That's really what it was like on the
first morning, you know.
It really was beautiful.
And really we knew our Maker just as
our dear Father.
And old Adam had no trouble.
You remember I shared with you before, God
showed him where to get the old orange
juice.
He went over and got it.
He had breakfast.
Then the Father showed him what he wanted
him to do that day, and Adam obeyed
him.
He dammed up this river, he pruned that
tree, or he plowed this field.
And God therefore provided everything that Adam needed.
And Adam received all his enjoyment from just
working hand and glove with the Father.
And that's what it was really like.
It really was a beautiful place.
And that's the Father's plan.
And that's really his plan for us.
It is possible to live that way, you
know.
You know it's all gone miserable.
We were watching TV in London, oh, about
two weeks ago.
And Jacques Mouneau was on, you know, the
geneticist.
And talking about genetic engineering.
The only solution to the overpopulation problem.
You know what their solution is.
You select the ones who can reproduce, and
you eliminate the ones who can't reproduce.
You know, that's the miserable mess we men
and women have got ourselves into.
It really was a beautiful place.
And God would have governed it.
If we had listened to him, he'd have
governed it so that there wasn't this overpopulation
problem.
But you know that it's all just gone
down the drain.
And really, at the very beginning, men knew
their position in the world.
They knew what it was like.
They knew why they were here.
They knew how important they were to their
Maker.
But you know one of the things you
and I fight now is just the sheer
insignificance of our lives.
You know it's come to such a point
that we all feel that terrible insignificance.
It's so hard even to gather together like
this, however loving and concerned we are with
each other, without feeling, you know, oh, I'm
insignificant.
I really am not important to anybody.
And you know the way that has led
you into trying to make yourself significant.
You know how from we were teenagers, we've
been trying to get ourselves noticed by somebody.
You know, we feel so much the insignificance.
We want somebody notice us.
Let us be significant to somebody.
And we tried all kinds of, oh, just
corny things when we were teenagers and we've
just got a little more subtle in them
now, you know.
We think, well, maybe if you do a
doctorate, maybe there aren't so many doctorates as
there are bachelors, so we'll go for a
doctorate.
But we're all struggling to get some kind
of significance.
You know it's very difficult to get that
without eventually beginning at least to discourage, let's
say, to discourage others from getting significance.
It's very hard to try to go for
significance in your own life without ending up
discouraging others from catching the limelight.
And you know, bit by bit, you begin
to manipulate and to domineer other people in
order to get yourself into a position of
significance.
You know how that leads just to the
old alienation.
You begin to feel, well, if I'm doing
this with my roommate, if I'm doing this
with the people in my family, if I'm
doing this with my girlfriend, they must all
be doing it to me.
And it just leads us into that old
alienation.
And we begin to suspect each other.
And we begin to suspect everybody else is
trying to manipulate me and domineer me.
And so in trying to establish our significance,
we're all becoming fearful of each other establishing
their significance.
You know, it just goes on and on
like that.
And really we try to get over it
in different ways.
Some of us begin to get so distraught
about it that we settle, well, we have
to get safe in some way.
If everybody's alienated to me and everybody's trying
to get one over on me, then I'd
better band together with some others.
And we'll band against the rest of the
world.
And so you know that we love to
join things.
We love to join clubs for the wrong
reason.
We love to be part of a political
party for the wrong reason.
It's good to be, you know, former governor,
for Nixon, but so many of us are
just using that to feel we're with a
herd, we're with a group of some kind
that will be safe because it's a bundle
of people who are grouping together to get
their own significance in the world.
You know that that whole herd instinct business
doesn't do us any good at all.
It begins to destroy the individuality of us
ourselves.
We begin to cease to be individuals ourselves,
those of us inside the group, and it
further intimidates the people outside the group.
And they feel more and more threatened.
And brothers and sisters, that's something really of
the mess that we men and women have
made of what was a beautiful situation at
the beginning.
You know, as we try to tackle all
these problems, we get to feel more and
more inadequate.
And because we feel inadequate, we feel, boy,
we have to do something about our inadequacy.
And so we try to prove ourselves adequate.
And so we set goals for ourselves in
this life, and we try to hit those
goals.
And we call the people, you know, who
hit them, they're achievers.
And the people who fail to hit them,
they're overachievers.
And we try to achieve in order to
declare ourselves adequate and significant in some way.
And it all brings strain and striving.
And we're all straining and striving for the
A, when we know, actually, the poor soul
by the university administration is committed only to
four A's per class.
But we're all hitting for the A.
And there's strain and striving, because we're all
trying to get to that point where we
prove that we're of some value in the
world.
And yet you know if you're like me,
you know, you just never get to feel
you're valuable enough.
You know?
You feel nobody really estimates your personal value
high enough.
The more indiscriminate bombing that takes place in
Vietnam, the more violence that takes place in
the city streets, the more mass classes, 500
people watching a TV set there are, the
more we feel that we have very little
value to anybody.
And so we try to establish our value,
you know.
You know how we do it.
Try to get into a position where we
prove that we're indispensable.
And so this is what makes so many
wives and so many children pout when they're
not given attention, you know.
Because they feel, no, I'm of value.
I'm of value.
Or it's what causes so many husbands, you
know, to seek alliances elsewhere outside their homes.
Because they want somebody that gives them some
value, and that respects them, and sets some
value upon them.
It's really what makes so many business people
and so many church people just pains.
They're always trying to get into a position
where they think they're indispensable.
And brothers and sisters, you know that we're
not talking about everybody else.
We're talking about us poor people, you know.
That's very much us, you know.
In all kinds of different ways, we're trying
to justify our being here.
We're trying to prove that we have a
right to be here.
Now, brothers and sisters, don't you see where
it leads you?
It really leads you into constant frustration.
Your mind and emotions get utterly disturbed and
destroyed, and you have to do something to
quiet them down just in order to keep
going.
Nobody is giving you the notice that you
need.
Nobody is giving the significance that you need.
Nobody is setting the personal value upon you
that you need.
And so you get frustrated inside and resentful,
and you get worried and troubled and anxious.
And all you can do is deal with
those symptoms.
And so you know the way we deal
with it.
We try to calm the old emotions, first
of all with the tranquilizers, then with the
alcohol, then we go a bit further into
the drugs, and now you know the latest
thing is what some of you mentioned in
prayer this morning.
We try to hypnotize the soulish powers, the
mind and emotions, into a place of passivity
through chanting Hare Krishna or through practicing the
negation of self and Zen Buddhism, and you
try to just blot it out.
And that's about the point that many of
us are at today, even in America.
In Europe it's worse, you know.
The old story, Europe, yeah, Europe is ahead
of us in thinking, and they're ahead of
us in the decline.
And there is a great sense of hopelessness,
you know, people feel, if I can just
blot out the whole mess, I can't find
a solution to it, if I can just
blot it out, I'll last through.
And that's what Sister was talking about with
the girl concerned with suicide, you know.
I don't think there's one of us who
live in this chaotic world, with all its
alienation, and with all its self-seeking, and
with all its desire for significance, that have
not come to the point of times that
old Eagleton says he came to, you know,
where there was a real heavy depression just
setting over you.
Now, brothers and sisters, do you know that
there is a sensible, planned solution, that the
maker of the world does have a way
out of that?
Now, all of you, you know, won't accept
it this morning, I understand that.
If you've come in this morning with a
whole lot of atheism inside you, and a
whole lot of agnosticism, you're not going to
accept just what I explain this moment.
But I'm asking you to begin to consider
that there is a way other than the
drugs, a way other than the alcohol, a
way other than the occult, that there is
a real solution.
There was a man in the first century,
and you know who he was, Jesus.
He said, listen, you're all seeking significance from
the wrong people.
You're all trying to get it from each
other.
And the reason you're trying to get it
is that you have lived your life without
the maker of the world.
Things were beautiful at the beginning, but you
no longer treat him as your father.
You treat him as an it.
You call him an élan vital, or a
vital force of some kind that started the
world.
You call him an explosion in the middle
of nowhere.
You call him two atoms coming together.
You call him a single cell amoeba.
You've ignored this creator.
You've ignored him and lived your own life
in your own way for your own purposes.
Now because of that, my father has turned
his face away from you also.
And he has ceased to make his power
available in your life.
And in fact, he has released his wrath
upon you, and what you feel now of
loneliness and of insignificance is a result of
God's reaction to your rebellion against him.
And Jesus explained, you know, that there was
a man at the beginning called Cain who
killed his brother, and from then on he
became a fugitive and stranger upon the earth.
And Jesus explained, look, that's what you become.
When you live your life without the maker
of the world with you, you sense this
rejection.
And what you're doing is attributing it to
everyone else and trying to live with it
by getting other people to accept you.
And Jesus said, that's not what is needed.
My father has condemned you to go into
infinite darkness after this physical life is over.
And it's the fear of that and the
awareness of that in your conscience that makes
you so desperate.
And then Jesus said, but listen, my father
loves you.
And he has allowed me to go into
that infinite darkness in your place.
So that he is able to keep his
antagonism and his condemnation against people who rebel
against him.
He is able to remain a just God
and to keep his promise about those who
forsake him will die.
He's able to keep his promise by working
that out on me.
But he himself wants no longer to work
it out on you.
And because I have died for you, my
father actually is ready to give you another
chance.
And he's willing to accept you as his
children.
And he wants you to start all over
again.
And this time to start with him as
your loving father.
And to start treating him as a real
person.
And brothers and sisters, all I can share
this morning is that those of us who
have believed this and have begun to deal
seriously with this man Jesus as someone who
was above time and above space and is
alive today, we have found a nutterly new
spirit coming into our lives.
And we've found a freedom from the depression
and a freedom from the worry and a
freedom from the frustration and a freedom from
always pulling somebody's coattails, you know, and saying,
look at me, look at me, look at
me.
And so many of us have never got
beyond that childish stage, you know.
Daddy, look at me, look what I'm doing.
And we've found a new spirit coming inside
us that makes us realize that the maker
of the world knows us and notices us
and loves us personally as one of his
sons and daughters.
And we've found that he makes things available
to us that we need.
But the real reason, you know, we started
to treat him in this way was not
because he did these things for others but
because, brothers and sisters, God is real.
God is really the loving Father of Jesus.
That's why I'm asking you to start believing
that.
Not because he'd do all those things for
you, but because God is real.
God is a loving Father and he knows
you this morning.
And he knows your name and he notices
you.
And he knows how you dressed this morning.
And he knows what you ate or didn't
eat this morning.
And he knows what you'll do this evening.
And he knows you by name.
And even though you've ignored him for years
and treated him as a kind of religious
principle for generations, it seems, yet he's willing
for you to start all over again with
him and to start believing that he really
does love you.
And he really is a Father.
And, brothers and sisters, that for many of
us in this theater has just changed everything.
And as this Father has begun to give
us his life, we've sensed a freedom from
all those frustrations that I shared with you
at the beginning.
Now, really, you know, you have to think
the whole thing over.
Don't you see that?
You have to think it all over.
You have to read some of the books
that you'll find in the lobby or in
the fish bookshop.
And you have to start talking with some
of the people here.
And then decide, is this true?
And then, if it's true, take the step
of saying to Jesus, Lord, I believe you
were real.
I believe you did not die as a
political criminal, but you did die so that
my Father would be free to forgive me.
Lord, I'm going to believe that now.
And I commit my life to you.
And I ask you to give me your
Spirit and drive away this darkness and desperation
and frustration and insignificance and enable me to
be what I was created to be.
So, will you, you know, think about it?
And if you want to, if you want
to pray sometime about it, you know, set
up a time and come and see me
or see some of the brothers and sisters.
Or just stay behind the theater or talk
to some of them in the fellowships.
But really just move forward in it as
God guides you.
And, loved ones, let's begin, some of us,
to live in the way that we were
planned to live.
You know?
Let's begin to really live with God as
our Father.
Really pray, you know, that Jesus will enable
some of you today to see it and
to come to Him.
Dear Father, I thank you for my brothers
and sisters here this morning.
And I trust you, Father, by your Holy
Spirit, to make it real to somebody for
the first time today.
Father, I know that men's voices are of
no value and men's intellects achieve nothing.
But I know you, by your Holy Spirit,
can make all this and you yourself real
to all of us today.
I trust you, Father, to do that.
And now we would commit ourselves to you,
to living this week with a loving Father
who knows us, who owns the cattle on
a thousand hills, who set out the galaxies,
who planned the seas and the rivers.
And we thank you that we can call
you our Father and we can trust you
and love you because of Jesus.
Amen.