the Mount and especially the
final illustration, who preaches on it today, the
climax is just the same, the issue is
exactly similar.
We've got to come to the same conclusion.
Either you're on the rock and you're set
for eternity, or you're on the sand and
you're in danger of complete collapse.
And I want us to take this story
and I want us to think of the
question, does it really matter how a person
lives?
Does it really matter how a person builds
his life?
You'll get the answer I'm sure before we're
through tonight.
I want us to look then first of
all at the significance of this building.
The significance of this building.
And I want us to notice that Jesus
explicitly stated that a wise man built, pause,
and a foolish man built.
Pause and consider.
A wise man built, a foolish man built.
Both of them were building.
You see, building is a responsibility and a
necessity of life.
What you build is determined by where you
build and how you build.
But I want to say that every fellow
and girl, every man and woman who hears
my voice tonight in this church and over
radio, is building every time you draw breath.
Since you left your home this morning and
went out into life, you built, you built.
You can't escape it.
It's a responsibility of life.
And either you've been building wisely or you
have been building foolishly.
But you've been building all day.
You've been building all day.
We are building day by day in our
work and in our prayer, not with hammer
blow and blow, not with timber sawing saw,
building a house not made with hands.
Following Jesus' perfect plans, little builders, all are
we, building for eternity.
You've been building today.
But you're going to decide whether or not
that building has been wisely done or foolishly
done.
The Bible is the best commentary on itself.
As a matter of fact, there is a
one law of interpretation which teaches that there
isn't anything in the Bible which hasn't an
illustrative mention.
Scripture compared with Scripture is the best way
to expound Scripture.
And although I'm not pressing this into the
story too rigidly, I believe there are three
kinds of buildings to which the Holy Spirit
refers in this holy book.
And those three pictures we're going to consider
right now in terms of the significance of
building.
And I'm going to ask you, have you
been building wisely or have you been building
foolishly?
The Apostle Paul talks about our bodies as
an earthly house.
The Apostle Paul talks about our bodies as
an earthly house.
And there is one aspect of building tonight
which I want to call body building.
Body building.
Something we do down here.
Body building.
And I want to say, my friend, that
that body which is sitting upon that seat
there as a unit today is something for
which you're absolutely responsible before God.
We talk about our spirit and we talk
about our soul and we do so with
great emphasis and with great significance.
But you know why we're down here upon
this earth?
Because we are responsible for the way we
handle and the way we build and the
way we regard our bodies.
We are fearfully and wonderfully made, says the
Scripture.
God's intention for every man, woman and child
is that that body of yours, that body
of yours which I'm looking at now, that
body of yours should be the temple of
God the Holy Ghost.
And I understand from the Bible that there
are three things that we ought to do
about our Bible, our bodies.
We ought to keep them absolutely fit, for
one thing.
We ought to keep them absolutely fit.
Paul talks about bodily exercise, profiting for this
little while.
And the mystery of suffering, the mystery of
suffering apart.
A depth of mystery into which no man
here upon earth can finally, can finally plumb
and explain the mystery of suffering apart.
God intends that every single fellow, man, woman
and child should keep their body absolutely fit
for God.
I believe that our bodies should be the
fit vehicles for the expression of the will
of God.
When our Father God prepared a body for
the Lord Jesus Christ in order that He
might express the will, the divine will to
men and women here upon earth, He took
great pains to make it a perfect body,
a prepared body.
And that body was cared for right throughout
His thirty-three and a half years.
I'm wondering if I'm looking into the faces
of men and women here tonight who allow
things to go into their bodies that, listen,
spoil and poison the body.
I wonder if I'm talking to somebody here
tonight who calls himself a Christian and yet,
and yet poisons his body constantly with the
sort of things you eat or the sort
of things you smoke or the sort of
things you drink.
If tonight, if tonight I were to drag
into this church something utterly profane, something completely
unrelated to the sanctity of this sanctuary here,
two-thirds of you would be on your
feet in protest because of my doing such
a thing.
And yet without any care in the world,
you can sit in your home, you can
sit in a pub or you can sit
in a hotel and take into your body
things that desecrate that which God intended should
be a holy temple.
God intends not only that your body should
be, listen, exercised for Him, but He intends
that your body should be preserved for Him,
preserved for Him at His disposal.
Listen to the prayer of the Apostle Paul.
I pray God that your whole spirit, soul
and body should be preserved until the coming
again of our Lord Jesus Christ.
I wonder, my friend, I wonder as I
speak to you tonight whether that body is
being preserved, a holy vehicle for His divine
expression, whether every single member of your body
is available to Him when He wants it.
God looks down from heaven tonight and He
says, Oh, what a job I have in
this sin-stained world, broken lives all around.
I want instruments through which I can express
my love and grace, but I have no
bodies, I have no hands through which I
can work, I have no feet through which
I can walk, I have no eyes through
which I can look, I have no lips
through which I can speak, I have no
brain through which I can think.
People are far too busy using their bodies
for themselves.
God intends that your body should be exercised
for Him, preserved for Him, yes, and thirdly,
surrendered to Him.
I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of
God, says the Apostle, that ye present your
bodies, a living sacrifice wholly acceptable unto God,
which is your reasonable service.
Do you know, my friend, do you know,
my friend, that that body, that body, that
body I'm looking at tonight was bought, was
purchased by the precious blood of Christ and
God bought it in order that it might
be separated entirely for His service and utterly
surrendered to Him?
I want to ask you tonight, and I'm
asking, I'm asking Christians who've been in the
Christian experience for years and years and years
and years, some of you are established Christians,
so established, so sound that you're sound asleep
it may be tonight.
I want to ask you, my friend, I
want to ask you if you know what
I have been talking about throughout this last
fortnight when I used the phrase, totalitarian surrender.
I want to ask whether every single faculty,
every single faculty of that body of yours
is wholly and completely surrendered to God.
If you're not, if you're not, that house
body of yours is being unwisely built.
You're not building it wisely for God.
You're a foolish builder.
Now I'm going to say something to you
and something perhaps you've never realized.
Perhaps you've never realized.
Do you know, my friend, that when you
Christian people especially, you Christian people especially, stand
before the judgment seat of Christ, and you've
got to stand before the judgment seat of
Christ, you've got to.
You come tomorrow night and you'll hear all
about it.
You've got to stand before the judgment seat
of Christ.
Do you know how you're going to be
judged?
2 Corinthians 5 puts it very carefully.
You're going to be judged.
You're going to be judged in relation, in
relation to the things you have done in
your body, whether it be good or whether
it be bad.
We talk about our souls being right with
God.
It is well, it is well with our
souls.
We talk about our spirit being quickened to
life.
But God says, I'm not concerned about your
spirit or your soul during the time you're
down here merely.
I'm concerned with your body because when you
stand at my judgment seat, what you're going
to be judged for are the things that
you've done in your body.
And I wouldn't be in the shoes, I
wouldn't be in the shoes tonight of an
uncleansed, unforgiven man or woman, Christian or non
-Christian here, whose body is defiled by sexual
abuse, whose body is defiled by indulgences of
one kind or another, whose body isn't entirely
at the disposal of God the Holy Ghost
for the expression of the will of God
through him day by day, whose body is
not being used as a prepared body for
God.
I wouldn't be in your shoes.
I'm asking you tonight, are you building wisely
or are you building foolishly?
For the apostle Paul puts it so clearly,
our body, our body is our earthly house.
And God's purpose is that it should be
exercised, it should be preserved, it should be
surrendered for his use alone, so that one
day when we stand for judgment, he may
be able to say, that was good.
That was good.
You used it for me.
But you know, there is another kind of
building I want to speak about tonight, and
the apostle Paul is the one who treats
it in one of his epistles.
It's the building of your home.
If a man know not how to rule
his own house, how shall he take care
of the church of God?
His own house.
It's mothering Sunday, I understand, next Sunday.
I didn't know that when I was praying
through my subjects.
You make a lot of it in this
country, and I praise you for it, but
I wonder just what significance it carries.
I wonder, I wonder tonight just what sort
of a home you're building.
And I'm speaking to parents here, I'm speaking
to young married couples here, I'm speaking to
engaged couples here, I'm speaking to single people
here, I'm speaking to children here, because you
all, all, are part of the unit of
a home somewhere or another.
I'm going to ask you what sort of
home you're building.
What sort of home you're building.
Have you ever realized, my friend, that the
breakdown in home life in America today, as
well as our country, is one of the
matters of greatest concern.
Even the optimists are becoming alarmed.
Never, never in this age has there been
such a moral landslide in the life of
home.
Do you know that the home is a
divine institution governed by certain laws which God
has laid down, and that the violation of
those laws constitutes, constitutes one of the greatest
sins that the Bible mentions?
Do you know, my friend, that such sin
is punishable with social disintegration?
There is, there is a man of deep
insight who has said against the British people,
the British people, that the breakdown in home
life is such today that if the British
people don't stem the tide, they will have
started in five years' time the process of
extinction.
I'm going to ask a few questions here
tonight, and I want to answer.
I want an answer, I want an answer
from you.
I want an answer from you tonight.
Tell me this, tell me this.
Is your home a place where God is
honored?
Is your home where the Lord Jesus Christ
has first place?
Tell me, is your home a place where
the Word of God is opened every day
and your family around you, you read that
Word so that the Word has its sanctifying
effect?
Is it a place where prayer is offered?
Is it a place where the sanctity of
the Spirit is felt?
Tell me, is your home a hell or
a heaven?
Are you fulfilling the laws which God has
laid down of loving, listen, loving husbands to
wives, loving wives to husbands, the husbands, listen,
consideration for your wife, wife, submission to your
husband, children, obedience to your parents, thoughtfulness and
carefulness for your children, not provoking them to
rot?
Tell me, is your home a home that's
being built wisely or foolishly?
Are your children tonight scattered all over the
place because they're wild and uncontrolled?
Are they set for jail?
Are they set for prison?
Are they set for suicide?
Are they set for drunken lives?
Because of the example, you have set them
in your home.
Because there's no parental control, no authority, the
power of the Holy Ghost isn't upon your
life, so you have no control whatsoever in
your home.
And as far as husband and wife are
concerned, well, you could just as well be
living in two parts of a town for
any sense of oneness and unity in Jesus
Christ.
I'm asking you, my friend, I'm asking you,
I'm asking you, overshadow the degradation, the utter,
the utter travesty of home life today, which
is called home.
But I'm asking another question too, my friend.
Not only the body building, not only the
home building, but there is another building to
which the Word of God makes reference, and
it's the building of the church.
The building of the church, the living church
of God, is called the house of God.
Paul refers to it as the house of
God.
The house of God.
He talks about the house of God, which
is the church of the living God.
I want to ask you, my friend, what
part you have in the building of the
church of God.
Yes, the church of God.
Perhaps the most important building of the three
we've mentioned, though we can't separate them.
The church of God.
You see, my friend, the foundation of the
church of God has been laid once and
forever.
And that foundation is Jesus Christ.
But the apostle Paul says, we've got to
take heed how we build on that foundation.
Let everyone take heed how he buildeth thereupon.
And he goes on to show that building
the church of God, building that superstructure upon
that foundation, necessitates that we bring to that
foundation living stones.
Living stones rightly related to the foundation.
And so the church of Christ goes up
and up and up and up until one
day it's complete.
And I'm going to ask you a question
or two here tonight.
What is your part in the building of
the church of God?
In the first place, are you a living
stone?
Are you a living stone?
It is my considered opinion, it is my
considered opinion that one of the greatest blockages
to revival, one of the greatest blockages, listen
carefully, to evangelism, pure evangelism, listen, one of
the greatest blockages is the dead wood in
the so-called church of Jesus Christ.
Your pastor stood up at this microphone last
night and he addressed the audience when we
had that mighty breakthrough last night.
Your pastor said this, will you be careful,
will you be careful for God's sake that
you're not standing in the way of blessing.
I wonder how many souls have been kept
out of heaven and the kingdom and blessing
this past fortnight because of dead wood in
the church here.
I wonder how many who claim that they
know the Bible, they know prayer, they know
evangelism, they know orthodoxy and everything else are
no more living stones, no more living stones
in the spiritual sense than this very platform
from which I'm speaking.
You're absolutely dead.
You go through all emotions, you appear at
the meetings, you do the business, you look
like a Christian so far as the aping
and pretending is concerned, but you're devoid of
the blessing of the Spirit, you're devoid of
the living Christ, you're devoid of the mighty
working of the Holy Ghost in your life.
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, and I
wonder how many of you have the humility
before God, I wonder how many of you
have the repentance before God, I wonder how
many of you have the fraction of courage
before God to come and stand here tonight
and kneel before God and confess that you've
never really been a living stone.
Not only living stones, but stones rightly related
to the foundation with symmetry and beauty and
listen, and listen, every single, every single prime
in evidence that the Lord Jesus Christ is
central in your life.
Central in your life, not only foundational, but
as the cornerstone central in your life.
I've been an evangelist for 17 years, and
I know this, I know this, that my
greatest problem, my greatest problem in talking to
the unconverted people is when they turn around
to me and say, Stephen Overt, don't talk
to me about being a Christian, don't talk
to me about being a Christian.
It's been said here this fortnight.
I have a fellow working in my office
who calls himself a Christian, and if that's
the Christian, I'm done with it.
Don't talk to me about being a Christian.
A fellow sat over the table the other
night in the hotel and said the very
same thing to me.
He said, I've yet to find a man
who's living the quality and level of life
that you've been preaching, and when I do,
I'll become a Christian.
I'm putting it to you.
It's as straight as that.
I'm asking you, are you building?
Are you building?
Are you building wisely?
Or are you building foolishly?
That is the significance of the building.
But I want to move quickly on, and
I want to say this.
We'll soon find out whether or not you
are building wisely or foolishly, because I move
right on to the question of the standard
of the building.
What does God expect?
I'll tell you quickly.
One building, one house, fell not.
The other house fell, and great was the
fall of it.
One house fell not.
The other fell, and great was the fall
of it.
What determined whether or not it fell?
One thing I want to point out quickly.
So far as the story makes out, it
was through the appearance of it.
Not the appearance of it, but the durability
of it.
Some of you are so beautifully whitewashed.
Some of you are so newly painted with
synthetic Christianity that it's very difficult to discover
on first looks whether or not you're really
one of those wise, wisely built houses.
But one day, the standard, the test is
going to press so hard that we'll soon
discover.
You see, there's a two-fold test.
There's the test of time, and there's the
test of eternity.
The test of time the Lord Jesus spoke
of again and again, it's tribulation.
It's tribulation.
In the world you shall have tribulation.
The Lord Jesus never promised that Christians were
going to be rid of tribulation.
He told them that they were going to
be persecuted, they were going to go through
tribulation, that right up to the end age,
when the Savior comes back again, that tribulation
was going to become hotter and hotter and
hotter for the quality of Christianity that He
demanded of them.
And I want to say, my friends, whoever
you are, whatever being your successes, your joys
or your pleasures, you're yet to pass through
tribulation.
You're yet to pass through tribulation.
It may be domestic tribulation, it may be
business tribulation, it may be personal tribulation.
And the fact that you've escaped it now
is no guarantee that you're going to not
face it.
Some of us have faced it already.
Others of you are yet to face it.
And I'm telling you, my friend, I'm telling
you straightly from my heart tonight, whatever you
think of what I'm saying, whether you smile
it off, whether you sneer it off, whether
you snap your finger and say, I couldn't
care less, when tribulation really strikes at your
life, if that house of yours, that house
of yours isn't built on the rock, if
that body house of yours, if that home
house of yours, if that church house of
yours isn't built upon the rock, it'll collapse,
it'll go to pieces.
I've seen it happen hundreds of times.
I could stop tonight to tell you story
after story.
I could tell you about the most charming
religious people.
I could tell you about some of our
lads who've gone away from my own church
into the fortress with a courage in their
eyes and their set chins and they said,
Pastor, we can take it.
We don't want to be necessarily keen.
Don't press us on this question of getting
right with God.
We'll come out clean.
And the letters have come back.
They've been shattered.
The pan has opened up and they've gone
down like a pack of cards.
Their lives have been ruined.
Bodies have been ruined.
Homes have been disgraced.
And the church has been brought low in
the dust.
But I'm going to go a little further
and I'm going to say this.
If tribulation and the test of time doesn't
find you out, eternity will find you out.
Eternity will find you out because there's coming
as sure as my name is Stephen Olford
and God is true, a day of judgment.
God hath appointed a day in the which
He will judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom He hath ordained whereof He
hath given assurance unto all men in that
He hath raised Him from the dead.
A day of judgment.
And as you will hear tomorrow night, I
believe that day of judgment is very, very,
very near.
I do.
I'm absolutely sure about that.
This world can't go on just as it's
going on with impunity endlessly in this present
state.
God has to act from heaven All I
can say tonight is this, that the hush,
the hush, the hush of heaven is the
hope of humanity.
Because when God breaks into the air again,
when God breaks into history again, it's going
to be, it's going to be judgment.
Judgment, men and women.
Judgment.
Amen.
Any warning?
The clouds begin to gather from every direction.
The sky becomes overcast.
Night seems to fall upon creation.
The wind that blew those clouds into position
almost as suddenly disappears again.
And there's a quiet calm, a hush, a
hush.
I've seen it happen so often I can
almost see it happening now.
I see the little ant crawling away under
a boulder.
I see the bird seeking shelter.
I see the animal quietly moving away out
of the tremendous wake of what is now
going to burst upon the land.
Then there's the flash of lightning.
There's the thunder roar.
I've seen lightning catch a tree and burst
it from its topmost branches right down to
its roots and break it wide open.
I've seen as it were the very fountains
of heaven burst open so that rain came
down in such deluges that I've seen an
entire house taken from its foundations and carried
away to destruction.
I've seen cattle taken, birds taken, men taken.
And I stood there and I've seen a
storm demonically beat itself upon creation such as
our Lord Jesus describes here.
And I've looked back and I've said my,
oh my, oh my, my God if that
is nearly, if that's nearly a symbol of
what's going to happen when thou dost break
in judgment upon this earth oh God!
I fly to the rock of ages for
safety.
The hush of heaven is the hope of
humanity tonight.
And because there's a hush in heaven, my
friend there's a chance for you to get
right with God and to get right with
God tonight and to get, get built upon
that rock and to start building a house
wisely for God whether it be your body
whether it be your home or whether it
be your church.
Judgment, judgment!
Judgment will find out the standard and quality
of your house and where it is built.
The significance of the house, the standard of
the house.
But oh I hear somebody saying to me,
Stephen Oldford you haven't said anything on how
of how I may start to build what
is the salvation of this house of mine,
this body house of mine, this home of
mine this church of mine what's the foundation
and how may I start to build Jesus
put it so clearly he said it this
way he said, whosoever cometh to me and
shareth these sayings of mine and doeth them
I'll liken him unto a wise man that
built his house upon the upon the rock,
upon the rock and will you notice the
three things Jesus said first of all he
said, you've got to find me, you've got
to seek me, whosoever cometh to me, seeking
Christ is the first step, seeking Christ, that's
finding the rock, that as Luke puts it
is digging deep that's going beneath the superficial
sandy obstruction right down to rock bottom that's
going deep, I'm not talking about something emotional
tonight I'm not talking about something superficial tonight,
I'm challenging fellows and girls and men and
women to use your intelligence to use your
mind you've never used it before if you
had you'd have gone further than you've gone
go deep with God tonight, dig deep don't
be satisfied until you find Christ in this
service go deep with him, I tell you
go deep with him and find the rock
and thank God the word of God says
they that seek me early shall find me
and having found the rock I want to
say another thing, having found Christ trust Christ
having sought him, trust him, whosoever cometh to
me and heareth these sayings of mine in
Jesus, Jesus means by hearing, trusting for faith
cometh by hearing and hearing by the word
of God having found the rock my friend
will you hide in the rock, will you
hide in the rock, will you make the
language of your heart tonight, rock of ages
cleft for me let me hide myself in
thee thank God for a cleft rock thank
God for a riven rock, thank God for
a rock into which you can hide tonight
and be safe when the storms come, thank
God that you can put your foundation into
the rock and you can begin to build
but there's something else Jesus said, not only
have you to seek him, not only have
you to trust him, but you're to obey
him, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and
doeth them, and doeth them, you know ladies
and gentlemen you've come into this place dozens
of times it may be during this crusade,
either morning or evening or both, and some
of you to this very hour have heard
all I've preached and not one of you
have translated that yet into obedience, I'm challenging
you tonight not only to find Christ, I'm
challenging you tonight not only to trust Christ
I'm challenging you tonight to go through in
obedience to all the will of God whatever
it costs whatever it costs even if it's
going to go clean across your friendship, even
if it's going to mean opposition, even if
it's going to mean the paying of bills
even if it means the writing of an
apology tonight, even if it means getting cleared
up throughout the hours of this night before
you go to sleep, you're going through with
God, you're going to obey him whatever it
costs, this book is going to be your
guide, you're going to start reading it tonight,
you're going to pray over it, you're going
to make it your meat and drink, and
you're going through with the will of God
to the end of your day you say,
supposing I do that supposing I find Christ
tonight by digging down deep, supposing I with
all my soul is the rock of ages
for me supposing I go through in obedience
Jesus says, that man will build upon the
rock, that man will be secure, that man
will be saved, that house will be saved
in tribulation and in judgment, so we have
seen the significance, the standard the salvation of
this house, and confronted with this tremendous truth
and challenge I'm asking you at this moment
I'm asking you at this moment what is
your answer to Jesus Christ will you seek
him will you trust him will you obey
him for remember this is the summer time
of God's death salvation winter is on its
way and when winter begins and the rains
and the floods listen and the tempest come
it'll be too late it'll be too late
the story is told of the little thatch
cottage up in the highlands of Scotland where
lived an old grandfather and his daughter it
was an isolated cottage one night this dear
old man went to his bed never to
rise again he was aged and he was
ailing the granddaughter was conscious of this and
wouldn't go to bed and decided that she
was going to sit by her dear grandfather
a tremendous storm sent itself outside, raging and
blowing and rattling that little cottage the atmosphere
was eerie darkness had fallen, no friends around
and the storm beat demontly outside as the
daughter leant over the old man she could
see that her loved one was failing fast
and thinking it the right thing to do
she went and she picked up the old
family bible and quietly she opened it and
she began to read, and the moment she
began to read the old man opened his
eyes and smiled very sweetly and said, thank
you daughter thank you for reading the old
book but have no fear have no fear
my lassie have no fear my lassie I'm
ready to go I'm ready to go, listen
listen I thatched my roof while it was
still summer I'm ready to go I thatched
my roof while it was still summer my
friend I'm asking you spiritually speaking is your
roof thatched, are your walls strong, is your
foundation secure are you on the rock of
ages are you building wisely have you found
Christ, have you trusted him are you abiding
in him, are you obeying him are you
safe for time and eternity if not, I
beg of you tonight, will you pray down
deep in your soul thou blessed rock of
ages I'm hiding in thee tonight, let us
bow our heads in prayer