======================================================================== WRITINGS OF W A CRISWELL by W.A. Criswell ======================================================================== A collection of theological writings, sermons, and essays by W.A. Criswell, compiled for study and devotional reading. Chapters: 55 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1. 01.00. Five Great Questions of the Bible 2. 01.000. Preface 3. 01.01. Am I My Brother's Keeper? 4. 01.02. If A Man Die, Shall He Live Again? 5. 01.03. What Shall I Do Then With Jesus Which Is Called Christ? 6. 01.04. What Must I Do To Be Saved? 7. 01.05. How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great Salvation? 8. 02.01. THE SCARLET THREAD THROUGH THE BIBLE - NEW YEAR'S EVE 9. 02.02. Part 2 10. S. A GIFT FOR CHRIST 11. S. ABRAHAM AND THE PROMISES OF GOD 12. S. BLOOD OF THE MARTYR STEPHEN 13. S. DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS 14. S. DISCIPLES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 15. S. ELECTION: THE HARDEST PASSAGE IN THE BBL 16. S. GOD AND THE EDUCATED MAN 17. S. GRACE ABOUNDING 18. S. HOW HEAR WITHOUT PREACHER? 19. S. I AM A DEBTOR 20. S. JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM 21. S. LET US HAVE PEACE WITH GOD 22. S. LIFE' STORMY SEA 23. S. LIVING IN THE SEVENTH OF ROMANS 24. S. MORE THAN CONQUERORS 25. S. NO CONDEMNATION 26. S. OCCUPY TILL I COME 27. S. OUR HOPE IN HEAVEN 28. S. OUT OF TRIBULATION, HOPE 29. S. Our Golden Opportunity 30. S. PAUL'S IRON CHAIN 31. S. PREDESTINATION 32. S. REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING 33. S. Receiving the Holy Spirit 34. S. SAVED BY HIS LIFE 35. S. SOUL-WINNER TRUETT 36. S. THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED 37. S. THE ATONEMENT 38. S. THE ENMITY AGAINST GOD 39. S. THE FAITH THAT SAVES 40. S. THE FUTURE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL 41. S. THE GIFT OF GOD 42. S. THE GREAT CONFESSION 43. S. THE LORD STANDING BY 44. S. THE LOST BEATITUDE 45. S. THE MEANING OF BAPTISM 46. S. THE PROBLEM OF ISRAEL'S UNBELIEF 47. S. THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN 48. S. THE SOUL-WINNING MINISTRY OF PAUL 49. S. THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS 50. S. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT 51. S. THIS GRACE WHEREIN WE STAND 52. S. The Living Christ 53. S. The Words of Salvation 54. S. WHEN WE COME TO ROME 55. S. WHY GOD PERMITTED ADAM'S TRANSGRESSION ======================================================================== CHAPTER 1: 01.00. FIVE GREAT QUESTIONS OF THE BIBLE ======================================================================== Five Great Questions of the Bible * * * * * * * W. A. Criswell, Ph.D. Pastor, First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas © 1958 Zondervan Publishing House. Copyright expired. Subjects: 1. Baptists — Sermons; 2. Sermons, American — 20th Century. CONTENTS These are the Five Great Questions Preface 1. Am I My Brother’s Keeper? 2. If a Man Die, Shall He Live Again? 3. What Shall I Do Then with Jesus Which Is Called Christ? 4. What Must I Do to Be Saved? 5. How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great Salvation? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 2: 01.000. PREFACE ======================================================================== Preface For thirty-nine consecutive years the First Baptist Church in Dallas has conducted pre-Easter noonday services in a downtown theater. Ever since the spacious Palace Theater (seating about twenty-four hundred people) was built, the services have been conducted in it. For twenty-five years the world-famed prince of preachers, Dr. George W. Truett, preached to the people in these meaningful convocations. This year, 1958, comprises the fourteenth year that I have led them. These sermons, "Five Great Questions of the Bible," are the series I preached this year. Next year I hope to preach on "Five Great Affirmations of the Bible," and if God blesses the publication of this year’s series, we shall seek also to publish next year’s. Being delivered at noon Monday through Friday, the messages number five in each group. This does not mean that there are only five great questions in the Bible. If the days had been ten in number, there could have been the subject of "Ten Great Questions of the Bible." But a choice had to be made, and these five I selected are the most meaningful to me. The messages have been written down stenographically. They are spoken, preached, prepared for a listening audience. They are simple and plain. They are evangelistic, seeking to bring to a saving faith in Christ Jesus the many hundreds from every walk in life who fill that large theater. They are of necessity brief. During a busy lunch hour, there is not time for elaboration of detail. In many instances in the sermons, the discussions could have continued much longer. But preaching at these pre-Easter services, I have found it best to say it straight to the point, then go on to the next topic. And now may God bless these messages to the reading public as graciously as His Spirit blessed them to the listening audience. W.A. CRISWELL Dallas, Texas ======================================================================== CHAPTER 3: 01.01. AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER? ======================================================================== Am I My Brother’s Keeper? And the LORD said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not, Am I my brother’s keeper? — Gen 4:9. THE FIRST GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in the response of Adam’s first son to an inquiry of the Lord. It is a sermon in itself. It answers itself. Cain’s reply, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" is an unconscious expression of soul responsibility. The story of Cain and Abel is recounted in the fourth chapter of Genesis. Its famous question, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" is usually applied to physical well-being. It is used to enforce the axiom that we have duties to perform in behalf of the unfortunate who need food and clothing, shelter, and medical attention. There is no doubt that this construction can be amply justified in the text. We are responsible for the physical welfare of our neighbor whether he lives close by or far away. We who are eminently blessed of God are not to be thankful that we have bread to eat while others starve; we are rather to be grateful to the kind providences of heaven that we have bread to share with others who have none. One of the far reaching projects of our own church that has marvelously blessed our people is the organization and support of our six missions. However much we may have proved to be a blessing to the people unto whom we seek to minister, it can be truthfully said that the six missions are a much greater blessing to us who have made them possible. It blesses us when we take advantage of the opportunity to share what we have with others. To feed a hungry man, to clothe a naked child, to bring medical care and attention to the sick, or to comfort the distressed, has a recompense paid with coin of God’ own minting. The image and subscription written large on the increment of that reward is never dulled or worn away by use. THE SPIRITUAL BASIS OF THE STORY The true turn of the story of Cain and Abel, however, is not outward but inward. It is not physical but spiritual. It is not of the body but of the soul. We know this because of the description of God’s response to the offerings of the two men, found in the fourth and fifth verses of this fourth chapter of Genesis. The inspired record states that "The LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering." First the Lord had respect unto Abel himself, and then He had respect to his offering. In the next verse we are told, "But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect." First, God refused Cain, and then He refused his offering. The acceptance and refusal of the Lord God were based upon the spiritual attitude and response found in the hearts of the two men. It was not a question of something outward, bodily or physical; rather, the turn of the story is to be found in something inward and spiritual. Like a proud exhibitor at the county fair, Cain brought a vegetable offering. He was complimenting God with so fine an arrangement of so excellent a gift. He was proud of himself, full of himself, and his offering was a portrayal of his own estimation of his endowed abilities. His heart was puffed up; he was not right, either toward man or toward God. On the contrary, Abel was a true, humble child of the Lord. In the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are told that "By faith Abel offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." The difference lay in the heart and in the spirit of the man. What he had, he had by faith, by trust, by commitment to God. By faith, he offered a blood sacrifice, an atonement for the soul. He felt himself unworthy, a sinner; and the deep, spiritual intuitions brought to him and taught to him by the processes of faith led him to make the sacrifice in blood. We have thus a portrayal of these first two brothers. The humble approach the attitude of Abel to the throne of God by the blood of the lamb is a type and a harbinger of the worship and approach of all men who by faith have reached out and upward to touch the hem of the garment of the Almighty. It was not so with Cain. He was full of himself, proud of himself, ambitious for himself. His inward spiritual rebellion is unveiled in the story that follows. In his envy and his wrath at the acceptance of his younger brother, the true nature of Cain is fully displayed. He slays Abel by his own hand, and the earth drinks up the blood of Adam’s second son. The tenth verse of the fourth chapter of Genesis is a terrible verse. God says to Cain, "What have you done? the voice of your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground." The first murder was born in the heart of a man who was indifferent to spiritual values. What was it to him if his brother was destroyed in death? AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WHOLE BIBLE The question of the Lord God, "Where is Abel thy brother?" and the counterquestion of Cain, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" make a kind of introduction to the entire Bible. Life responsibility, soul responsibility, is a recurring teaching of the whole Scriptures; it is woven into the warp and woof of the biblical fabric. In the Old Testament, the Lord God said to his prophet Ezekiel: Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked man, ’You will surely die,’ and you do not warn him or speak out to dissuade him from his evil ways in order to save his life, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteousness and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin. The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the righteous man not to sin and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will have saved yourself (Eze 3:17-21). In the New Testament, the responsibility for the salvation of all men, of all generations, of all peoples everywhere, is laid upon the Church in the great commissions to be found in the gospels and in the Book of Acts. In Acts 20:26, Paul stands in the presence of the elders of Ephesus to say, "Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men." The reason for this freedom from blood guiltiness he states in the next, Acts 20:27 : "For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God." He had preached the Gospel fully, fervently, prayerfully. If men were not saved, it was not be laid to his charge. He had done what he could. All of this emphasizes the heavy and weighty responsibility by which we are chargeable before heaven for the spiritual welfare of all men. God will surely call us into account — "Where is Abel, your brother?" Our souls are not free from blood until we have done our best to win the lost to the saving knowledge of Christ our Saviour, our only hope in this world and in the world that is to come. One time I asked a Sunday school teacher to be responsible for the winning of a young man who had moved to our city. The young man steadfastly refused the love and invitations and pleadings and appeals of the Sunday school teacher. Without any warning, either to himself or to others, the young man was suddenly stricken and died. The Sunday school teacher sought me out and with tears said earnestly and humbly, "Pastor, I did what I could; I tried the best I knew how: his blood is not on my hands." It is only when we have done our utmost to win others to Christ that we can say with the Apostle Paul, "Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men." Until this can be said by every one of us in all truth and in all sincerity, we are responsible to a God who will some day call us into account. The instruments of salvation are in our hands; God has committed them to us. There is no doctrine to be seen more frequently in all the Holy Scriptures than this charge and commitment. In Pro 11:30; the Holy Scriptures say, "He that winneth souls is wise." That is, we are to win souls; God has committed to us that responsibility. In Dan 12:3; we find these words: "And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." Here is the same truth again: we are to turn many to righteousness; God has called us to that task. We see it plainly again in the Great Commission of Mat 28:19-20 — "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." We are to make disciples; this is our Christian assignment. In the Greek language all the verbs in that commandment are participles except one, and that one verb is in the imperative — "make disciples." Going, baptizing, teaching — we are to make disciples. That this gospel ministry is committed to our care and trust is emphasized by James in the fifth chapter and twentieth verse of his epistle. The words are written by the pastor of the church at Jerusalem under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. "He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." We are to convert the sinner from the error of his way. The responsibility is laid upon us. THE METHODS OF GOD’S GRACE The methods of God’s grace are strange and unusual beyond compare. They are never exercised without human instrumentality. In the story of Cornelius and his household, recounted in the tenth and eleventh chapters of the Book of Acts, we read of the visit of the angel to the centurion with a message from God in Heaven. The message of the angel concludes with the directive that Cornelius is to send to Joppa to call for one Simon whose surname is Peter, who will tell him words whereby he and his household shall be saved (Acts 10:6; Acts 11:14). Why did not the angel tell him the words whereby he and his household could be saved? Because the instruments of soul salvation God hath entrusted to us. We are to preach the Gospel; we are to win men to Christ; the responsibility for their salvation lies upon us. In the marvelous and heart-moving story of the conversion of the Apostle Paul, recounted in the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts, Paul, trembling and astonished, says to the Lord, who appears in power and glory: "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Then the Scriptures quote the Lord: "And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and you shall be told what you must do" (Acts 9:6). Why did not Christ tell him what to do? Because He mediates His truth through others. The Lord’s message was delivered to Saul of Tarsus by a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias (Acts 9:10). It is thus through all Christian history; the message of God is delivered to us to deliver to other men. We are saved to save others; we are called to win others; we are elected as the instruments of salvation for lost men everywhere. The responsibility of their salvation lies upon us. One time I stood in the midst of a group of men gathered in the square of a little town. They were arguing about whether the heathen were lost without the knowledge of Christ. In the midst of the discussion, the postmaster, who was a fine Christian and Bible student, went into his office, picked up his Bible, returned to the group, opened the Book and read Rom 10:13-15. Without saying a word, when he had finished reading the passage, he closed the Book, returned to the post office and laid the heavenly volume down upon the table from whence he had picked it up. There was no more argument. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." "How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?" The responsibility for the saving of the lost world is upon us. God’s truth is mediated through human personality. There is not a syllable of the Holy Scriptures written without human hands. There is not a soul saved without a soul-winner. There is not a spiritual work done without a consecrated worker. There is not a sermon preached without a preacher. God and you make the Kingdom. God and you make the Church. God and you do the work. God and you win the souls. "God Himself cannot make Stradivarius violins Without Stradivarius." Our soul responsibility reaches to every part and piece and section and relationship of life. Parents are responsible for their children; friends are responsible for their employees. God will even hold us accountable for our opportunity to speak to chance acquaintances whom we meet by the way. Long ago I heard a great and devoted preacher describe a journey he made on a certain train in the early years of his ministry. Facing him in the coach was a sad-faced young man concerning whom the Holy Spirit whispered in the heart of the preacher, "Speak to him about his soul." The preacher somehow delayed, refused, and the young man got off the train never to be seen by the preacher again. The minister of God, in describing the incident, said these words: "If I could unravel all the years with their sorrows and trials and tears, I would do so, if I could only get back to that moment when I looked into the face of the sad, young man and felt the urging of the Holy Spirit to speak to him about his soul." The burden of that dereliction pressed upon the heart of the preacher through all the years of his life. Oh, the dereliction of us all, church and all, people and all, congregation and all, Christendom and all! How slow we are to make known the good news that Jesus died for our sins, that He was raised for our justification, that all who believe in Him shall have eternal life. An African who had just heard the marvelous story of love of Jesus was running to tell his fellow villagers the good news when he stopped, returned to the missionary and said: "Missionary, when did you say He died for us? Was it yesterday? Was it last week? Was it a year ago?" How tragic that the missionary had to explain that the Saviour died for the lost of this world one thousand nine hundred years ago! Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord, I care not how, But stir my heart in passion for the world. Stir me to give, to go — but most of all to pray. Stir, till Thy blood-red banner be unfurled O’er lands that still in deepest darkness lie, O’er plains where no cross is lifted high. Stir me, oh, stir me, Lord! Thy heart was stirred By love’s intensest fire till Thou didst give Thine only Son, Thy best beloved One, Even to the dreadful cross that I might live. Stir me to give myself so back to Thee That Thou canst give Thyself again through me. Am I my brother’s keeper? God help me to be true to the trust. I am. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 4: 01.02. IF A MAN DIE, SHALL HE LIVE AGAIN? ======================================================================== If A Man Die, Shall He Live Again? If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. — Job 14:14. OUR SECOND GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is the cry of Job in the fourteenth chapter of his book and the fourteenth verse — "If a man die, shall he live again?" Who has not asked this question in suspense or in hope or in fear? It is a question as old as the first grave. It is the cry of Job when he was brought low, when he was in despair of, and at the door of, death: "Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down: he fleeth also as a shadow, and continueth not. Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass: Turn from him, that he may rest, till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day. For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; Yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. The waters wear the stones: thou washest away the things which grow out of the dust of the earth; and thou destroyest the hope of man. Thou prevailest for ever against him, and he passeth: thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them. But his flesh upon him shall have pain, and his soul within him shall mourn" (Job 14:1-2, Job 14:5-9, Job 14:14, Job 14:19-22). There is no denying the apparent and seeming finality of the grave. When the silver cord is loosed And the golden bowl is broken; When the pitcher is broken at the fountain And the wheel is broken at the cistern. All have felt the oppressive sadness of this despair. Job is but the spokesman of the ages. When we come to the end of the trail, to the breaking up of the home, to the open and fresh-dug grave, all the flowers that blossom, all the poetry that is written, all the songs that have been sung, cannot hide the terror of the approach of the Pale Horseman. It is a horrible dream, inevitably relentless, inexorably come true. Beyond the darkness of death and the night of the grave, is there light? Is there life? Is there hope? Is there immortality? Peering into the depths of the vast beyond, Job asks this undying question: "If a man die, shall he live again?" HUMANITY’S UNDYING BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY Belief in the immortality of the soul somehow never dies. That belief is universal; nothing ever seems to alter that hope. It is not destroyed by time, by the passing centuries. There is an unbroken chain of belief in the immortality of the soul from the earliest evidences of the remotest bounds of history. The great orator and statesman, Cicero, made the most exhaustive study concerning this subject which has come down to us from ancient times. He concluded his vast research by saying: "The immortality of the soul is established by the consent of all peoples." In the tombs of the Egyptians there is found the oldest book in the world. For generations and for centuries mankind wondered at the content of those ancient books written in such strange hieroglyphics. When their secret was finally deciphered, the book was a book for the dead that they might be directed to prosperity and happiness in the life beyond the grave. When the ancient cuneiform inscriptions on long-buried Chaldean tablets written before Abraham were finally deciphered, they were found to contain prayers in behalf of the dead. The literature, the sculpture, the inscriptions of ancient Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and Roman civilizations are eloquent testimony to the universal persuasion of the death-lessness of the soul. The subject is the basis of Homer’s song and the inspiration of Virgil’s "Aeneid." The Gallic warrior was buried with his armor, and the painted Indian was interred with his bow and arrow. These were to be used in the future life. Even the lowest tribes in Central Africa, even the degraded Patagonians, teach a future life. Through time, through generations, through the multiplied millenniums and passing centuries, the persuasion that men do not die when the body decays is forever evident. Rational argument has been impotent to reason the hope away. However the philosopher and the metaphysician may ridicule it, scorn it, laugh at it, mock it, marshal arguments against it, there remains the undying, undeniable persuasion that there is something yet, over and beyond the brief experience of this life. The soul and the spirit are something else and other than dirt and clay. Life is real; life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal. "Dust thou art, to dust returneth," Was not spoken of the soul. Life without this hope is like an arch resting on one pillar; it is like a bridge ending in the midst of a dark abyss. Nothing is complete; nothing really matters. No life can find its ultimate meaning and purpose without the "hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil" (Heb 6:19), which hope is on the other side of the grave. Somehow, although rational argument may multiply apparent reasons for the vanity and futility of such a hope, it still lives, unceasing and undying in the hearts of men. The dean of a college one time brought to me a book written by a great scientist. Upon the last pages of the book the eminent man of study and research had written an addendum. It was a brief account of a personal experience. He said that all his life he had scoffed at the belief of immortality, but as he finished the volume, his father and mother had died. Somehow, he said, he no longer could believe that they ceased to exist. They lived in another world, in another place, He said he could not prove it; he just seemed to know that it was so. What was written in the last pages of the book of this eminent scientist is the verdict of all time and of all generations. It is difficult to be persuaded that the ultimate purpose and meaning of life is to be found in the corruption of the grave. THE CERTAIN REVELATION OF IMMORTALITY But where is to be discovered and to be learned the sure and certain word concerning this all-important question — "If a man die, shall he live again?" Where is to be found the authoritative revelation? The cry of Socrates in the presence of death is one of the most pathetic utterances in all literature: "Oh, that there were some divine word upon which we could more securely and less perilously sail upon a stronger vessel." It is the picture of the soul wistfully scanning the mysterious waste of waters, fancying it discerns far away the golden isles, yet not so sufficiently sure as to weigh anchor and launch out into the deep. A syllogism is a frail vessel for so hazardous a venture; a metaphysical theory is a paper boat in which to dare the dread abyss. "Intimations of Immortality" are well enough for poetry to while away an idle hour, but we need more than felicitous expressions and aesthetic fancies when the room is darkened and the faithful physician is compelled to accept defeat. There are many hints and whispers and implications that reach toward the probability of immortality, but neither poet, nor naturalist, nor philosopher, nor all of these combined, can sustain us in our need when death’s shadows fall across our lives. Where is the sure and certain word concerning this question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" To wade through the natural religions of mankind, to sift the philosophies and speculations of men, is a barren and fruitless search. There is no ultimate answer to be found in any volume of any work that has been produced by uninspired and terrestrial-bound humanity. Even the Old Testament Scriptures are veiled and dimly outlined, waiting for a fuller revelation. Enoch walked with God and was not, but the Old Testament Scriptures do not say where or just how; they do not explain. Elijah was taken by a whirlwind into heaven, but what happened beyond that glorious translation is not delineated. Saul talked with Samuel from the dead, but the Scriptures do not go further in the recounting of the incident. Daniel spoke of the resurrection of the just and unjust, but the book is sealed until the appointed time. By faith, the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets looked forward to that fuller hope when life and immortality were to be brought to light. They saw it from afar. Abraham rejoiced to see that day, "and he saw it and was glad." Job rose out of his despair to utter one of the sublimest hopes and most glorious prophecies to be found in all the passages of the ancient Scriptures: "For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me" (Job 19:25-27). But it was still a prophecy. It looked for fulfillment beyond the centuries to a hope that lay far ahead. That ultimate and glorious day of the full revelation of the life beyond the grave, longed for by Abraham and Job and David, was brought to us through the coming of the Son of God, Himself. It is He, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. (". . . is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" — 2Ti 1:10.) Running to the empty tomb, the women heard the incomparably marvelous announcement on that first Easter morning: "And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead: and, behold, he goes before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word" (Mat 28:5-8). Walking by the way, the two Emmaus disciples said to one another: "Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" (Luk 24:32) To the astonished disciples our risen, resurrected, living Lord said: "Peace be with you..... Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence (Luk 24:36-43). THE HEART OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH The very heart and soul and substance of the Christian faith is to be found in the revelation of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. The deity of Christ Himself is confirmed by it. He is "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead" (Rom 1:4). The difference between the claims of Christ and false claims of all other messiahs and would-be saviours is to be found in the resurrection. It is the Lord Jesus Christ, our Saviour, who is singled out among all mankind to be the true Son of God, because it is He alone who has been resurrected, immortalized, and glorified from among the dead. He is the first-fruits of them who sleep. He is the Captain of the sainted band who rise in power to glorify God forever. The validity of the ministry and authority of Christ and of His message is to be found in His resurrection from the dead. This is most evident in a conversation between Jesus and the rulers of the Temple, recorded in the second chapter of the Gospel of John: Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken (John 2:18-22). When He was accosted by the Pharisees and the scribes who demanded of him a sign to authenticate His teaching prerogatives, He replied: "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Mat 12:39-40). Had Jesus not risen from the dead, every word of His revelation, every hope of His promises would have fallen into the dust of the ground, decaying in Jesus’ tomb with His corrupting body. The whole length and breadth and height and depth of the hope we have in Christ are bound up in the power of God that raised Him from the grave. This has become the incomparable message of the Christian hope and the Christian faith: "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him........ I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain" (1Co 15:13-23; 1Co 15:50-58). With what comfort, with what joy, with what peace, with what prospects of glory, can the Christian face the inevitable and ultimate conclusion of this earthly life! For he that believeth in Christ can never, never die. Though the outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. If the house of this tabernacle be dissolved, we have a building of God made without hands, eternal in the heavens. It is the triumph of the old, old hymn — My latest sun is sinking fast; My race is nearly run. My fiercest trials now are past; My triumph is begun. Oh come, angel band; Come and around me stand. Oh, bear me away on your snowy wings To my immortal home. "If a man die, shall he live again?" In Christ, gloriously so, forever and ever, world without end. Amen! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 5: 01.03. WHAT SHALL I DO THEN WITH JESUS WHICH IS CALLED CHRIST? ======================================================================== What Shall I Do Then With Jesus Which Is Called Christ? Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ? — Mat 27:22. A THIRD GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in the first gospel of the New Testament. It is the cry of Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of the province of Judea, when he was faced with the alternative of crucifying or defending Jesus of Nazareth. Nobility of conscience led one way; world expediency led in an opposite way. He was caught between the two conflicting appeals. In futility he turned to the leaders of the mob and desperately asked, "If I choose the release of Barabbas, what shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" This cry of Pontius Pilate has come down through the centuries as a personal question confronting every soul. If one is inclined to deny this confrontation, he may ask: "Why think any more about Jesus than about Jupiter? Why feel constrained to face Christ any more than to face Caesar? Why have anything to do with Him? Why not bow Him out?" The answer is most obvious. The coming of Christ into this world is a decisive act of heaven, an intervention of God in human history. We have to reckon with the fact of God and with the fact of Christ. The fact of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, is inevitable and inescapable. THE MATERIALIST AND JESUS The secularist, the materialist, the agnostic, the atheist, the cynic, the infidel, is the foremost to deny vigorously and vehemently that he has anything to do with Christ. He says, "I have gotten rid of Him." Like Pilate, he is a man who has washed his hands of Christ. He has nothing to do with Jesus, no more than he has anything to do with the dead Pharaoh, Ramses II, who lived thousands of years ago in Egypt. Having made this positive declaration and having got rid of Christ, he then goes to his office and writes a letter and dates it April 2, 1958 — "Anno Domini" — "in the year of our Lord." Is that getting rid of Jesus? He closes his financial business on Lincoln’s birthday; he closes it again on Washington’s birthday. Is he open for business on Christmas Day? Surely he does not observe Christmas, for he has got rid of Christ, and Christmas is His birthday. He goes to the coronation of the Queen of England, but he has no interest in such an event because it is a church service and a Christian religious ceremony. He attends the inauguration of the President of the United States, but he cannot enter into the true spirit of that meaningful occasion because the President takes his oath of office on a Bible and lifts his hand to swear before the Lord of Heaven. He reads the great literature of the race, but he must blind his eyes to the great surge of immortal prose and poetry because it is filled with the name and the ideals and the spirit of the prophet of Galilee, and he has got rid of the prophet of Galilee. He listens to the great music of the masters of all time but stops his ears lest he hear the wonderful oratorios of Easter and of Christmas. They have to do with Jesus, and he is rid of Jesus. He deals with the fundamental problems of civilization, and here again he meets the inevitable Christ. It is the principles of Jesus of Nazareth which have made this a Christian civilization. How could there have been a Christian civilization without Christ? When he plays with his boys, he says to the big one who is pushing the little one around, "Here, son, remember the Golden Rule." He learned that rule from Jesus. Whether it is at a wedding or at a funeral, whether it is in a cemetery or on the spire of a church, the whole world and whole procession of time and history point to Jesus. He shines in every star; He speaks in the conscience of every day. Wherever we turn, whatever we do, we meet the form and figure of this despised Nazarene, this lone Galilean. He looks at us from childhood, from the cradle of Bethlehem where He humbled Himself and took upon Himself the form of a man. He looks at us from the Horns of Hattin, in the Sermon on the Mount, in the great ethical principles of the Kingdom of God. He looks upon us from the brow of Olivet, weeping over a lost world. He looks upon us from the Cross in agony and in blood, dying for the sins of humanity. He looks upon us from Heaven from where He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. We meet Him down every road. Wherever we turn, wherever we are, there stands this inevitable Christ. Whether in life or in death, we have to do with Jesus. THE PSEUDO-SCIENTIST AND JESUS There is another kind of man who stands up to say: "But I am a scientist; I am interested only in facts. I have nothing to do with fiction or fable or religious superstition; therefore I have nothing to do with Jesus." But, sir! The most amazing fact that ever happened on this planet is Jesus. A life that has changed the whole calendar, a life so tremendous as to cause the world to date everything from Him, is a considerable fact, is it not? He was a peasant child, born in a cattle shed. Brought up in a carpenter’s shop, He worked at a humble household trade until He was a full-grown man, taught His people a few months, and died at thirty-three years of age. Is it not an amazing fact in itself that such a man of such humble origin should have so influenced the destiny of the world? He raised no armies. He organized no political institutions. He held no office. He wrote no books. He composed no music. He was poor and unbefriended. He was called a traitor to His nation. He was ordered outside the walls of His capital city and was crucified between two felons. Yet, two thousand years later, men and women by the millions would gladly lay down their lives for His name. Able, gifted, trained, and educated young people by the thousands cross the seas and the deserts and the mountains to tell the glad story of the hope they have in Him. Are these not facts to be considered? What of men who call themselves scientists, who pride themselves on sticking to the facts, yet shut out from their consideration the major fact and derive from them the science of geology. They say that stars are facts and deduce from them the science of astronomy. They know that fossils are facts, and they arrange from them whole chapters on the changing history of the earth. But they say nothing, deduce nothing, from the dominant and towering fact of all human history; namely, the fact of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God. What of men who base conclusions on the heavenly bodies, but can base no conclusion on the Heavenly Character? Have they not blinded themselves to the really great and unique fact of the universe? THE WORLD’S RELIGIOUS TEACHERS AND JESUS There are many people who are willing to receive Christ as a great teacher and religious leader, but who are at the same time willing to receive Him as only one of many such wise and good men who have come into the world. They place Him in the Pantheon of noble religious expounders along with Confucius, Gautama the Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, and others. Many books have been written in which are gathered together the lives and the stories and the religions of these different historical characters. On the jacket cover of the volume will be pictures of these several men and among them, of course, a supposed likeness of Jesus. In comparison with Christ, however, other religious leaders are as the darkness of the night compared to the light of the sun. They are as the Philistine god, Dagon, who fell broken before the Ark of the Covenant of Israel. Confucius was a political philosopher, who assembled the teachings of ancient people for the good of his nation. He made no claim to the office of prophet or of messiah. Gautama the Buddha ("the enlightened one") was a teacher in search of truth who at last found the secret of happiness in the annihilation of desire. The ultimate goal of his "Nirvana" is to come into the bliss of nothingness. Hinduism, with its many gods and reincarnations (of which Krishna is one), is a religion that has cursed India for thousands of years. What can you do to help a country and a depressed people where every swine is a devil, every cow is a god, and every wooden plow is a fetish of religious worship? The desert leader, Mohammed, with his convenient visions and revelations, allowing to himself and to his followers four wives at a time, propagating the faith by the edge of the sword, looking forward to a heaven of harem delight, has been a weight and a millstone of degradation to the womanhood and manhood of Islamic civilization. There is no place for Jesus of Nazareth in any religious pantheon, either in the ancient or the modern world. He does not fit. He does not belong. He is separate and apart, as high above other religious teachers as the heavens are high above the earth, as far removed as the east is from the west. INSPIRED GENIUS AND JESUS "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" There are many who rise to say, "Let us accept Him as a great, inspired genius. Homer was such a genius; so were Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. Let us place Jesus among them." But you pass from one world to another when you go from Homer or Shakespeare to Jesus. As gifted as were these authors, they would be amazed to find themselves named in the same breath with the Son of God. Shakespeare, the greatest of them all, worked and toiled and saved in order to be financially able to be buried in the chancel of his church. On the stone covering his grave are written these quaint words: "Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebeare To dig the dust enclosed heare." In his will and testament, the dramatist wrote: "I commit my soul to God, my Creator, in humble belief through the merit of Jesus my Saviour to obtain everlasting life." One of the most famous stories recounted in English literature concerns Charles Lamb and a group of literary men who began to surmise what they would do if the noble and gifted and great of the past were to enter into the room. Charles Lamb said, "If Shakespeare were to enter, we would rise to our feet in admiration; but if Jesus were to enter, we would kneel and worship in adoration." How different is this Man of Galilee from all other men of our times and of recorded history! Limitations are a grief to men everywhere, but Jesus never mentions the word. The winds and the waves are subject unto Him. The blindness of the blind, the deafness of the deaf, the uncleanness of the leper, the withered hand of the cripple, all are subject to Him. He could feed the five thousand just by breaking bread. There is no limit; there is no struggle. He even speaks to the dead, and they live. When someone asked, "Why did Jesus use the name of Lazarus when He called that dead man from the grave?" the answer was made, "Had He not said, ’Lazarus come forth,’ the entire cemetery would have arisen to answer the call of our Lord." For everyone death waits — for the greatest, the strongest, the noblest, the wisest. All fall into the arms of corruption. But this man says, "I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it up again." Deep in the sepulchre He picks up His graveclothes, folds them carefully, and lays them apart. He walks out of the tomb, the full-orbed God of the first Easter resurrection morning. Who is like unto Jesus among all the sons of men? JESUS ACCEPTED AS LORD We have no ultimate answer to the question of Pontius Pilate, "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" until we receive Him for all that He said He was and for all that He promised to do. Open the door of your Bible, and you will find that He fits perfectly the three hundred Old Testament promises concerning the coming of the Messiah. Open the door of your home, and you will find that He will sanctify every day, He will enrich every life, He will bless every meal, He will guide and sustain every holy and worthy decision. Open the door of your heart, bow down before Him, call upon His name, and you will know what it is to have God, Himself, come into your soul. "I bow one knee before thee, O King, my liege lord," said an old hero; "I bow two knees before God, my Saviour alone." Look up into His face; open the door of your heart; give Him the love and trust and faith of your life; crown Him King and Lord of time and eternity. He will be your all-sufficient, all-adequate Saviour. If you are tired of the load of your sin, Let Jesus come into your heart. If you desire a new life to begin, Let Jesus come into your heart. Just now your doubtings give o’er; Just now reject Him no more; Just now throw open the door; Let Jesus come into your heart. "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" I shall receive Him as Lord and Saviour, as the King and Hope of my life in this world and in the world that is to come. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 6: 01.04. WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED? ======================================================================== What Must I Do To Be Saved? Sirs, what must I do to be saved? — Acts 16:30. OUR FOURTH GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in the Book of Acts in the life of the apostle Paul. It is the heartfelt cry of the Philippian jailer, who in despair lifts his sword to take his own life. Trembling with fear, he falls down before Paul and his companion, Silas, to ask the eternal and all-important question, "What must I do to be saved?" Like the previous question of the preceding chapter — "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" — this question also becomes the inevitable cry of every human soul. The picture of this jailer of Philippi, down on his knees in ruin and despair, asking the way to be saved, is an ultimate and inevitable picture of each one of us somewhere, sometime, someday. THE QUESTION BROUGHT TO US The question sometimes is poignantly brought to us through deep, deep sorrow. Sir Harry Lauder, the Scottish singer and entertainer who was loved by the whole world, had an only son who was killed in battle in the trenches of France. In his terrible grief Sir Harry Lauder said: "I found three possible ways of escape: one was drink — I could drown my sorrow in debauchery and dissipation; one was suicide — I could hide myself in the grave; the third was God — I could cast all my care upon Him, and I found God." Sometimes this question is forcefully brought to our conscience by a personal realization of our condition and of the condition of the world around us. John Bunyan so describes the Pilgrim in the opening sentence of his immortal vision: "I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden on his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, ’What shall I do?’ " This Pilgrim of John Bunyan lived in the City of Destruction, which is the ultimate name of every city in this world. The Pilgrim was burdened down with a great weight of sin and guilt, which is the condition of every soul that lives. Sometimes this question is brought to the conscience through the judgment and pronouncement of death. The approach of death is a grim and terrifying and searching thing. The man who feels that he is about to die no longer is able to trust in himself. What earthly power or help can deliver us when we are on the verge of the grave? Death is everywhere. The world is full of death’s handiwork; it is a veritable charnel house; it is a vast, illimitable cemetery. The sentence of death is upon all human merit and all human power. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, All that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave. It is this realization of the emptiness and futility of life that many times becomes the first part of our salvation. When all hope in self is gone, then Christ comes in with infinite love and grace and receives our souls from destruction. God, who raises the dead, is our only hope. When we have lost all hope in ourselves and in this world and in the ableness of human hands to save us, then we are in a saving way of clinging only to Christ, who alone can heal and deliver us. In England was a man who for years languished unjustly in prison. An attorney, his friend, through toil and patience, finally won for him a personal pardon from the hand of the queen. He went to the prison with the wonderful news that his friend was a free man. "See, I have a pardon signed by the hand of the queen." When announcement was made to the prisoner, there was no joy, no recognition, no response, either in look or in word. The friend thought maybe he had been in prison too long and did not realize the import of the wonderful news. "Don’t you realize? You are a free man; this is a pardon from the queen!" The prisoner bared his breast and revealed a terrible, eating cancer. Hopelessly he said, "Ask the queen if she can heal this." It is so with us all. The announcement of the successful acquisition of houses and lands and fame and fortune and all the rich gifts of life is nothing to one who stumbles into the grave. "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment." "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" THE ASTOUNDING ANSWER OF PAUL "What must I do to be saved?" The answer of Paul to this all-important question is an astounding thing. Paul did not frame his reply in terms of works or achievement or merit or worth, but rather in terms of faith and trust and committal. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." It is thus always with the proclamation of the good news of Jesus our Lord. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Spirit; Which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; That being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Tit 3:5-7). "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Eph 2:8-9). Our salvation is a matter of faith and of trust and of committal and of looking to Jesus. Our salvation is secured in a merciful provision of God that sets before us all an open door. The Lord did not say, "Be rich enough to buy it." Some of us are poor, and we could never purchase it. The Lord did not say, "Be erudite enough to learn it." Some of us are untaught and unlearned. The Lord did not say, "Be strong enough to win it." Some of us are weak and frail and could never possess it." All of us are fallen creatures, unworthy and unlovely. But the announcement of the great apostle is this: Believe and be saved — look and live — trust and be kept forever. This is within the reach of any man, of any child, of any soul anywhere, any time. You can be saved now; it is the Gospel of the good news of the Son of God. Thomas Chalmers, the incomparable theologian and minister of the University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh, was Scotland’s greatest scholar and preacher since John Knox. In his early ministry the theme of his message was, "Do and Live." He prepared and delivered many discourses on the commandments, on politics, on the issues of the day. Then a great change came in his life. He preached a new message — "Believe and Be Saved." He became a marvelous preacher of the atoning work of Christ, pleading, pleading with sinners to turn and be saved. Sometimes, rising to pronounce the benediction, he would plead again, calling sinners to repentance. He described the change in his life in a most moving and eloquent way as the time of his conversion, though he was thirty-one years of age and for years had been a minister of the Gospel. He had found the true message of the good news of the Son of God. We are saved by trusting in Jesus, by looking unto Jesus. "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else" (Isa 45:22). LOOKING UNTO JESUS One time I heard a prelate say in his sermon, "Stay with mother church, and mother church will take you to heaven." That would be wonderful if it worked. We would then have just the task of getting the people into the church to get them all into Heaven. But God didn’t say it that way, and God doesn’t do it that way. We are not saved by looking to the church, wonderful organization that it is. We are not saved by looking to the preacher. He may be a worthy, able, and God-fearing man, but he is a dying sinner like all the poor mortals to whom he delivers God’s message. We are not saved by looking to members of the congregation; they are full of fault and frailty and shortcomings. We certainly are not saved by looking to ourselves; we are the weakest and frailest of all. We are saved by looking unto Jesus. However weak we may be, He is strong. However lost we may be, He never loses the sense of direction. However full of sin and imperfection we may be, He is the One altogether lovely. However full of hopelessness and despair and death we may be, there is life everlasting in Him. We are saved by looking unto Jesus, kneeling at the Cross where He died for our sins, watching at the tomb where He was raised for our justification, waiting for the Saviour from Heaven where He lives to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him. Times may change, circumstances may alter, but He abideth faithful forever — "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Our salvation is a provision which God has made outside ourselves. It is the ark in the terrible storm of the awesome judgments of God. We who are in the ark are kept in the saving hand of God. It is the blood of the Passover on the black night of the death angel in the land of judged and condemned Egypt. He that is under the blood is under the keeping, saving hand of God. The salvation of God is always objective, outside of ourselves. The serpent lifted up in the wilderness is the sign and type of the salvation provided by God for lost, dying souls. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14-15). We are saved by looking to Jesus as they were saved by looking upon the serpent lifted up in the wilderness. Just to look! Less could not have been required of men dying from the sting of a serpent. Yet just to look was enough to show that the dying man believed God’s word, that he expected God’s remedy and healing, and that he accepted God’s will and God’s help. It is thus with us — the feeblest, the most sinful, the weakest, the most despairing, the humblest, the poorest, can turn to the Saviour on the Cross with the humble plea, "Lord, remember me." There is life for a look at the crucified One; There is life at this moment for thee. Then look, sinner, look unto Him and be saved, Unto Him who was nailed to the tree. I’ve a message from the Lord — Hallelujah! It is only that you look and live. Look and live, my brother, live; Look to Jesus Christ and live. ’Tis recorded in His Word — Hallelujah! It is only that you look and live. Charles H. Spurgeon as a youth was miserable under his burden of sin. He had sought relief from the weight of guilt upon his soul without reward or avail. On a cold, winter night he turned into a little Methodist chapel where services were being conducted without the aid of a preacher. A layman in his poor and untaught way was making an appeal from the text, Isa 45:22 — "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." He turned to the young man Spurgeon and said, "Young man, you look so miserable; young man, look to Jesus, look and be saved." And Spurgeon said, "And I looked that night unto Jesus, and I lived." THE CHANGED LIFE, "WASHING STRIPES" Oh, what an incomparably great change is wrought in the life of a soul that humbly will look in saving faith and trust to the Lord Jesus! What a marvelous change was wrought in the life of this jailer of Philippi! Look at the story as it continues in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Acts. "And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes: and was baptized, he and all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house" (Acts 16:33-34). This wicked man, who was cruel far beyond the call of duty and necessity of the law, who placed Paul and Silas in an inner dungeon and fastened their feet in stocks, is now washing stripes, mingling his tears with the water of expiation; one day rejoicing in the suffering he could inflict upon these poor preachers, the next day rejoicing in the Lord and Saviour whom they preached; one day laying heavy stripes upon the bleeding backs of God’s servants, the next day washing those stripes with tears of repentance. He felt that he could never, never repay what God had done for Him through the mercy and the grace of Jesus our Lord. It is so with all of us — washing stripes, trying to repay in some small and humble way what the love and mercy and grace of Jesus has brought to us. In the days of the Moody revivals, there was a man by the name of John Vassar who went to the cities where Moody conducted his meetings to invite the people to attend the services. He went from door to door, giving out tracts and urging the people to come to the revival. One woman heard of his visitation, and she said, "If he comes to my house, I will slam the door in his face." Not knowing, John Vassar came to her door, knocked, and with a tract and word of invitation, invited her to the revival. "You," said the woman, "are you John Vassar?" He replied, "Yes." She was as good as her word. She slammed the door in his face. But the man did not leave. He sat down on her doorstep and sang a song: Was it for sins that I have done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown And love beyond degree. But drops of grief can ne’er repay The debt of love I owe. Here, Lord, I give myself away; ’Tis all that I can do. Washing stripes! In some small way seeking to repay his Saviour for His love and grace, he sang the song. That night a woman at the service gave her heart to the Lord. In the testimony meeting that followed, she told the story of John Vassar and his visit to her home. She said, "When he got to those ’drops of grief,’ each one seemed to fall on my soul and broke my heart in two." Once again — washing stripes. Oh, the marvelous change that comes into the life that looks in faith to Jesus! "What must I do to be saved?" "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Now. Trust Him now. Believe in Him now. Give your heart to Him now. There is life for a look at the crucified One. Look and live! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 7: 01.05. HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE, IF WE NEGLECT SO GREAT SALVATION? ======================================================================== How Shall We Escape, If We Neglect So Great Salvation? How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation? — Heb 2:3. THE FIFTH GREAT QUESTION of the Bible is found in a book written toward the close of the years in which the Holy Spirit guided faithful men in writing down the Word of God. The plan of salvation is finished; the gospel message is complete; atonement has been made for our sins, and the Lord has returned to Heaven. The offer of salvation is now made to all men. There is a way of escape from judgment and from hell. It is after this completion of God’s final gospel handiwork that the vital question is asked: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" All the previous questions have had a sure and certain answer: "Am I my brother’s keeper?" — "If a man die, shall he live again?" — "What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" — "What must I do to be saved?" But this final and fifth question has no answer. I cannot find an answer. It is not answerable. When God has done His best and we spurn it, refuse it, pass it by, there is no other way, no other hope, no other recourse, no other appeal. THE TERRIBLE ALTERNATIVE OF TURNING AWAY FROM "SO GREAT SALVATION" This question of Heb 2:3 is like the question raised in that awesome and terrible seal described in the sixth chapter of the Revelation of John. "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon become as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" (Rev 6:12-17). Having spurned the overtures of grace, having done despite to the blood of the covenant, having refused the proffered mercies of the love of Jesus, where could there be further hope? In the awful hour of judgment and condemnation, who shall be able to stand? At the turn of this century, the only connection between the island of Galveston and the mainland of Texas was an iron bridge. On a fateful day in 1900, the United States government sent warning after warning to the citizens of the city that a terrible hurricane was coming their way, and that they should escape for their lives. Over that iron causeway to the mainland went trains and trolleys and vehicles to safety; but the citizens of the city looked at the blue of the sky and the quiet of the sea and, heedless of the terrible warnings, in a false peace went to bed and to sleep. In the dark and terror of that frightful night, the gentle breeze turned into a wind, and the wind turned into a hurricane, and the hurricane turned into a torrential rain, and the torrential rain turned into a tidal wave, and the tidal wave went over the island, destroying the bridge like a match stem. When the one way of hope and escape is spurned, there remains no other avenue of salvation. Nothing remains but judgment and death. The author of Hebrews, who voiced this soul-searching question, has described the terrible alternative of turning away from Christ in Heb 10:26-31 : "If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." American people pride themselves on their realism. They like to "face the facts." In all of the relationships of life, they choose to "put all the cards on the table." They say to the preacher and to the doctor, "Tell it to me straight; no beating around the bush." Let us then look straight and openly into the face of the facts of the brief life we possess in this world. If we lived forever, then there would be an abundance of time to settle this matter of salvation. If we were promised a second chance in the world to come, then it would not greatly matter what choice we made in this life. If, when we could finally repent and turn and be saved, we could undo and recall and remake all we had done in the days of our rebellion and rejection, then we could still have hope of nullifying any wrong decision made in former years. But the eternal fact of time and life and experience is this: when we have sinned away our day of grace, we find no place for repentance though we seek it carefully with tears. "Lest there be . . . any person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears" (Heb 12:16-17). When we sell our birthright for a mess of pottage, there is no possibility that afterward we shall inherit the blessing. No day passed can ever be recalled; no deed done can ever be undone; no life born can ever be unborn; no human power can turn back the shadow on the dial. It is indeed a dark, stark tragedy of which Edward Fitzgerald writes in his translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. Our helplessness to change the past is only exceeded by our helplessness to change the future beyond the grave. When death comes, character is forever fixed; eternity is forever settled. As we die, so shall we be forever and ever. "As the tree falls, so shall it lie" (Ecc 11:3). "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Heb 9:27). Men are dying every day with the desperate cry on their lips, "I must live, I must live; I cannot die." To sleep in youth is to sleep in a siege, to sleep in age is to sleep during an attack. The advance of the enemy, death, is inexorable. He assails alike the prince in his palace and the peasant in his cottage, and he comes to you, to me, to us all. Who is able to keep us from the abyss of the grave and the judgment of perdition? Where is such deliverance to be found? THE ONLY TRUE SAVIOUR As a youth, reading ancient history, I frequently came across the word, "soter," after the names of the conquering princes. There would be Seleusius "Soter," Philadelphius "Soter," Ptolemy "Soter," Demetrius "Soter." When I began my study in Greek, the meaning of the word became apparent. The word, "soter," is the Greek word for "saviour." These men, each in his turn, presented themselves as "saviours" of the people. Riding war-horses, advancing to battle in iron chariots, commanding legions and armies, they arrogated to themselves the title of "saviour." But their deliverance was always cheap and unrewarding and disappointing. However the war or the battle raged or the government was changed, men still died in their sins, and the awful enemy of death wasted the population without hope, without promise, without light beyond the grave. But this man, Christ Jesus, the God-Man, offers to this world a real and everlasting deliverance. It is called by the author of Hebrews "so great salvation." Christ saves from sin and hell. The love and adoration and worship we owe to Christ as "Saviour" is the natural response of the human soul to the gospel message of Jesus. England’s regard for the Iron Duke Wellington knew no bounds when he saved his people from the ravages of Napoleon. Our regard for Winston Churchill hardly knows any limit. He stood alone against the whole world threatened or conquered by Hitler. Our gratitude to the man who could find a deliverance from dreaded cancer would rise beyond what tongue could tell or song could sing. What shall we say, then, of this Man of God, this Man of sorrows, this Man of the cross, this Man of the resurrection, this Man of coming triumph, who is able to save us from judgment and death? "Man of Sorrows," what a name For the Son of God who came Ruined sinners to reclaim! Hallelujah! What a Saviour! Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned He stood, Sealed my pardon with His blood; Hallelujah! What a Saviour! Lifted up was He to die, "It is finished" was His cry: Now in heaven, exalted high. Hallelujah! What a Saviour! When He comes our glorious king, All His ransomed home to bring, Then anew this song we’ll sing, Hallelujah! What a Saviour! He is able to save to the uttermost them who come unto God by Him. "Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb 7:25). He has begotten us who were in the bonds of death to a living hope through His own resurrection from the dead. He has brought to us an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us who are kept by the power of God unto this bountiful and ultimate deliverance. It is truly "so great salvation." It is mediated through the love and mercy of Jesus without money, without price, without merit, without any ableness of our own. We receive it through faith and trust and committal of our lives to Him. The feeblest, the humblest, the poorest may come, as well as the richest and the wisest and the greatest. The cost is nothing to us; it is ours for the asking because it was purchased by the blood of the crucified One, even our Lord and Saviour, Christ Jesus. A youth, who one time was pointed to Christ as the way of salvation, asked the preacher, "Is it that easy?" The preacher replied, "Easy for you, but not for Him." To create man was a display of the omnipotent power of God. God did it without struggle, without labor, by fiat. But to redeem the man, even the omnipotent arm of the Almighty was impotent without vicarious suffering. God Himself took upon Himself the sins of the man He had made and offered expiation for our guilt on the tree. Our Saviour was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He is the Lamb upon whom God hath laid the iniquities of us all. He is the suffering Servant, wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, by whose stripes we are healed. He is the sacrificial Lamb of God, oppressed, afflicted, brought to the slaughter, taken from prison and from judgment, and cut off out of the land of the living. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, to put Him to grief, to make His soul an offering for sin. THE DAY OF THE CROSS — THE DAY OF SALVATION This is Friday, the day of the Cross. The solemnity and the deep seriousness of this vast throng of people filling this great theater is in itself a deep, unspoken recognition of the price and penalty our Saviour bore to deliver us from so great sin and death through so great salvation. The three crosses on that day of long, long ago were raised on the Hill of a Skull just outside the Damascus gate of the city of Jerusalem. The one hanging on the central cross is God manifest in the flesh. From nine o’clock in the morning until noon, He suffers and prays: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." In the agonies of death He speaks words of salvation to the thief crucified by His side: "Today shalt thou be with me in paradise." He turns to His mother and commends her to the apostle John: "Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy mother." From twelve o’clock noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, darkness covers the face of the earth. He cries in loneliness: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Burning with fever, He exclaims: "I thirst." He utters the final cry of victory: "It is finished!" He bows His head and dismisses His spirit: "Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." Before sundown the soldiers break the legs of the first and the third to hasten their death; but the figure on the middle cross is so certainly dead that they break not his legs, but a soldier takes his spear and thrusts it into his heart. When he draws out the iron head of the long shaft, there follows it the fountain of blood and of water for cleansing, for healing, for saving. "That He might taste death for every man" — this "so great salvation." Count Zinzendorf, a rich, brilliant, carefree young prince, walking through the Dusseldorf art gallery, came upon an Ecce Homo, a picture of the suffering Christ. Transfixed, he gazed upon the crucified Son of God. The inscription beneath the picture fastened upon the young man’s soul like a burning fire of God’s Word in the heart of the ancient prophet: Hoc feci pro te Quid facis pro me. This have I done for thee; What hast thou done for me? He turned from the gallery a new man, a regenerated man, a saved man, God’s man. The young count founded the new missionary endeavor that has swept through the civilization of modern times. Our one hope lies in the Saviour who died for our sins on the Cross. There is no other way. How shall we escape if we turn aside from God’s one provision for our salvation? There is no other plan; there is no other hope; there is no other Gospel. What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Who can stand by me and deliver me in the awful and ultimate day of the dissolution of this world? Who can be my advocate and deliverer in the great judgment day of God? Who can save me in this life, save me in death, save me in the life that is to come, if I turn away from Jesus? "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" It is the unanswerable question. To turn from Christ is to die forever and ever and ever. God help us to lift up our eyes with the look of faith to Him who alone can redeem us from "so great death" through "so great salvation." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 8: 02.01. THE SCARLET THREAD THROUGH THE BIBLE - NEW YEAR'S EVE ======================================================================== THE SCARLET THREAD THROUGH THE BIBLE - NEW YEAR’S EVE 12-31-61 Part 1 [We are going to stand, as it were, on a great and lofty eminence and look over the entire story of human history, from its beginning in the unknown distant ages of the ageless past, unto the vast, incomparable consummation of the ages which are yet to come. Before time] was created, God-the Spirit, God, the Almighty Jehovah God-created his infinite heavenly hosts. He created them in angelic orders. Some of them are called angels; some of them are called seraphim; some of them are called cherubim; some of them are called archangels. But in the celestial, spiritual, heavenly world, God created a great and heavenly host. And in that host of God’s created angelic beings, living in the heaven of heavens where God lives, there was the great covering cherub, the ruling archangel that God named Lucifer, or the "Son of the Morning." That was the first great creation of Almighty God in the timeless ages before time was. The second thing that God Jehovah did was this: He created the physical universe. And when I hear ministers and preachers try so to spiritualize religion as to take the material and the physical out of it, they’re getting more religious than God. God likes materiality. He created it. God likes corporeality. He created it. God likes these planets and these rocks and seas and stars, and He likes people, and He likes eating. He created it. He likes living. He created it. The second great creation of God was this material universe, and the Book opens in Gen 1:1 : "In the beginning"-in the beginning of God’s material creative ability, producing this world that we see-"in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." When that was, nobody could know. Mind could not extend itself to enter into it. In the beginning of the beginning, God flung these great universes out into space, placed them under His great almighty laws, and everything that God did was beautiful and perfect, filled with light and glory and gladness. His creation in the celestial world was beautiful and perfect. And His creation of the material world was beautiful and perfect. Every orb was set in its place according to the celestial ableness of Almighty God, everything beautiful. Then sometime in that beginning, in the ages of the ages past, sometime before time was, there came into the heart of the great covering cherub in the celestial world, there came into the heart of the "Son of the Morning" what we call sin. I read it, first from the prophet Ezekiel. God describes him: Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship prepared in thee was perfect and beautiful. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I [says the Lord God] have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God, and thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity, till sin was found in thee ... Therefore, I will cast thee out as profane ... Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by the reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee down ... Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities. Therefore, will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, and it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes ... (Eze 28:12-18). And the second passage describing Lucifer, the Son of the Morning, is in Isa 14:12 : "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cast down to the ground ... For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit upon the mount of the congregation ... I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High God"-taking God’s place. "Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell." Somewhere in the infinite, timeless ages of the past, sin was born in this covering cherub, this archangel of the Lord God Almighty, under whose care God had placed the heavenly hosts. And when Lucifer fell and when sin was found in him, one third of the angels of heaven fell also. And in the fall of Lucifer, God’s created, corporeal world fell apart. Sin always destroys. Sin plows under. Sin wrecks. Sin grinds. Sin destroys. And somewhere in the timeless ages of the past, after God had created the heavenly hosts and after God had created the heaven and the earth, sin was found in Lucifer. He was cast out. One third of the angels were cast out with him, and in that sin and in that transgression, God’s great universe fell to pieces-the planets, the sun, the stars wracked with fire, with mists, with water, destroyed by the searing blast of winds. God’s beautiful world fell into emptiness, into a void, into formless mass, into ugliness and darkness. And then God did a miraculous and a marvelous thing. In six days-in six days, a day with a morning and an evening, a day of 24 hours-in six days, God recreated this planet and this universe, our sun and its planets, and this planet earth. In six days, God recreated it, bringing it out of its formless, empty void; out of its darkness and its mist and the watery grave; and God, in six days, recreated this universe. On the first day, God said, "Let the light penetrate it." And God’s heavenly and celestial light poured into this formless void, when the earth was "without form and void, when darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." "Preacher, how do you know all those things?" From the Bible. It says here in the Book: "And the earth became tohu wa bohu, translated here, "void and formless, empty and uninhabitable." I turn over here to the prophet Isaiah, Isa 45:18, and the great prophet saith: "For thus saith the Lord that bara-created out of nothing-the heavens and the earth; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not tohu or bohu." God never made this universe formless, and void, and empty, and dark, and destroyed. God made it beautiful and perfect. His material, corporeal creation, His physical universe was as perfect as his celestial universe was in glory. But sin destroyed it and plunged God’s universe into chaos and into formless darkness. And Isaiah the prophet says God did not create it that way. Satan did that. Sin did that. Iniquity did that. Transgression did that. And now, God is recreating His universe. And on the first day, He pierces it with the glory of His light. God said by fiat, "Let there be light." Some people come along and say, "Well, that’s an eon of five hundred thousand billion years." Listen. That’s by fiat. God said, "Let there be light," and the first day, God’s light penetrated the dark mass of this lost and chaotic and watery, buried world. Then on that second day, He created the firmament. He raised the waters above from the waters beneath. And then on the third day, He created on the third day-a day like your day-on the third day, He created the seas, put the waters together and the dry land appeared. And then on the fourth day, God made the marvel of the sunset. Why a sunset? That’s the most extraneous, useless piece of work that I know of. God loves things that are beautiful and colorful. And on the fourth day, God cleared out the darkness and cleared out the mist and took away the clouds, and God made the beautiful sunset and the sunrise on the fourth day, and the moon appeared to shine by night. They’d been created in the beginning. That wasn’t when God created the sun and the moon and the stars. This is the recreation of God, when God kicked away the chaotic darkness into which this earth was plunged. And He made the phenomena that you call sunset, sunrise, and the moon that shines and glows, the queen of heaven by night. Then on the fifth day, He created animal life. All of the things that we see living in this earth, He did it in a day-in a day, not in a million thousand trillion years, but by fiat; God created them by His spoken word. And on the sixth day, He created the man and his wife. Let us, Elohim, plural, let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let him rule over the seas and the dry land and the earth and all of the things God has placed in this universe; let him rule over them. Every once in a while, I’ll meet somebody who looks with great theological askance upon a trip to the moon. Why, man, that’s part of God’s universe He’s given into the hands of the man to have dominion over. If anybody is smart enough-and we’re getting to be-to find our way to the moon, and if they’ll promise me a safe return, I’m ready to go on the first ship. I’d like the experience. I’d like it. All of God’s creation-the fowls of the air, and we can out-fly them; the fish of the sea, and we can out-swim them; and everything that God has made, did He create this man to have dominion over it, and to rule over it, and to be God’s son as the high regent under the Almighty, ruling over God’s dominion. Then in the Garden of Eden where he placed the man-and the Garden of Eden is located in the southern part of the Mesopotamian Valley. I know that because, in the naming of the four rivers that poured through that beautiful garden, one of them is named the Euphrates, and the other is named Hiddekel or the Tigris River. Those two rivers flowed through the beautiful Garden of Eden, and there God began anew and again with His recreated world. Now, the serpent-the serpent, the serpent, you know him after he was cursed, crawling on his belly, licking up the dust of the ground. But the serpent was the most beautiful, the most beautifully adorned, the most gifted of all of the things that God had made in this world except the man. And the serpent lent himself, whatever he looked like and whatever abilities he had, the serpent lent himself to Satan. Satan is spirit. And a spirit has not body or corporeality. Spirits get into people. "Ah," you say, "that’s medieval, old fogy, theological baggage, preacher." Listen, I see evil spirits enter into the hearts of people-the spirit of lying, the spirit of deception, the spirit of violence, murder, meanness, iniquities, all kinds of things enter into the hearts of people. And Satan chose this most beautiful and gifted of all of God’s creation outside of the man and his wife. And in that serpent, he did a phenomenal and amazing thing. He began to speak in language to the beautiful woman-perfect, glorious, fashioned by the hand of God out of these sides. You have it translated "ribs." The only place that word is translated "rib" in the entire Hebrew Old Testament is right there. Everywhere else it’s the "side," the "side" of the ark. You wouldn’t say "the ’rib’ of the ark"; the "side of the ark," "the side of the tabernacle." Out of Adam’s side God took Eve. And He looked upon her and said, "This is bone of my bone, and this is flesh of my flesh," and he loved her and took her unto his heart. And Satan saw it. And Satan began to speak to that beautiful woman. Now you have the great conflict of the ages. What is it? Well, it must be the conflict, the struggle unto death between the freedom of our democracy and the tyranny of ideological totalitarianism. Before that, it was the wars that swirled around Germany. Before that, it was the awful campaigns that wracked Europe under Napoleon, under the Caesars. And before that, it was the awful wars of the Mesopotamian and Nile Valleys. Through the ages-ah!-the great conflict is in the heart of Satan and the mind and love of God. For you see, in glory, Lucifer looked upon the pre-existent Lord God Christ. And Satan said in his heart, "I would be first. I would reign. I would rule." And he hated Jehovah Jesus Lord Christ in heaven and decided to supplant Him and to destroy Him. You see, heaven loves the Lord Jesus. It’s hard to say these things because He was only Jesus in His incarnation, but in the beginning of the beginning, before time, before the ages, there was the uncreated God and the uncreated Christ. And when God said, "Let us make man," that is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the personality of God into which a man cannot enter. Our minds cannot understand it. We cannot fathom it. But in heaven, in that spiritual world, was the Lord Christ, and Satan envied Him and hated Him and lifted up his heart against Him to supplant Him. And it is against the Lord Christ that Satan, in all of his subtlety and his wiles, wages war day and night, for Satan chooses to take God’s world away from Him. And Satan has avowed to rule over God’s world in place of Him. And when God made the universe, Satan said, "I was the second." And when God recreated this universe, Satan said, "I will seize it," and when Satan saw the man and the woman in the Garden of Eden in the perfection and beauty of the Almighty, Satan said, "I will destroy them." "For they are made to rule," says God, "over My universe under Christ." "And I am going to seize the power for myself," says Satan, "and I am going to destroy the man. I am going to reign and to rule over this creation." And in the beginning sometime, all of this known to the sovereign God, in the beginning, the Lord Jesus came forward and volunteered to be the redemption and the forgiveness and the sin bearer and the Savior of Adam’s fallen race. And when Jesus met the tempter in the wilderness of Judea, that was just one tiny segment of the conflict between those two-between Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord God-that was just a small segment, a small link, in that awesome conflict between Jesus and Satan. It started up there before the worlds were. It started there before time was-the hatred of Lucifer for Jesus, and the love and compassion of the Lord God Christ for His creation and for His people. So in the garden, in the beginning, the serpent is used by Satan to speak to the woman whom God had made. And how does he do it? He doesn’t have anything new. Every approach is old. We know what he’s going to say before he begins. There’s not any new attack on God by Lucifer. We know exactly what he’s going to say. First, he’s going to put a question mark after the Word of God. "Yea, did God say that? Did God tell you there’s a hell? Did God say to you there’s a judgment? Did God say to you if you sin you’ll die? Did God say that?" Question mark, and then a lie. And the first lie: "You won’t die. You won’t die. You won’t die." And then he presented to Eve the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. And the woman ate, enticed and deceived by the serpent. And she took the fruit to Adam, and Adam was not deceived. Adam knew in the moment that he ate he would die. Satan deceived the woman, but he didn’t deceive Adam. And when Adam saw Eve partaking of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam made a choice. He so loved her and he so found his soul bound with her that Adam chose to die by her side rather than live without her. I cannot help but speak words of infinite admiration for the first federal head of our human race. He chose to die with Eve whom he loved rather than live without her. God could have made another Eve. He could have made half a dozen Eves. It was Adam who chose to die by the side of that beautiful and glorious created woman that the Lord placed in his arms and in his heart. And when God came in the cool of the day, He couldn’t find them. And He raised His voice, "Adam, Adam, Adam, where art thou? Adam, Adam?" And out of the covering of the trees in the garden, Adam raised his voice, "I heard you coming and I was afraid." God said, "Afraid? Who made thee afraid? Who taught you that word ’fear’? Afraid?" Afraid. "Yes," said Adam, "I was afraid, for I’m naked. And my wife is naked." And the Lord said, "Who taught thee thou wast naked?" And then the story is recounted to the Lord Almighty, and when they sat in the presence of God, they had made themselves fig leaves to cover their shame and their nakedness. And when the Lord looked upon them, He said, "But it won’t do, not what human hands can weave, it won’t do." And somewhere in the Garden of Eden, the Lord took an innocent animal, and before the eyes of Eve and of Adam, God slew that innocent animal, and the ground drank up its blood, "The Scarlet Thread through the Bible," and with the life sacrifice of an innocent animal, God took coats of skin and covered over the shame and the nakedness of the man and his wife; the first sacrifice offered by the hand of Almighty God. And I’ve often thought when Adam saw the gasping, spent life of that innocent creature and saw the crimson stain the soil of the ground, that was his first experience to know what it meant to die. Sin and death. And so the story of atonement and sacrifice begins to unfold through the Word of God, until finally in glory you will see the great throngs of the saints who’ve washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb-"The Scarlet Thread through the Bible". As you know, this is the first time that I have ever attempted anything like this. I have no experience. I have no precedent. I have nothing I’ve ever done to go by. Now, we’re going to have to change. I’m going to have to stop preaching, and we’re going to have to start going through this Bible. So, just as rapidly as we can, now, we’re going to follow through the unfolding of this purpose of God in the Holy Scriptures. In the Garden of Eden, as the Lord covered over the nakedness of the man and the woman, He turned to the devil, he turned to Satan, he turned to Lucifer, and He said something to Lucifer. He said, "In this woman, whom you have deceived and through whom you have destroyed the federal head of the human race, in this woman I will create out of her, I will create that one who will crush your head, out of the woman." Now the old rabbis for centuries pored over that word of Jehovah God to Satan. "The seed of the woman," and as all of us know, seed is masculine. Seed belongs to the man. A woman doesn’t have seed. It belongs to the man. And the old rabbis pored over that word and that promise of God, "The seed of the woman shall crush your head." Finally, as the Scriptures will unfold, we’ll know what that means, what that refers to. That is a part of that age-long conflict and struggle between the hatred of Lucifer and the love of God in Christ Jesus. But now we begin in atonement, in blood, in sacrifice: "The seed of that woman whom you deceived shall crush your head." So, driven out of the Garden of Eden, the Lord placed on each side of the gate cherubim and an altar. Wherever in the Bible you find cherubim, they are always symbols of the grace and love and mercy and forgiveness of the Lord God. And He placed the cherubim there and the altar there for the man to come to in repentance, in faith, to draw nigh to God. And He guarded the Tree of Life, lest the man eat of it and die. It was a merciful thing for God to do; for had our parents eaten of the Tree of Life and been confirmed in this body of death, it would have been the most tragic of all of the imaginable things that could have overwhelmed the human family. I don’t want to live forever in this body of death, my eyes gone, my hearing gone, my back stooped, my frame disintegrating, and yet confirmed in this body of death, and never be able to die. God put away and guarded out of sight the Tree of Life, lest the man eat thereof and live forever. "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither does corruption inherit incorruption." God has made it possible for us to exchange this old house of clay with its infirmity and its senility-God has made it possible for us to exchange it for "a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." And that’s why He put away and guarded the Tree of Life. Someday, of course, as you’ll see, through the Book, we’ll find it in glory in the paradise of heaven. So, the Lord drove out the man and his wife, and she bore two sons. One was named Cain, and the other was named Abel. Cain brought to that altar first fruit of the fields. Like a displayer at a county fair, he was so proud of himself: "And look what I have done." And he laid it at the feet of God in his pride. Abel, by faith, feeling himself unworthy and undone-Abel brought a lamb, the first slain of his flock, poured out its blood and offered it upon the altar. And God respected Abel for the faith in his heart and received the sacrifice. But God respected not Cain because of the pride in his heart-like Lucifer, lifted up, thought well of himself. And when Cain saw he was rejected, he lifted up his hand, and there was the first mound in the earth, and underneath it lay a boy. And Adam and Eve knew what it meant to die in the loss of that boy, Abel. And their tears watered the soil above his grave. And in the goodness of God, the Lord gave her another son, Seth. And Seth was a man of God; and Cain, driven out from the presence of the Lord, was a blasphemer. And then you have the progeny of those two: the line of Cain and the line of Seth, the children of God. And as long as the children of God were separate, God blessed the earth, and the world, and the families. Then, in the sixth chapter of Genesis a tragic thing came to pass. The sons of God, the children of Seth, looked out into that world and they liked the glamour of the nightlife. And they liked the drunken orgies of the world. And they turned aside from their separateness and their dedication and their holiness, and they began to marry into the families of the sons of Cain. And God looked upon them, and His children had forsaken His altars and forsaken their devotion and had forgotten their consecration, and the whole earth was filled with violence and evil and iniquity. Whenever a girl comes to me and says, "I’m going to marry a worthless drunkard, but I’m going to reform him. You don’t understand, Pastor. I’m going to make a Christian out of him," don’t you ever think that when God’s people intermarry with the vile and the iniquitous of the world you’re going to lift them up to God. They’re going to pull you down to hell. That’s exactly what happened in the earth. The children of God began to marry in the line of Cain, and the earth was filled with violence and blood and murder and blasphemy. And God said, "It’s enough, it’s enough." And He looked over the whole created family of the Lord God, the children of old man Adam, and there was only one righteous man in this earth, just one. And that man’s name was Noah. And God said to Noah, "It’s enough, it’s enough. One hundred twenty years from now, I’m going to destroy this world by flood. You make for yourself an ark and bring your family in." And then out of His compassion for the world that He made, the Lord God told him to bring seven into the ark of the species that was clean and two of a kind into the ark of the species that was unclean. So he built that great ark, made and fashioned after the finest nautical symmetry known today. And then God shut him up. When the rain began to fall and the floods began to rise, and those people beat on the door of that ark, why didn’t Noah open the door to let them in? Because God shut that door. There’s a day of grace beyond which a man can’t trifle with God. Known to Him, there’s a time, there’s a line. When a man goes beyond it, he’ll never be saved, never. No. In the New Testament, we call that the unpardonable sin. God shut the door. And that race and that generation were destroyed. And then after God opened the door and Noah came out, you have the beginning of all the nations of the earth described here in the tenth and the eleventh chapters of the Book of Genesis. All the nations of the earth are divided into three parts; the sons of Noah were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. The sons of Japheth are what you would call the Aryans, the Indo- Europeans, that great family to the north and to the west, of whom we here tonight are a part. God shall enlarge the tent of Japheth. Japheth is the great, multiplied wing of Noah’s family, Japheth. The second: Ham. Ham is the father of the Canaanites, of the Egyptians, of the Africans, of the Philistines, and all of those people who live in Africa. And the Canaanites and the Philistines who were the enemies of the people of God, they are the children of Ham. And God said they should be a servant people. The third great wing of the Noaic family is Shem. And Shem is the father of Shemites: the Elamites, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Syrians, the Hebrew family-all of those people, the Arabians, the Arabs-all of those people who lived in that great, vast section of country from Ur of Chaldea through the fertile crescent down to the River of Egypt. That was the home of the Shemites, the Semites. Anti-semitism is a vicious prejudice of people against those that God exalted in the revelation of His love and grace. And those families were all one, and they all sought to be together, just like families do. But God had said to inhabit the whole earth and to have dominion over the whole creation, so when all of those families came together in Gen 11:1-32 to build a great central monument that would hold them together. And if they ever had another flood-which God said they wouldn’t have-they were going to have a tower that would reach up to heaven in which they could escape from it. When God looked down and saw the pride again in the human heart, He confused their speech-Babel, Babylon. And being unable to understand each other, those that could speak this language went over in that direction, and those that could speak this language, automatically gathered in that direction. And those who could speak this language automatically went in this direction. And they divided up according to the speech, according to the family tongue, according to the mother language, and then they separated from Babel over the face of the earth, and the nations grew up from those three great sections of the family of Noah. Now, that is God’s introduction to His Bible. Gen 1:1-31, Gen 2:1-25, Gen 3:1-24, Gen 4:1-26, Gen 5:1-32, Gen 6:1-22, Gen 7:1-24, Gen 8:1-22, Gen 9:1-29, Gen 10:1-32, Gen 11:1-32 concern the whole family of the human race. Now, beginning at Gen 12:1-20, beginning at Gen 12:1-20, we come to see one family that God has chosen through whom He will keep that promise. "I will give thee a seed that shall crush Satan’s head." In the Gen 12:1-20, God says to Abram, who lived in Ur of Chaldea, down there at the bottom of the Mesopotamian Valley where those Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow into the Persian Gulf, God said to Abram, "Get thee out from thy father’s house, thy father’s people." He lived in an idolatrous city, and his father was an idolater. His father’s name was Terah. They say he manufactured idols and sold them. God said, "Get out, and I’ll make of thee a great nation, and I’ll bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee. And in thy seed shall all the families and nations of the earth be blessed." So, out of the family of Shem, God chooses Abraham from Ur of Chaldea. And he didn’t leave his father’s house and his father’s family at first. From Ur of Chaldea, he went up to the northern part of the Mesopotamian Valley in a place called Haran. Abram, Nahor his brother, Terah his father, and Lot, his brother’s son, they all moved up to Haran. In the Bible, you’ll also find that to be Padan-aram-Haran, Padan-aram. There Abraham got a wife for Isaac-Rebekah-and there Jacob fled, and for 20 years was a servant of Laban, and married Leah and Rachel up there in the northern part of the Mesopotamian Valley in Haran. But after Terah died, the father of Abraham died-after Terah died, then Abraham took his wife, Sarah, and took his nephew, Lot, and left Nahor his brother there. And Abram moved down into the Promised Land. He came to Shechem and then to Bethel and then to Hebron, then down to Egypt for awhile because of famine, and then back to Hebron. And there at Hebron, he and Lot divided, and Lot went down into the cities of the plains and pitched his tent toward Sodom and became the mayor of Sodom. And the angel of the Lord came and said to Abraham, "If the sin and iniquity of that awful city is as it has come up unto me, we shall destroy it." And when the angels had left, Abraham stood yet before the Lord, knowing that Lot-righteous Lot, vexing his soul with the filthy living of the Sodomites-knowing that Lot was in that city. He prayed to God, "If fifty righteous can be found, would you spare it for the sake of fifty, if forty, if thirty, if twenty, if ten?" Had he asked for Lot, I think God would have granted his request, but he asked for ten. The angels couldn’t find ten, and there as Abram looked on from Hebron, the fire fell upon Sodom and Gomorrah after Lot, his wife, and two daughters were snatched away. Jesus says a picture of His coming is as it was in the days of Lot. First God’s people must be taken out before the fire and the brimstone can fall. And at Hebron, Abraham looked and saw the destruction of the cities of the plain. Then Abraham moved to Beersheba. Then follows the story of Isaac, which is enmeshed with Abraham, and the story of Jacob; Isaac’s life enmeshed first with Abraham and then with Jacob. Now, the story of Jacob. In Beersheba, where Isaac is living, Rebekah loved Jacob and Isaac loved Esau. Jacob is very shrewd, and Esau is a fine specimen of an animal. You’d have liked Esau. He’d have been the captain of the football team. He was a hunter, he was a fisherman, he was out with the dogs-yup, whoo, whoo, whoo! He liked that. That’s Esau. You’d have liked him. All the way through, Esau is splendid. But he was carnal; he was of this world. He liked the things of the flesh. And Isaac liked that because he ate of his venison. So, upon a day when Esau is returning from a hunt perishing to death for hunger, he sells his birthright to Jacob for a mess of pottage-for some soup. And then, with Rebekah, Jacob cheats Esau out of his birthright-out of the blessing, having already purchased from him his birthright. And Esau said, "I will kill you." And Jacob fled away to Padan-aram, up there where Nahor lived in Haran at the north of the Mesopotamian Valley. So, Jacob flees away, and he stops at Bethel, and there God confirms to him the promise of the seed and of the land of the Savior who was to come. And from Bethel and his vision of angels, he goes to Padan-aram to Haran. Up there in the grandson’s house of Nahor, whose name is Laban, the brother of Rebekah, and he works for Laban seven years for Rachel. And then of all things, when he woke up the next morning and looked over there at the woman whom he’d been married to that night, she wasn’t Rachel at all. I’ve always thought that that was one of the stupidest things that a man ever did in my life, that he couldn’t tell in the nighttime whether it was Rachel or not. He should have known her better than that. So, he worked seven more years. Having Leah, he worked seven more years for Rachel. Then he worked six more years for Laban, and at the end of twenty years came back when God said, "Go back to Palestine." So, Jacob comes back on the east side of the Jordan, then crosses over to Shechem. And living there in Shechem, Simeon and Levi do a cruel and awful thing in destroying the men of Shechem. And then, finally, Jacob comes to Bethel and renews his vow to God, and from Bethel down to Hebron. And while he’s on the way to Hebron, Rachel dies at Bethlehem. And down at Hebron, this boy, Joseph, is sent to Dothan, which is about ten miles north of Samaria, in order to find the flock and the brothers who are keeping them. And when Joseph appeared they said, "There’s that boy that our father dotes on, and spoils with that coat of many colors." They propose to slay him. Finally, Reuben persuades them to just spare his life, and they sell him to the Ishmaelites, who take him down into Egypt. And in Egypt, Joseph becomes the prime minister under Pharaoh. There is a famine in the land of Canaan, and the story of the brothers going down into Egypt. And they come back for their father, and it is in Egypt in the time of famine, they are given Goshen. As you look at Egypt, it had a triangular delta where the different rivers pour out into the Mediterranean Sea. On the right side of the delta, between the right side of the delta and the desert is a little country that is named Goshen-very fertile. And there Pharaoh and Joseph settled Israel and his family. Then we come to the death of Joseph-that his bones be carried back into the Promised Land when God visits them. There arises a Pharaoh who doesn’t know Joseph, and he sees those Israelites prospering, and God is blessing them. And they are afraid of them, so Pharaoh uses them to make bricks without straw, to build cities in slavery. And as they groaned under that heavy oppression, God bowed down His ears to hear, and there arises a man who was Pharaoh’s son, an heir apparent to the throne, whom she took out of the waters when the cruel Pharaoh decreed that all the male children should die, learned in all of the arts and sciences of the Egyptians, whose heart was with his people, taught by his mother Jehovah God and the choice of Israel. Having fled away from Pharaoh on the back side of the desert at Sinai, he is tending sheep. And while he’s tending sheep on the back side of the desert at the foot of Mount Sinai at the bottom of the Sinaitic Peninsula, there God speaks to him out of a burning bush. And God says, "I’ve heard the cry of my people." "Ah, said Moses, anybody but I, anybody but I," but the Lord says, "No, it is you. My people through whom this promise is to be made and kept inviolate, My people." Moses goes down, and after the ten plagues on a night of nights, isn’t it amazing how these things are done without any meaning whatsoever except as God gives them meaning? Why, on that night of nights, why should they take a lamb and slay it? Pour out its blood, sprinkle it with hyssop-which is a common, ordinary mistletoe type of a thing, a parasite of a thing, a common plant that grew on the walls and everywhere in that country-take a hyssop, dip it in the blood and sprinkle it on the door posts and on the lintel in the sign of the cross, on the door posts on either side. On the lintel here at the top, in the form of a cross, sprinkle the blood. And when the death angel passes over that night, "When I see the blood, I’ll spare your house and your home." And in all the other homes and families, there’s death, and the wailing and lamentation of all of Egypt, except to those who are under the blood, under the blood, "The Scarlet Thread through the Bible." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 9: 02.02. PART 2 ======================================================================== And that night, Israel goes out with a high hand. And they cross over the Red Sea by the providence of God and turn down south until in the third month of the exodus they stand there at the base of Mount Sinai. And on Mount Sinai, forty days and forty nights, Moses is with God, and the Lord gives to Moses-first, first, God gives to Moses the moral law, Exo 19:1-25 and Exo 20:1-26. Then God gives to Moses the civil law, Gen 21:1-36, Gen 22:1-31, Gen 23:1-33, Gen 24:1-18. Then God gives to Moses the ceremonial law, Gen 25:1-40 to , with its tabernacle and its priesthood and its sacrifices. Then in the Book of Leviticus, we have, first, Lev 1:1-17, Lev 2:1-16, Lev 3:1-17, Lev 4:1-35, Lev 5:1-19, Lev 6:1-30, Lev 7:1-38, the sacrifices. There are five of them-the burnt offering, the meal offering, the peace offering or the thanksgiving offering, the sin offering, and the trespass offering. The difference between the sin and the trespass offering is the sin is done volitionally. A trespass is an inadvertence, a thing a man didn’t mean to do. And those five sacrifices are given here in the first five chapters of the Book of Leviticus. Then, in Lev 8:1-36, Lev 9:1-24, Lev 10:1-20, we have the consecration of priests; in Lev 11:11-47, Lev 12:1-8, Lev 13:1-59, Lev 14:1-57, Lev 15:1-33, ceremonial holiness; in Lev 16:1-34, the Day of Atonement; Lev 17:1-16, Lev 18:1-30, Lev 19:1-37, Lev 20:1-27, Lev 21:1-24, Lev 22:1-33, Lev 23:1-44, all of the festivals; and Lev 24:1-23, Lev 25:1-55, Lev 26:1-46, Lev 27:1-34, the vows and the tithes and the laws of obedience. Every convocation of Israel is a happy one. It is a festival, it is a feast-except one. And that is the Day of Atonement. They observe it now, calling it Yom Kippur. A Jew may not be a Jew any other time of the year, but on that Day of Atonement, if he’s a Jew, he’s a Jew then. That’s the Day of Atonement in Lev 16:1-34. Then the Book of Numbers-first, from Num 1:1-54, Num 2:1-34, Num 3:1-51, Num 4:1-49, Num 5:1-31, Num 6:1-27, Num 7:1-89, Num 8:1-26, Num 9:1-23, Num 10:1-36, the events at Sinai. There’s a census taken, there’s a consecration of Levites. There’s the altar dedication and the observance of the Passover. Then the second part of the Book of Numbers, they’re on their wandering march through the wilderness Num 11:1-35, Num 12:1-16, Num 13:1-33, Num 14:1-45, Num 15:1-41, Num 16:1-50, Num 17:1-13, Num 18:1-32, Num 19:1-22, Num 20:1-29, Num 21:1-35, they make it from Sinai to Kadesh-Barnea. At Kadesh-Barnea, they send spies into the land in order to see how to conquer it, but instead of coming back with faith and dedication, they come back saying, "There are giants over there, and there are walled cities over there, and we were just like grasshoppers in their sight. We can’t conquer that land." Caleb and Joshua said, "But God, but God is with us. Let us arise and inherit it, for God has promised it to us." "No," said those other ten. And all Israel wept. And they turned back from Kadesh-Barnea, and for 38 years, they wandered aimlessly in the wilderness until all that generation had died. And at the end of the 38 years, they’re back again at Kadesh-Barnea, and then they make their way to the plains of Moab. There, you find the death of Aaron. There, the story of the fiery serpents and the defeat on the east side of Sihon, the king of Gilead, and Og, the king of Bashan. And there on that side, Moses gave all of that territory on the east side of the Jordan, he gave it to Reuben, to Gad, and to the half tribe of Manasseh. And on the plains of Moab, you have the story of Balaam and the sin of Baal-peor. Balaam was hired in order to curse Israel, but God wouldn’t let him curse Israel. So, Balaam had to do something to win his hire from the king of Moab, so he whispered something in the King of Moab’s ear, in Balak’s ear, and brother, did it work. Do you know what he whispered in his ear? He said, "Come here, shhhh, come here, shhhh, come here, shhhhh," and he said, "You get all the pretty women in Moab together and take them over there and put them in that camp and let’s see what happens." Law me, it happened. Man, it’s awful what pretty women can do, and they did it. Then you have that final preparation for Canaan. Now, the Book of Deuteronomy is made up of five great addresses of Moses. The first address is on the history of the forty years, Deu 1:1-46, Deu 2:1-37, Deu 3:1-29, Deu 4:1-49. The second address is on the law, Deu 5:1-33, Deu 6:1-25, Deu 7:1-26, Deu 8:1-20, Deu 9:1-29, Deu 10:1-22, Deu 11:1-32, Deu 12:1-32, Deu 13:1-18, Deu 14:1-29, Deu 15:1-23, Deu 16:1-22, Deu 17:1-20, Deu 18:1-22, Deu 19:1-21, Deu 20:1-20, Deu 21:1-23, Deu 22:1-30, Deu 23:1-25, Deu 24:1-22, Deu 25:1-19, Deu 26:1-19. The third address is on the blessings and the cursings, Deu 27:1-26, Deu 28:1-68. The fourth address is on the second covenant, Deu 29:1-29 and Deu 30:1-20, and the fifth address is his song and his last words. Deuteronomy means-Deuteronomy is a Latin word meaning the second giving of the law, made up of five addresses of Moses on the plains of Moab before the children of Israel went into the Promised Land. So, after Moses had sung his song, the Song of Moses, and after he had delivered his soul of these five addresses, then God said to Moses, "Get thee up, get thee up from the plains of Moab, get thee up to the top of Pisgah." And Moses went up to the top of Pisgah, called Nebo, and the Lord said to him, "Look, this is the land, this is the land." All through the Bible you’ll find the land, and the people, and the seed-the Savior Christ-and the kingdom. "This is the land which I swear unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob say I will give it under thy seed forever and forever. I have caused thine eyes to see it, but thou shalt not go over it." So, Moses, a servant of God, died there in the land of Moab on Mount Nebo, and God buried him in a valley. No man knoweth of his sepulchre until this day. And after the death of Moses, God said to Joshua, "Arise, arise, arise. My servant is dead. Moses is dead. Arise, thou and all this people, and inherit the land that I give unto Israel." Isn’t that amazing? God says He gives it to us. And they have to fight for it with their lives. They are contested by every inch just like God says to us today, "Go, make disciples," but it’s hard. "Go, preach the gospel," but it’s difficult. "Go," says God, "and make every man conscious of the laws of Jesus. Preach to him." "Ah, Lord, but that’s a hard assignment." Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. God has those that He’ll give us. Whenever a man preaches the gospel, somebody will be saved. When a man builds a church, God will add to it. They won’t all be saved until Jesus comes again. There’ll always be people here that will reject, but there will also always be people here that will respond whatever the difficulty, whatever the discouragement, whatever the clouds, "Go over," says God. There are victories for us. The Lord will give us somebody. He’ll give us you; He’ll give us you. So Joshua goes over. And there you have the wars of the conquest. He made three campaigns, first in the center of the country. He took Jericho. Then he took Ai, which was the military outpost and bastion of Bethel. Then the Gibeonites deceived them, and they made a truce with them. So, they won all of the central part of the country. Then Adonizedek who was the King of Jebus, later Jerusalem, with four other kings, those five warred against Joshua, and Joshua won the southern campaign. But when he prayed to the moon over-to the sun and the moon over Ajalon, "Don’t you go down and destroy the light," and there was a long day. Remember that story? That’s against the five kings in the south. Then up in the north against Jabin, who was the king of Hazor, up there above Galilee, that was the third great campaign, and then the conquest ceased. And the last part of Joshua is the story of his death and of his appeal to the people to be true to the Lord. Then we come to the Book of the Judges. The difference between a judge and a king is this: A king gives to his son in succession his throne, but a judge was raised up according to a crisis and endowed with special gifts from God. Now, first in the days of the judges, the hoards out of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates Valley, they’d come and oppress Israel, and Othniel, who is the younger brother of Caleb, is the judge raised up to deliver them. Then the Moabites oppressed Israel, and Ehud-you know, he was left- handed, and that’s one of the funniest ways to deliver a people I ever saw in my life. This man, who was the king of Moab, was named Eglon, and the book says he was very, very fat. And Ehud was left-handed. So, when you see a man, why, you watch his right hand. You don’t think about his left hand. You watch his right hand. So, Ehud came to Eglon to bear the tribute, and he laid the tribute down with his right hand. But he had his left hand back of him, and when Ehud put the tribute down with his right hand and the big, fat king looked at it in greed and avaricious gladness, then Ehud, who was left-handed, whirled around with his left hand and had a dagger in it, and he plunged it. And I want you to know, when the fat of Eglon covered over the dagger, he couldn’t pull it out, so he just left it in him and ran away. Isn’t that an amazing thing? Then you have an invasion from Philistia, and Shamgar delivers it with an ox goad. Then you have the great invasion from the north under another Jabin in Hazor, and Sisera is his captain of the hosts. And there’s not a man that will fight him, not a one, all of them scared to death, not a man. And God raises up a woman. Thank the Lord for Deborah! God raises up Deborah, and she encourages Barak, and they defeat Sisera and the hosts of Jabin in the vale, in the valley of Esdraelon. Then you have the Midianites and the story of Gideon. Then you have the Ammonite oppression and Jepthah, and last of all, you have the Philistine oppression and the story of Samson. And now we have come to the ministry of Samuel, the reign of Saul, and of David, and of the kings of Israel and of Judah. Now, the last of the judges was Samuel. Samuel marked the beginning of a great departure in Israel. There is only one religion in the world that is characterized by the phenomenon of what you’d call a prophet. No other religion in the world has ever had a prophet, nor has there ever been a religion in the world that foretold the future or that spake of things that God was going to do in times to come. And Samuel, the last of the judges, is also the first of the prophets. And in his ministry and in his life, Samuel instituted what you call a seminary, a school of the prophets. And from now on, you will find the prophetic ministry more and more coming to the fore in the life and the development of God’s people. This man, Samuel: first, the book. The ministry of Samuel is in 1Sa 1:1-28, 1Sa 2:1-36, 1Sa 3:1-21, 1Sa 4:1-22, 1Sa 5:1-12, 1Sa 6:1-21, 1Sa 7:1-17, and then the reign of Saul is in 1Sa 8:1-22, 1Sa 9:1-27, 1Sa 10:1-27, 1Sa 11:15, 1Sa 12:1-25, 1Sa 13:1-23, 1Sa 14:1-52, 1Sa 15:1-35, 1Sa 16:1-23, 1Sa 17:1-58, 1Sa 18:1-30, 1Sa 19:1-24, 1Sa 20:1-42, 1Sa 21:1-15, 1Sa 22:1-23, 1Sa 23:1-29, 1Sa 24:1-22, 1Sa 25:1-44, 1Sa 26:1-25, 1Sa 27:1-12, 1Sa 28:1-25, 1Sa 29:1-11, 1Sa 30:1-31, 1Sa 31:1-13. Now, to go as rapidly as we can-Samuel, as you know, was given in answer to prayer of a godly woman named Hannah, who was sterile. And in her prayer, God placed in her arms this little boy, whom she called "Asked of God"-Samuel. And when she weaned him after three years, she brought him to the house of the Lord at Shiloh, to the pastor of the church, to the high priest named Eli. And there before Eli, the little lad ministered unto the Lord, being a Levite, dressed in a linen ephod, the plain white garment of a priest. And Samuel grew up unto the Lord, and even in childhood, the word of the Lord came to Samuel, and no message that he delivered did God let fall to the ground. And after Samuel’s ministry, in which he went around with a Bible in his hand and taught the people the Word of God, he made his circuit year after year teaching the people the law of Moses. And after Samuel’s age, the people said, "We want to be like the nations around us. We want a king." And God said to Samuel, "Give them a king. The thing comes out of the vanity of their heart," but God had willed even in the Book of Deuteronomy that they have a king. So the Lord said to Samuel, "You go ahead and obey their desire." And he chose a godly, handsome, humble, marvelous young fellow by the name of Saul. Isn’t it a shame he could not have continued that way? Chose Saul, the son of Kish, and after the anointing of Saul, he is presented to the people. So humble is Saul, so self-effacing, that when they gathered to crown the new king, he’s not even there. They find him hidden away. And they bring him out, and he stands before the people, head and shoulders taller than any of the other of Israel. And they shout, "God save the king." Isn’t that a marvelous thing? They still say it over in England. "God save the king." And they crowned Saul. In his beginning ministry, oh! Saul was a great man and a powerful influence for God. For example, those Ammonites came from the east. The Ammonites were a kind of a Bedouin, nomadic group living over there at the head of the Arabian desert where it juts against Trans-Jordania. The Ammonites came and said to the men of Jabesh-gilead, "Come out. We’re going to put out your right eye, every man, just to show our contempt for Jehovah God and for you." And the men of Jabesh-Gilead sent word to Saul that the Ammonites had come and they were going to put out their right eye just to show the Ammonite contempt of Jehovah God and for God’s people. And the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul, and he slew his oxen and cut them up into pieces and passed the pieces throughout Israel and said, "Thus may God do to every man in Israel who doesn’t meet me at Bezek near the Mount Gilboa in order to fight for God and to fight for His people." Oh, it was a day of revival! It was a day of commitment. It was a day of victory and triumph. Saul led that army over there, and they routed the Ammonites, and the Jabesh-gileadites never, never forgot. And then every successful campaign crowned the work of Saul. His wonderful boy, Jonathan, attacked the Philistine garrison at Geba and at Michmash, and then he fought the Moabites and Edomites and the Syrians. And in every way, God blessed Saul. And then something happened I’ve never understood. And then something happened. Instead of being that self-effacing, wonderful, humble man who was filled with the Spirit of God and the power of conquest, when he went to fight against the Amalekites, he looked at the treasures of the Amalekites. He looked at their flocks and their herds, and greed seized him. Every once in a while, don’t you see a man like that? A fine man, and he succeeds out in the business world and it turns his face, and it turns his head. And Saul looked at all of the spoils of the Amalekites, and he decides then out of the pride of his life, he thought he’d chain Agag to his chariot and ride back through Judea and through Israel with Agag, the king, tied to his chariot out of the vanity of his life and disobedience to God. "It’s better to obey than to sacrifice," said the Lord God. And then in the second Philistine campaign, an overwhelming calamity destroyed Saul. On one side of the vale of Elah were the forces of Philistia, and on the other side were the forces of the children of Israel. And there came out a big giant by the name of Goliath. And he said to Israel and to Israel’s God, "You come out here and fight me. If you win, we’ll be your servants, but if I slay you, you’re our servants." And all Israel cowered and trembled. Shows you what happened to Saul. Instead of Saul being out there in the might and power of the Lord Jehovah God, he was back in the camp scared to death, scared of Goliath. You see, his heart had caved in on him. He’d lost his unction and his power with God, and he was afraid. And in those days, there was a boy, there was a boy, whom Saul didn’t know, and didn’t anybody know him. Even his own father didn’t call the boy to the feast when Samuel came to the house and said, "Jesse, in order to anoint a new king, here’s Eliab, here’s Shammah, here’s Abinadab." When he had gone through all seven of those boys, Samuel said, "I don’t understand. God sent me here to your house to anoint a new king, and you say these are all your boys, and God’s rejected every one of them because God doesn’t look on a man’s countenance. God looks on a man’s soul. He looks at a man’s heart." Samuel said, "I don’t understand. I can’t understand." And then the father happened to remember. "Well, wait a minute. I got another boy." Now, isn’t that a sight? "Yeah, I got another boy. But, my land, he’s herding sheep on the back of the pasture. He’s just a boy, he’s just a boy. You don’t want him. We never thought to ask him to the feast." Samuel said, "Listen, Jesse, we won’t sit down until that boy comes." There the feast is all prepared and everybody is standing around with their mouths watering and everything going on, and Samuel says, "We won’t sit down, even, until that boy comes." And when the boy came, he was ruddy, red-headed, of a fair countenance, and the glory of the goodness of God was in his eyes and in his speech. And when Samuel looked on him, God said to His prophet, "Arise, anoint him. That’s he; that’s My king," a ruddy-faced, red-headed lad from the sheepfold. That’s God. And he anointed him. What an amazing thing. Well, the next time that little boy appears, oh, he’s sixteen years old, fifteen years old. He’s in his teens, he’s growing up to be a young man. And law me, he’s walking down the hill to the dry wadi in the middle of the valley called Elah. Some of you have done that. I have, and picked up those stones; but I sure was glad there was no Goliath glaring at me on the other side. He walked down into that valley, and he picked out five smooth, round stones. You know, there’s an old gag. Did he lack faith that he picked out five stones? If he had believed in God, one stone would have been enough. Why did he pick out five stones? And the answer is, "Man, Goliath had four brothers." Yes, sir. Goliath had four brothers. There was one for Goliath and one for each one of the other brothers. And that little boy, that teenager down in that valley, stooping over, picking up those stones and putting them in his script, in his lunch bag that he took out when he fed the flock. He’d stay out all day and he’d take a lunch with him, and he had a little bag. And he put those four stones in there, and then he walked up on the other side to that glowering giant, nine feet six inches tall. Man, what a center on a basketball team he’d have made. Think of him. There he was with his staff, with his spear like a weaver’s beam, with his armor bearer carrying a shield higher than a man’s head. And the giant looked down, and there was that unshaven, ruddy-faced, slender boy with a shepherd’s staff in his hand, and something else in his right hand coming out to fight, and Goliath was insulted. He didn’t even get up. He sat down and he looked at him, and he said, "If you come to me, I’ll feed you to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field." And Goliath stood up and started to walk towards that boy, I presume just to get him by the nape of his neck and shake the daylights out of him. And law, me alive, that boy reached down into that satchel and got out one of those stones, and as he walked toward Goliath, that thing was swinging around his head, and when he got close he let it go, and it went right into the middle of his forehead and sank into his brain. And Goliath fell down dead, and David, the boy, took out his great sword and stood on the top of his carcass and hacked off his head. Now, there, now there was a victory. Ah, but here’s what happened. Oooh, that old green-eyed monster! When the women of Israel came back to Jerusalem singing about the victory and praising God for the deliverance, this is what they were singing: "Saul hath slain his thousands, but David, but David hath slain his tens of thousands." And Saul heard them sing. All the women, all their lives, loved David. Wasn’t that a remarkable thing? David must have been one of the handsomest, and one of the finest-looking, and one of the most personable, and one of the best specimens of mankind that the Lord ever created. God loved David, the women loved David, and the men who were with him. He said one time, when he was behind the Philistine lines when he was hated and hounded, David happened to say one time: "Ah, I remember, the well at the gate of Bethlehem out of which I drank when I was a boy." He just happened to say that. And some of those great, big, strong, fine men jeopardized their lives, went beyond the enemy’s lines, to get a drink of water for David. They loved him so. You can’t say too much about David, the man after God’s own heart. And the women loved him, and they sang that song, and Saul heard it. And the Book says, "And from that moment on, Saul began to eye David," and he began to hate him, and he began to seek for his life until finally, David fled the country and was assigned a city in the south of Philistia named Ziklag. And there he was in the third Philistine war. And the book closes in the battle of that third Philistine war. You see, Saul is oppressed, and the Philistines are gathering by the thousands and like the sands of the sea, and they’re spread there on the plain of Esdraelon, Meggido. How many of these battles will you find being fought there on the plains of Meggido? And the Philistines are there by the thousands. And Saul with his army-with Jonathan, Abinadab, Malchishua. Saul is up there on the height of the Mount of Gilboa. And he’s oppressed. And he goes over on the other side of the valley in the midst of which is a tall-it looks like a loaf of bread. It’s called the Hill of Moreh. And on that hill is a village named Endor. And in Endor is a witch. And in the dead of the night, Saul oppressed, finds his way to the witch of Endor, and he says, "Find me Samuel." My goodness alive, no witch is able to bring up the dead, no spiritualist, no anybody can bring up the dead. But God let that old hag, that old witch, bring Samuel up because it was for a purpose. And when that witch saw Samuel rise from the dead, her hair stood straight up-it scared the living daylights out of her. She knew she’d been a hoax, just like all the rest of them. Scared to death. And Saul said to Samuel, "I’m oppressed, and the Philistines are gathered like the sands of the sea, and God doesn’t answer me anymore, and I pray and he doesn’t answer, and I inquire, and he doesn’t answer. And God has forsaken me. What shall I do?" Samuel said, "There’s not anything you can do when God’s left you, not anything, not anything. When God has left you, there’s not anything to do. And this time tomorrow, you and your sons will be with me, be with me." People often ask, "Was Saul a lost man?" No, sir, Saul was not a lost man. Saul was the kind of a man that lost his ministry. He lost the great ableness of his life. But he was saved, for Samuel said, "Tomorrow at this time, you’ll be with me, you and your sons." Jonathan was one of the flowers of Israel, and wherever Jonathan was, Saul was going, and wherever Samuel was, Jonathan and Saul were going. Saul is the type of a man who was called of God, who was endowed with great [talents from God.] ... and for the Lord, success turned his head, and he lost his kingdom and he lost his children, and he lost the great open door that God set before him. So, the next day, Saul joins the battle, and the Philistines come up the side of the mount, and Israel rushes down the mount to beat them. And in that day, they slew Jonathan. He was the first one to fall. They slew Jonathan. Then they slew Abinadab. Then they slew Melchishua, and then the archer got the reins, and they began to strike the armor of Saul. When he saw he was going to perish, he took his sword and put the butt end of it on the ground and put the point of it in his abdomen, and he fell with all of his great weight on that awful sword and lay there in a pool of blood. And when the Philistines found him, they cut off his head and took off his armor, and they fastened his body to the wall of Bethshean, a Caananite city down at the bottom of Jezreel. And they took his armor in the house of their goddess Ashtaroth. And when the men of Jabesh-gilead heard about it, they went at night and took down the body of Saul and buried his body in Jabesh-gilead on the other side of the Jordan River. Then an Amalekite came. Now, we’re in 2 Samuel. Now, first the outline of 2 Samuel: 2 Samuel is the reign of David, 2Sa 1:1-27, 2Sa 2:1-32, 2Sa 3:1-39, 2Sa 4:1-12, his reign in Hebron; 2Sa 5:1-25, 2Sa 6:1-23, 2Sa 7:1-29, 2Sa 8:1-18, 2Sa 9:1-13, 2Sa 10:1-19, 2Sa 11:1-27, his reign over all Israel until his sin. The third part, 2Sa 12:1-31, 2Sa 13:1-39, 2Sa 14:1-33, 2Sa 15:1-37, 2Sa 16:1-23, 2Sa 17:1-29, 2Sa 18:1-33, 2Sa 19:1-43, 2Sa 20:1-26, the penalty for his sin, and 2Sa 4:1-12, the concluding of the life and ministry of David. Now, an Amalakite came, and running up to David said, "I slew Saul, I slew him, and here’s his crown and here’s his bracelet." He thought he’d be rewarded, but David refused for years to take advantage of the iniquity and the rejection of God against Saul. And David waited upon the Lord, and he took that Amalekite and he slew him. And then David made this beautiful, beautiful elegy regarding Jonathan and Saul, and then he leaves Ziklag, and he’s crowned king in Hebron over Judah. David was crowned three times, privately by Samuel, at Hebron over Judah, and then finally, all the tribes crowned king over Israel. So, Ishbosheth, who’s the son of Saul, is put on the throne by Abner, the captain of the hosts of Israel, and David reigned over Judah. But Abner turns aside from Ishbosheth and gives his loyalty to David, and when Joab, the captain of David’s hosts sees that, he’s afraid that Abner will take his place, so he privately slays Abner, one of the most dastardly deeds that anybody ever did. Then two murderers slay Ishbosheth. Then David is crowned king over all of Israel. And the first part of David’s life over Israel is magnificent. God gives him every victory on top of victory after victory. He is never defeated. On and on David rises in glory and in power as he extends the empire. Then, in the prime of his life, at the very height of his glory, instead of being out leading the hosts of God like a king ought to do, standing at the forefront of God’s people, he goes soft, and he stays at home and lets Joab lead the army. And while he’s at home on a couch in the evening, from the top of his palace, which is on the hilltop in old Mount Zion, he sees down in the city over the wall a beautiful woman bathing. He didn’t even know her name. That’s not love. He didn’t even know who she was. That’s not love. He didn’t know whether she was married or not. That’s not love. That’s lust. That’s downright, unadulterated carnality. David, whom God had given the world, David. And he watches that beautiful woman. He asks who she is. And he sends for her, and then she sends word to him, "I’m with child. What shall I do? For Uriah, my husband, is with Joab fighting against Rabbath-ammon." And David says, "This will I do." And he got him a pencil and he wrote a note. Hey, did Joab put that note in his pocket and keep it? Ah. And he wrote a note, and he said to Joab, "You have a man in your army named Uriah. He’s been down here to Jerusalem." See, David tried to get him to go and live with his wife. Uriah said, "I won’t. The armies of Israel are fighting for God, and I’m not staying at home." He sat out in the street, and he wouldn’t go in his house because the armies of God were at war against Rabbath-ammon. And then David got him drunk and he wouldn’t go in. So, he writes that note to Joab, and he says, "Joab, you go ride up there next to the wall. Ride up there next to the wall. And then when you get right up there at the wall, with Uriah in front, then the rest of you fall back. Leave him there by himself, all the blaspheming infidels of the Ammonites to slay. That’s what David wrote in that letter. And then he said, "When the report is made what you’ve done, I won’t castigate you for your strategies. I’ll understand." And Joab did that. He took his army, pressed against the walls of Rabbath-ammon with Uriah at the front. And then in the midst of a battle, he gave that secret command and all of the other soldiers withdrew, and Uriah stood there, one soldier, fighting God’s battles. And the Ammonites slew him, and he died there at the hands of the infidels. And then Joab wrote back to David and said, "The war’s going like this. We went up, and then we withdrew, but before you say anything, Uriah, the Hittite, is dead." Ah. Then the next sentence says, "But what David did displeased God." And the next day, Nathan, God’s prophet-the next day, Nathan, God’s prophet, comes in. And he says to David, "Sir, there is in this kingdom a man who has a vast flock. And across the way, there is a poor man who has one little lamb, and he nourishes the lamb, the only pet and the only love and the only thought that he has, that one little lamb, and that rich man, that man with great, expensive flocks and herds had a visitor. And instead of taking up his own flock, he went across and forced from that man that little lamb. And he dressed it." And David was angry and said, "Why, that scoundrel, he’ll -- he’ll restore it fourfold." Nathan looked at him and pointed his finger and said, "David, thou art that man. Fourfold." And the sword never left his hand. Fourfold. First, first, the lad died, born to Bathsheba. God said he will not live. Fourfold. First, the lad died. Second, that beautiful son Amnon: Amnon looked upon Tamar, the full sister of Absalom, and he forced her, and Absalom kept it in his heart, and after two years, he slew Amnon. Fourfold. Two of them. And then Absalom, the most beautiful prince the world ever saw with his flowing, golden hair, with his marvelous, scintillating presence and personality, and all Israel loved him so much-they chose him instead of David, and they rebelled against David and David fled for his life, because all Israel loved Absalom, the beautiful prince and son of the great king. And over there on the other side of the Jordan River, there is a battle fought. And when Joab sees Absalom, caught in an oak by that beautiful hair, he takes a dart and thrusts him through, and thrusts him through, and thrusts him through. Number three. David cries, "Oh, Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I died for thee, oh, Absalom, my son, my son." Number three. Number four. Fourfold shalt thou restore. Adonijah. Adonijah was like Absalom -- beautiful, personable, gifted. And when he sought to subvert the kingdom of Solomon, Solomon had him slain. Fourfold. And the sword never left his house. Throughout the story of the king of Judah, bathed in David’s blood. And 2 Samuel’s closes with the tragic story of the pestilence. God says to David, "Choose, choose. Shall it be seven years famine? Shall it be three months before your enemies or shall it be three days pestilence?" Ah, what a choice! What a choice! Seven years famine, three years to be pursued by my enemies or three days’ pestilence. He said, "Three days’ pestilence. I cast myself on the mercies of God. Maybe he will remember." And thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of God’s poor people began to die, to die, to die. And when David arises one morning, he sees the destroying angel with his sword raised over the city of the great king in Jerusalem to destroy, and David falls in the presence of the Lord God and says, "Oh, God, oh, God, against me and against my father’s house, oh, God, oh, God, but not these sheep." And the Lord says, "Get thee up." Mount Moriah, I’ve heard of that before, where Abraham offered Isaac, "Get thee up." Araunah’s threshing floor on the top of Mount Moriah, go, build an altar, sacrifice, the scarlet thread through the Bible. "When I see the blood of Passover, I’ll spare the city." David goes up, and Araunah sees him coming, "Oh, my king." "I’ve come, Araunah," says David, "to build an altar to God and to sacrifice lest the people be destroyed." And Araunah says, "My, lord, oh, king, I give you the place, I give you the instrument, I give you oxen for sacrifice." "Nay," says David, "I’ll buy it. I won’t offer it to God that which costs me nothing." He bought the threshing floor, and he built the altar. And God, when he saw the blood, forgave and saved; and there they built the temple of Solomon, and there they erected the great altar. And there the prayers and intercessions arise unto the Lord for these years and years, and someday when they rebuild that temple, the songs and praises of God will go up again from that same and sacred place. 1 Kings is divided like this: 1Ki 1:1-53, 1Ki 2:1-46, 1Ki 3:1-28, 1Ki 4:1-34, 1Ki 5:1-18, 1Ki 6:1-38, 1Ki 7:1-51, 1Ki 8:1-66, 1Ki 9:1-28, 1Ki 10:1-29, 1Ki 11:1-43 describe the reign of Solomon. The second part of it, 1Ki 12:1-33, 1Ki 13:1-34, 1Ki 14:1-31, 1Ki 15:1-34, 1Ki 16:1-34, 1Ki 17:1-24, 1Ki 18:1-46, 1Ki 19:1-21, 1Ki 20:1-43, 1Ki 21:1-29, 1Ki 22:1-53, give the story of the divided kingdom to the days of Ahab, king of Israel, and Jehoshaphat, king of Judah. Now, about Solomon: apparently, this is the pattern of life. Solomon began gloriously. God loved Solomon, the Book says, and crowned him with every gift. At Gibeon in the dream God said, "Anything, Solomon?" And Solomon asked for wisdom in order to rule his people well. And God said, "Because you’ve asked that, I’ll give you everything else. I’ll give you fame, and I’ll give you fortune, and I’ll give you victory, and I’ll give you a kingdom. And if you’ll be faithful to me, I’ll give you lengths of days." Well, what did he do? Solomon began gloriously and triumphantly, and the Lord extended his kingdom and blessed him on every hand. And then, and then, Solomon fell into the most tragic decline of any king that you could read of. God said, "You shall not multiply unto you gold and silver." And Solomon did that until it was as common in Jerusalem as stones on the street. And God said a second thing, "And you shall not multiply unto you wives." God hates that thing. Malachi says, "God hates that," and -- and Solomon multiplied 700 wives and 300 concubines. The little Sunday school boy said, "Solomon sure did like women and animals." And they said, "What do you mean he liked women and animals?" "Well, he said, "he had 700 wives and 300 porcupines." And the closing ministry of Solomon is tragic, tragic. There is rebellion on every side. He didn’t get length of days because of his disobedience to God. And his empire fell into disunity and disorder, and Solomon died one of the most abject failures in all human stories. On his death, Rehoboam is the king. And because of his cruel attitude, you see, he was reared in Solomon’s court. And when you hear Rehoboam speak, you hear the speaking of a young man who grew up in Solomon’s days. Instead of being young men of great dedication and great commitment to God, all they love is pleasure and the things of the likeness and the gladness and the emptiness and frivolity and foolishness of this world. That’s Rehoboam, so that his kingdom divides then, Jeroboam to the north, king over the 10 tribes of the north, and the lion of David over Benjamin enmeshed in David in the south. In the two kingdoms, there are 19 kings in the south and 19 kings in the north, though the south and the kingdom of Judea lasted 135 years longer than the kingdom in the north. In the upper kingdom, there are nine different dynastic changes. In the southern kingdom, of course, there’s no change at all. The line of David goes all the way through. And the Kings closes with the idolatry of Ahab and Jezebel and the rising of Elijah, the prophet of God. Now, to 2 Kings. 2 Kings is divided like this: From 2Ki 1:1-18, 2Ki 2:1-25, 2Ki 3:1-27, 2Ki 4:1-44, 2Ki 5:1-27, 2Ki 6:1-33, 2Ki 7:1-20, 2Ki 8:1-29, 2Ki 9:1-37, 2Ki 10:1-36, 2Ki 11:1-21, 2Ki 12:1-21, 2Ki 13:1-25, 2Ki 14:1-29, 2Ki 15:1-38, 2Ki 16:1-20, 2Ki 17:1-41 is the history of the two kingdoms to the fall of Samaria. And the last part of it, 2Ki 18:1-37, 2Ki 19:1-37, 2Ki 20:1-21, 2Ki 21:1-26, 2Ki 22:1-20, 2Ki 23:1-37, 2Ki 24:1-20, 2Ki 25:1-30, is the history of Judah to the fall of Jerusalem. Now, we come to one of the great principles of the words of God. Over here in the book of Isaiah, Isa 10:5, Isaiah says, "Oh, Assyria, the rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation." And in the Book of Habakkuk, which I had planned to speak of and haven’t time to read, the same thing God says about Chaldea, the kingdom of the Babylonians. So, these prophets now are beginning to prophesy. There is coming the destruction of Israel, and they prophesy, "There is coming the destruction of Israel." And they are describing that bitter and ruthless and merciless nation, Nineveh and Assyria, but they are coming. "The rod of mine anger and the staff of mine indignation," says the Lord God, and Tiglath-pileser and Nabopolassar and Shalmonezer and Sargon and Assyria, Samaria, Ashurbanipal and Esarhaddon. They come down from the Lord, and they carry away Israel into captivity and destroy the kingdom forever and plow under Samaria. "The rod of mine anger and the staff of my correction." That doesn’t mean that Assyria was any better than Samaria, and it doesn’t mean that Soviet Russia is any better than the United States. It just means that God raises up these empires that chasten God’s people. That’s why we tremble today in the presence of Soviet Russia, not that God favors them or loves them, but the favor and blessing of God is upon His people, and if His people don’t get right and if they don’t draw nigh and if they don’t serve God, the Lord raises up these bitter and merciless and cruel nations in order to chasten his people. That’s what the prophets were preaching to Israel: "If you don’t get right, if you don’t get right, if you don’t get right," then the great Assyrian hoards came down and carried away the northern ten tribes in 722 B.C., and then that left Judah alone. And down there in Judah, there was Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah. And the great Assyrian invasion came in the days of Hezekiah. And Sargon finally took Samaria. And then his son, Sennacherib, came down to take Judah. How do you have a fight, a war? Well, you do it with armies and a battle array. That’s how you fight a war. Sennacherib absolutely surrounded Jerusalem and took all of Judea. Hezekiah, the king, who was a godly man, made it a matter of prayer, and while he was down on his knees talking to God, the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, the son of Amos, saying, "You go tell Hezekiah, you go tell him that I’m going to put a up fort, I’m going to put a fort, I’m going to put a ring in Sennacherib’s nose. Send him back by the way that he came; for this is my battle. This is my war," says the Lord God. The next morning, there were 185,000 corpses when the angel of the Lord got through with the armies of Sennacherib, all in answer to good king Hezekiah’s prayer. America may be delivered somewhat by her armies and her air force and her men in uniform, but the imponderables of God either say life or death to a nation. Whether we live or die is in the hands of Almighty God. Then after King Hezekiah, there follows-until finally we come to the last great revival, Josiah. Josiah was one of the Lord’s anointed, the good king Josiah. And he did one of the most foolish things in this world, one of the most inexplicable, one of the most un-understandable things in this world. In the days of Josiah, there was a great revival, one of the great revivals of all times. Josiah repaired the house of the Lord, and on the inside of the house of the Lord he found the Bible. And wherever the people read the Bible, you’ll have a revival. And when the people read the Bible, they had a great time of the devoted love of their souls to God. And the people began to live right and to do right and to love God and to serve God, and it was a marvelous thing. And the prophets prophesied, and everything was blessed of heaven. And right in the middle of that, Pharaoh Necho who was the king of Egypt, Pharaoh Necho, made an agreement up there with the remnant of the Assyrian hosts from Nineveh. We’re going to find out if we have time, Nahum prophesied the destruction of Nineveh exactly like it was going to be. The remnant of Assyria-Pharaoh Necho, was going up there to join hands with the Assyrians in order to stop forever the rise of those Babylonians under Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar. And when Pharaoh Necho took up his army at Megiddo, there we got that same place again, Armageddon, where the battles of the world are fought. When Pharaoh Necho brought up his army there on the plain of Israel and at Meggido, to go up there and to join the armies of Assyria to fight against Nabopolassar and his son, Nebuchadnezzar, Josiah-the good king, Josiah, who had sworn allegiance to Babylon-Josiah took his little army and there on the plains of Megiddo, he tried to stop Pharaoh Necho in his onward march up there to the north. And what Pharaoh-Necho did was what you’d think he’d do; he ran over the little army at Judah, and he slew Josiah, the good king, and never was there a lamentation in the world as Judah and the prophets of God lamented over King Josiah. First, the rest of it: Pharaoh Necho joined the Assyrians up there at the head of the Mesopotamian Valley in a little place called Carchemish, and at Carchemish was fought one of the great battles of all time. Nebuchadnezzar-who was one of the ablest generals and one of the greatest kings who ever lived-Nebuchadnezzar was in charge of the armies of his father, Nabopolassar; and there, in 605 B. C., the armies of Nebuchadnezzar overwhelmed the armies of Assyria and of Egypt. And they were never great powers anymore, not Egypt, not Assyria again. And there, riding across the civilized world, stood that great colossus of a man, Nebuchadnezzar. And in those days, Jeremiah lifted up his voice and he preached to Judah, saying, "Repent ye, repent ye, get right with God." And Judah never repented, and Nebuchadnezzar came in 605 from the battle of Carchemish, and he seized Jerusalem, and he took Daniel and the fairest of the land to his kingdom in Babylon in captivity. And Jeremiah lifted up his voice, and he said, "Repent, repent, get right with God." They never repented and they never got right with God, and Nebuchadnezzar came back the second time in 598 B.C., and he took Ezekiel and 10,000 of the fairest to that captivity in Babylon. And Jeremiah lifted up his voice once again and cried, saying, "Repent, oh, repent, get right with God, turn ye, turn ye." And they didn’t repent, and they never got right with God. And Nebuchadnezzar came the third time in 587 B.C., and he didn’t have to come back anymore, for he destroyed Solomon’s temple, and he beat down the walls of the city. And he plowed under the holy city of God and sowed it down with salt. And he took the people into captivity into the land of Babylon, and the whole face of God’s earth turned dark in fear, bathed in tears and in sorrow. "If I forget thee, oh, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. If I prefer not thee, oh, Jerusalem, to my chief joys, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. By the waters of Babylon, there we sit down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion, for they that took us away captive, required of us a song, and they that wasted us asked of us, how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land." And Israel wept and they cried, and they got right with God. And out of that Babylonian captivity came the three great institutions by which God has blessed our world. One, they were never idolaters again, never, never. No Jew’s been an idolater since that time. Second, the synagogue was born, and this is a synagogue, the services of Judah are the services we have today. The synagogue was born. And third, out of the captivity came the canon of the Holy Scriptures. The old rabbis began to pour over the books and began to read the prophets and began to teach their people the word of God. And in those days, came Jesus with the scroll of the prophets in His hands, the same today. Today is this prophecy fulfilled in your ears! Ah, the wonder of the blessing of God as He guides through human history to that ultimate and final consummation. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 10: S. A GIFT FOR CHRIST ======================================================================== A GIFT FOR CHRIST Dr. W. A. Criswell 12/19/54B Mat 2:11 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And this is the Pastor, bringing the morning message, a Christmas message from Mat 2:1-23. Mat 2:1-23 : Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came magi-Parsi priests-there came wise men from the East to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born king of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him-and they quote from Micah-In Bethlehem of Judea; for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least among the little towns of Judah; for out of thee shall come a governor, that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privately-when he had privily called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, Go and search diligently for the young child; and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship Him also. The low-down hypocrite! What he intended to do was to slay the child. When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, and it came and stood over where the young child was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy -to get out of that place where Herod was and to find the child. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary His mother, and fell down, and worshipped Him; and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto Him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. And my text and the sermon is in the last: And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. It is primeval in the hearts of the man God made that he bring to God a gift. It is a natural reaction. One, and the most ancient, of the Hebrew words translated “sacrifice” is minchah. And the meaning of minchah, the Hebrew word, is “a present, a gift.” You find it in Gen 4:1-26 : And Abel, when he brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his minchah-to his sacrifice, to his present, to his gift, to his offering. But unto Cain and to his minchah he had not respect. Who taught those boys to bring a gift, a minchah, a present to God? It came out of the nature of their souls. You are that way. If there is somebody you love, there is no higher joy in your life than to bring to that someone a minchah, a gift, an offering, a present. So it is a natural reaction of one’s heart who loves Christ to dedicate to Him an offering and a gift: “And they opened their treasures and presented unto him gifts.” Judas Iscariot was the only one that couldn’t understand Mary, when she took her alabaster box and broke it and all of the perfume filled the house. The odor filled the house and it covered the body and the feet of the Lord Jesus. He didn’t understand that. He had a loveless heart and he had a scarlet life. He didn’t understand this. But, anybody else would. It was Mary’s reaction to the Lord Jesus. She gave Him the best, most precious gift that she had. When our Lord Jesus died, Joseph of Arimathea said, “He may have my own tomb. I give it to Him.” Nicodemus said, “I will buy spices and embalm His body.” And do you know how much he bought? The Bible says he brought 100 pounds. Think of how many spices that is. He brought 100 pounds! It was for the Lord. And if it had taken five hundred pounds, Nicodemus still would have brought it to the Lord--his minchah, a gift, an offering. And so with these wise men, these Magi, these Zoroastrian priests who found God in the heavens and in the stars-When they found the child, they opened their treasures. They had brought them along. “They opened their treasures and presented unto Him gifts; gold and frankincense and myrrh.” And they gave Him gold. He was poor. The Lord Jesus was born in a stable, laying in a manger, wrapped in rags-swaddling clothes, didn’t have any pretty little garment like a child born in your home, poor mother, had no clothes, had no garment. So, she wrapped Him in rags. Poor people on their way to Egypt. And them, in their sojourn in Egypt-poor people had to have help. And so God provided them help. In the hearts of one of those Magi priests, God placed the disposition to bring to the child a gift of gold. We’d do so today, but where would you find Him? How do you find Christ today? I have a gift of money. I’d like to give it to the Lord. How shall I do it? Where would you find Him? One of the very and most beautiful of all of the parts that are woven in the gospel message of Christ is this: that He identifies Himself with His people. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; For I was an hungered, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me; I was sick, and you visited me; I was in prison and you came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when did we ever see thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, then gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in, or naked and clothed thee? When saw we sick and visited thee, or in prison and came unto thee? Then the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily-truly, I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. When the Lord Jesus appeared to Paul-Saul of Tarsus-on the road to Damascus, He said, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”-identified Himself with His people. When the Lord turned to Simon Peter and said, “Simon, lovest thou Me?,” Simon said, “Yea, Lord. Thou knowest that I love you.” Then, Jesus said, “Feed my lambs-Take care of my sheep.” Where shall I find the Lord, and how shall I bring Him my gift? The Lord identifies Himself with His people: the hungry, the poor, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the imprisoned, the needy. There is the Lord. So, when I come to church tonight, I shall bring a gift for Christ. Some shall be foodstuffs, wrapped in white paper. Some will be clothing, wrapped in white paper. And in my hand I shall bring a gift of money. And it shall be for the poor of the continents and other nations and other languages and other tribes and families. In that way shall I bring a gift for the Lord. These three wise men could have given gifts to one another, and I guess it would have been all right. But, oh, we’d not had that story, nor its message and its meaning. For you and I to give gifts to one another at Christmastime is all right. The Lord would not find fault with your doing it. But oh, my soul-my soul. For us to give gifts to one another on His birthday and forget Him seems to me unpardonable and unspeakable and inexplicable. I shall bring a gift for the Lord. And how shall I find Him among the needy of His world? A black African Congo came to me one time. I don’t know how he had become a Christian and, evidently, had gone to a Christian school. But, in the card that he gave was-at the top of it was the picture and below was a piece of doggerel that he had written. It’s not poetry. But, it had a barb that stayed in my heart. And this is the poem that that black Christian, Congo African, had written below his picture. He called it “A Cry From the Congo”: We appeal to you, O Christian, In lands beyond the sea, Why didn’t you tell us sooner Christ died for you and me? Nineteen hundred years have passed Since disciples were told to go To the uttermost parts of the earth and teach. Why didn’t you let us know? Hear this pathetic cry of ours, O dwellers in Christian lands, For Africa stands before you With pleading, outstretched hands. You may not be able to come yourself, But some in your stead can go. Will you not send us teachers? Will you not let us know? Yes, we will. And our way is in these gifts that we bring to the Lord Jesus Christ. And they presented unto Him gifts: gold, an offering of money. And they presented unto Him gifts, gold, and frankincense. Frankincense: from time immemorial, from the time of creation, frankincense, the burning of incense, has been emblematic of the ascending prayers of God’s people to the Father in Heaven. When Zechariah, of the course of Abijah, went into the Holy Place and, there, on the golden altar, offered up incense to God at the time of the evening prayers, the people were outside praying as the smoke of the frankincense turned upward to God in Heaven. And it was then that the angel Gabriel appeared on the right side of the golden altar and made the announcement of the birth of the forerunner and of the birth of the Christ child. It is a picture of the ascending prayers of the people. At this time of the year, especially, our prayers ascend, are offered, unto God in behalf first of the peace of the world. When I think of Christmas, I think of peace. I think of the stars that shine brightly. I think of the hope of the world. Christmastime: peace time; Christmastime-the very antithesis of war and hatred. And the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace,” peace, peace. And in this day of terrible, paralyzing and indescribable atomic warfare, how earnestly should all men everywhere who believe in God and who trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, how earnestly should their prayers ascend for the peace of the world. I do not deny, nor am I persuaded otherwise, but that America could come out triumphant in any war. I think America could almost wage war against any combination of nations in the earth. But, I also think that, when we destroy them, we destroy ourselves. I think it’s the same thing as if two men were wrestling and fighting on top of a -story building and both of them fall off in the fight. That shall happen to America in any war that we wage. We would win it, I suppose. But, after we won it, what kind of a Marshall Plan would you employ to take care of the devastated millions who survive, and of the nations that were torn-their railroads, their communications, their cities, in dust and ashes? What would you do and where would you turn? It would be a world of woe and despair and hopelessness and poverty. War-the specter of war today is paralyzing in itself. They offered unto Him frankincense: a picture of prayer-our praying for the peace of the world, our praying for the deliverance of the captive. And I’m using phrases here that I used at Christmastime-“for the peace of the world,” “praying for the deliverance of the captives.” I mentioned a while ago-how many people are captive and subject today? Nobody knows. Only God could total up that vast and illimitable multitude. But, there are millions and millions and millions and millions-almost half of the world population today lives under a tyrant’s heel. They don’t know what any day may bring for it, the arrest in the middle of the night, the tearing up of families at home, the sending away into concentration camps, the destruction of all things that you and I hold dear and precious. They are held captive. Who breaks that awful grip that holds the nations and the peoples in bondage today? Who does it? I go back to my first premise. If we tried by force, we not only destroy them, we destroy ourselves. There must be some recourse and some appeal to a higher power and a more glorious way than the way of the use of the hydrogen and the atomic bomb. That power must lie in the power of prayer. Alfred Lord Tennyson said, “More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.” It is easily possible, easily possible-it could be easily probable that there could be a revolution on the inside of those Soviet countries, those great Red nations. They could quarrel among themselves and, in their own civil wars among themselves-those leaders in the Kremlin and in Beijing, it is easily possible that, out of their own disastrous inner feuds, there might be found a way to bring liberty to the captive millions of the earth. Why not ask God for it? Lord, rather send the offering of the blood of our men and of the nations of the world upon the sacrifice of the altar of Mars and of war. O God, bare Thy strong arms to intervene and deliver the captives of the world. And they offered a new frankincense: prayer for deliverance of the captive. And they offered unto Him frankincense: prayers for the remission of sin, for the saving of the lost of the world. “And by the knowledge of him”-did Zechariah, in his paean of praise and glory-“And by the knowledge of him shall there be remission of sins.” Men are lost without Christ. However you say that-theologically, metaphysically, scientifically, astronomically, terrestrially, historically-any way in the world you say it, men are lost without Christ. This whole universe is chaos itself. History has no destiny, and there is no certain goal or aim for any life, nor does it have meaning outside of the Lord Jesus. Our whole fabric of life has its key power in the Lord Jesus. Men are lost without Christ. They die in hopeless despair without the Lord Jesus. We pray for their conversion, that they might come to know God, that they might come to know Him in Christ Jesus. That’s a great missionary propaganda that lies back of all that we try to do in the churches of the Lord Jesus, offered unto Him-Frankincense, prayers for the conversion of the world, for the saving of the lost. I never had anything that stayed in my mind more beautifully than when I was a student at the seminary. And a pastor from Lebanon, Kentucky, said that an attorney, a lawyer in his town and in his church, came up to him and said, “Pastor, I have come upon happy days. I have come upon affluence and prosperity and I want to do something for God. What shall I do?” He was a wonderful preacher and a wonderful pastor. And he said to his prospering attorney, he said, “Why don’t you support a missionary?” The attorney thought about it, said, “I will.” So, he supported a missionary. He took a missionary himself and the missionary was sent to Korea. And the pastor said that attorney got a picture of his missionary and put it at the head of his bed. And he said the attorney prayed twice a day. He’d get down on his knees at night and he’d look up at his missionary, and he’d pray, “Now, Lord, bless my missionary while he works and I sleep.” Then, the next morning, when the sun rose in America, he’d get down by his bedside again and look up at the picture of his missionary and he’d pray, “And now, Lord, bless my missionary while he sleeps and I work”-Frankincense, prayers for the saving of the world. I am not in a persuasion, I do not have that doctrinal position that, by our preaching and by the gospel message we’ll ever take out of human nature the claw and the tooth and the iron fist and the greed and the hatred that seems to be inherent, the backdrop in human nature. I do not have that theological persuasion. But, I do believe that God meant, in the great rendezvous in glory, that, out of every nation and kindred and tribe, language and family, there should be those who would praise the Lord for the gift of His Son-cleansed, saved by the blood of the Lamb. And that’s why we’re doing-that’s why we’re preaching. That’s why we’re praying. “They offered unto Him gold, frankincense and myrrh.” A brief word-Myrrh. What is myrrh? Myrrh was a spice itself, sort of. And it was especially used for the embalming of the dead. I mentioned, a while ago, Nicodemus buying a hundred pounds of spices. What he bought them for was, in that long, winding sheet of our Lord, as they wound and wound and wound, he would take that 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes-he would take that 100 pounds and, as they wound the body of the Lord Jesus, he would put the spices, wind and wind, pouring the spices in the folds, in the folds, in order to embalm the body of the Lord Jesus. Thank God it didn’t turn out that way! Thank the Lord He rose from the dead! But, he intended to do it. That’s why he brought it, was to embalm the dead body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, myrrh-myrrh. Myrrh is a frequent term in the Bible. Over there in the book of Solomon, in the Song of Songs, myrrh represents life in its fullness and in its glory and in its best-the joy, the wild joy of life and living. Myrrh represents that in the Song of Solomon. And, as I say, myrrh was used for the embalming of the dead. So, if I could put the two together, they presented Him the gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh. Myrrh represents the offering of life, the sacrifice of life, the gift of life unto death. “And they offered unto Him myrrh”; that is, they dedicated their life unto death. The gift of life. When I was in Hong Kong, China, one of the places I was eager to visit was Happy Valley. There’s not a woman in the Missionary Society or anybody interested in missions in the world that has not heard of the beautiful little valley. It’s just a little vale, ’cause Hong Kong itself is just a small island. It’s just a little vale running down from the mountain and out to the sea, called Happy Valley. The reason I say that a missionary would know of Happy Valley, so many of our first missionaries to China are buried in that valley-just a little vale. And as I walked among the cemetery there in Happy Valley, I came across the tomb of the first American woman missionary to China. Her name is Henrietta Hall Shuck. And on that ancient tomb, there above her grave, I copied the inscription: “Henrietta, first American female missionary to China. Daughter of the Reverend Addison Hall of Virginia, USA. Consort of the Reverend Jay Lewis Shuck. Missionary to China from the American Baptist Board for Missions.” Then, the dates of her life. Then, this: “In the prime of life, in the midst of her labor, and in the meridian of her usefulness, suddenly, but peacefully, she died in Hong Kong, November 27, 1844, aged 27 years. Hallowed and blessed is the memory of the good.” Well, a little piece of her life: Born in a preacher’s home, read the story of Ann Haseltine Judson, who had given her life to be a foreign missionary in India. When she was converted, gave her life to be a foreign missionary. Completed her education a little less than 18 years of age. Married a boy named Lew Shuck, who himself had given his life to be a missionary to China. Two days after they were married, they were standing on the Boston pier and the families were waving them good-bye as they sailed away from the shores of America. They planned never to return, and they didn’t, for they went out-they went out forever, to give their lives to Christ in China. Took them a year to arrive-they arrived in 1836. Began their work in Macao, which is just below Canton, a Portuguese colony. Met a funeral procession. A father had died. And the little boy-after the burial, the little boy was seated by the grave, crying bitterly. And Henrietta asked if she could have the boy, the family being poor. They surprised her in an immediate consent. So she took the little boy. A little while after that, found a little girl that her mother had sold. And in cruel treatment, the little girl was almost dead in the cruel hands of the people who bought her. Henrietta paid ten dollars for the little girl and took her to herself. And so began her missionary work, teaching those little boys and those little girls. After a while they moved to Hong Kong. And two years after their ministry began in Hong Kong, she died in childbirth, 27 years of age. Well, as you walk up and down, and look at those graves, and call to mind the tremendous sacrifice in those days, this girl, had she been here in America, under the care of a physician, she would have been just like all of the rest of our mothers. We wouldn’t lose one out of 10,000. But, over there in Hong Kong, giving birth to a child, 27 years of age, died in vain-in vain. “And they presented unto Him gifts: gold and frankincense and myrrh”-the offer of a dedicated life to the Lord Jesus. And it never is in vain. It never falls to the ground. It never turns void in the hand of God. Through them, and the offer of their lives, a whole century of Christian missions has followed after. And the end is not yet. Anybody who would stand up and say, “At last, at long last, Mao Tse-Tung has conquered Christ; at long last, the Christian faith is found in the abysmal darkness of the triumphant Communism,” I think the angels themselves would laugh in his face. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 11: S. ABRAHAM AND THE PROMISES OF GOD ======================================================================== ABRAHAM AND THE PROMISES OF GOD Dr. W. A. Criswell 07-25-54 Rom 4:13-25 Now this evening we begin with the thirteenth verse, and conclude the chapter. The chapter [Rom 4:1-25] is an illustration of what Paul is saying about our justification. We are justified. We are declared righteous. We are accepted by God, not because of our good works, because no man’s life is acceptable to God because of our good works. The element of sin is in everything that we do. “There’s no man that is righteous”-righteous, perfect, acceptable-no not one.” “All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” If we are to be justified, it can never be on the basis of our righteousness. The righteousness, if we ever face God, must be by importation. It must be imputed. It must be given to us through the worth and merit of somebody else. And that somebody else is the Lord Jesus. Now, in preaching that and in writing of that, Paul, in the fourth chapter of Romans, uses an illustration. He speaks of Abraham, our father according to the flesh, being a Hebrew, him being a Jew. And he says, if Abraham were justified by works he had whereof the glory to see what I’ve done, and look at me. But, he couldn’t do it before God, because God knew too well what he had done. And Abraham, like all of us, was a fallen creature. He was an unholy and an unrighteous man. But what saith the Scripture? “Abraham believed God.” He trusted in God. Though he was a sinner, as all of us are sinners, yet he cast himself upon the mercy of God. He trusted God. Abraham believed God and his faith was counted for righteousness. He was saved by trusting God, believing in God. Now, that was the message this morning: the faith that saves, the committal of our souls to Jesus. Now, tonight we are going to talk, speak, read, exhort about that faith that Abraham exercised. And Paul speaks of it now, as we begin in the thirteenth verse of the fourth chapter of Romans: For the promise-talking about the promises of God, Abraham believed God-For the promise, God promised that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, or through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise madw of none effect. Because the law worketh wrath… Therefore it is of faith that it might be of grace. If Abraham were to be worthy of the reward of God, it would be a debt that He owed him to pay him. But, it is not of the law or righteousness or of deed. It is of the mercy and grace of God. It is a gift. Therefore it is of faith-something Abraham just trusted God for, that it might be of grace-and it might be a gift of the Lord; to the end the promise might be sure to all of the seed; not to that only which is of the law-that is, just to the Jew, but that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. Anybody that believes in God is a descendant of Abraham. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations-including us.) before him whom thee believed, even God, who quickened the dead, and called those things which be not as though they were of God. Now, going back to Abraham: Who, against hope, believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations, according to that which was spoken, So shall thy seed be. And being not weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about a hundred years old, neither the deadness of Sarah’s womb; He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; And being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform. And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness. Now, it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed unto him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification. Now, if I can choose a text out of that passage it is this- Rom 4:20 : He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God. And being fully persuaded that, what God had promised, God was able also to perform. “He staggered not at the promise of God.” I want you to know that sometimes the Lord overwhelms us. If we believe what God says and what he’s promised, it is sometimes an overwhelming thing. When it says here Abraham “staggered not at the promise of God”-in a moment, we can see what he could have staggered at. But, I say, as we begin this talk tonight, sometimes the Lord overwhelms us. We just simply are. We are just swept away by what God promises and how such a thing could be is difficult for us to receive or to understand. Could I say-do you remember, when the Lord Jesus said to those who were around the tomb of Lazarus-dead four days. In that country, it is hot, like this country. And they didn’t embalm the body. And in just a little while, the body begins to disintegrate and to decay. Lazarus had been dead four days-four days. And by that time, the decay had set in. In a hot country, with a body not embalmed, swollen, the Lord said: “Take away the stone.” And when he said that, it was more than poor Martha could take: “Lord, no, no, I could not bear to look upon the swollen burst form of one who we have loved. Lord, no, not that.” “Take away the stone.” “No, Lord, no. No.” And the Lord said: “Martha, said I not unto thee that if thou should believe, thou should see the glory of God?” Then, they took away the stone. You know, I think I would have staggered at that, too. Wouldn’t you? If somebody you loved, in a hot country, never embalmed for four days, dead, and somebody were to say: “Uncover the body,” I think I would stagger, too. Lord, I don’t believe I could look. I don’t believe I could stand it. Lord, it is too much to ask. Could I illustrate, again, how the Lord sometimes overwhelms us? Little Judea, small country, about that big, the northern ten tribes had been destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar-Sennacherib and Sargon had come, those bitter, nasty Assyrians. They had come and destroyed the kingdom. There wasn’t any part of it left. And now they were coming down and they were holding Judea in the palm of their hand. And they were surrounding Jerusalem. And like you would crush an egg, it looked as if those great armies of Assyria would crush little Judea. And so little Judea did what was the most natural and normal thing in the world for people to do. They went down into Egypt to make an alliance with the Egyptian in order that the hosts and the chariots and armies of Egypt might come up and fight against those Assyrians. That’s what we are doing today. Over there in the North Atlantic, we have NATO, a combination of nations in order to oppose Russia. And that’s what we’re doing now. We’re trying to build another NATO in the Pacific in order to stop Communism in Southeast Asia-most natural thing in the world to do. That’s what little Judea did. Surrounded as she was by the great armies of Assyria, she went down into Egypt to make a contract with Egypt, that Egypt would come and fight for Israel, and somehow block the onrushing armies of Assyria. They had a great preacher in that day. They had a prophet. They had a man of God. And his name was Isaiah. And the Lord God spoke to Isaiah and Isaiah came before the king of Judea with this message: “Don’t lean upon the arm of Egypt. Don’t make a contract with the Egyptians. In returning and in rest, in quietness and in confidence be your strength. Just look to God. Just look to God.” Would you do that? Would America do that? Would you stagger at that? Would you? The Lord God said to people through Isaiah: “I’ll protect you. I’ll fight for you. I’m enough. You don’t need another army. And you don’t need another covenant. You don’t need to go to Egypt. I’ll protect you.” Would you do that? Would you? Lay down your arms and pray to God: “Lord, protect our nation.” I want to finish that theory. I don’t like that-leave a thing hanging up there in the air like that. Judea trusted the Lord and they just left it with God and believed the promise of God. And you know what happened? All of you know the story. When Sennacherib, at the head of that Assyrian army, gathered Judea on the inside of the walls of Jerusalem, and bottled her up, and it looked as though Judea was certain to be slain, do you remember what happened? That night the angel of God passed over the camp of the Assyrians. And the next morning, when Sennacherib arose to lead his host against the people of the Lord, he had an army of dead men. Do you remember that? Do you remember that? He had an army of dead men. The length and breadth of his camp, his soldiers in the nighttime, had died. They were corpses. They were dead men. That’s the Lord. That’s the Lord. We are talking about this tonight: staggering at the promise of God, at the direction of the Lord. Paul uses Abraham here as an illustration of a man who was saved by his trust and by his faith, by believing in the promises of God. Now, I think he chose Abraham because Abraham lived 400 years before there was any Law such as you have in the Bible. And he chose Abraham because Abraham lived before there was any Jew, before there was any Hebrew, before there was any rite of circumcision, before there was anything connected with anything such as the Hebrew people, the chosen people of God, the Israelis. Back here is a man who trusted God, and his faith was counted for righteousness. So, we are going to turn back to this blessed, blessed story of the life of Abraham. We are going to look back, and look at these things that Paul says, when he speaks of Abraham staggering not at the promises of God through unbelief. Now, six things here-one right after another in these chapters, that God said to Abraham. Every time the Lord God talked to Abraham, he talked to him in terms of a promise. Abraham, this will I do. This will I do. Now, if you have a Bible, a whole Bible, you turn to the twelfth chapter of the book of Genesis, and we’ll begin. Abraham, who staggered not at the promise of God-the first promise is in Gen 12:1. Now, the Lord said to Abram, Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred, and thy father’s house, unto a land which I will show you; And I will give it to you, the length and the breadth of that land. And Abraham went not knowing whither he went. Would you do that? Would you do that, just trusting in God? He left his father’s house and left his father’s home and left his native land and left his people, and he went out, just trusting God, just trusting the Lord. He didn’t know where the Lord was directing him or sending him-just going out, trusting God, believing that God would keep his word and bring him to a promised land. First one. Now, the second one. Look at this: And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing. And in thee-in the twentieth chapter of Genesis-and in thy seed shall all of the families of the earth be blessed. At that time, Abram had no child. He was childless-didn’t have an heir. Yet, the Lord said to him: “Abram, I will make of thee a great nation. And in thy seed shall all of the families of the earth be blessed.” And Abram believed that. He didn’t have an heir, didn’t have a child. But, he believed the promise of God. Jesus says over there in the Gospel of John: “Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad.” He staggered not at the promise of God. He saw God’s will and he heard God’s promise and he believed it: that, in his seed, all of the families of the earth should be blessed. Now, look at the thirteenth chapter, the thirteenth chapter of Genesis. It is a story of Abraham and Lot. In the land of Canaan, they have gone in that journey and the Lord had led them to the Promised Land, to the land of Canaan. And in that land they also began to grow and to multiply-their flocks and their herdsmen and their servants. And the land couldn’t contain them both, both Lot and Abram. And so, Abram said to Lot: “The land before thee, you choose the part you want and I’ll take what is left. If you choose the right, I’ll go to the left. If you choose the left, I’ll go to the right-the land before you.” And you know what Lot did. He lifted up his eyes and he looked over the fertile section of the land, the valley of Jordan. At that time, it wasn’t cursed. It was like a paradise. It was like an Eden: beautifully watered, palm trees, date palms, fig trees, orchards, beautiful fields, beautiful city, the great plain of the Jordan. Up there, in those mountains, he looked out over the plain and he said: “I will take the well-watered plain of the Jordan.” And Abram said: “All right. Then, I’ll take these mountains, rough and uncultivable and untellable and not productive. I’ll take what’s left.” And so Lot went down to the rich valley of the Jordan. And Abram stayed up there in those rough, rocky mountains. And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him: “Abram, you lift up your eyes now. Look to the north. Look to the south. Look to the east. And look to the west. Whatever you see, Abram-including that valley of the Jordan, wherever you look, all the land that thou seest, to thee will I give it and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth. And if a man can number the grains of sand, then can thy seed be numbered. Arise, Abram, walk through the land, the length and the breadth of it. And I’ll give it unto thee as a possession forever.” He didn’t own a rock in it at that time. He didn’t own an acre, not a piece of it. But, he believed God. He trusted in the Lord. The Lord said it was his. And the Lord gave it to him. And may I comment here, before we go on to the next chapter? The land of Palestine, by irreconcilable covenant, belongs to the Jewish people. It is theirs by inheritance. God gave it to them. It is going to be trodden down-Jerusalem is going to be trodden down, until the days of the Gentiles are fulfilled, until the time of the coming of the Lord. Did you know, had it not been for the Gentiles that land of Palestine by now would have already been wholly in the hands of the Jewish people, without bloodshed and without war. They were going over there and they were buying that land with money. They were buying thousands of acres and hundreds of square miles of it, and would have bought it all at a legal and set price, but the Gentiles intervened, and the Muslim world especially, and under the aegis of Great Britain, there came bloodshed and war. And did you know, in that bloodshed and in that war, the Jewish people won the city of Jerusalem? But, somehow, in the providences of God, the Jewish armies fell back and they were only able to keep one little square, not Zion, the city of David-one little end of it, that’s the only part of old Jerusalem that the Israeli nation now has. It is just that one little piece, there, where David’s tomb is. Did you know, had the Jewish people won Jerusalem, Jesus would have come? The return of the Lord would have been. But, it is not in God’s Word for the Jews to have Jerusalem until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And when that time comes-I don’t know when it is-when that time comes, look up. You’ll see the Lord in the sky. You’ll see the Lord descend on the clouds of glory. You’ll see the Lord returning with all of his saints. You’ll see the heavens filled with the angels of God. And all of us will be caught up with the Lord in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when the great archangel blows its trumpet. That land belongs to the Jews. It will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until they say: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” And when the Lord comes, the nation is going to be born in a day. They are going to receive him and they are going to be saved. By an irrevocable covenant, I say, the land was given to Abraham. And Abraham believed God, and the Lord gave it to him. Now, we hasten-these promises of God to Abraham. Abraham believed, he staggered not at the promises of God. Now, in Gen 15:1-21 -this is the one that Paul is referring to. In Gen 15:1-21 : After these things the word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying, Abraham, Don’t you be afraid. Don’t grow weary in your heart. I am thy shield and you are getting great reward. Abraham said: “Lord God, I don’t see that promise that you made to me about a seed, about an heir in my house. I don’t see it. I’m 70 years old-70 years old. And my wife Isa 60:1-22 years old. And we don’t have a child. And yet, you say, in me all of the families of the world are to be blessed, and I’m to be a great nation. Yet, we go childless. There is no heir. There is no son. And there’s nobody born. And I’m 70 years old and Sarah, my wife, Isa 60:1-22.” And the Lord said: The word of the Lord came: “This one shall not be thine heir, this son of Eliezer,” the steward in his house, the head servant. No. “But he that shall come forth out of thine own body shall be thine heir.” And he brought Abram forth abroad and said: “Look now toward heaven and look at the stars. And though be able to number them, so shall thy seed be.” There’s that famous passage: “And Abram believed the Lord, and God counted for him for righteousness.” That’s Gen 15:6 : “And he believed the Lord; and the Lord counted it for him for righteousness.” He trusted God. Now, turn the page again-we must hasten here. We turn the page again to the seventeenth chapter and I want you to look-talking about staggering at the promise of God. Now, you look at this for a moment. What is the first word there? “When Abram was ninety years old and nine”-99 years old-99 years old. That’s 29 years later, about 30 years later. Thirty years after this passage here in the fifteenth chapter, when he was complaining to God that he didn’t have a son, and yet one born in his own house should be his heir. Twenty-nine years has passed. Thirty years have passed and Abram is now 99 years old and his wife was 10 years younger. She was 89 years old. She was 89 years old and they didn’t have a child. They didn’t have a child. And Abram says to God: “Lord, how can it be? How can it be-this promise that Sarah is to have a child and I’m to be its father? And she’s 90 years old, and I’m 100-how can it be?” And so, the Lord God said-now, look at Gen 17:5, “You’ve been called Abram, but I’m going to change your nanme to Abraham, for a father of many nations have I made thee.” Now, look at Gen 17:15 : “And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, you are to no longer call her Sarai, but Sarah shall she be, because I will bless her and she will be the mother of many nations.” And she’s 90 years old and he’s 100 and they don’t have a child-been barren all of their lives. And then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed and said in his heart: “Shall a child be born unto him that is a hundred years old? And shall Sarah that is ninety years old, shall she bear, Lord, could such a thing be?” You turn the page. In Gen 18:12 : “Then Sarah laughed within herself.” And the angel of the Lord, that came to announce the birth of that child says here, in Gen 18:14 : “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Abram, 100 years old, and he doesn’t have a child; and Sarah, 90 years old, and she doesn’t have a child. The Lord says: “According to this season, according to the time of life, you will have a little child.” And Abram laughed and Sarah laughed. And that’s what Isaac means in the Hebrew language: “laugher.” Is anything too hard for God? He staggered not at the promise of God. Sarah, 90, and Hebrews, 100, and the child was born, just as God had promised. Now, one other-one other-the promises of God. In Gen 22:1-24 : “It came to pass after these things-after the birth of the little boy, Isaac-you know, I wish I had time to go through the Bible with you. How in the world did a woman who was 90 years old have a child? And how in the world did a man 100 years old be the father of a child? I haven’t got time to go through the Bible because we would have to stay here too long. But, in those chapters that we’re skipping over now, to come to Gen 22:1-24, do you know what God did to Sarah? He made her a girl again. And did you know what God did to Abraham? He made him a young man again. He recreated both of them-both of them. We haven’t time to follow the story through. But, is anything too hard for God? Is it? Is it? The promise of God. Now, one other in Gen 22:1-24 : the little lad now is about 12 or 13 years old. And the Lord says to him: Now take thine only son, Isaac, whom thou loveth; and get thee in the land of Moriah and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And I haven’t time tonight to tell that story, when Abraham-he’s 113 years old now-when Abraham takes his only boy, Isaac, and makes that three-day journey and comes to Mount Moriah. And there, on the top of the mount, he binds the boy and, on a rough-hewn altar, lays him on the wood and raises the knife to slay him. Now, in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews, and the eighteenth and following verses, of whom it was said: By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac; and he that received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called; Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure. Do you get that? Do you see that? When the Lord God said to Abraham: “Take this, thine only son, and on top of Mount Moriah, bind him there and lift up the knife and take his life, and offer him to God for a burnt offering,” Abraham obeyed God and he took his boy. And on top of Mount Moriah, on top of the altar of uncut stones, he bound the boy and prepared to take his life, believing that God would raise that boy up from the dead-raise him up from the dead. He staggered not at the promise of God. Now, this final word to us: When God speaks and we hear his voice, there is just one thing for us to do-just one thing: Believe it, believe it. Faith is confidence in God’s Word and in God’s promise that he will keep his Word, that he will perform the things that he’s promised. Nothing is too hard for God-nothing. And that faith-faith isn’t reasoning about it. Faith isn’t sensations about it. Faith isn’t emotion and feeling about it. That is the curse of the Christian religion: “Preacher, I’m not going down that aisle. I’m not going to accept that word. I’m not going to be a Christian, not till lightning strikes me or not until I feel it or not until I get those sensations or not until something emotional overwhelms me. Not until I see the light or hear the voice of an angel, I’m not coming.” That’s the curse of the Christian religion-this thing of emotion. We can’t help but feel and we all have feelings. And that’s not what saves us. And that is not what faith is. Faith is not arguing about, feeling about it, emotional about it. Faith is not one thing or the other about our sensations about it. Faith is this: God says that and I’m trusting it, so help me, God. That’s it ======================================================================== CHAPTER 12: S. BLOOD OF THE MARTYR STEPHEN ======================================================================== BLOOD OF THE MARTYR STEPHEN 03-14-54 Acts 22:20 This is the pastor bringing the morning message from Acts 22:1-30. We have read Acts 22:1-15. I want first to read the remainder of the text. And now why tarriest thou? Rise and be baptized and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord. And it came to pass that when I was come again unto Jerusalem, even while I prayed in the temple, I was in a trance. And saw him, the Lord, saying unto me: Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem for they will not receive thy testimony concerning me. And I said: Lord, they know that I imprisoned them that believed on thee. And when the blood of thy martyr Stephen was shed, I also was standing by. And consenting unto his death and kept the raiment of them that slew them. And he said unto me: Depart, for I will send thee far hence to the Gentiles. And that concludes as far as he was able to deliver his message of defense. Now, in order that we might see what Paul was doing and why he thus spake, may I recount for a moment the story in Acts 21:1-40. This is the concluding part and time of the apostle Paul’s life. After his third missionary journey, he came to Jerusalem for the fifth and the last time. And when he made his report to James, the pastor of the church in Jerusalem, James said to him: Brother Paul, the people here, the Jews here who are Christians, who believe by the myriad, by the thousands. The Greek word is tens of thousands. It was an enormous church. Dr. Carroll, B. H. Carroll, says that the church in Jerusalem had more than one hundred thousand members. I know the church in Antioch when John Chrysostom was pastor of it had more than one hundred thousand members. They say this church is too big. Why, we haven’t even started. You wait until we have one hundred thousand members in it and then we’ll consider whether it is too big or not. When Paul went to Jerusalem, he made his report to the church concerning the grace of God upon the Gentiles. And he also brought to the church, the mother church, a gift from their hands for the poor saints in Jerusalem. So while Paul was there, the pastor said, the brother of the Lord, James said to him: Brother Paul, look at these tens of thousands of members of the church and they’re all zealots for the law. They all teach the law. They are Jews. They are Christians, but they are also Jews. They keep the law. They train their children in the way and in the manner of Moses. Now, they have heard of thee that you speak against the Jews and against the temple and against the sacrifice and against the mosaic customs. Now in order to still their voices, you take a Nazarite vow before the brethren here, then you go out to the temple and according to the Levitical code in Num 6:1-27, you shave your head with them and you burn the hair of separation and give according to the Levitical law. The church is for them, you paid for these poor Nazarites who cannot buy the offerings themselves. So in order to show himself Orthodox, to the Orthodox Jew, the apostle Paul consented and he went up into the temple. And it was during that time that he was making the sacrifices of purification and of separation, having fulfilled the vow that some of the Jews from Asia who heard him preach in Ephesus, who saw all Asia turn to Christ through the marvelous ministry of this man of God, they being in the temple and having cause to hate him bitterly. They cried saying: Men of Israel, men of Israel, help. This is the man that teacheth all men everywhere against Moses and against this place and against the customs God has delivered unto us. You say you can’t prove yourself to people who won’t believe in you. If you have an implacable enemy, don’t try. You could never live holy enough to convince him. So Paul in the act of proving himself Orthodox, instead of the men coming and saying: Look, we’ve been wrong about this man. Let’s shake his hand and receive him in our fellowship. Instead of that, they raised a hew and a cry, saying this man has polluted this temple. Not only not believing in the laws himself, but he’s brought in Greeks. Having seen prophets with him in Asia on the street. He’s brought in Greeks, plural. Into this temple. And there was such a furor and such a mob and such an awful stir until they seized Paul and were beginning to beat him to death there in the Gentile court of the temple in Jerusalem. Now, above the temple, oh, how the Jew looked upon that with the bitterness. Above the temple on the north side was the great tower of Antonio, a vast castle in which the Roman legionaries were housed and controlled Jerusalem and Judea under the hands of the procurator and under the hands of the Roman Caesar. In that high castle of Antonio, they watched the court, the Jewish temple and the worship, day and night, looking down upon it. And when the soldier, the watchman up there saw the terrible mob and cry in the temple, why, he sent word to the chiliarch, the leader of the Roman garrison and he called his centurion, who called the co-hort. And they ran down the steps of Antonio and into the temple and into the center of the mob. And picked up Paul as they were beating him to death. And he said: What is this man? Who is he? And they cried -- someone saying from another. And the chiliarch bound him with chains and was taking him out of the temple and when they came to the steps of Antonio of which they were going into the Roman garrison, Paul spoke to him in the classical learned Greek language and said: May I say I word unto thee? And the chiliarch, the colonel of the garrison turned and said: What? You speak Greek? Aren’t you that Egyptian that lead the sicarrii, the dagger men, the bandits? They were a hired company of men who went in great crowds and slew political enemies by stabbing them and then disappeared in the crowd. Aren’t you a part of that? And Paul said: No. No. I am barely a man who am a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city. And I pray thee, suffer me to speak unto the people. And the chiliarch suffered him from standing on the steps of the tower of Antonio, overlooking the vast temple court below when its infuriated, blood-thirsty and maddened mob, Paul raises his hand and made a defense for his faith. What kind of a thing would you think he would say as he stood there, bound in chains, guarded by the Roman legionaries, looking into the face of his own people and race and tribe and family who just before had been lifting their hands to beat him to death? What would you say? What would you think Paul would say? Well, some learned theological argument surely. Educated as he was in the Halakah, and the Haggadah the Mishnah of the rabbinical traditions, you’d say he’d stand there and he would elaborate learned theological things, arguments by the faith. You’d think he would confound those infuriated there below with heavenly eruditions, with celestial flags of oratory, wouldn’t you? As he stands there and looks into their infuriated faces and defends the Christian way, wouldn’t you think that he would fall into politic fancies and celestial fire and all kinds of able praises as he defends the Christian faith? Wouldn’t you think so? As we wait breathlessly for that man on the steps to open his eloquent lips and speak the why of the Christian faith, you know what he says? Like a child, like a child, he makes a recital of the simple facts of an experience; a conversion. There is no erudition. There is no learning. There is no argument. As he stands there on the steps of the tower, speaking to that vast maddened throng below, he recounts a simple experience. I was on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And as I made my journey in a light that put out the sun, I met the Lord Jesus on the way. He recounts a simple story. He was a learned man, Paul was. He was a graduate of the rabbinical school of Gamaliel, the greatest teacher they ever had, Paul was. He was learned in Greek, in classics. He could quote from their poet. He’d preached in the Areopagus in Damascus, in Athens. He knew Hebrew. He spake Aramaic. He was one of the great intellectual giants of his day. Yet when it came to the defense of the Christian faith, he never referred to the classics. Never banded about an actual argument. Never summoned up work of mind to bring to bear upon that mob below. But as he stood to defend the Christian faith, he recounted an experience. And my brethren, the defense of the Christian faith is ever just that. The defense of the Christian faith is never an intellectual argument, it is always a personal experience. Christianity is not a matter of the array of learned phrases and subtle arguments and philosophical approaches. Christianity is not a battle of opinions and of ideas and of philosophical insights. But Christianity is an incarnation. Christianity is a man standing up saying: This is what I have seen and what I have felt and what happens, because I was there. I saw it. I felt it. It is my experience. Christianity is a man standing up saying: I was on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And on the way, I met the Lord and it has never been the same again. Christianity and its defense is not a book, but a man. It is not an intellectual argument, it is a personal experience. This is what I have seen and felt and heard. That is the defense of the Christian faith. It is a man in Africa, standing up saying: I was going from Jerusalem to Damascus. And on the way, as those chosen go with fame and riches and honor, in one of the great clinics of the land offered me after my graduation from the medical school and after the completing of my internship in the great hospital, I was on my way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And as I journeyed toward that self-chosen goal, following ambition and fame and riches, I met the Lord Jesus in the way. And I heard his call and he said: Africa. And Africa which I turn my face to his people now, I minister this dark continent is my life and my prayer and my ministry and my practice. That is the defense of the Christian faith. It is a limping man standing up saying: I was a sheep going astray on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And I met the Lord Jesus in the way. And I am now returned to the shepherd and the bishop of my soul. The defense of Christian is a man standing up saying: I was blind, groping for the wall on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And I met him who’s able inside and glorious presence opened my eyes. And whereas, once I was blind, now I see. That is the defense of the Christian faith. The defense of the Christian faith is you, and I look at you in your face back there. And I see you. And you, and I look upon you who once were going to Damascus. On the road with a high hand and a proud heart, seeking. What things do we seek? Some ambitious for wealth, for fame, for achievement, for glory, for money, for pleasure. Inhabiting ways are we on the way. And we meet the Lord Jesus, and we are never the same again. I know, I was there and it turned me. It changed me. And I am a new man with a new hope and a new vision and a new dream and a new dedication. That is the defense of the Christian faith. Men, brethren, fathers in the defense which I now make unto you. I was on the way and I met the Lord and it’s never been the same again. A lot of people answer arguments like that. It cannot enter into them. Philosophy can bandy about all kinds of subtle places. Philosophy can marshal all kinds of erudite supposition. But philosophy cannot answer a man’s experience. I met the Lord. I saw him. I felt him. I heard him and I turned. To destroy Paul’s argument, you have to destroy Paul’s life and Paul’s character and Paul’s mission and Paul’s message and Paul’s ministry. To destroy Paul’s argument, you must destroy Paul himself. As long as he stands there, he’s a rock against which infidelity. And Paul’s philosophy and pseudo science beat itself to death. As long as he stands there with that story of meeting Jesus in the way. When I went into the room for my Ph.D. oral examination, having studied two years, the day came for them to question me whether or not I was worthy of that doctor’s degree. And one part of it was to stand a two hour oral examination with those learned professors and doctors of the law, asking one question after another for two interminable hours. So I took my seat and they started. And one of the questions was this, “Young man, in your study, in the field of New Testament, we suppose you have come across the critic words that Paul had a sunstroke on the way to Damascus and that was his conversion. He had a sunstroke under that terrible blazing Syrian sky, at midday, he had a sunstroke and that was his conversion. And I presume, they said you also have come across the critic word that Paul because of his vision and his trances, he was an epileptic. Now, young man, what do you think of that?” And I replied, “Honored sirs and learned men of the law, all I can say to that is this. That I have here in my hand, I have in my hand thirteen letters that are written by that man Saul of Tarsus. And in those letters are some of the sublimest passages, the world has ever known. Though I speak of tongues of men and angels and have not love, I have become a sounding brass or a clanging symbol. And though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge. And though I have all things so that I can remove mountains and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all of my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not love, it profiteth me nothing. The man who could speak like that and the man who could write letters like that, if that is a gift of a upon sunstroke, and if that is the gift of a man with epilepsy,” then I said, “may God in heaven grant that we all have sunstroke and that we all turn out to be epileptic.” The defense of the Christian faith is the apostle Paul himself. His character. Has life. His work. It stands for two thousand years. Sustained and glorious before God and before men. Brethren, hear my defense. I was on the way from Jerusalem to Damascus. And in a light that blotted out the sun, I saw the Lord Jesus. And the years passed and the days passed. I wonder how that experience wears in apostolic trouble and turmoil? Through the passing of the years, does he get away from it? Does he get away from it? So many times an experience we’ve had years and years ago, time clouds it. Memory grows dim and the thing is hard to remember. How does this man wear in his apostolic labors and his remembrance of what happened on the Damascus road? After shipwreck and after imprisonment and beatings and toils and travel, how does he do and how does he say and how has it worn? You have your answer here. We’re coming now to the close of the long life of the ministry of this glorious servant of God. And as he stands in the twilight of life to speak to his people in the teem of Jerusalem, to the men, brethren, and fathers of his own family and people, what does he do? He goes back to that glorious day, the hour that he met the Lord. And after the passing of the years, it is as bright and as glorious and as full and as meaningful as it was the day that it happened. That is true Christian experience. The days don’t wear it away. Time does not deface it. All of the trials and sorrows of life do not blot it out. It becomes sweeter, more precious as the years go by. Back yonder, back yonder, back yonder, I remember the day. I remember the time. I remember the hour. I remember the preacher. I remember the service. I remember the people. I remember the church. What it was like. I remember the song that they sang. I remember how I felt. And until that day until this, the experience has never faded. It hasn’t dimmed. But its true meaning has appeared more sweeter as the years go by. That’s in the defense of the Christian faith. When I was in school, I’ve never trained myself in following it, but I had a philosophical turn of mind. I like to read philosophy and psychology. Starting out to major in it. Was a grader in it. I liked it. Thinking, reading, trying to probe into the causes of things. Had a wonderful friend, glorious friend. He and I were pastors together in a little place. He there and I here. We went out together and came back to the school together. We were both majoring in psychology and philosophy. And reading those books, pouring over those arguments, thinking through all of those learned reasons. And as time went on, he left it. He resigned his church. He resigned his ministry and he gave up his Christian faith and became a learned, educated, scholastic, agnostic. He didn’t believe in anything. He didn’t believe in anything. And he said to me, “You’re going to do the same thing. You may think it now for another year. You may hang on for two more years. It may be a while. But you won’t stay, you can’t. You can’t. When you read these books and when you study this thing and when you see what men say, it will prove to you, too, the vanity and the emptiness and the vacuity, that stand for the Christian faith. You’ll leave it, too.” I wonder why I didn’t. I wonder why I didn’t. I want to tell you why. I will admit to you that times without number I’ve been so tied up in my mind until I couldn’t find the way. I will admit to you that there have been lots of times when I have so doubted in my mind until intellectually I felt I could not follow in the Christian way. I will confess to you that lots of times it seemed to me that the arguments of the agnostic and the infidel was beyond what any man could ever answer. I confess that to you. Then why didn’t I follow in his way and turn aside from the Christian message and the Christian faith? I’ll tell you why. I never could get away. I never could get away from how I felt and the something that happened in my soul back there when I was a boy and went to the little church and heard the pastor preach. And mother talked to me about trusting Jesus and the savior. And I went down the aisle and gave the pastor my hand and couldn’t see him for the tears in my eyes. Something happened there. As a boy, ten years old, something happened. And to this day, I have never been able to repudiate it. It did something to me. It took something in me. It is there forever and ever. That thing cannot die. I have never found an argument. I have never seen a philosophy. I have never read a book. I have never heard a man, never yet, that was able to change that something. The die that was cast. The bend of a twig, the turn of a life. I have never seen one that was able to take it away. And after the passing of these years, the tree has grown in that way until now it has become the heart and soul and center and vision and aim and goal of my whole life. I was on the way from Damascus, from Jerusalem to Damascus, and I met the Lord Jesus and it has never been the same again. The defense of the Christian faith is you, is you. Is you. This is it. This is it. Look around you. Oh, what the Lord has meant, what he has done, this is it. This is it. Now, in your program we had announced that I was going to preach on THE BLOOD OF THY MARTYR STEPHEN. I was. I intended to. But when I read this passage I just got to thinking about some of these things and I couldn’t pass them by. But in my appeal, I want to sum up the sermon that I prepared for this morning. And haven’t time to preach. In his defense, Paul says: No, Lord, I want to stay here in Jerusalem. Right where I saw Stephen die, I want to stay here. Where his blood was spilled and where his life was taken out, I want to take his place, Lord. And for Stephen, I want to preach, and for Stephen, I want to live. And where Stephen died, I want to die. And my sermon that I prepared this morning was this: Paul’s offering of his life to God for somebody else. For Stephen, Lord, you see it there in the passage. I was consenting unto his death and engineered his martyrdom. Lord, I want to stay where he stayed. I want to speak for him. And I want to live for him. And that was my appeal to you this morning. For somebody else, for somebody else, would you come down that aisle? Would you? Pastor, one of us belongs to one church and one of us belongs to another church. For the sake of him, would you come? For the sake of her, would you come? Would you put your homes together for her sake, for his sake? Would you do it today? Pastor, we have these children here. Here I come. For their sake, would you come? Somebody here today who belongs to the church. As I walked over here, one of our blessed women said, “There’s two young men here today. One is not a Christian and one belongs to another church.” If the one that belongs to another church could come, the other will follow behind him. For his sake, would you come? And for the sake of the lost world all around us, would you come? Would you come? Here I am, Preacher. Here I am, Pastor. I give my heart to God and my life in the fellowship of this church. I want God to use me and bless me in my life and reach others for him. Would you do it today? Would you do it today? While we sing this song, in that topmost balcony, from side to side, all around, anywhere, somebody, you. A mother, her children. A family or you. A child, one somebody, you. Here I come, Pastor, taking the Lord as my savior or coming into the fellowship of this church. Anywhere. While we sing this appeal and while we pray today, would you make it now? Would you make it now? While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 13: S. DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS ======================================================================== DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 19:28 01-24-54 This morning, we begin Acts 19:1-41 and continued through the seventh verse. Tonight, we begin at the eighth verse and go through the remainder of the chapter. For our reading, let us begin in the nineteenth chapter of the Book of Acts and the twentieth verse: Acts 19:20 -“So mightily grew the Word of God and prevailed.” Now the twenty-fourth- For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen. So he called together with the workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, you know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover you see and hear, that not along in Ephesus, but throughout almost all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away much people, saying that there be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians. And the whole city was filled with confusion; and having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, companions of Paul, . . . they entered into the theater [Acts 19:24-31]. -with the people- And they drew Alexander out of the multitude, the Jews did it. And Alexander beckoned with his hand, and would have made a defense to the people. But when they knew he was a Jew, all with one voice about the space of two hours hounding down crying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians-Great is Diana of the Ephesians. When the town clerk had appeased the people, he said, Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how the city of the Ephesians is a worshiper of the great goddess Diana -and of the things-and the image which fell down from Jupiter? Seeing then these things cannot be spoken against, [and so on] [Acts 19:33-36] And he completed his address and then “he dismissed the people” [Acts 19:41]. Now, that is the part of the background of the message tonight on Paul and DIANA OF THE EPHESIANS. There is not anything that a schoolboy does not hear more about when he sets his face in history than “the seven wonders of the ancient world.” And those words are almost household words: the seven wonders of the ancient world. They were the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Alexandrian Lighthouse-Pharos, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Colossus at Rhodes, the Phidias’ Statue of Jove [Zeus] at Olympia, and the temple of Diana in Ephesus. And of the seven wonders of the ancient world, far and away the most magnificent and impressive and glorious of them all was the incomparable temple of Diana in Ephesus. The glory of that temple could hardly be described. I copy from Pausanius who was an ancient Greek traveler and geographer, quote, "It surpassed every structure raised by human hands." And another ancient writer, "I have seen the walls and Hanging Gardens of old Babylon., the statue of Olympian Jove, the Colossus of Rhodes, the great labor of the lofty Pyramids, and the ancient tomb of Mausolus, but when I beheld the temple at Ephesus towering to the clouds, all of these other marvels were eclipsed." The temple at Ephesus was far larger and far more magnificent and far more famous than the Parthenon in Athens, which to us is the greatest building of antiquity. And the reason for it is that the temple at Ephesus was destroyed by the Goths in about 250 or 260 A.D. and it sank out of sight, and it sank out of memory. And it has only been since the days of the Renaissance that its glory and its splendor and its beauty and its grandeur has ever come to light. Pliny said it was two hundred twenty years in building. And the size of it was about two city blocks long-about six hundred feet long and about a city block wide. And it was supported by a hundred sixty [twenty]-seven columns of Carian marble and they were arranged eight at the end, and eight at the end, and all of the rest of them along the sides. They were sixty feet tall. As you entered Ephesus going up the ship channel of the Cayster River, you got a view of about three-quarters of the building. It was placed exactly east and west, and when a stranger first looked upon it, his breathe was almost taken away by the awe-inspiring sight. It had one architectural figure that distinguished it from all of the rest of the buildings of the world. When you see any columns over there in ancient Greece, in Egypt, here in the homeland or any where, any column I have ever seen-when you see any column, they are always belled out at the bottom-called a “drum”; unless it is an Ionic column, which lies flat-it stands flat on the pavement. And then the column is either plain or it is fluted. It either has a string around or it has no indentations-those flutings on the side. I have never seen any column different from that. The one exception is the columns of the Ephesian temple of Diana. They had sculptured sides-sculptured reliefs all the way up around to the height of about a man’s head. And those sculptured relief columns themselves were on the ground of the ancient world. On the inside of that glorious temple of marble and gold and silver-on the inside was the statue of Diana. Now you have it translated "Diana" here. Diana was a Roman word for the goddess of hunting- Diana. The word used here in the Greek is "Artemis." Artemis is a Greek goddess of hunting. In reality, the goddess at Ephesus was not either one. Artemis of the Greek and Diana of the Romans was a beautiful, graceful, gorgeous goddess. But this goddess at Ephesus looked like an ogre out of the dim past of man. It says here in the Bible that she was supposed to have fallen out of heaven from Jupiter. Apparently what happened back there in the day of Anatolian antiquity there was a meteorite that fell out of heaven. And they began to worship it way back in the dim ages. And then as time went on, the meteorite was placed to the side, and some crude image of a body was in the place instead. So in the passing of the centuries-this was the eighth temple built on that site-in the passing of the centuries, there came to be around that goddess all of the superstition and all of the dark magic and all of the heathen worship that had accumulated for centuries and for centuries. Now the goddess, I say, was not beautiful at all. Around the lower part of her body she looked like an Egyptian mummy-wrapped around and around and around. And then the upper part of her-the hands and face and body were of a woman. Now on her body was a multitude of little objects. Sir Ramsey Moore says that they are the ova of bees. Every body outside of Sir Ramsey Moore, the great antiquarian archaeologist-outside of him all of them say they were breasts. In any event, the goddess there in Ephesus was the goddess of fertility and fecundity. And she represented the proliferation of all life-animal, vegetable, and human. And she was worshiped as such. Now, they had a system of religion there in that Ephesian temple that was marvelous to behold. The sign, the insignia of ancient Ephesus was a bee. When you had an Ephesian coin, it had a bee on it and this goddess doubtless was the queen bee-the goddess bee. And she had a great retinue of servants, of men-of drone priests who dressed like women; and she had a great retinue of priestesses who were the worker bees; and then, beside them there was a vast concourse of flute players and trumpeters and acrobats and dancers and singers and everything else that went with a gorgeous Oriental ritual. Now when Ephesus was in its prime and glory as Paul visited it, two thousand years ago. No body in this earth would ever have dreamed but that the city was invincible and impregnable and eternal. What is Ephesus today? It is a haunted, weird, mausoleum of the dead. No body goes there. Malarial mosquitoes for many, many years have driven all men away. And for centuries and for years and years-over a thousand years, the very site of the temple itself disappeared. Right in the day of its glory Ephesus was one of the remarkable cities of marble of the world. And one of the marks of the Hellenization of the Ephesian goddess was this-that once a year, on her birthday in May, they celebrated for a solid month the Artemisia. On that-in that month nobody worked for a solid month. The entire city was given over to play. And children came there from the ends of the earth, and they had a typical Greek holiday. One of the things you will find in the writings of Paul is this. He wrote to the Corinthians church, while he was there in Ephesus, and he said, "I will tarry in Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries" [1Co 16:8-9]. Now, when you read that, you do not see a thing in the world there. He is just going to stay until Pentecost. Oh, no. That is not what he was talking about. Pentecost, he was going to stay until Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish holiday that came about in June. Such time as that-the first of June. What Paul meant was that they-that he was staying in Ephesus through May. That was, through the Artemisia, because the pilgrims came there through the ends of the earth gave him an infinite opportunity to preach the gospel. I can give you a parallel to that. When the World Fair was held in Chicago, Dwight L. Moody carried on his tremendous revival services and he turned all America to God. By the people-by converting the people who were there on the Chicago World Fair. Now, that was what Paul was intending to do in Ephesus. During the days of the Artemisia, when the pilgrims were there and every where, he was going to preach the gospel so the entire world could hear about it. Now, in those days in the glory of the temple and in the Artemisia, why they carried the effigy of the goddess through the city. And when the people left, why they wanted a prize, they wanted a memorial, and many of them wanted a god to place in their house to worship. So, this man Demetrius, a silversmith-he in his craft made little silver goddesses like that statue on the inside of the temple of Diana. And they made lots of money doing it. Well, the whole city was given over to idolatry, to black magic, and to superstition. And wherever Paul came along and began to preach the gospel-well, you know what happened. There was a certain inevitable conflict. There is no such thing as superstition and magic-necromancy, soothsaying, fortune telling, witchcraft-no such thing as that continuing by the side of the Christian faith. Let me tell you something, if you go to a fortune teller and a soothsayer and a palm reader, you are crazy-beside not being a Christian. You know that? You just are. You ought to go to have your head examined and not your palm examined. You just are. You just are. That is the craziest insane thing I know a body can do-go to a crystal gazer; go to a fortune teller. And my, they tell me-I never been to one in my life and I do not do that. But they tell me there are endless numbers of people who patronize those things. All right. Let us go back to Ephesus. That Asiatic goddess brooded over the city and magic was in the air. Phrases, powerful phrases were in the air. All kinds of incantations-“hocus pocus”; hocus pocus. Grab those chains. All of that stuff was every where. And so, when Paul began to preach and the people began to see the true light of God, why they brought their little bees and their black magic-all of their superstition, and they dumped them in the fire and they had a big bonfire right in the city of Ephesus. Well, it did not stop there. You cannot be a Christian and go to fortune teller and palm readings and all of this other inanity. The future belongs to God; go to Him; go to Him. Nor can you be a Christian and worship insanity-be an idolater. So when the people began to turn to God, why they began to turn away from these shrines, and these little goddesses, and the temple. And this man Demetrius-when he saw that his craft was about to be destroyed by that preaching of the man of God-he gathered his people together and he said, "Listen here, listen here. Not only are you about to get out of a job, and not only are you and I about to lose our craft, but the great temple itself is about to be despised and destroyed and forgotten and rejected." Now, when they had those big Artemisia, they sang hymns to Diana and went through the city-and you could just hear worship every where. -went through the city crying, "Great Diana of the Ephesians. Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; just like when the Arabs held a great political meeting, they repeated one sentence over and over again. I do not know what the sentence is, but they just say it over and over, and work themselves up into a frenzy. That is exactly what happened here. When Demetrius a called that group together and told them what was happening, why they began to shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and poured out into the streets saying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians"; and went up and down the streets of the city crying, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." And nobody knew what it was all about, but they were just working themselves into a frenzy, into a riot, into a mob. And the place for demonstrations in Ephesus was in the theater. The theater is still there. It seats twenty-four thousand people. In the excavation and rubble it was a tremendous place. And they poured in that theater and began to shout, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Now, some of those Jews who were in the city were terrified by what was happening. They were afraid that the thing was taking anti-Semitic turn. That they would go to the Jews. That is the reason you do not see it here if the Book. You wonder what in the world is Alexander doing with the Jews? Well, the reason for that was this-I say those Jews were terrified. They were scared to death. That tremendous mob in a frenzy, chanting, "Diana of the Ephesians." Of course the Jew was [not] an idolater and he was not visiting Diana. So they were afraid that it would take an anti-Semitic turn and the mob [would] just wipe the Jewish population off of the face of the earth. So when they saw that vast concourse of people in the theater, they put before them Alexander to speak for the Jews, and tell them they did not cause all of that. They did not have anything to do with what had happened to the Christian religion. So Alexander the Jewish oracle stood up and beckoned with his hand and said he was going to make a speech to them and some body said, "He’s a Jew." And when they heard that, the whole crowd howled him down and for two solid hours they cried, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," and wouldn’t [listen] to him or any body else-just a liar. Then the town clerk came-the official of the city, and he stood up there and looked at that vast mob-twenty-four [thousand] or more people in that great semi-circle of those marble tiers-he looked at them and he made a typical Greek speech. And his cold logic was like ice on their heated spirits. And he just dismissed them and put them away, and said, "You go back. You go back. No body robbed the temple and every body knows that Diana is the goddess of the Ephesians and she is worshiped all over the world. Now seeing these things are true, just go on home and go about your business." And so he dismissed them. And those Asiarchs, those men who carried on the government of the city who were friends of Paul. Isn’t that remarkable? They counseled Paul, and then Paul said to the disciples, "Goodbye," and they sent him away. And he continued toward his next journey up into Macedonia. Well, that is the background of this story. Now [I have] one or two things to say about it. First, all of mankind-all of mankind, with no exception to it-all of mankind. All of mankind-all of mankind has something in the head, or in the heart, or wherever you locate it-all of mankind does. And it is a spot that some thing is going to fill of the supernatural, of the other world-going to get into that. It always will. It always has. It is today. I cannot understand the spirit world. If you want to stop me good and hard, you just say, "Now Pastor, sit down there. I want to read to you out of this Bible." And then you just open and read to me any where it says-and it is a lot of places in the Bible-about the casting out of evil spirits. You take that story of the swine. The man who had the legions of devils in him and they wanted to be cast into the swine. Now, you just set me down any where any day and say, "Pastor, explain that to me." Well, I just do not know. I just do not know. There is a lot of that that I do not understand. But there is some of it I do understand. And what I do understand is this-that there is a vacuum in our cranium, in our heart, soul, wherever it is-there is a vacuum on the inside of us and it is going to be filled by some kind of a spirit. It will be either the spirit of superstition and magic, or it will be filled by the Spirit of the true and the living God. But there is something on the inside of me that is a vacuum and there is a spirit of some kind going to get in there-going to get in there. “Well, I do not know about that, Preacher.” You do not know about it? Then look at it just for a minute; look at it just for a minute. [Do] you think we are the only civilized people in the world? Listen here; you have not studied. Thousands and thousands and thousands of years before you were born, and before the American nation was conceived, hardly any body spoke the Anglo-Saxon-English language, they had a tremendously advanced civilization in China, where there was gunpowder-they invented it. Where did you get china? Well, it came from China, obviously. China came from China. They invented printing-writing, I do not know what all. They were cultured people thousands of years before we even came along. What is the matter with them? From the dynastic head to the coolie on the street, they filled with superstition and with fear-spirits, spirits, evil spirits. It was everywhere. And I told you the other day, when you see the architecture of the building, all of the philosophy-and the huge philosophy-so when the spirit falls on the house, they do not come back in but they shrug off from you in the house. That is China. That is in China. They are filled with all kinds of superstitions. My first contact in Africa was in Lagos, really. So I was walking over there and I said, "Listen here missionary, these folks look like they do in Birmingham, Alabama." I said, "preach to that fellow right there. Preach to that fellow right there." I said, "there are a thousand boys running across the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, that look exactly like that boy, just exactly like that." I was surprised. I do not know why, but I thought over there in Africa they would look different. They do not. They look just like the people over here. He said, "Yeah, that is right. That boy looks just like the boy on the streets of Birmingham, Alabama.” “But, he said, "the difference is this. The man in Birmingham, Alabama, has been reared under a Christian culture and a Christian civilization." He said, "This boy has been raised in humanagraphy. He looks the same on the outside." “But,” he says, "you do not know the fear and the superstition that lives on the inside of that boy’s head, and that boy’s mind"-a heathen, a heathen. And that is true all over the world. All over the world, men are going to worship some thing. Men are going to worship some body. And if we do not have God, and we do not have the true Spirit of God, and we do not have the enlightenment of the Lord, we are going to turn to ignorance and illiteracy-spiritual illiteracy and superstition of every kind and degree. It is true of all people in all generations and in all time. I started out there were not any people more cultured than the Greeks. And they were filled with the unspeakable and indescribable superstition, and their gods and their goddesses were beyond description. The Romans were the same way. All humanity is the same way. We either give our hearts to God, the true and living God, or we give them to something else-live in fear; live in terror; live like animals; live like beasts, cringe before the future and groping for it as a blind man looking for the wall. Or, you live and walk in the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And it will be one or the other. Now, I go on. One other thing here. As you look at this man Demetrius just a minute. Look at this man Demetrius. Well, he lived two thousand years ago. You think so? No, he did not. Demetrius never dies. Demetrius is always with us-always. He made that speech on the streets today some where. Demetrius did, and he made it yesterday some where. And he will make it tomorrow some where. Now you look at Demetrius and Demetrius’ spirit. He gets up there and he says-he says, "You know what? You know what? This great temple of Diana is in danger of being destroyed. This great temple of Diana is in danger of being obliterated and forgotten." So, ostensibly the appeal that he made was in behalf of the great temple of Diana. In reality, the reason he was making this speech was because he made money selling silver shrines to Diana. And he was losing his business. He was losing his trade. Well, he had made images for Olympian gold. He made images for the Aphrodite just as quick and as easy as he made them for Diana in Ephesus. As God’s Book says here, [Inaudible]* I want you to make me an image of Isis and Osiris. Make me an image of Isis. The leader said, Sure what does he look like? What does she look like? He did not care anything about the temple of Diana or any other thing like that-all he wanted was money. But when he made his great appeal to the people, what he was talking about was the temple here and the true religion of Diana-when in reality, what he was talking about is money. He is losing money. Well, I say Demetrius makes those speeches today. I hear them all of the time. I remember when we were talking about prohibition. I remember in Kentucky, where I was leaving at that time, I never heard such speeches in my life on personal liberty. “Oh head of the United States of America, you cannot tell us what to do or not to do. We are free people and we are defending personal liberty.” And the brewers and the distillers all have the rights: “that breaks our liberty and freedom in America”; when all of the time all they were working for was to make money selling liquor. That is all it was to them. That is all it was. That is all they are interested in now. Ostensibly for a great principle; actually making money-making money. That is a dastardly thing, did you know that? Because of personal gain to defend a thing on account of an ostensible principle. When in reality, the reason you are for it s on account of personal gain. Personal aggrandizement. That is terrible. That is terrible. Well, I have got to close. He is greatly worked up about the temple of Diana of the Ephesians-greatly worked up. Well, you say that is two thousand years ago-two thousand years ago. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 14: S. DISCIPLES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST ======================================================================== DISCIPLES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 19:2 01-24-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message from the first part of Acts 19:1-41. In our preaching through the Word, last Sunday we closed, we stopped on the first part of Acts 19:1 -“And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth.” And that is where we stopped. While Apollos was at Corinth. Now we continue in the nineteenth chapter: “while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coast came to Ephesus"-the capital city of proconsular Asia, the Roman province of Asia-“came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples, He said unto them, Have you received the Holy Spirit since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much have heard whether there be any Holy Spirit. And he said unto them, Unto what then were you baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism. Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him which should come after Him, that is, on Christ Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied. And all of the men were about twelve [Acts 19:2-7]. That possibly is one of the most difficult passages to understand in the whole New Testament. For example, you have here a generation after John the Baptist is dead, you have disciples of John the Baptist. John has been martyred for more than thirty years. And yet here are disciples of the John the Baptist. And not only that, but these disciples of John the Baptist in this nineteenth chapter of the Book of Acts are not on the banks of the Jordan River, nor are they even in the wilderness of Judea, but they are in Ephesus-far, far away in the capital city of Asia. And if you remember in the few verses just above, you have another disciple of John the Baptist, the eloquent Apollos, who hailed from Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, on the other side of the Mediterranean world. That causes an unusual question-disciples of John the Baptist; a Baptist movement that had its origins in the great forerunner that continues on through the years and the years-where did they come from? Who are they and what became of them? Then you have another problem here-the baptism of John. That was the only baptism that Jesus had. It was the only baptism that the apostles had. In fact, the qualification for a man to be an apostle were two. One, he had to be baptized by John the Baptist; and second, he had to be a personal witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet in this passage are disciples of John the Baptist who said they were baptized in John’s baptism-whom Paul baptized again. That was to give your casting aspersion and discredit upon the baptism of John. [Those are] just some of the problems that lie in this passage. So let us start out on them; because in finding an answer, there is in it a marvelous truth for us who are Christians. The first startling fact when you began to pull back into those days, the first startling fact you will discover is this, that there was a movement-the John the Baptist movement that was parallel to and alongside the Christian movement. They two were side by side, may [have] simultaneously developed. You and I think of the great forerunner as announcing the coming of the Lord, preparing disciples for the Lord, and that his movement was enmeshed and amalgamated and finally, encompassed by the Christian movement. That is not true at all. The John the Baptist movement continuous alongside the Christian movement. And John made disciples and those disciples made disciples. And Jesus made disciples. And those disciples made disciples. And the two movements went along side by side. And almost from the beginning, there was a bitter antipathy and antagonism between the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have time this morning barely to refer to that conflict, but you look at it. In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, beginning in the twenty-second verse it says, "After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judea; and they tarried there and baptized." So Jesus is there in the land of Judea, baptizing. "And John also was baptizing, in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there" [John 3:23]. Whatever baptism John was using, he had to have lots of water. Not a cup full. Not a glass full. Not a cup full, but lots of water. A tub full. A baptistery full. A river full. A pond full. Now, "John also was baptizing in Aenon because there was much water there: and they came and were baptized, Because John was not yet cast into prison" [John 3:23-24]. The two are side by side making disciples, baptizing those disciples and making converts. "Then there arose an altercation between [some of] John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying" [John 3:25]. Now, what was that purifying? Look at it. "And they came unto John, and said unto thee [him], Rabbi, he that was with thee beyond Jordan to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth”-yet He is more popular than you. You have lost your rabbit’s foot. It is Jesus that is the song on the lips and the praise from the heart-“and all men come to Him" [John 3:26]. And the disciples of John the Baptist were taking it hard. They were taking it hard, that altercation over purifying was over baptizing. Baptism is a purification. It is a sign of purification. It is a sign of washing and of cleansing. The cleansing of the soul and of the heart are a sign and a washing of the body. And they were in an altercation as the disciples of John the Baptist said, "The true baptism is from John. He got it from heaven." And the disciples of Jesus were saying, "The true baptism is from Christ. He is the great Messiah promised." They were having a lot of trouble there among those Jewish people. Now, you take one other. The disciples of John the Baptist made a direct frontal attack upon the Lord Jesus in the days of His ministry. Here in Luk 5:33, "And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers,” . . . but Thou, Brother, all You are doing “is eating and drinking and having a good time" [Luk 5:33]. You are over there staying with that bunch of kids, and You ought to be praying. You are up there with these men in those bowling lanes, and you ought to be fasting-then You would not have enough strength to bowl. You are around there with this crowd out at Mount Lebanon, in a camp out there with these young idiots, and You ought to be there down on your knees. Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers and you, you eat and drink? You will find the same thing in the second chapter of the Book of Luke-I mean, of Mark. And the disciples of John came to Him and said, "Here we are fasting and look at You. Look at You" [see Mark 2:18-22]. Now, I haven’t time to go into that. Let us continue on. I am pointing out to you that, even in the days of the flesh of our Lord, there was antipathy and jealousy and conflicts and antagonism between the disciples of John and the disciples of the Lord Jesus. I kind of hate to preach like this because I haven’t the beginning of time to encompass it all. And there is a lot more to this than I am saying. John the Baptist was loyal. And he died loyal to the Savior. John the Baptist was raised of God to introduce the Lord Jesus and he did it. And the true disciples of John the Baptist entered the Christian movement. John, the man who wrote the Fourth Gospel, Simon Peter, Andrew, all of the apostles of the Lord Jesus were disciples of John the Baptist. But there was a difference in them. Some of the disciples of John entered the Christian movement, but a great host of them did not. And as we go on, that will appear. But in no sense, must you get the idea that John was not faithful to his witness and loyal to the Lord Jesus, and he died that. Now, let me go back. From the beginning, I say, there was conflict and altercation and jealousy and enmity between many of the disciples of John and the popularity and prestige and growing fame of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when John died, that did not in any wise take away from his prophetic stature. Even in his prison, the disciples of John loved their master. And Herod gave them opportunity to visit him and to minister to him. And when John was beheaded, it just made him a greater prophet in their eyes. You remember the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Matthew and other Gospels. The Lord Jesus Himself said, "John’s baptism, was it of men or was it of heaven?” [Mat 21:25]. And the Jews said, "If we say it is from heaven, why, the Lord will say, Well, why didn’t you believe him and accept me as the Messiah? But if we say it is from men, why the people will stone us. Because-the Bible says - “all men took John for a prophet” [Mat 21:26]. And he is dead and is beheaded and yet, beheaded and dead, he was still the stature of the great prophet before the people. So the death of John the Baptist made no difference in the worship of the disciples as they remembered their glorious master. Now, that John the Baptist movement continued like the rippling out of the waves to a drop of a rock in a lake. The John the Baptist movement went out and out and out until it conquered the entire civilized world. For one thing, many pilgrims came to Judea, to the feast and they heard the great prophet preach. And they repented of their sins and they were baptized by John. And when they went back home, they took the message of the great forerunner with them. And they made converts and the movement went on. You will find over here in Alexandria I say, Apollos is a disciple of John the Baptist. And here in Ephesus, you will find these twelve men who are disciples of disciples of John the Baptist. Then when you go beyond the veil of older Scriptures, you will find these church fathers, those early ecclesiastical historians, you will find them mentioning the disciples of John the Baptist. One author is Justin Martyr. He refers to the disciples of John. As Justin was martyred in 110 A.D. Then you will find in Hegesippus. Hegesippus was an early church historian. And he lived about 160 A.D. And he mentioned the disciples of John the Baptist. And there is a pseudo literature called the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Recognitions. They have been reported to have been written by Clement who was reported to have been a bishop in the church at Rome. And they are an unusual collection of literature. And the heart of the Clementine literature is this: they are struggling with problems in their own day-say about 200 A.D. So Clement, the early bishop, pastor of the church at Rome is writing back there what happened back in the apostolic day. And so have Peter and John and the rest of them giving answers to problems that they are meeting in 200 A.D. It is a spiritual epigraphic literature. It is a soft literature. It is not authentic but it shows you the time. And this-these Clementine Recognitions I am going to read a passage, a little brief passage. Look at it. And behold, one of the disciples of John asserted that John was the Christ and not Jesus. Inasmuch as Jesus Himself declared that John was greater than all men and all prophets. If then, said he, he be greater than all, he must be greater than Moses and of Jesus Himself. But if he be the greatest of all, is not he then the Christ?" The disciples of John the Baptist, two hundred years now after the Lord Jesus. The disciples of John the Baptist are declaring that the great forerunner is the Christ, the Messiah Himself. Now, I can find that thing here in the Bible. John the sainted author of the Fourth Gospel. John lived to be about one hundred years old. And in 100 A.D., John was still living and he was at Ephesus. He was at Ephesus, the city of Ephesus, and he pastored the church at Ephesus for many, many years. Now, John said that if you were to try to write down every thing that the Lord Jesus did, the world itself could not contain the book[s] that could be written. So John says he picked out this little bit, what little bit, that he has written here in the Gospel. He has chosen that in order that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Now, it is perfectly-in his perfect selection of what he is going to write about the Lord Jesus. John in Ephesus is careful to write down even in the little bit that he chooses. He is careful to write down the testimony of John the Baptist concerning his being the Christ. John 1:20 : "and John confessed-John the Baptist confessed and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." Well, who said he was the Christ? There were lots of people saying John was the Christ. There were many disciples of disciples of John the Baptist who were saying the forerunner was the promised Messiah. So here in the Gospel of John, John took pains to turn aside and write down the testimony of the Baptist. And the whole chapter there, that whole section which I haven’t time to read is the testimony of John. And that is the strongest way you can say it, "He confessed, denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." Now, the reason that Luke wrote this passage here in Acts 19:1-41, where we are preaching from this morning, it was a libation in the first Christian century-these disciples of John the Baptist. So, Luke was writing here how Paul dealt with the problem., and gave that illustration. Now let me tell you something that is one of the most unusual things you could ever dig out. There are disciples of John the Baptist today. In the Mesopotamian Valley, there are about two thousand souls who call themselves, “Mandaeans,” or disciples of John the Baptist. And they have a John’s book and they look upon John as the promised teacher and Messiah who was to come into the world. Now, what kind of a religion was that John the Baptist movement? What kind of a people were they? Well, it is easy to answer that question. The John the Baptist religion, the disciples of John the Baptist and the kind of people they were-they were severe and ascetic. John the Baptist himself was one of the most impressive of all of the men who have ever appeared across the stage of human history. He looked like and he talked like a prophet that had stepped out of the pages of the Old Testament. His beard was unkempt. His hair had never been cut for over thirty years and hanged in jagged-and hung in shaggy locks around his shoulders. He was dressed in poor camel cast cloth with a leather curtain around his waist. And he thundered the repentance and the judgment and the coming fury of the kingdom of God. And he was bold and impressive in his implacable and inflexible countenance. And John and his disciples were amazed at the congeniality of Jesus. And the disciples of the Lord. They were rigorous. They are monastic. [But these others,] they were common. And the movement had in it a tremendous appeal to all classes, -to people who are classless and ascetic or the worldly religion. So as time went on, people who thought that the Christian movement was dilettante. It was effeminate. It was effete. It was too much here down in the world. And they liked the fury and the judgment and the preaching of the fire and the brimstone of John the Baptist. So they just kept on in that religion. And the thing echoed and reverberated and made converts and continued through the years and the centuries. So when Paul came to Ephesus, he looked at those twelve men. How did he know there was something wrong with their religion? Why, to the discerning eye of the apostle, I can tell you exactly how Paul saw it, was sensitive to it, and in solicitude and in love and in anxiety searched it out. Whenever you see a people who have lost the optimism of their religion, when you see a people that have lost the triumph of their religion, when you see people who have lost the glory and the happiness and the joy and the fullness and the look and the work and the gladness and the ecstasy of their religion, there is something wrong. There is something wrong because religion puts a soul in man’s heart. Religion puts a smile on his face. Religion puts a persuasion, a feeling of triumph in his life; whether we live or whether we die; whether we have or have not; whether we are sick or whether we are well; whether we are here or there. True religion in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ has a song-even in the night. So Paul looked at those twelve disciples. They were twelve men-twelve heads bowed; twelve faces lined with austerity; and the monasticism and the severity of a religion of fear and subservient and resentment. They were pulled out of the world. The world wretched and vile. And when they touch it, the violin is an instrument of the devil and we must never bring it into the church-so said the Monastics. And they-the whole set up of the creation is vile and iniquitous and we must pull out from it. Now, how do I preach and be misunderstood again? We ought to pull out from the compromise and iniquity of the world. But we ought to stay down there in the world where the folks are. If they live on the breach of hell, our church ought to be on the brink of hell trying to minister to the people who walk around on its verge. Where the people are, the church ought to be. Where the young people are, the church ought to be. Where the folks are, you ought to be. Whether you have all eternity to live up there in glory, God needs somebody down here, just like you-just like you. And that is what Christians say. The Christian religion is a down-to-earth religion. Get lost in the dust of the ground. It will be for the people, it knocks at the door. The Lord Jesus said, "I come to break bread at your house this day" [Luk 19:5]. So Paul looked at them and they were the lugubrious, sad, pathetic monastics. And Paul looked at them and said, "My soul, my soul. Does religion affect you that way?" The judgment of God coming in this way? We have a message of hope. So he asked them a question, "Tell me, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Was there a gladness of regeneration in your heart when you found religion? Did you find God and victory and triumph, did you?" And they said, "This Holy Spirit? All we know is monastic aesthetic. We never heard of whether there ever be any Holy Spirit or not." Now, there is a key that I can see what kind of people they were. And now, I cannot pass by the little comment on the movement of John the Baptist. As the movement progressed, some of it was good like Apollos. He was not that type. Apollos had the same baptism Jesus did, and the apostles did. And he was a true disciple of the John the Baptist-made ready for the coming of the Lord. And when Aquila and Priscilla told him about the Lord Jesus, immediately he was ready and received him. That is the true John the Baptist movement from the Lord Himself. But these men, the disciples of John the Baptist made disciples, and these disciples made disciples, and these disciples made disciples, and this made disciples, and finally they got away from the original intention and meaning and purpose of the Baptist movement altogether. So these men here never heard of the Holy Spirit. And yet they said they were disciples of John the Baptist. Why, they did not know anything about God. Tell me, when John the Baptist preached, didn’t he preach like this? "I baptize you in water: . . . but he that cometh after me Who is greater than I, . . . he shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire" [Mat 3:11]. Did he do that? Yet these men had never heard about the Holy Spirit-never heard about the Holy Spirit. They got away altogether from the true meaning of the movement of John the Baptist. So Paul, when he looked at them he said, "Listen here, that baptism that you have is nothing. And that religion that you have is worse than nothing." So he told them the truth of the faith by the Lord Jesus. And then they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Now, the best I can, may I encompass a whole hour’s appeal in a few sentences? One, one baptism, this baptism, the baptism in water, the baptism they are talking about here-baptism and the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as any meaning in baptism apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. You might as well go out there and let the president of the Chamber of Commerce dunk you in a pool as to say, "My baptism has meaning apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit." It has no meaning at all. It has to be upon a confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you must be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. An unconscious influx, a some body who is not converted, one who is not prepared for baptism-it is nothing. It is nothing-nothing. nothing. Apart from the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, a baptism in water is nothing-nothing. And another word regarding the baptism itself. The baptizing itself, Paul then said, "then you must be baptized again” -or re-baptized. "You must be baptized again." There that briefing that you will find here in that action of Paul, one is, Paul refused to allow Christianity to dissolve, to fall in the empty, hollow, ceremonialism of the Jews’ religion, of Judaism. There is no rite. There is no ceremony-baptism or any other rite. There is no other rite in the earth that has in any effect or any meaning or any spiritual power aside from a regeneration in the heart-the movement of God in the spirit and in the soul. And the rite on the outside is nothing at all-nothing at all. Because you have been baptized means nothing at all-nothing at all. "But Preacher, I got baptized and I belong to such and such church." It means nothing at all. It has to believe. It is a moving of the Spirit on the inside. The thing is genuine and real according to the inside, and the outside is just a token symbol, a pronouncement, a heralding. First, Paul refused to allow the Christian faith, just as it stands in the heart of ceremony; I baptize; I am in the church; I am on the way to heaven. "Not so," says Paul, "not so." You may be good and you may read the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but you are lost. No matter how many times you are baptized or how many preachers told you you belong, unless there is something that is moved on the inside of the soul and the heart. All right, the second thing here. Paul also insisted on the right administration of the ordinance. You can baptize, yes. But were you baptized for the right motive? Were you baptized for the right purpose? Were you baptized by the right administrator? Were you? Were you? Paul insists-he insists that a true baptism to be a baptism must be the right purpose, the right cause, the right meaning, the right person, and the right administrator. And you have here the Scripture for the insistence of your present pastor and many, many men who stand by his side, or by whom I stand, you have the Scripture here why we insist on the re-baptizing, or the real baptizing of these who come to us and say. And now may I make illustration just a moment? I do not know how many and this will be typical who will come to me and say, "Pastor, I want to join the First Baptist Church. We love this church. And we love to go hear the Word preached. And I want to join the church." I say, "Welcome, a thousand times welcome. Have you given your heart to God?" "Sir, I have been saved. I have been converted." "Have you been baptized?" "Yes, I have been baptized." ======================================================================== CHAPTER 15: S. ELECTION: THE HARDEST PASSAGE IN THE BBL ======================================================================== ELECTION: THE HARDEST PASSAGE IN THE BIBLE Dr. W. A. Criswell 11-21-54 Rom 9:10-28 In our preaching through the Bible, we have come to Rom 9:1-33. And I have entitled the sermon today: The Hardest Passage in the Bible, the most difficult passage in the Bible. Now, I say, that’s what I think of it. It concerns the doctrine of election, the elective decrees and purposes of God. The reading of the text-we shall begin at the ninth verse in the ninth chapter of the Book of Romans: For this is the promise, At the appointed time will I come and Sarah-who is then ninety years old-shall have a son. And not only this, but when Rebekah also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children, being not yet born-Esau and Jacob, for the children, being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her-God said unto Rebekah, The elder shall serve the younger. That is while the children were still in her womb. They had not done good, they had not done evil. But, according to the elective choices of God, God said to Rebekah: “The elder, that is, Esau-Edom, shall serve the younger, that is, Jacob, Israel.” As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau, have I hated. Now, that word “hate” is not like we use the word hate: malicious, villainous attitude. But, it means like it says in the Bible: “If a man come after me and hate not his father or mother or brother or sister, he is not worthy of me”-“hate” in the sense that we love God more than we love anyone else. So, if I could say it, “As it is written, Jacob have I loved-quoting God in Malachi. That’s Mal 1:2; Mal 3:1-18. As it is written in Mal 1:2; Mal 3:1-18, where God says: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau do I love less.” What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness? A better word would be fairness? Is there unfairness with God? No. For he saith to Moses-and he quotes Exo 33:19 -For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy. For the Scripture saith to Pharaoh-and then he quotes again from the sixth of Exodus-Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee and that my name might be declared throughout all of the earth. Therefore, hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou will say then, unto me: Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Or put it in my words: Why does God blame men then, if God’s will is irresistible? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, Even us-even us, whom he hath called-whom he hath elected, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As he saith also in Hosea-and he quotes Hos 2:23, I will call them my people which were not my people, and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, in the place where it was said unto them, You’re not my people; there they shall be called the children of the living God. Isaiah also cried concerning Israel-he quotes from Isa 10:1-34 and Isa 20:1-6, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. For God will finish the work, and he will do it quickly-a short work, a quick work will the Lord do upon the earth. As Isaiah said in another place-quoting Isa 1:1-31, before he quoted from Isa 10:1-34, Except the Lord of host had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom and had been made like unto Gomorrah. That’s the passage, the hardest passage in the Bible: He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy… Therefore, hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy and on whom he will, he hardeneth. I do not stand here, in this sacred place, proposing to understand this message today. Nor do I propose to explain to you the elective choices, the executive will, of the Lord God. But, I do propose to do this: we can look at the work of the Almighty. When as a boy, I used to sleep, once in a while, out in the western part of our state, under the open canopy of heaven and look up at the sky. I don’t suppose there is a scientist in this earth that would deign to be egotistic enough to say: “Well, I can explain all of that.” He can look at it. He can mark some of its orbits. He can measure the light years, some of those spheres far away. But, for him to say: “I can explain to you all of the created workmanship of God” would to proclaim him a silly man to begin with. All he can do is what you can do: look at the great firmament of God and marvel at the handiwork of the Almighty. God’s work is inexplicable wherever it is done. All we do is just look at it and marvel. Walking around on Oahu Island, the island on which Honolulu is built-walking around on the island, I saw an old thing of a palm tree. It was old and bent over and mostly decayed. And walking by it, I stopped and looked at it. Out of its rotten trunk there was bursting forth the most beautiful orchid I had seen. And I paused and looked at it and marveled at the workmanship of Almighty God. Who drew those diagrams and who dipped his pen in those gorgeous colors and traced those lines, and who made that beautiful thing? You explain that. You couldn’t if your life depended upon it. It is the workmanship of Almighty God. Turning to another, altogether different, realm of human life and history, all you can do is marvel at the workmanship of God. No man can explain any part of it, any piece of it. We can just look at it and observe it. Here is another. Whoever saw a Hittite? Whoever saw a Girgashite? Whoever saw an Ammonite? Whoever saw a Jebusite? Whoever saw a Canaanite? Whoever saw any of the ancient races and nations of the long, long ago? You never saw one, nor did anybody that you ever heard of-did they ever see one. And 1,000 years ago, and 2,000 years ago, and 2,500 years ago, they never saw one. But, I have seen a Jew. I have seen Israel. I have seen the children of Abraham. The children of Israel and the children of Abraham were contemporary with the Hyksos and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Canaanites. Why is it that Israel lives today and all of those other ancient nations have perished? It is a work, it is an election, it is a sovereignty of Almighty God. Like the Gulf Stream goes through the sea, so the great race of Israel continues through the eons ands centuries and millenniums. Explain that. You couldn’t explain it. It is a part of the sovereign grace and choice and election of Almighty God. The Lord Jesus said in Mat 24:34-35 : “This generation-this race, this genus, this tribe, these Jews, the children of Abraham-they shall not pass away until all of the promises and the denouement of God be unraveled and unfolded and fulfilled according to the sacred Word.” The Jew will be here until the end of time and he will share in the consummation of the ages. He is beloved for Abraham’s sake and he is the chosen of God. And he will always be in this earth. That’s a part of the elective purpose of Almighty God, and all I can do is look at it. Hitler can try to destroy them. Stalin might. Through the years they have been persecuted and the vagabonds in the earth. But, they are still here and God says they will be here until the end of time. That is an election of Almighty God. I say, I do not deign to explain the work of the Almighty. All I can do is look at it. And that’s all Paul could do. All Paul could do was just to look and marvel at the riches of the grace of God, the elective purposes of God. Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36 are all about that: God’s purposes, His elective purposes with Israel and with the peoples of the earth. And look how he closes it. Does he explain anything about it? He cannot. Paul, though he is inspired, cannot reach into the unfathomable and inexplicable depths of the wisdom of Almighty God. Look how he closes the passage-the ninth, tenth and eleventh chapters-look how he closes. Look how he ends the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans: O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him are all things; to whom the glory forever and forever. Amen. Paul ends that glorious passage-chapters nine, ten and eleven in Romans-with a holding up of his hands: “I cannot enter into the mystery of it. I just marvel,” says Paul, “at the glorious purposes, the elective purposes of God.” All right. Now let’s start on it. Let’s just look at it. We cannot explain it. We wouldn’t try. But, we can look at it. And I think we should. I think, if we had a glorious 20,000 foot peak by Dallas, snow-crowned, towering toward God, for a man not to look at it, you might think would be ridiculous. He ought to look at it. Would to God we had one here to look at. We ought to. It is a part of the workmanship of God. So, with this thing of election, I think we ought to look at it. I think it will help our hearts and our souls. And that’s the purpose of the message this morning. When we come to these things in the Bible-they’re in the Book and the preacher is preaching the Book-and when we come to these great doctrines of election, we’re going to look at it. We’re going to look at it. All right. First of all, the Bible’s presentation of it. The Bible has no hesitancy. It does not stammer or stutter. It is not apologetic when it comes to the presentation of this whole sovereignty-the kingship, the rulership-of Almighty God. Now, I could be here all morning long. But, out of one book-I have chosen three passages out of one book, the Book of Isaiah, that I might first-as we begin this message, that I might enter into the Scripture of the Bible, as it presents the sovereignty, the Lordship, of Almighty God. This is out of one book, but it is all through the Bible. Isa 14:26-27 : This is the purpose that is purposed upon the whole earth; and this is the hand that is stretch the out on all of the nations. For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out and who shall turn it back? Isa 14:24 : “The Lord of hosts has sworn, saying: Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.” That’s the Lord God speaking. Now, may I turn to two other passages in the Isaiah? One is in Isa 44:1-28, beginning at Isa 44:24 : Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer, and he who formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens above; That great canopy above us, God says, I put it there. That spreadeth abroad the earth by myself. He didn’t have anybody help him make it. He made this earth. That frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad; I like that. The Lord God looked at these people who predict, and he scorns them and scoffs at them. … and maketh diviners mad; that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their follies foolish. That confirmeth the word of his servant, and performeth the counsel of his messengers; that saith to Jerusalem, Thou shall be inhabited; and to the cities of Judah, You shall be built and I will raise up the decayed places thereof; That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will triumph thy rivers; That saith to Cyprus-that saith of Cyrus -Isaiah is speaking 250 years before this man was born. And Isaiah calls him by name, 250 years before he was born. That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure; even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; And Jerusalem was already built. … and to the temple, your foundation shall be laid. And the foundation was already laid. Isaiah, speaking 250 years before that came to pass, said 250 years hence, this city will be destroyed. The foundations of the Temple will be uprooted. But, there will be a man who will come by the name of Cyrus. And he will obey the Word of God, and he will cause the city to be rebuilt and the Temple to be rebuilt. That’s the Bible. That’s the God of the Bible. Now, let’s turn to another in Isaiah-the forty-sixth chapter of Isaiah: I am God-the ninth verse, and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executed my counsel from a far country; yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I also will do it. Now, that’s typical of the whole Bible. It makes no apology about presenting the sovereignty and the Lordship of the Lord God. The great preacher, Spurgeon, said: “No man can ever get a true view of the gospel of the Son of God unless he will take into account two lines: The line of the sovereignty of God and the line of human freedom.” And Spurgeon said this, in closing that remark: “I cannot make them unite. Neither can you make them cross.’ Broadus said of it like this-Broadus said, when you approach a house, you can never see as you approach it but half of it. This side-go around and look at the other side. But, when you go around the other side; then you lose sight of this side. As you approach a house, you can never see but half of it at a time. Go around and look at the other half. But, I have noticed when I fly over the city of Dallas and look straight down, I can see all four sides at the same time-look right straight down on the house and see all four sides at the same time. That’s the way with us and God. Here, we can never see but half of the thing at a time. When I am looking at a man’s freedom-his human moral freedom-he’s absolutely free. And I look at that. Then, I look I turn my face toward God. And I can see the lordship and the divine sovereignty of Almighty God. And how to make them both fit, I do not know. How can a man be perfectly free, and God run this thing by his sovereign elective will, I do not know. But, up there in heaven, when you look down, those things are altogether. I cannot enter into the mystery of it. It is just there. I am just in sympathy with this: One of the great divines at the turn of the century avowed, saying: “There can be no greater reinforcement for religion,” said he, “in our time than a return to the ancient doctrine of the sovereignty of God.” All right. Now we are going to talk about the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God is this: that there is a divine, heavenly purpose that lies back of this world. God has a will. God has a purpose. The Lord has a goal and a destiny for the human race and human family. History is reaching out toward some great rendezvous, toward a vast consummation. And that purpose and that will is what we call the elective purposes, the elective decrees of Almighty God. Now, the fact that there is a plan in this world. There is a plan of God in history, in life, in yours and mine, and in all of the destiny of the nations and peoples of the earth. There is not anything great and worthwhile that could ever be accomplished without first a plan. You must have a plan. That must be first. When General Eisenhower, our president, was preparing our armies for the assault of the Hitlerite bastion, and when D Day came, that thing was executed after long and meticulous planning and care. Every man had their this, this, this, and those, that, that. And everything was carefully worked out. He had a plan. When a man builds a cathedral, when he builds a great beautiful building, first there must be piles and piles of blueprints. There must be a plan. A man couldn’t paint a picture without first, in his mind and heart, he sees the thing. And then he puts it on canvass according to a plan. So with this vast universe in which we live. God has a plan. He has a purpose. He has a program. And if there were no plan and no purpose in back of this universe; this universe would be nothing other than a express train driving head on without engineer, without light, without track, and would surely fall into the abyss. God has a plan, a sovereign plan, for this world in which we live. Now, what kind of a plan is that? The plan of God is always merciful. The redemptive plan of God is always turned toward the saving of the lost, toward the redeeming of a people. In God’s Word, in God’s Book, men are never appointed to damnation. There is no such language as that in the Bible. Men are appointed unto salvation. The elective purposes of God are always toward our salvation, never toward our damnation. Eze 33:11 says: “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked would turn from his evil way and live.” God does not delight in the destruction of any human soul. The elective purpose of God is never toward the damnation of a man and the ruining of his life and his forever in the world to come. The only election that I know that is full of hopelessness and damnation is the election of science. The doctrine of natural science, of the survival of the fittes, is nothing other than the doctrine of election. They call it selection: the doctrine of selection. And in natural science, the doctrine of selection is without human hope and without a vestigial remnant of pity or of care. But, the doctrine of election, in the heart and mind and purpose of Almighty God, is filled with the love and care of someone who loves humanity. Now, in the expression of that sovereign will of God, the will of God, the elective purpose of God, is it always manifest to the end that the man might be saved. All men are lost in sin. And our aversion to the will of God is as patent and as open and obvious as the certainty that man’s damnation lies ahead. Now, in the course of the sin and the self-destruction of humanity, God intervenes. That’s his sovereign will. That’s his elective grace. God intervenes. God intervenes to restrain evil. God intervenes through his Son and the Holy Spirit and the church and through the preacher and through the message of Christ. God intervenes. And in that intervention, he chooses men who will respond to his will. As Paul mentions here in Rom 16:1-27, God will choose Abraham. And God will choose Isaac. And God will choose Israel, Jacob. And God will choose Moses. And God will choose a remnant of Israel. And the Lord’s work and the Lord’s will is worked out through all of the generations and through the centuries. So much so, that a prophet could look ahead and say at an exact time, like Daniel did, the Messiah will be born. And Micah, the prophet could say in the exact place, the Lord Jesus will be born. And Zechariah could say, 500 years beforehand, the exact manner in which he will present Himself, riding an ass, going into Jerusalem. And Isaiah, 750 years before, could describe the exact manner in which He will die. God’s purposes are worked out. But, they are already known in heaven. They are known to God. And they are worked out in history through the years and the days that unfold. And God can see the end from the beginning. And those purposes are always good. They are always blessed. They are always merciful. They are turned to the saving of the man. Now, who are these people that he chooses? The Lord’s choice, His election of men, His choice of people, is always on the basis of their willingness to respond. Could I give you an example of that? The Lord chose Abraham. Now, look how God selected him. He elected him. The Lord said: Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation. And all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him and they shall keep the way of the Lord, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of. The Lord selected Abraham. He chose Abraham because God could see that Abraham would respond to the appeal and the choice and the call of God. Now, over here in the passage out of which I read; the ninth of the Book of Romans-he uses an illustration here, Paul, of God’s elective choice concerning Esau and Jacob: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau, I do not love so much. And God chose the younger and said the elder shall serve the younger.” All right. Let’s look at those two boys. Now, that’s God’s choice in heaven. He could see what those boys were going to be like. And he made His choice, His election. Down here, as the story unfolds, we can watch it. Those two boys were greatly different. They vastly differed. Esau was a fine animal. He had the brute strength of an animal. He lived out in the open. He was a red, hairy man. And he was passionate in all of his appetites and ungovernable in all of his expressions. That was Esau. Jacob was a different kind of a man. Jacob was a fellow you would not have liked. He was tied to his mother’s apron strings. He was a house boy. He washed the dishes. He swept out the floor. He did exactly what his momma told him to do. He was smooth-skinned like a girl. He was sissy and effeminate. That was Jacob. But, the Lord God had a great purpose. Esau was given to his appetite his whole life. And if you read the life of Esau, the whole life of Esau was given to fleshly appetite. There was something on the inside of Jacob that God could see. And through that veneer and through that outside of deception and effeminateness and freakiness and all of those things that we don’t like, there came a time in Jacob’s life when, at Peniel, on the other side of the Jordan River, he had a great experience. And he gave his heart, and he gave his life, and he gave his soul to Almighty God. And God changed his name from Jacob, which means “supplanter” or “deceiver,” to Israel, which means “the prince of God.” And from the day of his conversion until he died, Jacob, or Israel, was a stalwart patriarch, serving and walking in the will and in the elective purposes of God. God could see that. God could see that. And the Lord God chose Jacob, because Jacob had what was in him: an ability to respond. And he would respond. And the elective purposes of God were carried through Jacob and not through Esau. Now, on the other side, Paul mentions Pharoah: “Pharoah, for this cause did I raise thee up that my glory might be shown in thee.” God hardened Pharoah’s heart. How is that? That was like this. God chooses a man according to the man’s response. What will he do? What will he do? How will he respond? And God sees it before the man is born. It is not something new to God. He sees the end from the beginning. And this man, Pharoah, the Lord hardened his heart. And I had trouble with that until first read those passages where it says: “And Pharaoh hardened his own heart.” And Pharaoh hardened his own heart-and Pharoah promised these things to the children of Israel and then he didn’t do it. He backed away from his promise. And finally, the Lord gave him up. And that’s how the Book of Romans begins. In Rom 1:1-32, when a man continues in aversion to the will of God-when he continues in sin and in wickedness, finally the Lord gives him up and he hardens in his sin. He continues on until he becomes a personification of the negation of the resistance of the sin itself. And that is a part of the development of the elective purposes of God that we see here in this world. There are those who will respond. They are the elect. There are those who will not respond. They’re the non-elect. Or, if I could use the word of Henry Ward Beecher, he said: “The elector, the whosoever wills, and the non-elector, the whosoever wont’s.” And God sees it from the beginning. And his elective purposes are wrought out in those who will respond to God’s call and God’s will. Now, as briefly as I can, may I bring to our hearts what this thing means to us-the elective mercies, the purposes, the executed plan of Almighty God in our lives? First, our only hope of ever being saved lies in the elective intervention of Almighty God. “We are dead,” the Bible says, “in trespasses and in sins-we are dead in trespasses and in sins.” We are dead in trespasses and in sins. A dead man cannot spontaneously originate his only quickening. Somebody from the outside must quicken a dead man. It is just the same. A thing created cannot spontaneously originate its own creation, somebody must create it. It is like the birth of an infant, an infant cannot originate its own beginning. There must be a prime mover. There must be a start somewhere outside itself. So with a man, dead in trespasses and in sins. All of us are dead in sins. We are lost. We are lost and undone. There must be some outside seeker who finds us and who quickens us and that’s the elective intervention of Almighty God. The shepherd seeks the sheep. The woman searched the house for the lost coin. The father waited and prayed and pled before he left with the prodigal boy. The prime mover has to be God. Otherwise, we are all lost. The elective purpose of God is our hope that we can ever be saved. It starts with him. In his mercy, he looks upon us and he seeks us. And when we turn, he saves us. All right, second. The continuing of our lives lies in the purposeful plan of Almighty God. If we have any hope, in the life in which we live, the frame and the plan and the following of our life, that frame and that plan lies in the goodness and in the mercy of Almighty God. Oh, the things that can overwhelm us. The things that can destroy us . The terrible things that can lie await for us. But we believe in the goodness and in the help and in the mercy and the care of Almighty God. One of the great Christian poets of all literature is Robert Browning . And one of the poems of Robert Browning is an expression of that purposeful care of the Almighty. Could I quote its first stanza? Go along with me The best is yet to be. The last of life For which the first was made Our times are in his hand. Who saith a whole I plan. You chose but half. Trust God, see all Nor be afraid. That’s the Christian poet’s expression of a sovereign grace of Almighty God. Our lives are in his hand Who saith a whole I plan. Trust God, see all Nor be afraid. He will take care, he will take care. I may not be able, but God will see us through. The sovereign grace of God is our hope that our lives shall be blessed in this world while we live. And now, last, our hope of a destiny to come, that come day we will reach glory lice in the purposeful love, in the sovereign will, in the grace and goodness of Almighty God. How shall we ever make it? How shall we get there? We, who are so little and so lost in this vast, vast universe. Our world is so tiny. Our whole universe itself is tiny compared to the infinitude of Almighty God. Maybe the Lord will overlook us. Maybe God will forget us. One of the preachers stood up and preached this sermon and started off with the text in the 10th Chapter of Matthew, the very hairs of your head are numbered. And he said: Why, some of you here, do not believe that even your hairs are numbered. That God doesn’t even know who you are. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. A part of the sovereign grace of God is this: That not a one of us is lost. In all of the multitudes of God’s great, vast, infinite world, but he knows you, and he knows you, and he calls you by name. And you are as much an object of care in the elective purposes of God as all of the stars by which he runs the vast firmament above us. You are not lost, nor are you going to be forgot. Nor will you ever be alone. But you are a care and a prayer and a love and a revelation of the goodness of God. No matter who you are. He cares for the microscopic as well as he cares for the telescopic. He has as much concern for the infinitesimal as he cares for the infinite. And the mercy of God reaches down and touches each one of our hearts and we will not be overlooked or forgotten in the great denouement, in the vast, era, millennium age that is to come. I want to tell you a little thing about that and then I have to quit. The care of God, the care of God for the little, for the tiny, for you, for you. If you live long enough, people will forget you. If you live long enough, you will outlive everybody who ever knew you . If you live long enough, you will die. And you won’t be wanted. Who wants to embalm you and put you where -- no, sir, you would be placed in the ground. You would be buried out of sight. And five hundred years from now if the world is still standing, who remembers who was buried in that place? The world will forget. It does. It will. And in the vast infinitude, who remembers? Who remembers? It is the sovereign elective grace of God that will never forget. And he cares for you. Now, I say, I little thing to illustrate that and I’m done. There is a chapter in the Koran, the Mohammed Bible; there is a chapter in the Koran that has the most unusual presentation in it. It is this: The angel Gabriel is standing by the gates of gold. And while he is there, the Lord God sends him on a mission to do two things in the earth. He tells Gabriel to do two things. First, he sends Gabriel to King Solomon to prevent him in sin from forgetting the hour of prayer as he exalts over his royal states; that’s one. The other thing that Gabriel is commissioned to do is this: He is to help a little yellow ant on the slope of Mount Ararat that has grown weary trying to get food for its nest and otherwise would perish in the rain. So Gabriel leaves the divine presence and goes down to earth and he does those two things. And to him one is as royal as the other. Because God commands it. First, he prevents the King Solomon from sin by forgetting the hour of prayer in exaltation over his royal steed. And second, Gabriel helps the little yellow ant on the slope of Ararat to enter into his little nest that otherwise he might not perish in the rain. I like that. And I think it is a revelation of the will of Almighty God. In the vast denouement that lies ahead and in the course of the ages and the histories, that shall yet be written and come to pass, and in God’s great firmament and his great universe by which he has made this. In all, the Lord’s care and his elective purposes are for his children and his children may be small and may be weak. And his children may be you and may be me, but we are not forgot and our hope lies in the elective purposes, in the grace, in the sovereign will of him who made us and sought us and loved us and saved us. And by his grace and the promise of election will keep us to that great and final hour. I must quit and we sing our song. And while we sing it, somebody you, give your heart to God. Trust him as your savior. Somebody, you. Coming into the fellowship of his church. In the topmost balcony, the last row, from side to side, anywhere, somebody, you, somebody, you. Pastor, I’m giving my heart today in trust to Christ. And here I come. Pastor, into the fellowship of the church by baptism or by letter, a family of us. Pastor, here we are. All of us, our family are coming. Or just you, just you. While we sing the song and while we make appeal, would you come? Would you come? And make it now, while we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 16: S. GOD AND THE EDUCATED MAN ======================================================================== GOD AND THE EDUCATED MAN Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 28:23 05-30-54 In Acts 28:1-31 in which chapter we have come preaching through the Word of God, in Acts 28:23, it says that Paul “expounded . . . the things of the kingdom of God, . . . out of the Law of Moses” [Acts 28:23]. And those two, Moses and Paul, the two chief men outside of Christ our Savior and Lord and God-Moses and Paul, the two chief men of the Bible: one in the Old Testament and one in the New Testament, bring to my mind the subject for this message tonight, GOD AND THE EDUCATED MAN. Religion has affinity with a trained mind, an educated mind. One time I asked a professor at Baylor, when I went to school there, what he meant by the word "affinity." I had never used it before. I didn’t know what it meant and he used it talking to us, talking in a biology class. The word affinity. Well, we happened to be close to a window overlooking the campus, and there is a sidewalk that runs right through the middle of the campus-from one building to the other. And there was a boy and a girl who were holding hands with one another and looking at one another, and, you know, going down the sidewalk. So the professor said, "Well, look out there. You see that boy and that girl?" Well, he said, "They have an affinity for one another." I have never forgotten the meaning of the word since-affinity. God and a man with a trained mind have an affinity for one another. The two seem to fit. They seem to enmesh. Because a man is ignorant and unlearned and untrained is no reason at all why he should be more acceptable to heaven. Hierarchy does not consist in ignorance. Piety can find its highest expression, its noblest bearing, its sublimest achievement in the educated man. Moses was learned in all of the arts and sciences of the Egyptians. He was a man who had gone through all of the schools of his day. He was prepared and trained for the highest work God ever gave to man-up until the appearance of Jesus Christ. And it is no less so in the interpretation of the message of Jesus to the world. The Lord chose a man who was learned in the Greek language, who was brought up in the Greek university, who was taught in all of the theological casuistry of the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem. The two greatest exponents of revealed religion are first, Moses, and then, Paul. And both of them were men of the school. They were taught and trained and educated. They were prepared for the great work God committed to their care. You will find no exception to that. In all of the history of the development of God’s working in the realm of religion, you will find it done by the trained and the educated man. That does not mean you have not had wonderful preachers who flung out of the dust of the ground and the soil of the earth. That does not mean that we did not have capable men to proclaim a message in their own unusual style and fervor, who butcher the King’s English, who were never trained in the school. But, I think there is no exception that the great development of the Christian faith and of the revealed religion of God has inevitably wrought and furthered by the man of the school-the man trained; the learned man; the educated man. You can see it right on through. From the days of Moses to Isaiah, to Daniel, through Saul, through Augustine, through John Wycliffe, through Savonarola, through Hus and Hübmaier, through John Wesley and George Whitefield-men from the university-through the most learned mind that America has ever produced, Jonathan Edwards, and clear up through this present day. I repeat that God has an affinity and religion has an [affinity] for a trained and an educated mind. When you look at the great universities of the world, up until this present time-in our generation, when state-supported schools have come to the fore-up until this present generation, all of the great schools of the world were religious schools. They were schools founded by the churches. And they were schools guided by the ecclesiastical leadership of the nation and of the people. That is true over there in Europe; in the ancient universities-Oxford, Cambridge and all of the rest. And it is invariably true of the great old universities of America-Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Chicago University. All of them were founded by the religious people. They are products of the schools. Religion has an affinity with the trained and the educated mind. You came-your schools came out of the church. That is where it was born. In 1780, Robert Raikes, who was our journalist in Manchester, England, passing down the streets in the slum sections of Manchester on the Lord’s Day, on Sunday, saw those children dirty, unkempt, untrained, violent, cursing, playing out in the streets of the city. And Robert Raikes, a journalist, began the first Sunday school. Being a journalist, he captured the imagination and the ear of the English people, and finally, the throne itself. And he organized Sunday schools all over the land. What kind of a Sunday school was it? Not what you would think of when I use that word. It was a school that took those children who worked in child labor before there was any such thing as the Child Labor Law to prohibit it; he took those which were and he taught them reading, writing, arithmetic. And, of course, in that day and time, a large part of the reading matter was biblical, it was scriptural. But the Sunday school movement did not begin at all as a church movement teaching the Bible. It started Robert Raikes in Manchester in 1780-to gather together those children on the Lord’s Day and to teach them how to read and how to write. And, of course, I say a large part of their subject matter was religious because in teaching them how to read. They taught them the Bible. They read the Bible. And the days passed, and as time went on and the movement grew all over the world, some of the people got together-now I repeat, the church had nothing to do with this to begin with. It met on Sunday because it was the day of freedom. As a development came, those people said, "On Sunday, we ought to teach the Bible, religion. And during the days of the week, we ought to teach reading, writing and arithmetic." So the great movement divided. And our Sunday school movement, the teaching of the Bible, and your public school movement, the teaching of the three R’s, came out of the same source and out of the same heart and out of the same movement. And they belong together. The teaching of the Bible and the teaching of God, and the teaching of the arts and the sciences, they all come out of the same heart and out of the same place and out of the same movement. And as time went on, they were fully separated. From Monday until Friday, we study science and literature and the arts. And then on the Lord’s Day, we gather especially to today the Word of God. But they ought never in heart and in soul be separated. The trained mind is a religious mind. And God I say, has an affinity for an educated man. We are not full-grown until we are taught both of them. We ought to be taught the Word of God. No man is educated who is ignorant of God. And we ought to be taught in our schools that we might be full-grown in our citizenship, in our homes and families and among our friends and among our people. Now, that leads me to point out several things that are highly interesting to me because they affect us in our church and in our life and in our destiny and in our future as a nation and as a people. Education, secular education, profane education, the education of the three R’s, the education of the arts and the sciences, the education of the school, education has a tremendous responsibility to God and to the church. And to the family and to the home and to the nation and to the people. It has a tremendous responsibility. And the first thing it ought to be-the first thing it ought to be-education ought to be honest and sincere. When they teach our boys and girls the way of life, and when they explain to them the mysteries of this earth and this world in which we live. And that is where I think-that is where I think we fall into all kinds of trouble religiously. For example, I have young people coming to me all of the time-all of the time. It is not isolated incident. They come to me all of the time-every single day, "Pastor, I am so confused. I am so confused. I am just lost. When you get out there and you say in that pulpit God made man out of the dust of the ground. And He formed him out of the dust of the earth. And yet when I go to school here, my professors teach me that we all came from a green scum. We started way back yonder in the eons ago as a little aradigm,* a little paramecium or a little amoeba and then we grew up and we became a tadpole. Then we kept on growing and we became a frog. And then we kept on growing and we became a fish. Then we kept on growing and we had legs and we walked out on dry land. And we kept on growing and we became a monkey. And then finally, we turned into me. And that is what we are taught. There is no God in it,” they say, “and there is no place in it for the creative workmanship of God in a making of a man. Now, that is what I am taught, and you preach just something else. Now, what am I to believe? And where am I to turn?" Well, that is a great system. That is a great system. Brother, it is a knockout. It is a humdinger that system. Walk all over a tadpole, Beginning to the end. Then it was a frog With a tail set in. And then a monkey In a banana tree. And now I am a doctor With a Ph.D. [author and source unknown]. Brother it is a cover. It is a cover. I tore a leaf out of the Reader’s Digest. It is an article by a great learned scientist on how we are going to look. So he starts way back, way back when we were unicellular little animals and came on up. And where we are now. And then he prophesies what we are going to evolve into. You are not going to have any more little toes. They are going to evolve off. You are not going to have any more teeth. They are going to evolve out. And you are not going to have any more hair; not even the women. You are going to be absolutely bald and hairless, every woman, every one of them. All of our beauty parlors are going out of business. I do not know what all else he says. I haven’t got time for it. One of the sentences here is very interesting-"Not long before the beginning of the Ice Age, our ancestors were quadrapedal apes. Swinging brashly through the tree tops, like a present-day monkey or gibbon or chimpanzee. But he was an ape. He was a monkey with possibilities." Some-now don’t forget, this is a learned scientist now, in the Reader’s Digest. But he was a monkey with possibilities. Some inner urge compelled him to get up on his two feet and free his hands for purposes other than locomotion. Now, when I read things like that and brother, when you go to school, chances are you will be taught that up and down. When I read things like that, there was a time when I was one cell. That is right. There was a time when I was one cell, and there was a time when I walked on all fours, and I crawled around as a little baby. That is right. But oh, my soul, the first dedication I think that education has as they teach is this, they are to be honest and sincere. It is a theory. It is a man’s idea. It is his brainchild that all of us descended from monkeys. That is not a proven fact at all. And it is an insult to the monkey. You know that? “Three monkeys”- Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree Discussing things as they are said to be. Said one to the other, now, listen you two, There is a certain rumor that can’t be true. That man descended from our noble race. The very idea is a dire disgrace. No monkey ever deserted his wife, Starved a baby, and ruined their life. And you’ve never known a mother monk To leave a baby with others to bump Or pass them on to one or another Until they hardly know who is their mother. Now another thing, you will never see A monk’ build a fence around the coconut tree And let the coconuts go to waste, Forbidding all other monk’s to place. Why if I put a fence around this tree, Starvation would push and steal from me. Here is another thing that-that a monk won’t do, Go out at night and get on a stool. Or use a gun or club or knife To take some other monkey’s life. Yet man descended beyond, But brother, he didn’t descend from us. [author and source unknown]. What that professor ought to say is this: he ought to say, "I believe my ancestors were monkeys." He ought not to say all of our ancestors are monkeys. If he wants to think that, that’s all right. And if he wants to say that, that is all right. But you ought not to teach that as a fact, as a truth. He ought to say, "That is my idea, my great grand-dad was an anthropoid ape. That is my idea." But you and I may have a different idea about it. We believe we were created indeed the image of God. And until some body can come along and prove that difference, let’s stay by the Book, let’s stay by the Book. You see, young people, whatever is truth, do not be afraid of it. Do not be afraid of it. Just be careful to distinguish what is a fact, what is truth, and what that man says is a fact and says is the truth. For they may be two different things. He may say thus and so, but it may not be that way at all. He may think thus and so, but it may not be that way at all. You just ask for the facts, that is all and stay with it and don’t be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of anything. Why, I tell a man that is talking about the Lord Jesus, "Sir, if you can claim by another man, that is better than the Lord Jesus, I will forsake the Lord Jesus and I will follow the better man." If he has more of God, if he can reveal more of God, if he acted more like God, if he had more of God in him, which is inconceivable,-but if he brings me some body that was more of God than the Lord Jesus, why I would reject the Lord Jesus and follow the other man. Until he does, I am staying with the Lord Jesus. [It’s the] same way about all of the other things in life. "Whatever is true, oh, let us have it. Whatever is of Christ, let us push Him out." And when you finally you come to know it all, you will find that the Great Author of the world above is the Great Author of the world in that Book, the same man did both of them. You will find that. The older you get, the more you grow in grace and in knowledge and in the experiences in this life, the more you will see that the things that are out there, are the things that is written here. Sincerity, love another one-humility. Young people, there is so much you never can finally know. The other day one of these men took me out fishing. We went fishing. [We] got into a boat and we rowed to a certain place in that lake and it was as dirty and as filthy, it smelled bad, it stank. It was mucky. It was miry. It was everything that nobody was like. And I want you to know, out of that muck and out of that mire and out of that dirt and out of that filth and out of that stink, I want you to know that out of that, there was on the bosom of the water those beautiful, flat green leaves of the lily. And right in midst of those beautiful leaves, the most gorgeously-colored pink lilies that you ever saw. Where did they come from? They came out of the dirt and the muck and the mire. The beautiful beauty you have in front of you tonight, guess where it came from? Out of fertilizer that stinks, and out of dirt, and out of filth. That is where they came from. And they won’t grow without it. How in the world are those glorious flowers in a seed and in the dirt? I do not know. I just look at it and am humbled by it. Aren’t you? This boy down here that married that girl, he said they have a little baby. They, have a little baby girl. Where did they little baby girl come from? How did one cell ever make two and the two make four and through geometrical formation, they made billions. And by and by, that precious little baby girl was made in the bosom of that young mother. Oh, I just am humbled by it. Oh, the things that God does. You never know, you are never able to explain. You just look into the face of God and say, "May the Lord be praised and glorified." That is all-to be humbled. Just briefly these other two things. Education, godly is to be inspirational. It is to lift us up. It is to set our feet on a rock. It is to put a song in our hearts. It is to send us out with a great enduring experience. And last of all, the summary of it all is to be godly. No man is ever smart because he is like Sinclair Lewis. In my day, Sinclair Lewis was the number one author of all America. And he spoke for America. And he wrote for America. He was lionized by America. Sinclair Lewis one time stood up in a church pulpit in Kansas City, Missouri, and he said, "God, God, there is not such a thing or person as God. If there be a God, I defy Him to strike me dead." And he took a dramatic stance there in the pulpit, defying God to strike Him dead. And I remember when that happened, oh, by the millions all over the country, people applauded-great doings, smart doings. Where does materialism and atheism find its allegiance? It will finally land in the country and in the culture where all the sacred values of God are taken out. And that’s what communism is. No God, no Christ, no Bible, no church, no heaven, no hope. You are an atheistic, materialistic communist-which is a violation of God’s world, of our own soul, of everything we hold dear. True education is always godly. It leads to the wonderful revelations we have in Christ Jesus. And he is not smart who stands up like Sinclair Lewis and says, "If there is a God, I defy Him to strike me dead." He is not smart. He is smart who bows down in reverence before the great God of the starry sky above uses and the microcosm, the nuclear world around us. And the heart and soul on the inside of us. And who says, "The Lord Who made me, Whose I am, and Whom I serve, O God, teach and save me in the right path, in the heavenly will until finally, my task is done and I go to spend that final eternity with Thee in glory." He is a smart man. The Lord bless you, young people, as you turn your page to the life that lies ahead full of perplexities and despair, but remember He lives. He holds the world in His hand and He will see us through. Now, we’re going to sing our song. And while we sing the song, anywhere in the balcony around, this press of people on this lower floor, anywhere, some body you, give your heart to the Lord. Tonight, Pastor, I take Him as my Savior; or, to come into the fellowship of His church; as the Lord leads the way and says the word tonight, would you come and stand by me? A family of you; Pastor, all of us are coming tonight. Or one, some body you; as God shall say, shall lead, shall open the door, any where tonight; while we stand and sing this song, would you give your heart to the Lord? While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 17: S. GRACE ABOUNDING ======================================================================== GRACE ABOUNDING Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 5:20 09-19-54 …the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled Grace Abounding. In our preaching through the Word we have come to Rom 5:1-21. This is, I suppose, the fourth sermon. The other three have been in the previous verses. This sermon is in Rom 5:20-21. We begin reading at Rom 5:18, “Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men through condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of man shall many be made righteous. “Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our Lord.” And the text, “But where sin abounded, grace-God’s grace-grace did much more abound.” The grace that is greater than all our sin. But where sin abounded, as men multiplied in the earth, sin and violence and wickedness multiplied in the earth. As men grew in numbers, so did sin grow in violence and in exceeding sinfulness. Iniquity and wickedness covered the earth. Sin abounded in the days of Cain and of Abel. And sin abounded in the days of the Tower of Babel. And sin abounded in the days of the Flood. And sin abounded in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Sin abounded in the days of the captivity. Sin abounded in the days of the cross. And sin abounded in the days of the martyrs. And sin has abounded in our present evil and sorrowful day: the ruthless, merciless, cruelty of modern totalitarian states, enslaving whole nations, driving men by the millions into utmost and to utter despair. Sin abounded in the earth as men multiplied in the world. And the inevitable concomitant follows thereafter, as sin abounded, misery and woe and death were multiplied-physical death, spiritual death, eternal death. And there followed after that first offense mountains and mountains and immeasurable mountains of grief. The story of humanity since the day of the Fall is a story of age, of iniquity, of sin, of disaster, and finally, of death. To write the story of humanity one must lift his pen in tears, in heartache, in grief and in blood-the abounding of sin. From the ramparts of glory, our heavenly Father looked down upon this scene. And His heart was filled with pity for the man that He made and for the children of Adam. Woe and tears, sorrow and distress, and inevitable age and death-the lot, the universal lot for all mankind. And the Lord, as He looked upon the race of the millions of men, the Lord was moved to pity as He looked upon our despairing and sorrowful lot. A father in Virginia with two boys, one a full-letter man in college, the other 13 years of age with every promise to be like his big brother. Somehow, the 13-year-old boy, not being careful as his father had admonished, on his bicycle was tangled up with a truck. In the hospital the lad fought for his life. The doctor made the announcement to the father, “By the amputation of his right arm at the shoulder and his left leg at the hip, I think we can save his life.” When that sorrowful announcement was made to the father, the father said, “I looked down into the face of my 13-year-old boy and as I looked into his face for the first time, I came to know what God’s Word meant, “As a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. “For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” So the Lord in glory looked down in pity upon the children of men. And where sin abounded, grace and pity and mercy and salvation and forgiveness did much more abound. And out of the pitying heart of God there came the great story of the everlasting goodness and grace and mercy of God our father in Christ our Savior. And the story of that grace abounding-did I say at first-in parabolic, in allegoric form. Picture if we could, if we will, a vast cemetery, illimitable graveyard. And around that graveyard is a high and a lofty wall. And it has only one entrance therein. And that entrance is barred and locked by a massive iron gate. On the inside of that barred and massive gate, on the inside of that tall and lofty wall, are all of the millions of the human race. And they bow and they bend to the grave. The grave yawns and reaches up its arms to engulf all of mankind. On the inside of that vast cemetery, that illimitable graveyard, on the inside are the tears and the ages and the sorrow and the woe and the heartache and the cry and the agony of all mankind. “The wages of sin is death.” That’s everywhere, for the young, for the old, for the aged, for the wise, for the unwise, for the yesterday, for the today, for the tomorrow. Death, death, reigning triumphant! Death, death everywhere! On the outside of that wall, looking up on the agonizing despair of those who are imprisoned therein, there stands Mercy weeping. She looks through the iron gate of the bar, of the massive gate, and as she weeps she cries, “Oh, that I might enter in! I would bring solace for their sorrow. I would bring relief to their distress. I would bring life for their death. Oh, that I might get in!” And as Mercy weeps outside the iron gate, and as all humanity cries in agony and in death on the inside, behold, there passeth by an embassy of the heavenly host on some celestial mission in the course of glory to some other far-distant world. And as they pass by, the angelic hosts stop and looked upon Mercy as she weeps at the iron gate. And one of the angels said to Mercy, “Mercy, can you not look upon that scene without pity? Can you pity and not help?” And Mercy replies in her tears, “I can see and I can pity, but I cannot enter. I cannot relieve, I cannot help.” And the angel replies, “Mercy, canst thou not enter to relieve and to help?” And Mercy replies, “Because Justice has barred the way and I, I cannot undo the lock.” Just then as if to guard the gate Justice appears, and the angelic host says to Justice, “Justice, why will thou not open the gate and allow Mercy to enter in?” And Justice firmly replies, “Because they have broken my law, and I must administer the penalty of the law. Either they die or justice must.” And as the angel host looked upon a dying humanity, and as Mercy cried at the gate, and as Justice stood there to bar the way, behold, there stepped forth from the heavenly host, One Whose form was like unto the Son of God. And He came to Justice and He said, “Justice, what are thy terms that Mercy might enter in and save the lost and the dying?” And Justice replied, “My terms are as that. My terms are as the dead. My terms are exactly this: I must have death for their life. ‘Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.’” And the Son of God replies, “Justice, I’ll accept thy terms. Upon Me be their guilt and their sin. Upon Me be their death, that the gate might be opened and that Mercy might enter in.” And Justice replied, “What bond, what covenant, what contract, what testament doth Thou make that Thou will keep my conditions?” And the Son of God replied, “My word and My oath.” And Justice answered, “And when will Thou fulfill Thy bond and Thy covenant?” And the Son of Man replied, “In the fullness of time on a hill called Calvary outside of the wall of the city of Jerusalem.” Justice was satisfied. The bond was made. The gate was opened wide. And Mercy entered in and preached the gospel of everlasting hope and salvation to the lost and the dying of all humanity in the promise of a Lamb of God Who should come and take away the sin of the world. The bond was sealed and made in the presence of the angelic host. The bond was committed, first to patriarchs and the prophets. And they instituted a long series of rites and ceremonies and rituals, lest men and heaven forget the execution of that sacred and solemn vow. And in the fullness of time, at the conclusion of Daniel’s sixty-ninth week, according to the prophecy of the man of God, there appeared on a hill called Golgotha, outside of the north gate of the city of Jerusalem, there appeared Justice and Mercy. And Justice said to Mercy, “And now, where is the Son of God for the execution and the cancellation of this bond?” And Mercy said, “Behold, there He comes at the foot of the hill.” And Justice looked down, and there at the foot of the hill came the Son of God bearing His own cross and behind Him following, His weeping church. Mercy fled and turned away. And the Son of God staggered to the hill of the cross and met Justice face to face. Justice finally looked into the eyes and countenance of the Son of God and had in his hand the ordinance and the bond and the covenant of death written large against us. And Justice said, “The day has come for this bond to be redeemed and to be canceled.” And the Son of God received it, took it out of the hands of Justice, tore it up and threw it to the wind? No! He seized it and took it and nailed it to the cross, crying, “It is finished, it is finished!” As He was nailed to the cross, Justice called to Death to consume the sacrifice. And Death came and took and consumed His humanity. But when he touched His deity, Death received a mortal wound. And to sum it up: And the earth was dark and the earth shook the mountains, that out of that death, out of that covenant, out of that suffering and sacrifice, out of that burial and out of that tomb, there arose the life of the knowledge of the glory and grace of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And to the earth, to the blessed in the land, to every language and every people and nation, to the everlasting evangelist, preaching the gospel of hope and the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ our Lord. “Where sin abounded, grace-God’s grace-did much more abound.” “So by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God.” “Not as the offense, so is the free gift. For if through offense of one, many be dead, we all were dead, much more the grace of God and the gift of grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many.” Where sin did abound, where death did abound, where the curse did abound, where judgment did abound, where sin did abound, grace, God’s grace did much more abound. As men multiplied, the sin did abound, the whole earth covered by the violence and the wickedness and the villainy and the evil and the grief and the hurt and the death of man. Where sin did abound, the whole earth filled with the violence of unrighteousness. Every heart, every life, every home, every deed, every man, every soul, as we multiplied in the earth, so sin was multiplied. Where sin did abound. And the water of the deluge covered the earth, could not suffice to wash its stain away. And the fire fell from heaven, but could not burn out the accursed plague. And the earth opened her mouth, but could not swallow the monstrous sin. And the law thundered from the big darkness of Sinai, but could not restrain the children of disobedience. And like a scourge, like a conquering foe, sin abounded in the earth. Sin waxed bold. It stuck its cap on the hill of Calvary. Sin abounded and it seized the Son of God and nailed Him to the cross. And in that soul, sin met its master. And death met its victor. The victim is the victor. In the death of Jesus Christ, in His death, He slew death and He opened the gate of the prison house and called to resurrection and to immortality those who had been slain therein. “Where sin abounded, grace-God’s grace-did much more abound.” Where sin abounded, took to condemn, grace did much more abound to justify. Where sin abounded to corrupt, grace did much more abound to purify. Where sin abounded to harden, grace did much more abound to soften and to subdue and to yield. Where sin abounded to imprison and to enslave, grace did much more abound to preach the gospel of liberty to the captives. Where sin abounded to break the law, grace did much more abound to heal the breach and to effect the same. Where sin abounded to consume as with an unquenchable fire, grace, God’s grace, did much more abound to extinguish the flame and to heal the wound and the hurt. Where sin did abound to slay and to kill and to destroy, grace, God’s grace, did much more abound to give life everlasting and eternal life. Where sin abounded to lay in the grave, grace did much more abound to call resurrection and to immortality. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God-the grace of God-is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, “That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Savior.” Even so, does grace reign, God’s grace? Grace hath placed on her head the crown of glory, of righteousness, of immortality, the diadem of heaven. She has received the eternal scepter to reign forever. And the gates of the final prison house, the dim, dark, dismal dungeon of death, the gates are thrown wide open. There’s a sign, there’s a hoof beat of a new life in the cemetery. And [immortality] is walking among the tombs. The Son of God has come forth victorious and triumphant. And He speaks forgiveness and life everlasting to those who look in faith and in trust to Him. Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin. Marvelous grace of the loving Lord, Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt, Yonder on Calvary’s mount outpoured, There where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. Sin and despair like the sea waves cold, Threaten the soul with infinite loss; Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold, Points to the refuge, the saving cross. Dark is the stain that we cannot hide, What can avail to wash it away? Look! there is a crimson tide; Whiter than snow you may be today. Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, Freely bestowed on all who believe; You who are longing to see His face, Will you this moment His grace receive? And the chorus of that old song: Grace, grace, God’s grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within; Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin. Where sin did abound, grace, God’s grace, did super abound, more exciting, abundantly abound than sin [that] hath reigned over death. Even so grave gives [in] to eternal life of the resurrection and immortality and ultimate victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. The gospel of the grace of the Son of God! If you listen on television, if you listen on radio, where you are today, would you open your heart to receive the goodness and the forgiveness and the mercy and the pardon of the Son of God? Would you? Would you today? Kneeling there by your radio, your television in the bedroom, in the living room where you are, anywhere you are. Driving along in a car, would you stop the car, bow your head over the wheel, “Lord God, today, I open my heart to the fullness of the pardon, the forgiveness, the salvation, the overflowing grace of God my Savior, in Jesus Christ our Redeemer.” Would you do it now? Would you make it today? And in this vast throng, the crowd, in the vast balcony around, to the farthest row in that topmost balcony and from side to side, somebody you, somebody you, a family you, all, somebody you, would you come into this aisle down here by my side? “Pastor, today, today, we make it all for God.” Looking to Jesus to be saved in Him. Somebody new in the fellowship of the church by baptism or letter or promise of letter or statement? However God shall say the word and lead the way, while we make appeal today, would you come? Would you come into the aisle, in that balcony, down that stairwell, down to the front, and by my side? While we sing this song prayerfully, today would you come? Would you make it now? Give me your hand and your heart to God. While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 18: S. HOW HEAR WITHOUT PREACHER? ======================================================================== HOW HEAR WITHOUT PREACHER? Dr. W. A. Criswell 12/12/54 Rom 10:12-15 In our preaching through the Word, we are in the great parenthesis, Rom 9:1-33; Rom 10:1-21; Rom 11:1-36. And, the message this morning is taken out of the middle chapter, Rom 10:12-15. And, the reading of the Word is this- Rom 10:1-21; Rom 12:1-21; Rom 13:1-14, Rom 14:1-23, Rom 15:1-33 : For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon Him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things! For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?" The largest delegation of the United States government is in the Philippine Islands, located in Manila. All of our diplomatic work of the Far East and the Orient is channeled to that legation in Manila. When Dr. McCall and I were in the Philippines, the illustrious ambassador and representative of the United States, Myron M. Cowan, sent for us. And, we ate lunch with him and his wife in the embassy. He had a special reason for inviting us to come. As he began to speak to us, he said, "Except there be a moral and a spiritual rebirth among these people of the Orient, all of our mission-all of our military and economic missions will fall to the ground." He said, "We need a preaching. We need a spiritual rebirth. We need a great moral revival, not only in the Philippine islands, but all through the East." Now, he said, "I called in the archbishop. There are more than 16,000,000 Catholic people," he said, "in the Philippine islands. And, I called in the archbishop," and he said, "I said to the archbishop, ‘These people do not understand Latin. They don’t understand those foreign tongues. Will you not preach to these people? They need preaching to.’” Now, he said, "I’d like to make the same appeal to you as representatives of Southern Baptists. How many missionaries are you sending out?" And, we said. “And, how much money do you give for their support?” And, we said. And, he said, “It’s not enough. It’s not enough. We need preachers. Send us preachers. We need preachers. How shall they hear without a preacher?” John R. Mott, great missionary statesman of former years, said before the Second World War, “We must send a thousand missionaries to Japan or else we shall send a million bayonets.” We sent a million bayonets instead. Somehow, in the economy and in the wisdom of God, all of the means of conversion and salvation and regeneration have been committed to human hands-“And the word of the Lord came to Elijah," "and the word of the Lord came to Jonah." "And the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah." And, the Lord said, "Thus shall you speak to the children of Israel," and thus shall you speak to the lost of the world-The instrument and the means of salvation and conversion and revival have been committed to human hands. "How shall they hear without a preacher?" In the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts, there is recorded a story of the conversion of the Apostle Paul: how he met the Lord Jesus on the way to Damascus. And, the Lord, above the brightness of a Syrian midday sun, spoke to the apostle and said, "Arise. Stand on thy feet and go into Damascus and there shall be told thee what thou must do.’" Why didn’t Jesus tell him what to do? Because no man and no people ever come into the knowledge of the will of God except through the mediation of human voice, of a human man, of some other man. In Acts 10:1-48, there is recorded the marvelous story of the conversion of Cornelius. And, the angel of the Lord appeared to Cornelius and said, "Cornelius, send down to Joppa and ask for one Simon Peter, who shall come and tell thee words whereby thou and thy house may be saved." Why didn’t the angel tell him the words whereby Cornelius and his house could be saved? Because no man is ever saved except through the mediation of another man. The preaching of the gospel: “How shall they hear without a preacher? The responsibility for the conversion of the world, for the remaking of our nation, for any hope we may have in our destiny, of any future, lies in human hands. God has committed that sacred responsibility unto us. In Eze 33:1-33, God, speaking to the prophet, says, if a watchman is on the wall and the sword comes and destroys the city, if he does not speak to warn the people, the blood of the city is on his hands. If he seeks to warn and they give no heeding, then he’s delivered his soul. So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; herefore, thou shall hear the word at My mouth, and warn them from Me. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hands. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way, to turn from it; if he do not turn from his ways, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou has delivered thy soul. The care of all of the souls of the world, their nations and their peoples has been committed unto us. That is the answer of Cain’s ancient question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” If I have a brother who is starving and I have bread to eat, if he is thirsty and I have water to drink, if he is lost and I know the way, or if he dies without God and I have the words of salvation, God says that his life is chargeable to me and his blood will God require at my hand. This means a missionary obligation for all of the tribes and language and people and nations of the world. In a little town where I once pastored way, way back and away, there was a little group of people on a porch of a little cracker box of a post office. And, they were talking about foreign missions and they were much against it. And while they were talking, the postmaster, one of the fine men in my little church, went inside of the post office, got his Bible, came out, turned to this passage and read it: For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?" Too often, and too much, has the attitude of Christendom and of all of our churches-too often has it been like the disciples in the presence of the hungry multitude when they said, "Go away. Go away. Keep back. We have barely enough for ourselves. We can barely manage to keep the life in us with these five little loaves and these two small fishes. There’s nothing for you. Go away. Keep away. What we have, we must keep for ourselves." I saw a cartoon that a man had drawn for a newspaper. On the inside of a great sea was an island. And, on the inside of the island, a group of people with their faces turned inward and their backs to the sea. And, that was all: Nothing written, nothing else. But, when you looked at it more closely, the sea around the island was the sea of humanity. And, the little inlets of the ocean that reached up to the island in the midst of the sea were long, bony human hands, empty and hungry, emaciated and poor, reaching out, reaching up to that little group on the inside of the isle. But, they had their backs turned. They were looking inward, at themselves. They didn’t dare turn, it seemed, to look at the hungry faces of the vast sea all around them and those long, lean, empty and bony hands reaching out and reaching up. That is a picture of the vast needs of the world. Some time ago, several years ago, the budget at a First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City was something like sixty or seventy thousand dollars: a mere pittance. And, they called a new pastor. And, the pastor went to the First Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, and he began to lay upon the hearts of the people of that church the tremendous need of a vast, vast world: “How shall they hear without a preacher?” And, the people shook their heads and murmured against it and the deacons opposed it. And, the church turned it down. And, one of the men said, “He’s speaking of a vast budget, a tremendous giving program. We have enough already. What would you do with all that money?” And, they turned it down and passed it by, to the heartbreak of the pastor. But, during the course of the year, he began to speak to the people from the pulpit, saying things like this, “If we had a hundred thousand times as much as we’re able to give, it would be practically nothing compared to the vast needs of the world.” And, he began to lay upon their hearts the missionary causes of all the nations and tribes and peoples of this earth. And, when the time came for the new budget and the new year, the deacons came to him, one by one, and said, “Pastor, we’ve been mistaken, and we regret our last decision.” And, the church said, “We’ve been misled. We haven’t followed the will of the Lord, nor have we seen the vision of a lost, weary world.” They made a new budget. I have a habit now of sending a telegram to the First Baptist Church of Oklahoma City about our budget. And, they send me a telegram about theirs. And, then, about two weeks ago, they oversubscribed their budget in one day, like we did. And, their budget today is more than $460,000. No longer are our churches saying to the call of the world, "We have nothing for you." We’ve changed. We’ve changed. There’s a new spirit. There’s a new heart. There’s a new zeal. There’s a new missionary vision among our people. And, we’re saying to the nations-we’re saying to them, "Come back. Come back. We have come upon great supplies. O India, you need not go away. And, China-O China, we have made a great mistake. China, come back. Come back. And, little Africa, you need not go away empty-handed. We have plenty enough and to spare." Isn’t it always true that, so long as the church keeps just everything for itself, it lives in some kind of a half-famishing state, just barely enough to get by? But, when the church begins to scatter abroad, when it begins to divide, when it begins to send out its missionaries, when it begins to open its heart to the vast, hungry appeal in the world, somehow God multiplies the loaves and the fishes in our hands. As the ancient Proverb writer said, "There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth. But there is also that withholdeth and it tendeth to poverty." How grateful I am for the great missionary passion of this incomparable church! Now, our giving program totals, in a year, about $750,000-just our giving program, not our building fund, just our giving program. And, we divide it, about 51 percent for missions and about 49 percent for ourselves. Some of the men have said to me, “Pastor, the day is coming, the day is coming when the-when the giving program of this glorious church will be over a $1,000,000 every year." I said, "I think it comes. The day will come, the hour will come, when the missionary program in this church with our local work will go beyond $1,000,000 every year. And, when that day comes, I’m looking forward to the time when we will divide that 60 percent for the world and 40 percent for us, or 70 percent for the world and 30 percent for us." You need not go away. You need not go away. We have bread enough and to spare: Our answer to the missionary call of God, "How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach except they be sent?" And, this passage also lays upon our souls our obligation to our Jerusalem, our city, the Dallas in which we live: the preaching of the gospel to the lost of our people. It is the glory of the Christian faith that it cares for the poor of the earth. In the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of Matthew: It came to pass that… when John heard in prison the works of the Christ, that he sent two of His disciples, And said to the Lord, Art Thou He that should come, or we look for another? Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and show John those things which he hear and see; The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and -and there’s one more- … and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.’" The glory of the Christian faith is this: “and the poor have the gospel preached unto them.” That does not mean that the Christian faith overlooks or forgets or circumvents those who are rich and mighty, the titans of industry, the magnates of business, the kings of finance. In the ninth chapter of that same Book of Acts in which is described the conversion of the Apostle Paul, the Lord said of him, "He is a chosen vessel of mine, to bear My name before… the kings of the earth." In 1Ti 2:2, Paul says that, “I exhort that intercessions and prayers be made for the kings of the earth." In Rev 1:5, Jesus is described as “the prince of the kings of the earth.” In the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation and the twenty-fourth verse, it is said, "And the kings of the earth do bring into that glorious city their honor and their glory." They’re not forgotten. They’re not forgotten. But, through all of the centuries, and through all the generations, it is a part of the earth that had been oppressed and driven and downtrodden. They live without hope. They live without-without a start, without a song, without joy, without any future, without any destiny. But, the Lord Jesus came and He was the friend of the poor. The Lord Jesus came with a new message and a new gospel and a new way. He brought hope to the downtrodden and the famished and the weary and the forgotten of all the lost millions, multitudinous, of this earth. It was a new day. It was a different day when Paul, the apostle of Christ, wrote a letter to Philemon, saying, “I’m sending you back your slave, Onesimus; but you receive him not as a slave, but as a brother beloved.” “And the poor-and the poor have the gospel preached unto them”: That’s the glory of the Christian faith. I appointed two men from our board of deacons to go look at our Good Shepherd department and to bring a report back to me. I asked Bruce Graham and Fred Shepherd. I sent them down and said, "Look at that Good Shepherd department"-which is a ministry to the poor of our city-“look at that Good Shepherd department and bring me back a report." So, about a week or so ago, they came back, after two or three months, with their first report. And, this is what they said. They said, "Pastor, the Good Shepherd ministry cannot continue except it be a mission endeavor of our people. That is, they must have food and they must have clothing and they must-they must have medicines and they must be supported. If the work is to continue, it must be a missionary-supported work of our church.” Now, what shall we do? Shall we continue it or shall we not? And, I said, “I cannot tell you why-I cannot explain it, but in my heart and in my soul, the Christian faith is somehow bound up with that kind of a ministry. Wherever people have need, wherever they’re poor, wherever they’re hungry, wherever they lack, wherever they’re downtrodden, wherever their misfortune, wherever they fall into circumstances and exigencies beyond their control, somehow, to me, a part of the fabric of the Christian faith is a response from us.” I said, “When you feel the substance of the Christian faith-what it is, that’s it. That’s it. And, if you take that away, you take the whole message away. You take the substance of it away. You take the thing away itself.” It’s like a boy, a teenage boy, the son of an illustrious theological professor. He taught theology in the seminary. Upon a day in the evening, the boy was seated by his father and his mother in the home. And the boy, the teenage boy, turned to his dad and said, “Dad, do you know what? I saw the real thing today. I saw the real thing today.” And, the dad said, “Son, what do you mean?” And, the boy said, “Dad, I went down to the mission today. I was at the mission today.” And, he said, “I saw men and women converted, remade, reborn today.” He said, “Dad, that’s the real thing.” And, he said, “Dad, why didn’t you ever tell me about it before?” You see, the boy had grown up in a Christian home. He had a devout mother and his father was a professor of theology in the seminary. But, he never saw the Christian faith, and the real meaning of its marvelous message, until he saw it reaching down into the thing of humanity up and up and up. And, that’s the difference between Communism and Christianity. Communism reaches up and pulls everybody down. But, Christianity reaches down and lifts everybody up. That’s the hope of the world is the Christian message of the Lord Jesus Christ: "And the poor-and the poor have the gospel preached unto them." If I were to demonstrate-make exhibit, "This is the Christian faith. This is the faith," what would you say? What would you say? Oh, I know. We’ll go to the great Southern Baptist Convention, where -- where 30,000 churches are represented and where thousands and thousands of messengers sit. And, in that vast convention, in their assembled sessions, we’ll look at it. Surely, this is the faith. Well, it may be. Jesus never mentioned it. He never referred to it. What is the faith? Oh, a man magnificent, trained, scholastic, academic, oratorical. He stands up, and in one great peroration after another, he rises to new and glorious heights. And, we listen to him and say, "Truly, this is the faith. This is the faith." Isn’t it strange? Jesus never referred to it. He never mentioned it. What is the faith? Oh, a marvelous cathedral with its Gothic vaults, with its rising architecture, with its glorious services. That’s the faith. That’s the faith. Jesus never referred to it. He never mentioned it. This is the faith, surely. The surplice minister, standing in dignity, in glory, with all of his beautiful robes, carrying on a gorgeous, ritualistic service. That’s the faith. The Lord never referred to it. He never mentioned it. But, He did have something to say about a cup of cold water given to a man thirsty, in the name of a disciple. He did have something to say about knocking at the door, visiting the sick and the needy and the hungry and the stranger and the forlorn. He did have something to say about the one lost sheep: seeking it, finding it. That is the faith. And, I see it in you. I see it here. Sunday School class: knocking at the door, outside of itself, beyond these walls, up and down the streets of this city, seeking the little babe in the home, seeking the father and mother in the home, seeking those children in the home. That’s the faith. That’s the faith. This is the faith: Visiting these missions of ours, four of five of them over the city, preaching the gospel to the people. That’s the faith. This is the faith: Go out to the Buckner Orphans’ Home, climb up into that balcony, watch those poor, orphaned children eat. And, they eat so ravenously and vigorously-does you good to look down upon them. That’s the faith. This is the faith. Standing here in this pulpit, opening this Book, Sunday by Sunday, taking our passage out of the Word of God and pleading with the lost and the unenlisted and the unchurched of the people of Dallas, lifting up the cross, preaching Jesus. This is the faith. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. But how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how should they believe in Him of whom they haven’t heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And, that’s our message to your heart this morning. Somebody-you, trusting the Lord; somebody-you, putting your life in the fellowship of the church; somebody-you, dedicating all you have and are to our glorious Savior; a family of you, "Here we are, Preacher, and here we come”; a youth. As God shall lay the appeal upon your heart, anywhere, will you make it now-in this glorious enterprise, in this missionary endeavor, mediating the message of Jesus, all through this earth?-“We’re by your side, Preacher, to pray, to give, to support. Here we come and here we are." In that top balcony, from side to side, anywhere, while we sing the song and while we make this appeal today, today, would you come? "I’m doing it now, Pastor. And, here I am, taking the Lord." Taking the Lord as your Savior, or putting your life into the fellowship of the church-by baptism, by letter, by statement, by promise of letter, however God shall say the word and make the way-while we make appeal, while we prayerfully sing, would you come? Would you come, while we stand and while we sing? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 19: S. I AM A DEBTOR ======================================================================== I AM A DEBTOR Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 1:14 06-27-54 Rom 1:8 : First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers; Making requests, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you. For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gifts, to the end ye may be established; That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me. Now I would not have you without knowledge, brethren, that often times I purposed to come unto you, (but was hinder hitherto,) that I may have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. Then my text for tonight: For as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God and the salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. And the sermon this morning is in Rom 1:14 : “I am debtor both to the Greek, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” That is, he is under tribute and obligation to all of the peoples, and nations, and cultures, and languages, tribes and families of the world. By that grouping- Greek (the cultured and educated Greco-Romans); The Barbarians (the man untouched by the higher cultures of civilization); The wise (those who are trained in the way of the Lord); And the unwise (those to whom the message has never been made known)- I am debtor to them all. That’s a strange thing for a man to say, isn’t it? That he should refer to the fact that he is loaded down with debt to all of the families, and nations, and peoples, and tribes of the world. What does he mean when he says he is under obligation? He has a debt to pay? Well, it is a debt of a man who has “the message of life,” to a man who is dying; it is that kind of a debt. It is a kind of a debt as if you stood by the bedside and saw a fellow perishing with an unspeakable, indescribable, loathsome and incurable disease and you knew the remedy; you knew how to make him well and strong; you knew how to heal him of his malignancy, of his malady; you had an answer. Because you know, you have a debt to that man who lies there in agony and in death. It is the same kind of a debt as if you and a party were lost in the desert. And you left the group, searching for water to drink, and you found it-a crystal pool of clear, cool spring water; and the palms grew by the stream. And you bathed in it; and you drank it; and you sat down under the palm and enjoyed it; and forgot of the party that is perishing and famishing of thirst. You have a debt! You are under obligation! “I have found the water! I have found a spring!” You have a debt to return to the party and say: “This is the way of life! I have found water, water to drink!” “I am debtor!” It is the same kind of debt that the Good Samaritan felt that he owed to the more wretched traveler who fell among thieves on the road to Jericho. He was lying there in his own blood, robbed and beaten and left for dead. And the Samaritan passed by and he felt that he owed that wretched, dying, robbed, beaten man-owed him life, protection and care-a debt. It is the same kind of a debt as if you were in a boat and were rowing down across the lake. And in front of you, a boat capsized and sank and the poor wretches were struggling in the water. And they lifted up their arms to you, crying for help. And you, in your boat as you row by, you have a debt, an obligation. “I am debtor to the Greek, to the Barbarian… to the wise, to the unwise: “That kind of a debt. It is another kind of a debt Paul felt in his own life and heart-and in the kingdom of the gospel of the message that he was preaching in the name of Christ Jesus-that all of these somehow had made a contribution to the progress and the furtherance of the preaching of the gospel. We owe them a debt, all of them. The Greek-what did he do for the gospel? The language the gospel was preached in, and the language the gospel was first written in, was the incomparably beautiful and expressive language of the Hellenes; it was the universal tongue. And the Greeks had spread a universal culture. And in that culture, and in that language, the gospel of the Lord Jesus was preached and it was written. And all of the civilized world heard it because of the inheritance they had received from the hand of the Greek. What did he owe to the Romans? The Romans built the road that the gospel message traveled over. The Romans insured a peaceful world. The Romans put together the one great empire, all of the known civilized world-law, order, justice, the inter-communication of people and ideas-all of it was a gift of Rome. The Jew-what did he owe the Jew? I say to you in my humble opinion, the greatest debt that the world owes today is to the Jew. To the Jew! In so many places, hated and despised, and outcast-put in his ghetto-are the victim of violent anti-Semitism-the world owes its greatest debt to the Jew. Why, through them was delivered the oracles of God, the prophets, the apostles and, according to the slate, our own savior, the Son of God and the son of Mary. What does he owe to the Barbarians? The vast, uncultured groups who inhabited the darkened continent and the fringes of the civilized world-what did he owe to them? Much, in every way: their humility; their eager readiness to believe, to accept. And their worship of the Great Spirit whose name they could not fathom, but whose presence they intuitively knew. A debtor to all of the families, and languages, and tribes, and peoples, and nations of the world-I am a debtor! And now, to bring that to our heart and to us today, we are debtors, all of us! We are debtor to the people who live before us and to all of our contemporaries today. There is not any man dependent unto himself. We are dependent upon them; we are under tribute, and under obligation, to them. In the last several years, it has grown popular to write stories in magazines about successful men. Sometimes they are autobiographical. And those men parade before our people as examples of great success; or they operate before us as examples of great success. We have some of those men here in Dallas. I have read of them in some of the magazines of America. And I am proud of them; and proud of their success. And I thank God for all that they have done. But I also have this comment to make: there is not a man among them, not a one of them, but that owes his success to somebody else; he’s a debtor to somebody else. Nineteen-twenties of everything that he has was given to him by somebody who lived before. And the other one-twentieth was given by a contemporary. He is a debtor-with all of his prowess and all of his good fortune. For one thing, when he rises from bed in the morning, he couldn’t rise, he wouldn’t be there to rise, had it not been for his mother’s pain and the blessing of an early home. He rises, having spent a night’s sleep in safety: but the reason that he slept in safety was because somebody died that he might be saved. An unknown guardian watched over him during the night. He dresses: but the clothes that he puts on, he didn’t spin or weave or make. And he speaks: but the language that he uses was created by a thousand Miltons who turned it into silver bells and by the blood of men who died for freedom of speech. He gets in an automobile that he didn’t make-unknown men carved out and ferreted it out-all of the patents that go into that complicated machine. And he comes downtown and he walks on these streets that he didn’t build. And he goes up into an office that he didn’t erect. And he uses a telephone that didn’t invent. And he looks out of the windowpanes that he didn’t discover. And he uses electricity that he didn’t discover… And why go on? Just exactly what did he do? Just exactly what? He is a debtor, a debtor! And all that he has, he owes to someone else. In the Book it says, “we brought nothing into this world.” In this Book it says, “that all that we have, first we received.” Robert Louis Stevenson, one time, suddenly remarked, regarding the pride of our human family: “To every man’s hand, something is given. If it be nothing less than four fingers and a thumb.” I never made them; somebody put them there. I am a debtor to somebody else. When we turn to the church, and our Christian faith, and our Christian lives, under what tribute, and what obligation, does the Christian find himself a debtor. This church here-I have been here ten years-it was here before I came. Some of you have been here forty years… fifty years… sixty years! It was here before you came. Somebody, back yonder before we came into this fellowship, founded here in this city this blessed church. And they watered it with their tears; and they sacrificed for it; and they nurtured it, and cared for it, and ministered to it-all of them in the days and in the years that are past. Our singer here says: “We will now turn to the hymn and sing the hymns.” He didn’t write that hymn! Nor did I! Nor did we! The songs that we sing-somebody gave them to us. And the Bible that I hold in my hand-I didn’t write it! We did not write it! Neither did our fathers and mothers write it. Back yonder, back yonder, back yonder, in the dim ages of the past, thousands and thousands of years ago, did men pick up a pen and, under the hand of God, and for a period of two thousand years, were they inspired to write the Revelation of the oracles of Almighty God. The fact that we meet here today, unmolested and unafraid-what if our congregation was in Moscow? What it our congregation was in Peking? I wonder if I would be here at all? I wonder if this congregation would meet unmolested? For the freedom of this assembly, we owe a debt, an obligation. We are under tribute to how many? To whom? Their blood, their lives-how much do we owe!!! And when I speak of our Savior, the Lord Jesus-“we’re not our own.” Paul said in Corinthians: “Bought with a price-He paid it all.” Robert Murray McCheyene died when he was thirty years old. He burnt himself out-a young Scots preacher, lived a little over a hundred years ago-but he left an indelible impression upon the world; though he died when he was thirty. And one of the most beautiful poems, I think, in the English language is this written by that young preacher entitled: “How Much I Owe.” When this passing world is done When it has sunk beyond glowing sun When we stand with Christ in glory Looking over our life, our finished story Then, Lord, shall I fully know Not till then how much I owe When I stand before the throne Dressed in beauty not my own When I see Thee as Thou art Loving with unsinning heart Then Lord, shall I fully know Not till then how much I owe When the praise of heaven I hear Loud as thunder to the ear Loud as many waters’ noise Sweet as harps’ melodious voice Then, Lord, shall I fully know Not till then how much I owe Even on earth, and through a glass Darkly, let thy glory pass Make forgiveness feel so sweet Make Thy spirit’s help so meet Each on earth, Lord, make me know Something of how much I owe I am debtor! We are debtors to the grace and mercy, to the life and atoning death of the Son of God! We are in His debt! And now, turning to the other: we are debtors to those who need us. There is not a broken, pained, tortured body; there is not a lost sheep; there is not a storm-driven soul; there is not a leper; there is not a darkened mind and a clouded life but to whom, you and I owe the debt of the unfathomable, unsearchable riches of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. God made it that way. We are in their debt. That’s the reason, and in it, the heart of this church beats as one. That’s the reason that over yonder, we have a west Dallas mission. And over yonder, we have our Hampton Road mission. And right over there, we support our Dallas Community Center and right beyond, we bought, and helped to build, the first Mexican church here in this city. We owe a debt to our Latin Americans and, as faithfully and valiantly as we know how, we are trying to be true to that obligation. There is a part of all that you bring here, to this church that goes into that ministry. That’s the reason that over yonder, and over yonder, and, when the Supreme Court had given itself decision, over yonder we shall have our third Anglo mission, ministering to thousands of people in this city. Our debt, our obligation of the tribute-that’s the reason that as I went around with Dr. Goldi, visiting the lepers in Nigeria, West Africa, all through that great, vast country, clan settlements-where they picked up the outcasts because the leper cannot associate in the family any longer; nor can he visit in the village any longer; nor can he have a home where other people live any longer. And they are pressed outside and pushed away; and we gather them up and in clan settlements all through the country, we gather them up. And the physicians with his nurse, his male nurse, the physician makes regular journeys, bringing to them medicine, looking at their sores, caring for their leprous body. Who sent out that missionary? We did! Who buys that medicine? We do! Who built those clan settlements? We did! Why? Why? Because of the unspeakable, unfathomable, indescribable urge on the inside when a man becomes a child of God-a debt to pay! Part of everything you bring to this church goes over there. And I haven’t time to speak of the ministry that we seek to share with our brethren that goes all the way around this earth. While we believe, carrying on, all the debt-the debt that we owe. And I’m glad to share it-no burden to me! There’s an unspeakable joy; there is an inevitable gladness; there is an indescribable celestial holiness that comes from the knowledge that-through this blessed church and in what little that I am able to dedicate to its work-I have a part in ministry to the need of our world. I am debtor! I am debtor! And now the last: I cannot remember when I didn’t hear people refer to the fact that we have one last debt to pay. You know what they mean by it. We have a final debt to pay; and all of us have it-a final debt. They are talking about our inevitable, and final, hour when we pay back the debt of this life in death. A final debt to pay: go through those cemeteries… “paid in full,” “paid in full,” “paid in full.” We all have a rendezvous with the pale horseman, a final debt to pay. And it is sobering! It is sobering! I sat down this week with one or two men in the Baraca Sunday School Class. We got to talking about our wonderful friends in that class, some already over the divide, some who are looking into the face of God even now. And one of the men remarked, he says: “You know, there were six of us that-every Monday-we sat down and talked about our class, six of us in the class, meeting every Monday-four of them gone-two of us left.” A few weeks ago, accepting an invitation to speak in California, I went out there, not nearly so much to speak as it was to see my mother. Go up there into the cemetery, stand there on the side of a valley. Look down there-my name on that grave. I have my father’s name. You can’t stand and read your own name “there” without having a sobering affect-just a matter of this long, or this long-this many days, or this many days-that debt that we pay. But that’s not the last one. There’s another one still. I’ve always thought there is another one still. I have another debt. I have another rendezvous. I have another obligation. You know what it is? It is not just to die. It is not just that this body be given back to the ground from whence it came, that we inevitably return-paying the debt. But there is another. I have a debt, a rendezvous to make. It is in glory. It is in heaven. And I ought to make it. Don’t you think? You ought to make it. Don’t you think? When the family gathering there, ought you to be there? When God calls the roll in glory, shouldn’t your name be there? We’re invited to the marriage supper of the lamb and it is one invitation we ought to accept. We ought to make it. We ought to be there when the Lord opens the portals of glory and the saints go marching in, in that number. Don’t you belong? Do not I? Do not we? The debt we finally owe-that the grace of God was not shed in us, and for us, in vain-but that we kept the appointment. “Lord, when the hour strikes, and the great day comes, that rendezvous I’ll make. I’ll be there, Lord, for the great and final debt to which I will be true. I’ll make it, Lord! I’ll be there! I am debtor to do it. It is not a heaven without you-you know that? I guess God in his infinite wisdom has to make it heaven when our families aren’t there. But I still say it is not as heavenly as it could have been had you made it. With you gone-however the Lord turns it-it is not as glorious as had you made it. Somehow, I think you owe that debt to be there when God’s great heavenly day brings together His children in this earth. You want to be there. That’s the reason we preach the gospel. That’s the reason Paul said: So as much as is in me, I’m ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome… For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that will receive it. I’m ready to preach the gospel. It is the power of God. And we owe it to God to accept it. It is a debt to pay. We must sing our song. While we sing it, from side to side, anywhere, everywhere, somebody you. Would you step in this aisle and down here to the front and stand by me? “Here I am, Pastor, and here I come.” Is there a child this morning, a you, a family, today: “Preacher, I’ll give my heart to the Lord in faith, in trust, here I come. And here I am.” Is there a family of you to come into the church? Today, while we make this appeal, would you come into the aisle and down to the front. “Here we are, Pastor, all of us.” On the radio as we go along, if you listen to this appeal this day, by your radio, in the chair, or in the bed where you sit or lie, would you give your heart to God? Would you say: “Lord, the humblest best I know how, I give my soul and my life in Thy keeping, in Thy trust.” Anywhere in this vast auditorium, while we sing the song, and make appeal-giving your heart to the Lord or into the fellowship of His church. Would you come and stand by me, while all of us stand and sing together? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 20: S. JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM ======================================================================== JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 21:1-15 02-28-54 b In your Bible tonight, turn to Acts 21:1-40 All right, we’re going to read Acts 21:1-40 : And it came to pass, that after we were gotten from them, and had launched, we came with a straight course, unto Coos, and the day following unto Rhodes, and from thence unto Patara. And finding a ship sailing unto Phoenicia, we went aboard, and set forth. Now when we had discovered Cyprus, we left it on the left hand, and sailed into Syria, and landed at Tyre: for there the ship was to unlade her burden. And finding disciples, seeking disciples, we tarried there seven days; who said to Paul through the Spirit, that he should not go up to Jerusalem. And when we had accomplished those days, we departed and went our way. They all brought us on our way, with wives and children, until we were out of the city, and we kneeled down on the shore, and prayed. And when we had taken our leave one of another, we took ship and they returned home again. And when we had finished our course from Tyre, we came to Ptolemais, and saluted the brethren and abode with them one day. And the next day we that were of Paul’s company departed, and came unto Caesarea: and we entered into the house of Phillip the evangelist, which was one of the seven and abode with him. And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy. And as we tarried there many days, there came down from Judea a certain prophet named Agabus. And when he was come with us, he took Paul’s girdle, and bound his own hands and feet, and said, ‘Thus saith the Holy Spirit, So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.’ And when we heard these things, both we, and they of that place, besought him-besought Paul-not to go up to Jerusalem. Then Paul answered, ‘What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.’ And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’ And after those days we took up our carriages, and went up to Jerusalem. Now, that’s far enough for us tonight. And then tomorrow-next Sunday, we’ll pick up there. Take the journey up to the city of God. As you read this outline of their trip from Miletus on the shore near Ephesus, to Caesarea, as you read it, there are many things that those of you who have gone to school have read in your history book. Many things that come back to your heart and mind. There at Miletus on the shore, beyond which is Ephesus, the capital of Asia Minor, from Miletus, they sailed about forty miles down to the island of Coos. Now, you remember that is the place where Hippocrates lived, and Hippocrates was the "Father of Medicine," the great physician. There was a temple there in Coos to the Greek god of healing, Asklepios. And they had a school of medicine there. And in the Greek world, when a young man wanted to be a physician, he went to the city of Coos. And he was taught there, and attended the temple worship there. That must have brought to this beloved physician who is writing this story, Dr. Luke, it must have brought to his heart, many memories as they stopped at the city of Coos. Then from Coos, they went down about fifty miles passing by the island of Patmos and so came to the island of Rhodes. And the city of Rhodes is one of the great cities of the ancient world. And it is a city beautiful today. Rhodes was the famous home of one of The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Do you remember what it was? The Colossus! The Colossus-one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World-the Colossus was built on a rock in the harbor of the city of Rhodes. Now, that Colossus is an interesting thing. And because Paul was there and looked upon it. Well, let’s stop just a minute and speak of it. The Colossus of Rhodes was built on a rock, as I say, at the entrance into the harbor. And it was a bronze statue, a cast-bronze statue of Apollo the sun god. And it towered about one hundred twenty feet high. It lacked about forty feet being as high as the largest bronze casting in the world, the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor. But in that ancient world, it was a phenomenal thing. It was beyond anything that they had ever seen. A strange medieval superstition said that the Colossus of Rhodes straddled the entrance into the harbor and that the ships went between the gigantic legs. Oh, not so, not so. You could not conceive, for one thing, of a Greek with an artistic temperament and mind such as the Greeks had, of ever casting a statue of Apollo in such an undignified manner-straddle-legged like that. No, it was a magnificent statue and the top of his head was silhouetted against the sunray-a sunburst-and its raised right hand held its gigantic torch. And the artist Chares who cast it in 280 B. C., so made it that there was a tower, that there was a stairway, a winding stairway on the inside that went clear up to the head. And the Rhodians built fires in the eyes of the great statue for beacon lights in order that ships might be guided safely in the harbor at night. Now, it didn’t stand very long, for a very short time-for 280 B. C. to 224 B. C.-fifty-six years. And in 224 B. C., a gigantic, terrible earthquake pulled it down and the great Apollo collapsed into the sea. And it stayed there in the sea, a gigantic ruin for over nine hundred years. Now, when Paul visited the city of Rhodes, the great Colossus, the great statue was a heap there, broken down into the sea. And Pliny who visited Rhodes and saw that statue about the same time that Paul did-Pliny wrote of it like this-and I quote from it: Even as it lies, it excites our wonder and admiration. Few men could clasp the thumb in their arms and the fingers are larger than most statues. Where the limbs are broken asunder, vast caverns are seen yawning in the interior. Within it, too are to be seen large masses of rock, by the weight of which the artist steadied it while erecting it. Now, when Paul came to the island of Rhodes, he saw that great bronze statue, broken and lying there in the sea, in the harbor. Now, we’ll carry on through. Won’t take but a moment. The end of that Colossus was most humiliating. In 672 A. D., when the Saracens overran Attalia, and captured the island of Rhodes, they sold in 672 A. D. They sold the great statue to a Jew. And he cut it up and put it on hundreds and hundreds of camels and sold it for scraps of bronze and it was made into implements of war. That’s the end of the statue at Rhodes. And what a humiliating thing for such a glorious wonder of the world to wind up in somebody’s shrapnel or somebody’s machine gun or somebody’s bullet or somebody’s sword or instrument of war. But so is the turn of life. And do you ever sit down sometimes and think, I wonder what the end will be of the Statue of Liberty when some day a foreign foe comes to America, cuts her down and burns her up and melts her for scrap? Did you ever think about things like that? Well, the Good Book says there are days coming like you never saw, like you never saw. And whether we live or whether we die depends upon the judgment of Almighty God. It doesn’t depend upon our atomic bombs. And it doesn’t depend upon our jet planes. And it doesn’t depend upon our flattops in the navy. Nor does it even depend upon that atomic submarine. It depends upon the judgment of Almighty God. That brings us to that next city that they stopped at. They stopped at Tyre. And doesn’t that name Tyre bring back to you a lot of things?In Isaiah and in Ezekiel, in the days of those prophets, Tyre was a great commercial city of the world. Her ships covered the face of the earth. She was lifted up with a great mercantile: maritime city of all of the generations. But Isaiah and Ezekiel prophesied the day when there would be nothing there and the fisherman would spread their nets and dry them where the teeming harbor and the people were trafficking in merchandise. When Paul visited the city, it had already lost the glory of the day of Isaiah and of Ezekiel. But it had not come into the desolate fulfillment of those terrible prophecies. For those prophets said, "You shall not forget God and live." And the name of Tyre is a proverb in keeping with the fulfillment of the Word of God. Do you remember Kipling’s recessional? Far-call’d our navies melt away- On dune and headland sinks the fire- Lo, all our pomp and strength and glory of yesterday, Are one with Nineveh and Tyre! Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget! So they stopped at Tyre. There the ship was to unlay her burden: took on a new load, traded. Tyre was the mercantile center of the ancient world. “And finding disciples there, they tarried seven days.” You know, as I read the Scripture and thought through this message tonight, it brought me back to a like experience that I had over there in that part of the earth. “Landing at Tyre, finding certain disciples, they tarried there seven days.” When we landed at Istanbul, old Constantinople, the old capital of the Byzantine Empire, when we stopped there, it was raining. And there was a tall, fine-looking young Greek who was standing beyond the Immigration gate, out in the rain with an umbrella over his head.And everyone that passed by, he asked them, "Are you the Baptist missionaries from America? Are you the Baptist missionaries from America?" And he stood there at the gate, where the people going past Immigration and Customs were going out into the city, and asked each one of them that question. So when Dr. McCall and I came to the gate, that young Greek was standing there in the rain with that umbrella over his head. And so he asked us, "Are you the Baptist missionaries from America?" We answered him by another question and found that he was looking for us, for Tom Holloway had written over there to the American Bible Society that on such and such day, and on such and such plane, we were to land in Istanbul. So we went with that young man to the hotel. It was in the evening and after we had registered and had deposited all of our baggage, we went out with the young man to eat. And he took us to a native restaurant and ordered for us. We were very hungry like wolves. He ordered for us a marvelous meal. So when the waiter came with all of the marvelous repast, a bountiful meal, the waiter only set the table for two; for Dr. McCall and for me. So I looked over at the young Greek and I thought in my heart, "Now, he’s too poor to order a meal for himself. It must be something like that." So I said to him, "There are only places for two here. Setting for two. Are you not going to eat with us? Remember you are our guest. We love to have you." And he said to us, he said, "No, this is Wednesday and Wednesday is my fast day. I never eat on Wednesday. I give the day to fasting and to prayer for my people and for this great city." After we had eaten, he asked us, he said, "Every Wednesday night we have a prayer meeting in my home. Would you like to come?" I was so tired from the long journey, I could have just collapsed, but he was so kind and inviting, that I said, "Why certainly, sure we’ll go." So I said, "Where do you live?" He said, "I live across the Bosporus in Asia Minor." Well, it was already late at night, I said, "Do you mean to tell me, they will be over there in a prayer meeting this late?" "Yes," he said, "because they think you’re coming." So we went. We got on a boat, on the Golden Harp, there at Istanbul and crossed the Bosporus and I stepped foot on Asia for the first time in my life-going to a prayer meeting in the home of this Greek, Thomas Kosmotun. We made our way over to his home. And by the way, if I could parenthesize just a moment there, when we got on the streetcar in the city, in Asia Minor across from Istanbul which is in Europe, when we got on the streetcar there, right in front of us was the biggest man I ever saw in my life. And I turned to Thomas Kosmotun and I said, "That man, look at him-giant of a man." He said, "Yes, sir, that’s the most famous citizen in Asia Minor." He says, "He’s the biggest man in the Turkish Empire." A giant of a man-oh, he was as big as the Colossus at Rhodes almost. I stared at him so long, looking at his fingers and his hands and his feet until he went to a little place in the streetcar and pulled down a shade between me and him. Made me feel kind of self-conscious. But we went over there; we went over there to the home of this boy. And though it was about eleven o’clock at night, or twelve, we found a little company of Christian people there. There were several Armenian Christians, a Greek or two-belonging to this family, and a Turk or two, and we had our service that night. And when I hear people criticize the Voice of America, being in foreign countries so long, not able to read the newspapers, we were not able of course to keep up with the news. But after our prayer meeting, he turned on a shortwave radio set and I heard the Voice of America. So it sounded it good to me. That was the first time for days that we had heard anything of the news of the world, as America would say it. Well, we returned back home, back to the hotel, got in about one and two o’clock in the morning. But it was worth it, and the next day we went with the boy to the little band of Christian people who meet in Istanbul-a little company, just like this little company here. Out of a city of way beyond a million people, I suppose there are not as many evangelical Christians, as would fill that little space right in there. Oh, it broke your heart! Broke your heart. I never saw such a cosmopolitan city in my life, Russians, Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Slavs, Yugoslavians, and every kind of a nationality in the world-there in Istanbul. One of the tremendous opportunities of the world and that little handful of people, and the rest of that vast city lost, lost. So Paul comes here to Tyre, saw a little handful of Christian people and met together with them. Then after spending seven days there, went on his journey. As he faced that journey toward Jerusalem, everywhere that he went, the Holy Spirit said, "When you go to Jerusalem, bonds and imprisonment await you." And the next sermon I preach on this is going to be entitled, The Beginning of the End. It isn’t long now until Paul comes to the end of his life. Went up to Jerusalem, bound there, sent to Caesarea, bound there, sent to Rome, bound there. Liberated for just a while, sent back to Rome and martyred. And everywhere, everywhere the Holy Spirit said to Paul as he made this journey back to Palestine, "When you go to Jerusalem, bonds and imprisonment await you." But how did Paul face it? You look at him. And now, he says: Behold, I go [bound in the spirit] to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, Save that the Holy Spirit witnessed in every city saying that bonds and afflictions await me. But none of these things move me. Neither count my life dear unto myself-whether I live or whether I die, is nothing at all-I am finishing my course in this ministry to testify the gospel of the grace of the Son of God. So here in Tyre, the Holy Spirit said to him, "As you go up to Jerusalem, bonds and imprisonment await you." And then when he came to Caesarea, there came down from Jerusalem, this prophet Agabus who took the girdle around his loins. That’s a belt by which a man dressed in an Oriental garment would raise up his toga. He took that away from Paul, unbound it. And Agabus bound his own hands and his own feet and he said, "Thus saith the Holy Spirit, `So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles’"-at whose hands, Paul died. And when all of the company heard that from this prophet Agabus, they pled with him, "Paul, Paul, don’t go to Jerusalem. It means bounds, afflictions, imprisonment and death. Don’t go!" But Paul answered, "What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? For I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." May I say something to me and to us about that thing? You and I are brought up on that old axiom of self-preservation as the first law of life. That’s the first thing we must do-to look out for ourselves. That’s the way we are brought up. That’s the way we are taught. First, I must look out for myself-that I am provided for, that all of my necessities are met. I must live the first law of life. When you look at these men who followed God, that’s the last consideration, "I don’t have to live. You don’t have to live. What we must do is just this one thing, the will of the Lord be done. If it is to live, or to die, it is in His hands." That’s why we are so torn up and so messed up and so full of ourselves. We think thus and so and thus and so, and it has to be just this way, when all of the time it doesn’t matter, not at all. All that matters is that the will of the Lord be done. And Paul was fearless. And any man is fearless who faces life like that. "Whether I live, that’s in God’s hands. Whether I die, that’s in God’s hands. Whether I succeed, that’s in God’s hands. Or whether I fail, that’s in God’s hands. Whether I’m strong or weak, whether I’m well or sick, it is in God’s hands." One of these young men returning back to Africa to be a missionary, as a physician, said to him, "Such a waste of life. You cannot live. If you’ll stay here, you can. But if you go back to Africa, you will die." And the young man replied, "Sir, in the building of a bridge there are many great stones in the foundation that are buried and are never seen. I am one of those stones. I’ll go back to Africa, I shall die.” But God takes the sacrifice of what we call a wasted life and on it, God builds His kingdom in earth and heaven. Afraid? Afraid? “You go to Jerusalem and bonds and imprisonment await you.” Was he afraid to go? Would you be afraid? Even a Roman soldier was disgraced if he trembled before danger. And a Spartan, a Lacedaemonians was taught never to retreat in the face of an enemy. And when they fought, they stayed there until they won or they died in the battle. Paul had laid everything on the altar, everything. And the details of the final oblation were nothing. Whether he suffered in prison, whether he was afflicted, whether he was in bonds or in chains, his life had been given to God. How it was spent and how he died was in God’s hands. The will of the Lord be done. Fearless, that’s the Christian! Courageous, that’s the Christian! Unafraid, that’s the Christian! Looking ahead, going on great confidence in the Lord God, that’s the Christian. That’s the Christian! One of the pastors I talked to this week before last on this trip through the East, I asked him why he didn’t go on such and such journey through Europe. And this was his answer. He says, "At the time for me to go, there was an epidemic in my city, a virus. And my people were sick, sick, sick." And he said, "Had I left, it would have looked-it would have seemed as if I of running away, I was afraid. I was leaving my people in the face of an epidemic." And he said, "Rather than my people think that I would leave them in a time of need, I forewent my journey to Europe and stayed with them and ministered to them in their illness." Like the pastor of the First Baptist Church in New Orleans, Louisiana, sometime ago, when that city was struck with Yellow Fever, they pled with the pastor of the First Baptist Church, "You leave. You leave. If you stay here, you’ll die. You leave! You leave!" He said, "Why certainly I’ll not leave. Certainly, I’ll not leave. I’ll stay here to minister to my people and to bury our dead." And he stayed and he caught that Yellow Fever and he died. But he was a true minister of the Lord Jesus Christ. Courageous. Fearless. Devoted. Loyal. True unto death! That is what it is to be a Christian. That is what characterized God’s people through all of the centuries. When they were fed to the lions, they were fearless and unafraid. When they were burned at the stake, they were fearless and unafraid. I stood by the townhouse-the courthouse-in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, and it is built right beside the Lamont River that empties from the Zurich Lake into the Rhine. And there by the side of that townhouse in the blue waters of the Lamont River, they took our Baptist preacher who lived about three hundred years ago. And his name was Felix Manx. He was a Baptist preacher. And they said, "So you like water? Water. We will give you lots of water." And they took him and bound him and they drowned him there in the blue waters of the Lamont River, fearless and unafraid. I looked on the monument in Oxford, England to Latimer and to Ridley-two men of God who were burned at the stake, burned at the stake, courageous and fearless. In 1947, as I looked on the faces of those German preachers, our brethren, who had gone through the Nazi persecution fearless and unafraid-and in 1950, gathered with those Baptist D. P.’s from the Ukraine and White Russia, and from Latvia and Estonia, from Poland and from all of those places beyond the Iron Curtain countries, in preaching, I preached through three interpreters, two on one side and one on this. And everyone of them had known what it was to lose house and home and possessions and country and friends and to go out a stranger and a refugee in the name and for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fearless and unafraid: what it is to be a Christian. Going to Jerusalem to bonds and imprisonment and to death. But going fearlessly, courageously, trusting in the providences and the will and the ultimate destiny and victory of God. And now, to some of you young people, may I say a final little word? That’s the reason, that sometimes I marvel, I marvel at you. I marvel at you. Sometimes I do. You meet a problem like this. All of that crowd over there, look what they are doing. And if I don’t do what the crowd does, I’m isolated and ostracized and set out here by myself. And so you will. And you cowered and you cringe and you tremble and you are a slave and you give in and you compromise. And you streamline and conform.And I marvel at you. I marvel at you. When if all of them are on that side, how about you? And Christ? Standing alone? How about it? How about it? Courageously, fearlessly. I don’t care what they do and how many of them there are doing it and what rate they go and how many are going, I’d walk in with the Lord this way. This way. This way. So I go on not knowing. I would not know if I might. I had rather walk with Christ in the dark Than to walk by myself with sight. I had rather walk with Him by faith Than to walk by myself with sight. Fearless, unafraid, standing you and Christ together. Going to Jerusalem, to Caesarea, to Rome and to death with God. That’s enough. That’s enough. To live or to die, it is in His hands. It is in His hands . The will of the Lord be done. And he turns his face to the final triumph in Christ. Well, that’s our appeal to you tonight. That’s our appeal to you tonight. Would you do that? Would you do that? With the Lord? With the Lord? "Preacher in Him, with Him, for Him, by Him, through Him, I yield and dedicate my life and here I am. And here I am. Trusting Him. Going all the way with Him. Here I am and here I come." Would you do it? Would you do it? Is there a family of you to come into the church tonight? Is there a you, somebody you? As God makes appeal, as He opens the door, will you make it now? Will you make it now? "Preacher, I’m coming on confession of faith in the Lord Jesus. I’m giving Him my heart and my life and here I come." "Preacher, I’m coming by statement or by letter." "I’m coming by baptism. I’ve settled this thing with God. And here I am. And here I come." "I’m giving my life to him in a new way by reconsecration." In the balcony round, from side to side, anywhere, as God shall make appeal, would you make it now? "I’ll make it now. I’ll make it now." While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 21: S. LET US HAVE PEACE WITH GOD ======================================================================== LET US HAVE PEACE WITH GOD Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 5:1 08-01-54 Now, in your Bibles, we turn to Rom 5:1-21. And the sermon tonight is the first verse. The whole sentence is contained in two verses, so we will read the whole sentence: “Therefore”…-and the “therefore” refers to the chapters that have gone before. Paul has been proving a great spiritual revelation. Therefore being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; By whom we have access into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. “Therefore being justified by faith”: the preceding chapters- Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Rom 4:1-25 -all have been proving that we all are sinners, and that we cannot, in our own righteousness, justify ourselves-that no man, by the deeds of the Law, could ever be saved. Paul has been proving in those previous chapters that, however good we are, we are never good enough; however holy we are, never holy enough; however “acceptable” we are, never acceptable enough. There is always in us-always-the element of mistake, of shortcoming, of dereliction, of sin, of death. We never quite attain the full measure of the stature of God. We are never perfect enough, however we might aspire or labor or work toward that goal of holiness and perfection. We never attain it. All of us are in debt. All of us are in death. All of us are in sin. But, says Paul, we are not saved by our efforts to be holy or our works to be good. We are not dependent upon those for justification before God. For God, seeing us in our weakness, our humanity, our sinfulness-the Lord sent into this world a mediator, a sacrifice, an atoning Savior to take our place, to be for us sanctification and justification and atonement, to pay the price the penalty of our sin. And he says, “That’s the only way that anyone who has ever been saved was saved.” And he takes, for example, Abraham, who was the founder of the Hebrew nation and who was called of God to be the father of the chosen people. In the fourth chapter, how was Abraham saved: by his works? No, for his works were not righteous and his works were not acceptable before God. How was he saved, then? Paul, quoting from the Book of Genesis: “Abraham believed God, and his faith was counted unto him for righteousness.” Abraham was saved by faith. Abraham was saved by casting himself upon the mercies of God. Abraham was saved like all of God’s children are saved: he was saved by grace, by mercy, by the tender kindness of God. “Therefore,” says Paul-“Therefore we, being justified by faith,” and he looks back to the end of the chapter before-“Jesus-who was delivered for our offenses, and was raised again for our justification”-Jesus, our Savior: how we are justified by faith in Him. All of that, I say, was in these preceding chapters. Now, Rom 5:1-21 begins in a different way: “Being justified, believing that, receiving that-receiving that-“Now being justified by faith”: we have a situation here where “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Well, that’s all right. That’s a good translation of the Textus Receptus of that verse. “Therefore being saved by grace”-“Therefore being saved by faith,” declared righteous, acceptable to God by trusting God for it-“being justified by faith, we have peace with God.” Now, that word translated “we have peace” is one of those words that these great brilliant scholars-I don’t know how many years they’ve been discussing it-is that Greek word there echomen, or is it echomen? Isn’t that a funny thing? You know, the whole Roman Empire was, one time, divided over a Greek iota. And they went to war and tore up the church and the whole Roman Empire over a Greek iota. Did you know that? In the days of Arius and Athanasius, one of them said Jesus is homoousias. The other said He was homoiousias, with a Greek iota in there. A discussion of the essence of Jesus: was he one in essence with God, or was he of a substance like the Father? Well, that controversy, I think, tore up the Roman Empire. These scholars looks at this text here: “Therefore being justified by faith, exomen”-omicron. Is it an omicron ‘o’ or an omega ‘o?’ If it is an omicron, “we have peace with God” is right. It is an active linear indicative. But, if it is that omega, it is active volative subjunctive: “Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God-let us have peace with God.” Well, how do you think it is? I think it’s an omicron. I think the manuscript evidence shows, without doubt, that the true text here is “Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God”-now, having settled this thing with God-“let us have peace”-let us rejoice in that salvation-same thing that you will find over there in Mat 21:1-46, where Jesus, telling the parable of the wicked husbandmen, where he built a vineyard, then went away. He sent back servants and they beat one, and killed another. Then, the lord said, “I’ll send them my son, and they’ll reverence my son.” So, the lord sent his son into the vineyard. And they said, “This is the heir; let us-volative subjunctive-kill him, and let us seize-let us take hold of-his inheritance.” That volative subjunctive is here. “Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God.” That’s the joy of our religion. That’s the Acts 9:1-43 : “Then the church enjoyed peace… .” That’s what Paul is writing here. “Therefore being justified by faith”-being saved, being Christian, being acceptable to God, through the Lord-“being justified by faith”-now, let’s enjoy our religion-let’s settle this thing about our conversion-and in peace and in thanksgiving to God-“By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice-and are glad-in hope of the glory of God.” I don’t know how many of us-I don’t know how many of us-I was down there at the camp, listening to our children and they came and talked to me-Thursday night, a great group of those children came. And they took my hand-and some of them were weeping-and they were saying to me-I mean, a host of them were saying to me: “I have been baptized and I belong to the church. But, I don’t know whether I’m saved or not-I don’t know whether I’m a child of God or not. I’m don’t know whether I’m born again or not.” And that troubles me-that troubles me to no end. These children: we are so careful with them, and we try to be so everlastingly responsible. And you know me-I work together with the parents and the Sunday school teachers. We do everything we can. And then, I’m standing out there at the camp. And the children talk to me like that: “Preacher, I don’t know whether I’m saved or not. I don’t know whether I’m born again or not.” And then we make an evangelistic appeal here in a service, and people come down here and stand in front of this rostrum, in answer to an appeal. And they don’t know whether they have been saved or not. “Pastor, I don’t know whether I’m a child of God or not. I don’t know whether I’m saved or not. I don’t know whether I’m a Christian or not. I have no assurance.” And I look at the throng-and the throng and the throng-some of our own people go down there and they say: “I don’t have assurance. I don’t know if I’m saved. I don’t know if I’m converted. I don’t know if I’ve been born again. And I’m troubled and I’m miserable.” And you are in trouble and in misery. That’s what Paul is talking about. That’s the thing I’m going to preach about here tonight. In the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans: “Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God… .” We’re not to live in trouble and misery and agony and wonder whether we are born again. It’s a terrible way to live. It’s an awful state in which to find ourselves. That thing was true in the Bible, again and again. In the sixth chapter of the Book of Hebrews, this is the thing that, whoever he is-I think it was Apollos-this is the thing that Apollos was writing to that little church: Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto maturity; not laying again the foundation of repentance toward dead works, and of faith toward God, Of the doctrine of baptisms… and all the rest. Those things back there about repentance and faith and baptism-he calls them rudimentary principles, first principles. And we ought to get over them and beyond them and get on with it, and go on to maturity, to be full-grown Christians. But, you can’t-you can’t, as long as you live that’s there. So, you ask, “Am I saved or am I lost? Am I justified or am I condemned? Am I dead in Christ, or am I alive in Him? How is it with me? How is it with me?” And I tell you, that thing is everywhere-it’s everywhere. You can go through the church, and through the Sunday school, and up and down these aisles, and ask our people: “Do you have great assurance-do you know that you know?” And so many will equivocate: “Preacher, I have tried and I have tried. I went down the aisle. I was baptized. But, honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m in doubt. Sometimes, I think I am and sometimes, I think I’m not.” And it’s a miserable way to live our faith. And it’s an affront to God and it makes for poor religion. That’s the reason Paul starts off here, at the beginning of the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans: “Therefore being justified by faith, echomen-peace with God… .” “Let us have-volative subjunctive-let us seize-let us seize-let us hold-let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Now, how is it that a man can have “peace with God?” How do you become that Christian? How do you get out of that limbo of not knowing for sure? How do you do it? How do you get to where you enjoy it? “Therefore being justified by faith-being justified by faith”: You do it by trusting Jesus. And that’s all you can do, I don’t care what else you try. It’s by trusting Jesus. There’s nothing else. There’s not any other way. It’s done by trusting Jesus. “Preacher, I don’t believe that. I believe you have to trust Jesus and do some good works.” Then, you’ll be in misery all the days of your life. How will you know if you’ve enough good works or not? How will you know-how will you ever know if you’ve done enough to get to heaven? Trust in Jesus, and add something else-how will you know if you did enough, or if you did it right? That’s the way to be in misery, and in agony, all the rest of your life. How do you know? It comes by trusting Jesus. That’s the whole of it. That’s the sum of it. It’s the middle, the beginning and the end of it. You’re justified by faith-by trusting Jesus. You come down that aisle 40 dozen times, and it will always be the same way: trusting the Lord Jesus. There’s nothing you can add-nothing. And it’s an eternal salvation, that’s never taken away. That soul that on Jesus, Hath leaned for repose, I’ll never, no, never, Desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell Should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no, never, forsake. What more can he say Than to you He hath said, To you, who for refuge, To Jesus have fled? All of it is locked up in that word-we’re saved by looking to Jesus, by trusting in Jesus. There’s nothing besides trusting the Lord Jesus. You cannot be partly saved. A man is not partly dead and partly alive. He’s either dead or he’s alive. We’re never partly justified and partly condemned. We’re either condemned or we’re justified. There’s no partial state before God. I’m either lost or I’m saved-one or the other. I’m either condemned or I’m justified-one or the other. I’m in Christ or I’m out of Christ. -Just like you are in this world: you’re either alive or you’re dead-one or the other, one or the other. Now, you may be sick. You may be half-sick. But, if you’re still alive, you’re alive. It doesn’t matter how sick you are, or how low you are, to be alive is to be alive and to be dead is to be dead. And one is not the other. And it’s the same way in God: I’m saved or I’m lost. I’m justified or I’m condemned. And I’m one or the other. “Preacher, how do you get to be justified?” By faith. You are one or the other. We are justified by trusting in Jesus-looking to Jesus, looking to Jesus, trusting the Lord Jesus, depending on the Lord Jesus. “Well, I don’t know if I depend upon Him enough?” You don’t even need to qualify it with “enough.” “I don’t know if I believe in Him enough.” You don’t need to qualify that with “enough” faith. Your faith may be bold and vigorous. Or your faith may be weak and apologetic. It’s not what kind of faith. It’s whether you trust Jesus. That’s it. The Lord saith, “On such-and-such night My death angel passes over. And any man who has sprinkled on the door lintel blood, if he will get under that blood, in that house, my angel shall pass over. But, when the angel passes over, and sees that there is no blood on the lintel of the doorpost-if there is no blood on the lintel-death will visit that house. Death will come into that home. “ And I can imagine that night. Can’t you? In an awful, solemn moment, when you could hear the leaves rustle, that angel passes over every house in the land of Egypt. On the inside of the house, under the blood on the lintel, I can imagine all kinds of people. Can’t you? Some of them, shallow; some of them, profound; some of them, with great faith; some of them, with little faith; some of them, with great questioning; some of them, in doubt and in dread; some of them, in perfect peace-trusting in the Lord. But, if they were under the blood-if they were in that house-if they had enough faith to walk in the door, they were safe. The angel passed over and there was life in that house. That’s the same thing as we find in this thing here tonight. There are some of you with strong faith. There are some of you with a little faith. There are some of you with questionings. There are some of you who, in dread and in fear, wonder. There are some of you who have perfect peace. But, if you’re under the blood; if you’re trusting Jesus; if you’re in Christ; if you’ve taken Jesus as your Savior, you’re safe and you’re saved, forever and forever. As Paul says here, “Having been justified by faith, let us rest in peace-let us have peace with God-let us enjoy our religion-let us be glad in Him.” And I want to preach about that tonight. That’s my introduction. You people better pray for me, too. I’ll tell you: I’m preaching myself to death. But, there’s so much here to say. How do you say it? How do you say it? Now, I’ll preach about that. The work of Christ for us is a finished and completed work. The work of redemption-the work of our salvation-is a final and completed-eternally completed-work. If God is God, when the Lord Jesus died on the Cross, He said, “It is finished-It is finished.” When the Lord Jesus prayed, in the High Priestly Prayer, of the seventeenth chapter of the Book of John, He said to God, His Father: “I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” What is finished? The work of redemption-the work of atonement-the work of salvation: it is done-it is finished forever and ever. It’s a great historical fact. It happened 2,000 years ago. Now, the work of the Spirit in me is never finished. The Holy Spirit could never say, “It is finished.” Only Christ could say that. The work of the Spirit in me, inside of me, is ongoing, helping me to love some of the people that I don’t love: “Lord, help me to love them.” There’s just some people that you look at and is it’s hard to love them. But, in the power of the Holy Spirit, God said, “Love ‘em. Love ‘em.” Did you hear that? Some of you just need to put your meanness right there. Yes, Sir. “The fruit of the Spirit is love-love… and joy.” When I see someone, and he’s down in the mouth-and he had a loan called yesterday, and he can’t make the payment on the debt-I say, “Brother, you need to get over that. That’s why you have faith-joy-joy. Peace-peace. I know it’s stressful out there where you are, fighting with your wife. Some of you fellas around here: Cut that out! Peace! Long-suffering-long-suffering; gentleness; goodness; meekness-meekness. My, my, wonder if the Holy Spirit can ever transform some of us-I reckon He will. Why, as long as you live, there’s the work of the Holy Spirit in you. And the Holy Spirit is never done with us. No matter how good we are, we need to be better-we need to be better. And the Holy Spirit continues the work in us. The work of Christ is finished-forever and ever. No man adds to that. No man takes away from that. You’re not saved by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit cannot cancel sin. What cancels sin is the blood atonement of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. “And the blood of Jesus, God’s Son, cleanses us from all sin.” “This is the blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sin.” We are saved by the blood of Jesus. We are saved by the atonement of Christ. We are saved by His Cross, by His sacrifice, by His death on the tree. We are justified by trusting in that final, finished work of Jesus. And it’s done forever. It’s done forever. You can’t trust Jesus’ atonement and then say, “I’ll add this and that and that. I must trust Jesus and be baptized. I must trust Jesus and keep the commandments. I must trust Jesus and”-No! There’s not any “and.” You’re saved by trusting Jesus and Jesus alone. Do you remember Nicodemus? Jesus said to him, “You must be born again.” Nicodemus said, “How can a man be born again?” And the Lord replied, “This is the way that a man is saved, that a man becomes a child of God: As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up; that whosoever trusts in Him-looks to Him-may be saved.” Looking to Jesus-washed in the blood of the Lamb-looking to Jesus-saved by the atoning grace of Christ Jesus. Jesus never said to Nicodemus, “You must get yourself born again.” You can’t do it. I’m still waiting for someone to say, “I got myself born” the first time. You had to have your mama. You had to have your papa. It’s unfair for you to say that you had something to do with being born the first time. It’s ludicrous. And for you to say, “I got myself born the second time” is equally inanity and ludicrousness. You’ll never get yourself born the second time any more than you got yourself born the first time. Nicodemus asked, “Master, how can a man climb back into his mother’s womb?” And Jesus said, “Nicodemus, no, no, no. A man being born again is like the serpent being lifted up in the wilderness. Whosoever trusts in Him-looks to Him-looks to Him, is born again. He becomes a child a God looking to Jesus-looking to Jesus.” All the work of the Spirit-He brings the fruit; He gives the fruit; He brings all the gifts of the faith that glorify God in heaven. But, I’m saved-I’m born again-by looking to Jesus, by looking to Jesus. That’s the principle. I could never repent enough-I could never repent enough. I could never do enough. I could never cry enough. “I’m miserable. I don’t know how I could ever make it to God. And when I look at all these other people, they’re miserable and they can’t help me. And when I look at all the other faiths, and works, and baptisms, I still don’t know what to do.” But, looking to Jesus, I have peace. Being justified by faith, we have nothing but peace with God, forever, in the Lord Jesus.” I think of Simon Peter as, so many times, typical of us: Jesus, walking on the water, in the middle of the night, and Peter, with the disciples. Jesus says, “It is I. Be not afraid-be not afraid.” And Simon Peter says, “If it is thou, let me come unto thee upon the water.” And the Lord says, “Come-come. Don’t hesitate.” Will you trust God? It doesn’t have to be some kind of tremendous faith. You just have to trust God. “If you want to walk on the water to me, just get out of the boat and walk on the water to me.” And Simon Peter had enough faith-had enough trust in Jesus-to get out of the boat. And he was walking to Jesus on the water. He was walking on the water, going to the Lord Jesus. And while he was in the midst of the sea, he took his eye off the Lord. And he began to look at the wind and the waves. And he was filled with fear and he began to sink, and cried, “Lord, save me.” And Jesus reached to where he was, and said, “Simon, why-why do you doubt? Why do you look at the wind, Simon? Why?” As long as he looked at Jesus, he walked on the water. While he looked at Jesus, there was peace. There was tranquility. In the wind and the waves, he walked on the water. But, when he looked away from Jesus, at the wind and the waves, he was filled with fear and terror. He began to sink into that wave. As long as we look to Jesus-as long as we are centered in the Lord Jesus, there is peace and tranquility. As long as we’re trusting in Him, even if I’m not all right, He’s all right. I may be filled with fear, but the Rock on which we stand never moves. Looking to Jesus-looking to Jesus, we have peace in Him, not in things, not in others, not in the church, not in man, not in creeds, systems, doctrines. We have our peace in the Lord Jesus Christ: “Being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”-looking to Him, looking to Him, looking to Jesus. Looking to Jesus-He’s our all in all. We’ve got to quit. He’s our all in all. Are you in Christ Jesus, who has been made unto us-He’s made Christ for us our wisdom, and our salvation, and our sanctification. “As it is written, let him who glories, glory in the Lord.” “Of him, ye are in Christ, who, of God, is made unto us our righteousness.” I despair of my own. He is our righteousness. “He is made unto us our sanctification.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 22: S. LIFE' STORMY SEA ======================================================================== LIFE’S STORMY SEA Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 27:1-44 05-23-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled: LIFE’S STORMY SEA. In our preaching through the Word, we have come to Acts 27:1-44. In all of ancient literature, Phoenician, Greek, Roman, Oriental, there is no passage like this passage. It is the finest written account of a storm at sea, the voyage of a Mediterranean ship, to be found any where in the ancient literature of the world. And it is not only the inspired Word of God, it is also magnificent writing. It is literature. Now, I will not read the entire chapter though the message today is built on all of it-all of the chapter. But I shall read certain passages, and if you have it in your Bible, we shall designate them by verses. Acts 27:1 : “And when it was determined that we should sail into Italy”-Paul had appealed unto Caesar, so to Caesar he was to go. He was on trial for his life. And he appealed to the supreme court of the Roman Empire. Being a Roman citizen, he had a right to do it. So he is being sent to Rome as a prisoner to appear before Italy, the Roman Empire’s highest court. “When it was determined that we should sail into Italy, they delivered Paul and certain other prisoners unto one named Julius, a centurion of Augustus’s band. And entering into a ship of Adramyttium”-a town-“we launched, meaning to sail by the coasts of Asia” [Acts 27:1-2]. And so they start out. They go this way in order to go that way because of the prevailing winds. Now, let us go down to Acts 27:8 : “And, hardly passing it”-a little island there-“they came unto a place”-in Crete-“which is called the Fair Havens. Now when much time was spent, and when sailing was now dangerous, because the fast” -that is the Jewish Day of Atonement in the fall, and winter time was coming-“and now when sailing was dangerous, because the fast was now already past, Paul admonished them saying, Sirs, I perceive that this journey will be with hurt and much damage, not only of the lading and ship, but also of our lives. Nevertheless, the centurion”-being the highest Roman officer, was in command of the ship, even though he was not a sea faring man, the centurion, the officer of the army-“believed the master and the owner of the ship, more than those things which were spoken of by Paul” [Acts 27:8-11]. The thirteenth verse: “And when the south wind blew softly, supposing they had obtained their purpose,” they left Crete, and sailed out into the open sea. “But not long after there arose against it a tempestuous wind called Euroclydon. And the ship was caught, and could not bear up into the wind, we let her drive” before the wind-[it was] all they could do. Now Acts 27:18 - And we being exceeding tossed with the tempest; . . . And the third day we cast out with our own hand the tackling of the ship. And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after long abstinence, Paul stood forth in the midst of them, and said, Sirs, . . . I exhort you to be of good cheer: for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, only of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God, . . . Saying, Fear not, Paul, . . . Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer: for I believe God [Acts 27:18-25]. Now Acts 27:38 : And when they had eaten enough, they lighted the ship and cast out the wheat into the sea. Then they had taken up the anchors, they committed themselves [unto the sea], . . . And falling into a place where two seas met, they ran the ship aground; and the forepart stuck fast and remained unmovable, but the hind part was broken with the violence of the waves. And the soldiers’ counsel was to kill the prisoners, lest any of them should swim out and escape [Acts 27:38-42]. That was the thing always done. But the centurion, willing to save Paul, kept them from their purpose and commanded that they could swim, to cast themselves first into the sea and get to land: And the rest, some on boards and some on broken pieces of ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped, all safe to land [Acts 27:43-44]. The next day, found it was a little isle of what we call Malta today, just south of Sicily. All of us are familiar perhaps with the poet and with the parable and with the simile and with the metaphor, when we refer to life in sea-faring terms. It is a sailing on the ocean of life. All of us who never have written a line of poetry, who do not go out of our way to speak in parables, who are not given to simile or metaphor, yet we talk like sea-faring, sea-going people ourselves. There could possibly not be a more common nomenclature than that we use in ordinary vernacular when we refer to life as a sea-going trip. It is an ocean experience-launching our little boat on the sea of life, hoping some day to bring it to anchor in the desired port. I say, that is a common parlance and speech among us. On this sea of life we are so often times beguiled and mislead. And when the soft wind-and when the south wind blew softly, when the south wind blows softly, ah, how many times are we beguiled and mislead. The centurion said, “The voyage is filled with light and with fair skies, and with clear nights, and with soft breezes. And the journey will be easy and happy and full of light and laugher and lift and gladness. Come, come. And the master of the ship, the captain of the boat, when the soft south wind blew so gently said, It will be a pleasant journey. The whole way with a myriad sea, with fair skies, no fog, no reef, no rocks, no shoals, no tempest, and no storms-for the south wind blows softly. And the owner of the ship, the man who had the biggest stake in it, when the wind blew softly from the south, he said, The voyage will be one delightful, happy, glad. See the fair haven? See the beautiful journey? Come, let us launch out for the journey. We will be without mishap or accident and dreaded euroclydon and dreaded tempest and awful storm, they will not hit our little boat. Come and let us sail away into the beautiful mirror of the sea, for the wind from the south blows softly. Isn’t it too bad? Right in the midst there stands the preacher of God. He is always standing there. And he is always speaking. And his message is always so grim. We do not like him. We do not like to listen to him. We do not like his words and we do not like his message. This man Micaiah said Ahab, I hate him. My soul loathes him. He never speaks anything but things bad. He never prophesies good. I hate him. And when Micaiah stood up in your Sunday school lesson, when Micaiah stood up and said, And Ahab, you will not come back. Ahab said: You take him and put him in prison and feed him with bread of affliction and water of affliction until I come again in triumph and in victory. And when he came again, they took his dead corpse and buried it and washed the chariot of his blood. Isn’t it funny? They did exactly as old Elijah said, They washed the chariot in the place where Naboth fell under his hand and where the dogs licked up Naboth’s blood and there the dogs licked Ahab’s blood [1Ki 21:19]. Micaiah: I do not like him. I do not like him. Grim preacher of God, I do not like him. He prophesies evil and bad. You see the preacher stands up and he says, Life is not a sailing on mirrored seas under fair skies to some fair haven of a port. The grim preacher stands up and he says, Life is not an excursion among the beautiful island seas of the Mediterranean, following away its creeks and coves and its base. The preacher stands up grim and unwelcome and he says, Life is not some romantic journey, up and down some beautiful clyde or up and down some glorious ride. The grim preacher stands up and he says, Sir, I perceive that this voyage will be with great hurt-the tempest, the storm, the roaring reefs, the sunken rocks, the terrible fogs, the awful driving, raging wind-Sir, I perceive that the voyage is greatly dangerous. And isn’t that true? Isn’t that true? Do you know the sailing of life’s sea, where the boats launch and the soft wind blows, and out in the open ocean the little boat is sailing away? But do you know a life that does not have its euroclydon? Do you know a life where the terrible tempest doesn’t rise? Where the storms do not beat? And where the sun goes out and the stars disappear? You hear the roar of the preacher and the great swelling tide as they cover the rocks and the reef. Do you know a life that does not have its storms and its peril? And you know what? Let us take just a little segment, a little segment, a little segment. Let us start with last Wednesday and go through last Friday-just a little segment of the journey, of this trip. From Los Angeles to Chicago, for six and half hours, last Wednesday, I road on the plane with General Omar Bradley. General Wright as you well know, he was the commanding general of the armies that were thrown against Hitler in Europe. He was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; that guided the course of the Korean War-a five star general. Talking to him so long for six and half hours, I learned a great deal with him, especially since I am a preacher-talking about lots of things. One of the great men of the world, one of the famous men of history-General Bradley. He will be in Dallas in about a week or so from now. Why, you think a man like that, so high, so elevated-five star-they have a daughter, he and his wife. They have a daughter married to a test pilot with three little children. As we rode along on the plane, he said, “Not very long ago, my son-in-law was killed. The jet he was testing exploded and he was killed. And now, in my home,” he said, “my daughter lives and three little fatherless children.” He paused a long time and looked way out into the distance through the windows of the plane. He turned to me and added, “I am an old man to be rearing three little children. Don’t you think? Don’t you think? Don’t you think?” Euroclydon-and the storm, that is life. That is life. Friday, I was walking down the main boulevard in the city of Detroit. There was a woman walking down the street. She had a purse hanging on her arm and a few packages on her hand-beautifully dressed, walking down so happily. I suppose she had been shopping. I do not know what for. Maybe she was going to get married and she was shopping for her wedding day. Maybe she was a young mother and was shopping for her little baby. Maybe she was going on a long trip and was getting ready for a happy vacation. Going down the boulevard, there at the corner of the street where I was, she turned and walked through the boulevard on that one side to the island where the buss and the street car stopped. She walked onto the island and then beyond the island on the other side of the boulevard to cross the street. And down that boulevard a big brand new car was driving at a terrific rate. And I do not know what happened. I do not know what happened. All I know, is I have not gotten over it yet. It made me sick and faint inside. That fast car hit that woman and knocked her through the air and way out beyond into the street, down the street. And we did not dare touch her. You are not supposed to. But it just kills me to see her writhe there in agony in the street; try to get up and could not. Ah, Euroclydon. The storms, the strifes out of the blue of the sky when the wind from the south blows softly. But if you live or die, I do not know. That is life. That is life. I say we take just one little section of it. When my plane was met by a special representative in order to take me to the convention to speak, I was late [and had] given up hope of being able to speak. But American Airlines was nice and they radioed ahead, and had a man right there and my baggage and every thing open and right to the convention. A wonderful man met me, an executive in Detroit of the public transportation system-a wonderful fellow, one of the finest Christians I ever knew. And he has two little children, wonderful children. And a wonderful wife, a glorious Christian wife. Devoted-such a wonderful Christian family. I have seen his children. They were with him. I did not have his wife with him. He just told me about her. He is a younger man than I am, just getting along wonderfully in the city of Detroit. So he brought his wife to see me Friday night. And I shook hands with her and visited with her. She is a young woman, a beautiful woman, and a glorious Christian woman. She is blind. I did not have the temerity. I did not ask why. I did ask, have the temerity to say to her husband, “How long has she been blind?” And he said, “Two years ago. Two years ago.“ When the soft wind blew on the day of their marriage and that they lost their little boat on the sea of life, and a grim preacher stood up and spoke of some of those things I would dare say that they would laugh. It would have been hard to realize. She is blind-blind. Just one other. Just take this little piece out of a journey. The man that took me to the airport Saturday for me to come back to Dallas to preach, that man is a wonderful Christian man. When we got to the airport [he was] physically shaken and changed. You know how you go along right down the expressway and you laugh and talk and you visit? He just drew suddenly still and heavy-hearted. Well, I had to say something; so this was it. He had been to that airport, about thirty miles at Willow Run, about thirty miles to the city. He had been to that airport just about a week before. And you know why he was out there? He had gone out there to the airport to meet the rest of his family. He and his wife had a nineteen-year-old boy that was in school-being educated to be a preacher, a preacher. And the boy took leukemia and suddenly died. And he had been there just a week before to meet the rest of the family for the memorial service for his boy. That is life. That is life. And the preacher says-the preacher stands up and says, “It is not a fair sailing.” There are rocks and there are shoals and there are reefs and there are tempests and there is Euroclydon that comes suddenly, unannounced, unlooked for, unexpected, and it drives the little ship before it. And when those things come to pass, how we reevaluate everything we have ever looked for and longed for and loved in this life. Look at these men. And as the ship was driven, “the third day, we cast out with our own hands the tackling of the ship” [Acts 27:19]. Now again, and when they sought to lighten the boat with their own hands, “they cast out the wheat into the sea” [Acts 27:38]. That was good wheat. Good wheat. Good wheat. The ship was made to carry that wheat. The purpose of the journey was to deliver that wheat. Rome could not support itself and could not raise enough food around Rome to support the imperial city. And the granary of the imperial city was in Egypt. And this was a ship from Alexandria, carrying wheat from Alexandria to Rome for Caesar and his imperial golden city. The ship was made to carry wheat, good wheat. That was the purpose of the voyage. That was the purpose of the trip. And yet, this Book says that with their own hand they took that wheat and cast it into the sea. It was only incidental that Paul was there. That the Roman centurion was there, that the prisoners were there. The purpose of the ship was to deliver that wheat. And yet, the Bible says, with their own hand they took it and threw it out into the sea. They forgot they were traders. They forgot they were ship masters. They forgot they are buyers and sellers. Just one thing in the terrible storm-that they might be saved. Aren’t we like that? When I was a boy, a long time ago, I read a cartoon, “Mutt and Jeff.” Mutt and Jeff had been told that way over the sea there was-there was a country where diamonds were like rocks on the ground. You just went out and gathered them-just picked them up. So they outfitted a boat and went across the sea and there in the beautiful valley, the diamonds were like rocks strewn on the ground. Such a day, such a time, you never thought for, never dreamed of. Only a cartoonist thought that such a thing like that could ever live or exist. So he drew that valley there with diamonds outcropping, just blocks everywhere, and they were all solid diamonds. Well, Mutt and Jeff-Mutt and Jeff gathered all of the diamonds that their ship could hold. [They] filled their ship full of diamonds and were headed back towards civilization. A storm hit the boat. A storm hit the boat. [It] always does. A storm arose and hit the ship, and they were stranded out in the middle of the sea on a little wooden raft. And the end of that picture, those diamonds were on that raft. They were rolling off into the sea, forgotten, neglected, unwanted, uncared for. And in the middle of the raft was Mutt and Jeff dying and thirsty for a glass of water-a glass of water. Isn’t that life? All of these things we moved out for, that we seek to grasp. All of these ambitions and aims, all of those great goals, these things we dream about, trade our life and days for. By and by they turn to ashes and dust in our hands. Who wants them? Who cares for them? And it has been when life is gripping us and the ship is going down, it has been because for that same grim preacher of God. Where is the mariner? Where is the centurion? Where is the master of the ship? Where is the owner of it? Oh, owner of the ship, come and tell us now, what shall we do? And how shall it be? You were the one that said the sea will be as glass. And the wind from the south blows softly. What say you now? Centurion, owner of the ship, scientist, professor, learned scholar, infidel and unbeliever and agnostic, you are the ones that have told us all of this voyage shall be beautiful and fine and wonderful and full of happiness and gladness and joy. And the wind blows softly. And what say you now? The tempest is upon us. And we stand in the peril of our lives what say you now? There is not anybody that has anything to say but that grim preacher of God, who when the journey was started said, “Down the way are the blows reefs and the sunken rocks. Down the way is Euroclydon. Down the way is the wind and the tempest.” You know, right here could I define what a preacher is? What is a preacher of the gospel? This is a preacher of the gospel. A preacher of the gospel is a man who stands on a storm-tossed deck. And the masts are pulling. And the winds are raging. And the sails are blown from their ropes. And nothing, but the specter of the dread form of death and the grave rises ahead. The preacher of the gospel is a man who stands in the midst of the huddled refuge on that sinking boat. And he lifts up his voice and says, “Sir, be of good cheer, for there stood by me this night the angel of God saying fear not, fear not. You do not need to be afraid. Fear not. Fear not.” That is a preacher of the gospel. He stands by the open grave and he opens that blessed Book. And he reads therein, “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe in Christ. In his Father’s house are many mansions” [John 14:1-2]. Who can say that but a preacher? But a preacher? That is what a preacher is. When all have forsaken and fled, when their little knowledge, when their little infidelity, when their little agnosticism has faded like a candle before the sun? The preacher stands on the storm-tossed deck and says, I have heard the voice of God saying do not be afraid. Be of good cheer, let not your heart be troubled. That is a preacher. He has a message when the wind is blowing and the storms assails. So they took the little ship and they let her drive before the storm into a little place where two seas met. And there in the meeting of those two seas, the boat ran aground. And the forepart stuck past and hard in the bank, in the bar, in the sand, and the violence of the waves beat the hinder part and broke the boat to pieces. That happened in a place where two seas met. And the ship was destroyed. And that is a parable lastly of our lives. Finally, the boat in which we make our journey across life’s sea, finally it always runs aground when two seas meet. The fierce pounding tides of time on this side, and the fierce pounding tides of eternity on that side, and those two seas meet on our death bed. And they pound our little boat to pieces. Timber by timber, plank by plank, faculty by faculty, step by step, strength by strength, part by part, piece by piece, the little boat of our lives is pounded to death. My eyes-and I cannot see like once I did, the vision grows dim; and my hearing-and I cannot hear like once I did, my hearing grows difficult and hard; and my strength-I cannot stand up and walk like once I did; the pounding seas are destroying the little boat in which I launched out into the deep. It is then-it is then, that our hearts turn in faith and in trust and in hope to the great God who made us. And to Jesus, our Savior, when our little boat is pounded to pieces, oh, Lord, remember me. O Maker of the mighty deep Whereon our vessels fare, Above our life’s adventure keep Thy faithful watch and care. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great, our boats are small. We know not where the secret tides Will help us or delay, Nor where the lurking tempest hides, Nor where the fogs are gray. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great, our boats are small. When outward bound we boldly sail And leave the friendly shore, Let not our heart of courage fail Until the voyage is o’er. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great, our boats are small. Beyond the circle of the sea, When voyaging is past, We seek our final port in Thee; O bring us home at last. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great, our boats are small. [Henry Van Dyke, “O Maker of the Mighty Deep”]. May we pray. Dear Lord, Holy Savior, even our little children peering into the reflection of this sea of life wonder. And all of us who have grown older, all of us have experienced the truth of this message this day. There is not any life launched on that open sea but that shall meet its storm, shall be driven by the fierce Euroclydon, shall know what it is to be battered and hammered. And some day to us all, where two seas meet, there to find our little boat battered and torn, timber by timber, faculty by faculty. Lord, thank God for the grim, stern preacher. When he tells us of these roaring reefs and these sunken rocks and these violent winds, he is in the a welcome guest. He prophesies of an evil day. He prophesies of age and of death and of wind that breaks. But when the time comes and the lights gone out and the sun is dark, oh, that same preacher so grim and stern, standing among the people saying, “But I heard a voice from God. Be of good cheer.” There stand by us this day, oh, Lord, stand by us in all of the ocean journey, the vicissitudes and fortunes and exigencies, stand by us Lord. Be thou the captain and the pilot of our little craft and bring us some day home with thee. Thank thee, Lord, for the hope, for the assurance, for the precious presence. And now, Master, as we sing our song, some body today give his heart and life and trust to thee. Some body put his life in the church. Send them to us. We shall thank thee Jesus name, amen. While we sing our song some body, you; some body you into that aisle down here to the front, Preacher, today, I give my heart to Christ. Would you come and take me by the hand? Preacher, I give my hand to you. I give my heart to God. Some body you, come into the fellowship of this church, by letter, by baptism, by confession of faith, however the Lord shall say the word, would you, a family of you, a one of you come. Preacher, today my life with the Lord of these glorious people into this church; however God shall open the door and lead the way, while we song, would you come? While we stand and sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 23: S. LIVING IN THE SEVENTH OF ROMANS ======================================================================== LIVING IN THE SEVENTH OF ROMANS Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 7:7-25 09-26-54 Tonight, I am preaching on Living in the Seventh of Romans. And I suppose that means practically nothing to everybody. But, by the time I get through with this sermon, I hope you’ll never forget it: what it is to live in the seventh chapter of Romans. If you will turn with me tonight to the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans, we’re going to read from the seventh verse to the end of the chapter. Are you ready? Rom 7:7 -and you follow it as I read the Book: What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin but by the law; for I had not known lust, except the law said, Thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. For I was alive without the law once; but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, just and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceedingly sinful. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I-I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow mw; for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not; but the evil that I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man; But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man-wretched, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank god through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. That is Rom 7:1-25. There is a whole library-I mean a whole library, literally, about that passage. It is the introduction to one of the great chapters of the Bible. Rom 8:1-39 is one of the great chapters of the Bible. Rom 8:1-39 is the habitat of the Christian. It is the life of the believer in all its high and sublime wonder. But, before Rom 8:1-39 is Rom 7:1-25. And the seventh is the introduction to it. And I say that there’s a whole library written about it-a whole library. And these men who are theologians and scholars and commentators-how vastly do they differ about Rom 7:1-25. Do you know many times he says “I-I-I” here? All through that passage, I-“for what I would do, I do not”-I-I-I, all the way through. Now, just to take the opposite extreme as they try to investigate this chapter in the Book of Romans: the great evangelist and author of a century ago, Charles G. Finney, said that this was a picture of an unregenerated man. It is a picture of Saul, before his conversion. It is a picture of Saul, in the days when he lived under the Law. It is a picture of an unregenerated and unconverted man. And he says that the only reason that Paul uses “I” here is by way of illustration-that it is nothing personal at all. And then, he says, if this seventh chapter is a picture of you, you are unregenerated and damned and going to hell. That’s what Charles G. Finney says about this passage: If your experience is like that of Rom 7:1-25, you are unregenerated. You are damned. You are lost. You never were saved. And you are going to hell. That’s what Charles G. Finney says. Now, another extreme: not long ago, a wonderful theologian and a matchless interpreter of the Bible, A. C. Gaebelein, says that this chapter of Romans is a picture of every Christian. It shows the struggle of the Christian against the presence of soul in his soul and in his life. And those are the two extremes. Now, Pastor, what do you think of Rom 7:1-25 and the picture that Paul has written here? This is what I believe. I believe the seventh chapter of the Book of Romans is a universal experience of all mankind everywhere-everywhere-you-I-we-yesterday-today-in generations past-in generations to come. It is a picture of humanity. And it is an experience, I say, common to all mankind. It was the experience of the Apostle Paul in the day that he lived under the Law. And by works, by ritual, by effort, he was trying to be saved by keeping the Law, and failed at it ingloriously and miserably, and, finally, found salvation in Jesus Christ. He found liberation apart from the Law in the Lord, which is the glorious Rom 8:1-39. Now, it is a picture of you and me, and all of us, before we were converted. We tried and failed and then threw ourselves at the feet of Jesus and He saved us. And it is a picture of all of us who have been saved. There is an internal war-and we struggle and we fight and we battle and we fail. And finally, in Rom 8:1-39, we take it to the Lord. And it happens again and again. You will struggle with it today and tonight, and then again tomorrow. It will not go away. It is a picture of all mankind. It is a universal picture of the struggle of all the people, everywhere: a picture of the saved; a picture of the lost-for I find a law in all of us, and it never ceases and it never leaves. I will never get so righteous; I will never get so holy; I will never get so close to God; I will never get so high up spiritually; I will never get so nigh unto heaven that I will not continue to face this struggle. I find that principle everywhere-and I mean in you all, too-in you all, too. There are no people that I have around me that are holy. We are all sinners-every last one of us. We all fall into mistakes and error. We all continue to commit sins-we all do-we all do. There is just nobody that I’ve ever seen that is so sanctified and holy that they don’t struggle and sin. It is a universal experience of the saved and the lost. It was the experience of Paul-he battled against that thing. This passage speaks of the ongoing presence of the “old man” in the life of the life of the Christian. It is the experience of the young man and the old man. It is the experience of the civilized man, with all of his education and all of his culture. It is the experience of the heathen, whom all the missionaries encounter and to whom they preach the true God. It is the experience of the lowly and the unworthy. It is the experience of the high churchman and the low churchman and the no-church man. We are divided by so many geographical divisions. There are different races. There are different creeds. There are different religions. There are different cultures. But, there is one common factor, one common denominator that is present in all of our lives. And it is this: when I would do good, there is evil present within me. All of the struggles and all of the misery of all the generations are summed up in Rom 7:1-25. However things may be on the outside, and however circumstances may change, I still have to live with myself. And on the inside of me, there is a principle of evil. There is a struggle-and however moral or however intelligent or however cultured or however scholarly I am, that same old me is still there on the inside. A writer one time said it like this: “I locked myself within myself; and there was the principle of evil, destroying myself… .” So Paul says in Rom 7:1-25 : there is a war inside of every man-“and the law within my members wars against the law of my mind, sending me into captivity to the law of sin. Though with my mind-my spiritual highest goals, I serve the Lord, but with my flesh the law of sin.” And those two, Paul says, war on the inside. And that conflict is a universal experience and an ongoing experience and that does not change when you become a Christian. You might say, “Pastor, I’m coming down there tonight and I’m going to give my heart to Jesus. And the devil will no longer be able to touch me. And he will leave me alone. And he will never come to me again. I’m going down that aisle and win that battle forever.” Well, you can come down that aisle, but you will not win the war that way. It will make a difference, though. You’ve taken sides in the war. Oh, wouldn’t it be great if, when you give your heart to Jesus, the Lord would give you a Lamb’s heart in place of your pig’s heart? But, theirs is still the “me” heart. You have not won the war. You’ve just enrolled in the army. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it is. You’re just getting ready to fight. Now, I know that there are a whole lot of people-a whole lot of people-who say, “I’m removed about that. I’m sanctified. I’ve gotten above sin. I’ve had the blessing. I’ve been set aside. I’m holy and removed.” And some of the greatest teachers of all time, like John Wesley and all those all Methodist preachers-every one of them-the old-time Methodists-was a Holiness preacher. John Wesley was a Holiness preacher. He believed that you could get to the place where you did not sin-they believed that you could get to the point where you did not sin. Now, that’s a marvelous thing. That’s wonderful thing. And I would glory if there was a man who could stand up here in this pulpit and preach that he had come to the place where he did not sin-that he had advanced in his Christian life to the point where he could not sin. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? There’s only one thing about that that scares me and threatens me, and it is this: you know, the sin above every other sin is the sin of the Pharisees-the sin of the self-righteous-the sin of the self-proud. It is the sin of the Pharisees, that says to God: “I’m not like other men. They do this. They do that. They do everything. But, I don’t do this and I don’t do that and I don’t do the other thing.” That’s how the sin of pride and the sin of self-righteousness comes into our lives. You think you are better than those ungodly and defiled people on the outside. And you look down on all others, as sinners, when you are above that-you look down on all others. My Brother, I am persuaded that, as long as we live in this world, as long as we live in this life, we live in this body of death. And Paul tells us what’s going on in this Rom 7:1-25. This godly, godly man has written this thing which is at the heart of all of us who have given our hearts to the Lord Jesus and who pride ourselves on the fact that we don’t go out here and live like the world lives-who don’t go out and drink and carouse on Sunday night and Saturday night-we don’t live that way. We’re not like that. But, that doesn’t mean that the principle of sin and evil does not live within us, even within a godly Christian man like this author. What he’s talking about here is that indescribable thing. Listen to him: It is not what my hands have done That weighs my spirit down. It is how sad I feel inside. Don’t you? Alas, they cannot but see in part Because they cannot look upon the heart. But, I can see myself within. And there I find the principle of sin. That spreads its poison through my frame. That’s what therein me to blame. “O wretched man”-of all the tentacles of the Law-why, I’m a good citizen and a member of the church, when you start to get close to God, there is that sin on the inside that made you lust. O God-O God, how far-how far apart we are! And I’ve always felt that, the nearer you get to God, the more you see, in the light of the gospel, that you’re not worthy to stand in Thy presence. “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.” F. B. Meyer said he was out calling on his parishioners when he encountered a washer woman. And he saw out there on the line this beautiful, beautiful laundry-that washing that he put out there on the line. And he complimented her on it: how fine it looked and what a wonderful thing it was-that white wash. And it pleased the old washer woman. And she asked the pastor inside to have a cup of tea. And they went inside and had a cup of tea. And while they talked, the sky clouded up and there came a sudden snowstorm. And when the pastor left, the ground was covered with white, white snow. And the pastor looked at the clothesline and said to the lady, “Your laundry is not that white now, is it?” And the washer woman replied and said, “Pastor, there’s nothing wrong with that wash. Nothing can compare to God’s almighty white.” Compare yourself to another man and you may look pretty “white.” But, if you compare yourself to God Almighty, you will fall to your knees and say, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Me, too. Me, too. And I say: this battle goes on throughout our lives-all throughout our lives. When we think of all the kinds of sins that dog our heels-from the sins of youth all the way up through the sins of pride, self-righteousness and achievement, to the sins of old age, such as littleness and cynicism and criticism and bitterness. You never get beyond such sins. You never get beyond it. There are some things you wrestle with in your youth. There are some things you wrestle with in manhood. There are some things you wrestle with in middle age. There are some things you struggle with in old age. As long as you live in this body of death, the seventh of Romans will be your experience. And these words will be your cry: “O wretched man that I am! Where shall I turn-Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” I can’t really preach about it tonight. I’ll start and then I’ll have to pick it up next Sunday. “O wretched man that I am-wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Long as I live in it-this house of pain, this crucible of sin, I will struggle. “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But, there is an answer: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”-deliverance comes through Jesus our Lord. It is a gift of God, not by strength inside of him, not by education, not by power. It is only by the strength and glory and righteousness of Jesus Christ. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is He that makes the deaf to hear. It is He who makes the blind to see. It is He who made the leper whole. It is He who raises the dead. And He that can do that can touch a man’s life and transform it. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord,” forever and ever. And tonight we ask you to come to Jesus Christ. It is He that can reach into the deepest part of a man’s life and transform him. He never lets us down. He’ll always see you through. And if you feel, “Lord, I’m not equal to this, remember that you are placing you life in His hands.” He will hold you and keep you. Will you come forward tonight? “Preacher, here I come.” Wherever you are, come. From the balcony or from this lower floor, come. “Pastor, here I come, along with my wife and family.” Or, just one somebody-you, come now. As the Lord shall speak to your heart, come now, while we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 24: S. MORE THAN CONQUERORS ======================================================================== MORE THAN CONQUERORS Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 8:29-39 10-24-54 In Rom 8:1-39, this is several Sundays that we’ve been in Rom 8:1-39, and when we begin Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36, we are really going over our heads. We’re going to get drowned in the unfathomable wisdom and riches and choices of Almighty God. This will be the last message on Rom 8:1-39. This morning we stopped at Rom 8:28. And so tonight, we have the rest of the chapter. And now your pastor reads it. And we start at Rom 8:28, because it was on account of Rom 8:28 that the rest: We know that all things work together for good for them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For-(and this is where we pick up tonight)- for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn of many brethren. Moreover whom he predestinates, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, then he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that he is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which, is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And that finishes that section of the book of Romans. Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36 have to do with the problems of the Jews-Israel’s unbelief. And in Rom 12:1-21 to the end is one of practical appeal and exhortation. I’ve chosen a name for the sermon tonight out of this passage: More Than Conquerors. “Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” The people to whom Paul used that word, to whom he wrote it, are accustomed to the use of that word. The conqueror, the triumphant warrior: For the letter is addressed to the capital city of the Roman Empire. And I suppose no capital city in all of the history of the world ever had the place of dominant influence that Rome had in the centuries of the Roman Empire. A tremendous city-a city built by military prowess. The whole thing was largely the result of military achievements. The Roman legions had gone out to the south in Africa and to the east and the west, and to the west into Spain and into north into Gaul and to Belgae and the Germans. And even up into the British Isles. And wherever the Roman Legionnaire went, somehow God in heaven prospered his feat of arms. He was a conqueror. And I would suppose that there was no nation in the world that ever had the succession of military geniuses such as led Rome from one tremendous victory to another. Not one leader, not two, but a century and a session of centuries of them-tremendous military strategists, generals, commanders. Now, Rome came to be an accumulation of all of the prey of the wealth of the pillage, of the entire world. And as they brought back the spoil, trailers of it, wagonloads of it, carloads of it, vast streets full of it, as they brought it back, they usually accorded to the triumphant general a Roman triumph. Do you remember the death of Cleopatra? When Octavius Caesar who later became Augustus Caesar, when Augustus Caesar won Egypt, conquered Egypt, added Egypt to the Roman Empire. The queen of Egypt was Cleopatra. And rather than grace the triumph of Octavius Caesar when he would bring her back to Rome and publicly display her in a triumphal chariot through the streets of the city, rather than endure the shame and disgrace of a Roman triumph she had been experimenting with poisons for many, many years on her slaves. And learned that the finest way to die without any convulsion or heart or pain was to sustain the bite of an asp. So when she lost her kingdom and became the subject of Octavius Caesar and saw that she was to grace his triumph in Rome, why she opened her bosom to the bite of the little slender tenuous snake and so died. That’s why she took her life. All of those great generals, when they came back, went through the Eternal City in a triumphal chariot. And the city echoed to the shouting and the cheers of the people as the soldiers marched by and the Legionnaires stood in front of the plaudits of the whole populace, and the triumphal car bearing the general was filled with flowers as the people pitched them out as he went through the streets of the city. When you go to Rome, you will see several of those great arches. One of them will be to Titus. And it commemorates the destruction of the Jewish nation. And when you walk through the Arch of Titus, on the frescos to the left there, as they often do, is the picture of the spoil of the temple of Jerusalem. That’s the only picture you’ll find in the world of the seven-branched candlestand-candlestick, lampstand, and of the table of shewbread and of the Jewish captives. All of that is in marble on the left. And on the right, as you walk through that Arch of Titus, there in the marble the sculptor drew a marvelous scene. There is Titus, in his chariot, holding the reigns of his steeds. And right back of him is a woman dressed in the beautiful flowing robes of the Roman patrician and she is holding a wreath over his head. And then back of Titus are his triumphant legionnaires. And also he is riding through the city of Rome. They were accustomed to a triumph, to a victory, to the conqueror. And Paul uses one of those words: Nay, in all these things we are huper nikao, nike, that would be the Greek word for victory. We are huper nikao. Or the Latin translation of it would be super vinco. Nay, all these things we are super vinco, huper nikao. All these things we are surpassingly victorious. “We are abundantly, gloriously, triumphant through him that loved us.” Now, just for a moment, these things: We Are More Than Conquerors. To be less than a conqueror is to be a prisoner-It is to be defeated. It is to be chained to the chariot wheels of Satan. Barely to conquer is not really to achieve. In a little turn of fortune would have changed the tide-to win by a hair’s breadth, to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat, just barely to do it. In this season of the year, when we are playing football, to win against thirty-five to thirty-four, why any little old thing could have changed it. The back could have stumbled. The line could have wavered. The wind could have blown a little harder. Or the ball could have bounced in another direction-any little old thing. Just barely to win. That’s not what it is, Paul says, with the child of God and the Christian. In these things, we are abundantly triumphant. We win gloriously. By the score-if you were playing football, the score would be two hundred ninety to nothing. That’s how we win. Or if you are playing baseball, the score would be sixty to nothing after the first inning. Yes, sir! Or if you were running a horse race-not for money-but if you were running a horse race, our horse is clear around the track before the others have got out of the pens. That’s what it is. It is to win. It is a triumph! It is to conquer, gloriously!!! No doubt about it. That’s what Paul says about us. Well, now the reason he says that about us is this passage that I read. He didn’t say that and not substantiate it. He said that as a conclusive. And he has three things in this passage upon which he bases that tremendous persuasion. The first is this: We’re going to win. We’re going to triumph. We’re going to do it gloriously, marvelously, surpassingly. We’re going to do it. Why? Because there is not anything, there is not anything, neither death nor life, nor angels or the powers up there. No principalities or powers down here, not the things that are now, or the things that could ever come, or things up yonder, or things way down deep, nor any created thing of God shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Brother, Jesus saves! Paul says: God is for us. God it is for you. And there is not anything; not anything that can come between you and God. Not anything. Not anything! A lot of things can try; lots of things can attempt it; many things can enter, but they can’t enter in between. The man that belongs to God, and the man to whom God belongs, there is a knitting, a welding, an iron thing, a forged steel of cable-but not anything can break. And that’s his first reason. Could I just add this word before I go to the next one: In no uncertain terms, and I’d like to say tonight, you are not to be afraid of these things. So many times we speak of the holding of God and the keeping of God and the predestination of God and the election of God. We kind of speak of it apologetically in a whisper as though we mustn’t mention that. Oh, brother, my friend in Christ. The Bible is not that way. In no uncertain terms, it sounds out this thing of God and this thing of the choice of God in the election of God and the keeping of God. The Bible rings that note. It sounds that on the trumpet. It is the blessed assurance, it is God that is zealous and keeps us and it is God that will preserve us against that final and opening day. In Rom 10:1-21 now-to say what I was going to say-in John 10:1-42, all of us who love this Bible, all of us read those blessed words. The Lord says: “My sheep, my sheep who belong to me. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and I call them by name.” You’re not just Gidget so and so, like a convict with a number underneath you. Not to God. “I call my sheep by name.” He knows you! He’s got your name, your name. He called you by name! And I have given to them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all; and no one is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand. I and my Father are one. More than conquerors, because of the love of God in Christ Jesus-nothing can separate us, come in between. The second word here: While more than conquerors, why do we out distance the whole field? Because of Christ who is at the right hand of God and also maketh intercession for us! We have an advocate like a man who turns his case over to the best, the most brilliant, the most capable, the most able lawyer that ever lived. And truth is on his side. And when a great, able, learned scholarly lawyer stands before the bar, and in his soul and heart there is great burning conviction this day that I pray for right and of God. You can’t bound or overcome a man like that. The very walls speak for him. The very side of over-righteousness pulls for him. And the very heart of the men listen to him and are for him-his inner conscience. God’s whole created world fights for that man. You have an advocate; you have an intercessor; you have a friend and He’s at the right hand of God. And somehow in the gracious providence of the Almighty, the Lord is disposed. He is gracious. He is disposed to condescend to listen to an intercessor. That’s one of the things about God. It is just a part of the nature of God. It is a part of the character of God. He is disposed to listen to an intercessor, to a pleader. When Moses interceded for his people Israel, God listened to him and spared Israel. When David interceded in behalf of his people, God listened and saved the people. When Job interceded in behalf of his friends, God listened and saved his friends. Yet the Lord God Almighty is inclined and disposed to listen to the intercession of a man, a mortal man. How much more does the Lord God Almighty, the Father listen when Jesus said “But he’s My child. He’s My son. He’s been redeemed by My blood. He’s been justified by faith. He fled for refuge to Me!” What do you think when Jesus pleads your cause? In heaven, remembered in glory, at the right hand of God, you have an advocate who maketh intercession. That’s the reason the book of Hebrews, Heb 7:25 says that, “... he is able to save to the uttermost them who by faith in God come to him, because he ever liveth to make intercession for us.” Now the third: And brother, this is something. We are more than conquerors, I said because nothing can separate us from the love of God. We are more than conquerors because Paul says, ‘... at the right hand of God, stands an advocate who pleads for us and who takes our case. “ Alright, now the third one: We are more than conquerors, Paul says, because we are the eternally predestinated, the eternally chosen, the eternally elect of God Almighty. And that’s the reason we cannot fail. We cannot fail. We cannot be lost. If we were, God’s word and God’s promise would fail to the ground. For whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate... and whom he did predestinate, them he called, and whom he called, them he justified, and those whom he justified, he glorifies. Just a little part of it now, but finally some day, altogether: “Yeah, but Preacher, I don’t believe that.” Well, I can’t explain it and I don’t understand it, but God’s Book says it and thank God for it, whether I understand it or not. What is election? Election is this: I’m going to do it from the Bible and then I’m going to say it in my words: Whom he did foreknow-the Lord God, looking down through the avenue of the years to the end of time and saw us and our fathers and our children through the generations. Whom he did foreknow-God seeing it through the endless ages and the centuries, whom he did foreknow, them he did predestinate. And whom he did predestinate, them in their time and day, he called. I felt that call. Didn’t you, in your day and time? Didn’t you? Something down in your soul and in your heart, didn’t you? Like that old story of the mallard, when those wild geese came over-those native, those indigenous, those domesticated ducks, they just wander around in the farmyard. But when those ducks will fly north and begin to call, that wild mallard who has been caught, he looks up and he tries to fly. And that snap pulled him back. But there was something in his soul that heard the call of the mallard and of the wild. You felt it in your life. There was a day when that thing pounded into you’re soul. “Whom he foreknew, them he predestinated, and those whom he predestinated, he called, and whom he called, he justified.” What does the word “justification” mean? It is a legal term and it means you are declared righteous. God treats you as though you are righteous. You are not righteous, justification means you are treated, you are dealt with, you are accepted as though you are righteous. Not that you are, none of us is-but God looks upon you and treats you as though you were righteous. “And those whom he called, he justifies.” He declares them righteous through the blood of Christ, “and those whom he justified, he also glorifies.” That means our immortal glorified bodies as well as our regenerated changed spirits. Now, I said I was going to say that in my words. This is my word. What is election? Election is this: In view of the foreknowledge of God, what God sees and what God knows, God writes in His Book of Life the names of those what are destined to eternal life. He writes them in His Book! And all of the devils in hell, and all of the powers in the sky, and all principalities in the earth and Satan and his angels and all God’s creation can’t outdo and take out and blot out that name that God has written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. The only thing you have to do is what Paul said, “Make your election and calling sure.” That’s all. Lord, is my name there? Is it had there? Lord, is my name written there? Election: the choice of God. In the foreknowledge of the Almighty, looking down through the centuries, in view of that foreknowledge, He writes in His Book, the names of those who are going to be saved and you can’t be lost, and you can’t be lost! God won’t let you be. Isn’t that a good feeling? Man a-living! When the devil’s after you and he’s got you. When all of the things that can happen in this world and may and do, you don’t need to be afraid, you don’t need to tremble, because the Lord says, “I will see you through. I will keep you. I have given unto you eternal life. And you cannot perish.” Well, look what Paul says here: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Who will do it? And when he says that; he sweeps all heaven and earth: “Who would hand anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Then he sweeps all hell: “Who in hell would lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Oh, and then he sweeps all earth: “Who in earth would lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Who? Who is going to stand up and face Almighty God and condemn and lay to our charge? Who is going to do it? It is God that justifieth! It is God that declares us righteous! It is God! Who is he that condemneth? Who shall say anything to God? If God be for us, who is going to stand up and say anything to God? Aren’t you glad He’s on your side? Ah, what if God were against us? What if the Lord Jesus were against us? What if the Book were against us? What if the testimony and the courts of heaven were against us? What? Aren’t you glad He’s on your side pleading for you? Aren’t you glad you’re in His family, an adopted son in the household of faith. That God is for you? That you felt that call in your soul and you belong to Him-aren’t you glad? Now, I want to say a word about election. And then I have to quit. Can’t stay here all night. I want to say a word about the elected purposes of God. I’m a voice. I don’t make up this-I’m just somebody preaching-I don’t make it up. I just read in the Book. I’m an echo. That’s all. Just saying to you what’s in the Book. That Book there is a record of the elective purposes of God. He chooses Seth. He chooses Abraham. He chooses Esau. No, He could have. But He said, “I choose Jacob. I choose Israel.” He chooses Israel. He chooses Judah. He chooses David. He chooses Mary. And gives her to Joseph that she might have somebody to protect her and care for her. He chooses Simon Peter. He chooses Judas Iscariot. He chooses the apostle Paul. God chooses, and the record of that choice and the development and the outreach of it and the denouement of it and the meaning of it, is in this Book. That’s what it is. And the Lord said, “And thus it shall be.” And sometimes He’ll say: “Thus it shall be a thousand years hence.” But He said it and shall He not do it? And He commanded it and shall it not come to pass? Had it not come to pass, God said it and He will say it a thousand years ahead and it comes. It always comes. This is a record of the elected choice of God. It is His world and He runs it. Alright, let’s take one thing out of the whole Bible. Going to take one thing. The Lord God said to Abraham: “Abraham, thy seed, thy children shall inherit this land. To thy seed and to thy seed’s seed, to thy children and to thy children’s children, shall it be given-this land.” And where are his seed and where are his children? They are in the land of Egypt and they’re slaves. They’re slaves. They are chattel property in the land of Egypt, Abraham’s children. But God said, “They shall inherit the land. They shall possess the land.” And upon a day, in the determination of Almighty God-upon a day, the Lord said to Pharaoh: “Let my people go!” And Pharaoh said, “Not so!” But God said, “Let my people go!” And Israel marched out of the land of Goshen with a high hand. And they came to the Red Sea. And in front of them was the sea and back of them was the flood. But God has determined the seed of Abraham should inherit the land. And the sea could not refuse to divide, nor could Pharaoh save himself. And they marched through triumphantly. And Pharaoh and now they’re in the wilderness. They will famish in the wilderness. They will starve in the wilderness. Not so, no sir! Manna falls from God out of heaven to feed them. God said they shall inherit the land, the seed of Abraham. But they will die athirst. The hot sun will burn and scorch them. No, not so! A rock follows them and out of that rock comes the living stream of crystal water. Yeah, but in that terrible land, serpents shall bite them. In the midst of the camp, a brazen serpent is raised and whosoever shall look shall live. And in that terrible wilderness the Amalekites shall attack them and destroy them. No, not so! For Moses’ hand shall be held up on one side by Aaron and on the other side by Hur and Joshua shall prevail. And in that terrible land, Sihon the king of the Amorites and Og the king of Bashan shall seek to destroy them. Not so! But God shall deliver in their hands Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites and of Bashan. And they come to the Jordan River. And it’s in a flood and they have to stay. Not so, for God said, “They shall inherit the land.” And the flood is piled up from its source and the water rises and rises like a log. And the flood assuages as it runs its course below and the great army of the Lord marches through, following the priests with the Ark of the Covenant. And you have the story of the conquest of the land. God said it. And God determined it. And it came to pass just as God said. And Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36 says that the Jew is going back to Palestine. That he’s going to inherit the land of promise to Abraham, his father. And in that land, the Lord Jesus shall set up a kingdom and He shall rule in this new heaven and this new earth. God said it. It is determined in the courts of glory. And God shall bring it to pass. Preacher, how does that affect me? Every way. Every way. When I feel the call of God in my soul, Lord, here I am. Here I am. Oh, Lord, help me to say yes. Help me, Lord, to respond. Oh, God, from my sight, not from His sight. You see the end from the beginning, but from my sight, oh, Lord, God, put me in that celestial number. Oh, God, from my sight, because I don’t know; from my sight, because I’m finite; from my sight, Lord, oh, God, have mercy upon me. Write my name, Lord, in that Book. How does it affect me? This other way: Lord, if you’re for me and if you have called me, and if you have chosen me, then Lord, I’ll not be afraid. I’ll make it Lord, by Your help and by Your power; I’ll make it. I’ll be there. When the roll is called, my name, when the great rendezvous in glory is gathered, I’ll be in the number. And not anything is going to get me, nothing, it can’t. God won’t allow it. He’s got us and He holds us, and He keeps us. And my salvation doesn’t depend upon me. It depends upon God. I just leave it in His care. I’m just trusting Him. I’m just looking to Him. Oh, God, He calls, and chooses, and saves, and keeps, and justifies, and glorifies, oh, God, into Thy caring, keeping, do I commit my soul and my life and my destiny and the forever that is to come. And then you rest, not in you or your strength, but you rest in Jesus, in the promise of God. He said it. I believe it. And that settles it. Hallelujah. Glory to His name! Praise Him forever. God blessed world without end. Oh, praise to His glory and to His infinite goodness to you and to me. Now, we’re going to sing our song. While we sing the song, if the Lord says to you: “This is your night. I’m calling you.” Will you answer: “Then here I am, Lord, and here I come.” Have you already given your heart and life to God? Have you already trusted Him as your Savior? Have you followed Him in baptism? Into the fellowship of this blessed church. Would you come? Would you come? As God shall say the word and make the appeal, on the confession of faith, by baptism, by letter, by statement or promise of letter, a family or just one somebody. Would you come? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 25: S. NO CONDEMNATION ======================================================================== NO CONDEMNATION Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 8:1 10-03-54 I’m preaching through the Word-last time, the last part on Rom 7:1-25, and tonight we begin in Rom 8:1-39 and Rom 8:1. If you have your Bibles turn to it and we will read it. And then keep your Bible open and we’ll look at some of these things that Paul has written under the inspiration of the Spirit to the churches of God in the earth. Rom 8:1-39 and Rom 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus-there is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” In Rom 7:1-25, he had recorded the conflicts of the inner life of the believer in Christ. Starting up there at the twenty-first verse of the seventh chapter of Romans, “I find then a law, that when I would do good evil is present with me. “For I delight in the law of God after the inward man. “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members”-the conflict-inner-the struggle on the inside of the man who has given his life to God. And then the outbreak, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And then the grand avowal, “I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! With the mind, my inner heart, my spirit, I myself serve the will and the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” You have a chapter heading there and a divide of the verses that is artificial. And when Paul wrote it, by no means was there any such suggestion as a separation between those glorious verses. Every man who gives his life to Christ and follows the will of God shall find himself in a conflict, in an inner struggle, in an agony of spirit. But in our agony, and in our trial, and in the battle of the soul, “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” Conflict, yes, but no condemnation. In the midst of the hottest of the battle we still are justified. And in our agony and in our trial we still can lay hold upon the Word and the promise of God, “There is therefore now no condemnation.” Hit by the devil, dragged at the by the appeals of sin, seared [?] between the upper and nether stones of Satan, powdered and bruised and crushed in the mortar and pestle of the hand of our adversary, we shall triumphantly say, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” All of us who have fled, poor prodigal sinners as we are, find refuge in Jesus. This is our verse, “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” Poverty, yes, but no condemnation. Depression of spirit? Sometimes, yes, but no condemnation. Depression and defeat, weakness, miserable agony, interceding and crying, yes, but no condemnation. “There is therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” And you have in your King James Version a concluding word in that verse, “For who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Somebody wrote that, we don’t know who did it. It is not in the original, it is not in the text. Paul didn’t put it there. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” Period! And somebody who came along transcribing these texts in the years and the hundreds of years ago seeing that verse said, “We can’t let that stand like that, my fellow Presbyterian ministers!” A fellow read that and said, “Why, it is not possible for a man to be saved trusting in Christ Jesus! We better do something else besides what the Lord introduced in the word there. There must be somewhat to offer unto God of sanctity and holiness there.” And back yonder in the years and years ago, a man reading that said, “We don’t believe a man can be saved by just trusting in the Lord, so we will add to it, ‘There is therefore no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.’” Over here in Rev 22:1-21, one of those copyists did the same thing. In the King James Version, which is a translation of the Textus Receptus, you have it translated here, “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have a right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates of the city.” A copyist did that. Here’s what John wrote, “Blessed are they that washed their robes, that look to Jesus, that trust in him. Blessed are they that washed their robes, that they may have a right to the tree of life.” A copyist saw that and said, “That, that can’t stand. That can’t stand. We have got to change it!” So he changed it to, “Blessed are they that do his commandments.” It’s not there. No sir, not according to the book, not according to the Bible, not according to the Holy Spirit-no man shall ever be saved by doing His commandments! And God himself spurns your righteousnesses, as they were filthy rags. If a man is saved, he is saved by refuge, by fleeing to or hiding himself in the Lord Jesus. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” You notice that word “therefore”? You better look at that. A man who put a “therefore” back of what he says doesn’t have to stammer. He speaks with authority. He speaks with certainty. He speaks under the power and usage of the Almighty God. And Paul speaks thus there. “There is therefore”-wonder what that “therefore” refers to? That word “therefore” refers to all of the things he has said previously in this marvelous epistle to the church at Rome. But all of those things that Paul had said in Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Paul is saying that all of the world is guilty before God. In Rom 3:19 he sums it up, “That all of the world may become guilty before God.” Whether a man lives over yonder or over here, whether his skin is white or black, whether he is learned or unlearned, whether he lives rich or poor, male or female, young or old, all alike, we are condemned before God. We’re all sinners in God’s sight. That’s what Paul was saying in the first three chapters of the Book of Romans. And in Rom 4:1-25 Paul was saying that we are saved not by our good works, not by our merits, not by our keeping of the law, not by our working according to the commandments, but we are saved by trusting the Lord Jesus Christ. Rom 4:1-25 :[5] said, “Him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justified the ungodly, the same is committed to Jesus, is counted for righteousness-Jesus who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.” Then in Rom 5:1-21, he says that all of us who have trusted in Christ, have received the covenant of grace through Him, all of us are in Jesus as our federal head. In Rom 5:18, “Therefore, as by the offense of one, Adam, judgment came unto all men to condemnation”-all of us sinners to die, all of us belonging to a mortal race that descended from old man Adam. “Therefore, as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, by the free gift in Christ Jesus, grace and salvation and mercy came upon all men unto justification of life.” These of us who have flown to the Lord for refuge and have found in Him an abiding place, we are one with the Lord Jesus. He is our Savior, our representative, and our champion. For us He kept the law, He obeyed all righteousness. And His goodness and His virtue are imputed unto us. And we cannot be condemned because we are one in Him. In Rom 6:1-23 he described that mystical, that vital, and that living newness that we have in Christ Jesus. And he reckons it in the form of baptism. We are buried with the Lord in the likeness of His death, “That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also walk in newness, in victory, in the triumph of life. “For if we had been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.” We have died with Christ. We are raised with Christ. As Christ is, we are. If He was condemned, we are condemned. But if He is justified, we are justified in Him. We are one in Christ Jesus. And then in Rom 7:1-25, at the beginning he likens that mystical union of the believer in Christ, he likens it unto a marriage. “Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ that ye shall be married to another, even to him which was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.” We are no longer married to the law, no longer married to death, no longer married to good works. But we have been espoused to another. We are the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are one with Him. One flesh, one law, one devotion, one commitment, one eternal and everlasting life. Married to the Lord Jesus Christ. We belong to Him. We are His. Sometimes that oneness of figure is used, the vine and the branch. As the branch is one with the vine, so we are one in Christ Jesus. Sometimes the Lord will use the figure of a foundation stone-as a stone is one with the foundation, so we are one in Christ Jesus. And sometimes the Bible will use the figure of the members of the body. As the members of the body are one with the head, so we are one with the head of the first, the Lord Jesus Christ. If the head can be condemned, then we can be condemned. But if the head is justified, we are justified. If my head is acquitted, my hand is acquitted. No man can be drowned if his head is above the water. You can’t drown a man, by his feet! As long as his head is free and above, you can’t drown him, as long as the head of the body of Christ, our Savior, as long as He is above the storm and the curse of condemnation, then His members cannot be lost, cannot be condemned and cannot fall under the sentence of death. We are one in Him. And through it all-through it all, “There is therefore now no condemnation.” We are all-he is talking about our great substitute and provider, He Who died in our stead. “God commended his love toward us that he while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. “Much more, being justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. “For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. “And we rejoice in God by whom we have now received that blessed atonement.” He died for us that in our stead-and the Lord only needed one death. Just one. Just one. When a criminal is condemned and hanged, or he is electrocuted or in the gas chamber, and his life is forfeited, the law is satisfied. It never demands but one death. And Christ died that death for us. The penalty was paid. I don’t pay it again. The debt is paid. I don’t pay it again. He was our substitute. He died for us. “God commendeth his love for us and while we were yet sinners-under condemnation and under the sentence of death-Christ died in our stead,” in our place. He did that for us! He did it for me, for us. In my reading, Charles Haddon Spurgeon of England and Dwight L. Moody of America, both of the men living in the same generation, happened to come across the same story as their brethren told it. I’ve read it in both of their messages. It is this. In one of the French wars a man’s name was drawn for the battle, and because of other considerations a friend stepped in and took the place of the man. And that friend went into the war, and in the battle he was slain. In the years after, the man’s name was drawn again. And when he appeared before the law, he said, “My name has been drawn, and I went to the war and I was slain. And I cannot be pushed into the service again.” And they found out that his friend had taken his place and had died in his stead. And according to the law, the man was free-he had already paid, he had already died, and he was free. His friend had taken his place. So it is in the condemnation and in the wrath of the judgment of God that is upon our sins. “The wages of sin is death,” and, “The soul that sins shall die.” And who dies? All of us die, or somebody else. I must pay the penalty, or somebody else. Christ has done it for us. He paid our penalty. He took our place. He died in our stead. So, “There is therefore no condemnation, no death, no judgment to be, to them who are in Christ Jesus.” We stand free. We stand forgiven. We stand, we stand freed. We stand justified. We stand accepted in the presence of the courts of glory. “No condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus.” We must take the whole text, “There is therefore no condemnation.” Many they are who would stop, “No condemnation.” Many are they who say, “The Lord is merciful, He would not condemn. The Lord is full of grace and mercy, He would not judge. The Lord is full of compassion and sympathy, He would not rebuke. The Lord is full of good tidings, He would not consign to eternal perdition even the least of His creatures.” Many believe that today, “There is no condemnation in the chapter.” Oh, it does not say that. Jesus doesn’t say that. The Bible doesn’t say that. The Bible is full of the terrible thunder and fury of the Almighty God upon the error and the transgression of man’s sins. From its beginning as in its ending, there are the awful tremblings and judgments of Almighty God on our transgressions. It is a gospel of Satan, it is a promise of the devil, when he whispers in your ear, when he said, “God said thou shalt surely die. Thou shalt not surely die,” Satan whispers if your ear. That’s a false gospel. It is a false hope, it’s an illusion, “There is no condemnation.” Outside of Christ, there is nothing but condemnation! All of us are lost and undone sinners outside of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh those words, Heb 10:27, outside of Christ, nothing left, “But a certain looking for of indignation.” In John 3:18, “He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already-he’s already condemned-because he hasn’t believed in the only begotten Son of God.” And the last verse in that same chapter, John 3:36, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God, the wrath of God, the burning fury and judgment of Almighty God abideth on him.” “There is therefore now no condemnation.” This condemnation is the judgment and the wrath of God everywhere-except one “where,” except one place, except one refuge, except one hope, except one gift, except one place, except one conquering mercy, except in one Somebody. “There is therefore now no condemnation for them who are in Christ Jesus.” We fly to Him for refuge and for hope. We bow in His presence. We look up into His glorious face. We find grace and salvation in Him. And to those who are in Christ Jesus-all in Rom 8:1-39 -and so gloriously and so triumphantly he challenges heaven and it echoes through all hell. Listen to Paul as he says, “What shall we say then? If God be for us, who can be against us?” And again, “He that spared not his own Son, but hath delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Again, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Who’s going to do it, anybody? God justifies them in Christ Jesus. He has said it. We are stammer and stutter, we are feeble and fail, falter, be defeated and be bound. But in Christ, “It is God that justifieth.” We trust in Him and He is equal to God. “It is Christ that died, yea, that is risen again, and he is seated at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. “Who is going to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?” All that we need, all that will save us, all that shall keep us is in the Lord Jesus Christ. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.” When I am in myself, I am in sin. When I am in myself, I am in the flesh. When I am in myself, I am in condemnation. When I am in myself, I am ultimately in the wrath and perdition of the eternal damning of an unending hell. When I am in myself I am lost, I’m lost, I’m lost! But when I am in Christ Jesus, in the Lord Jesus, I trust my soul to the Lord. And in Him, I submit my life unto Him. And in Christ there is no condemnation, there is no lostness, there’s no judgment, there’s no fire, there’s no burning, there’s no wrath, there’s no hell. There is nothing but the promise of the ultimate victory of the glory of God in Christ Jesus. You are saved in Him. You are saved in Him. Eternally and forever, you are one in Him. You are in Christ, “No condemnation to them in Christ Jesus.” As a man in the days of the Flood in the ark, in the ark, as the heavens grew dark and the fountains of the deep rose, and the waters rolled, the ark flowed on the bosom of the deep, and Noah was safe inside, inside the ark. As a citizen of Israel would say, under the blood that awful Passover night when the death angel scrutinized the doorposts and the lintels of all of the homes and families of Egypt, under the blood, under the blood is the life that was saved. He was safe. As Moses was saved in the cleft of the rock. God said, “Moses, no man shall see my face and live.” And the Lord God took Moses and put him in the cleft of the rock and covered him there with His hand while His glory passed by. Fannie Crosby wrote that beautiful song: He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock That shadows a dry thirsty land. He hideth my soul in the depths of His love, And covers me there with His hand, And covers me there with His hand. When the devil says, “You are lost. It is part of the stumbling into the perdition of the fire and eternal judgment.” Could we? Could we? “There is therefore no condemnation, no judgment, to them who are in Christ Jesus”-safe in the hollow of His hand, safe forever, forever. That’s the hope and the promise. That’s the gift of God: eternal life in Christ Jesus. Looking to Him, not to the church, not to the ordinance, not to our good works, not to the keeping of the law, not to obeying of the commandments. Our hearts in Him, loving the Lord, given to the Lord, and all of the rest of the beautiful and precious ways that ought to adorn and embellish the life of those who are in Christ Jesus-it follows beautifully. There you see, there is somebody helping them, somebody keeping them, somebody guiding them, somebody guarding them-if you’re in Christ Jesus. And that’s our appeal to your heart tonight. While we sing this song, while we pray, would you, somebody you, give his heart to the Lord, come into the fellowship of this church. While we sing this hymn, into the aisle and down here to the front and to the pastor. Would you come tonight? “Preacher, tonight I give my heart and my life to the Lord Jesus, looking to Him, looking to Him.” Some of you already saved, already baptized. While we make this appeal, you come and share with us this gracious ministry, the blessed hope we have in the promise in the death and resurrection and the glorious coming again of our Lord Jesus. While we make the appeal, in the aisle and down to the front would you come while we stand and while we sing? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 26: S. OCCUPY TILL I COME ======================================================================== OCCUPY TILL I COME Dr. W. A. Criswell Luk 19:11-27 11-14-54 Now, the reading of the Word is in Luk 19:1-48, the third Gospel. In your Bible, turn to it. It will help you as I preach from it tonight. Luk 19:1-48, beginning at Luk 19:11-27 : And He spake in parables because He was nigh to Jerusalem, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear. And He said therefore, A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. And he called his ten servants and delivered unto them ten pounds and said unto them, Occupy till I come. And that’s my text. But his citizens hated him, and sent a message after him, saying, We will not have this man to reign over us. And it came to pass, that when he was returned, having received the kingdom, then he commanded these servants to be called unto him, to whom he had given the money, that he might know how much every man had gained by trading. Then came the first, saying, Lord, thy pound hast gained ten pounds. And he said unto him, Well, thou good servant: because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities. And the second came, saying, Lord, thy pound hath gained five pounds. And he said unto him likewise, Be thou also over five cities. And another came, saying, Lord, behold, here is thy pound, which I have kept laid up in a napkin: For I feared thee, because thou art an austere man: thou takest up that thou layedst not down, and reapeth that thou didst not sow. And he saith unto him, Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: Wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with interest? And he said unto them that stood by, Take from him the pound, and give it to him that hath ten pounds.’ (And they said unto him, Lord, he already hath ten pounds.) For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath should be taken away from him. But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me. That’s an unusual parable. And it’s not only a parable. Jesus took it out of real life, out of a little page of history. When our Savior was a child in Egypt, in exile, a very small baby, having fled away from the face of Herod the King, that wicked and terrible monarch-while He was down there in Egypt, Herod died and he left his kingdom, the kingdom of Judea, to Archelaus, his son, just before he died. And through all the years before his last illness, in his will he had given the kingdom to Herod Antipas. But just before he died, he changed his will and gave it to Archelaus. Now, when the will was read on the death of Herod the Great at Jericho-when the will was read, the army immediately proclaimed Archelaus as king. But before he deigned to assume the title of a king, he made his way to Rome in order that he might be confirmed in the kingdom by Augustus Caesar. When he went to Rome, there was a deputation of Jews from Judea who inveighed against Archelaus, and among them was Antipas. They said, “We don’t want this man to reign over us.” Augustus compromised, and gave Judea to Archelaus, with the title of an ethnarch, and gave Antipas Galilee and Perea. When Archelaus came back, he slew all of those enemies who had journeyed to Rome to speak against his receiving the kingdom. Now, that happened when Jesus was a child. And through the years of His life, the story, much repeated, became very familiar to Him. So as He passed through Jericho, in the same place where Herod the Great died, in the same place from whence Archelaus had gone to ask for the kingdom, to receive the kingdom from the hands of Augustus Caesar-as He passed through the city of Jericho, He was in the midst of an electric excitement. When He came to Olivet and He entered Jerusalem-that was the days of the triumphal entry. Everybody believed that the kingdom was immediately at hand. Everybody believed that Jesus was to be the Messiah promised of God. All the people around Him, by the thousands and the thousands-they were at a fever pitch. This is the day that John the Baptist had introduced. This is the day of Isaiah and Zechariah the prophet. This is the day of the glory restored to Israel. “Why, this man, Jesus,” they said, “He can take an army, and if anybody is slain, He can raise the soldiers from the dead. This man Jesus can feed five thousand men with just a little handful of bread. This man Jesus can do wonders and miracles. With Him as our Lord and Messiah, the kingdom is certainly at hand.” So that great multitude, thousands around, that great host of people believed that immediately, immediately the kingdom of God was to appear. They felt that this Lord Messiah would defeat the enemies of the Jews. They felt that He would throw off the Roman yoke. They were persuaded that He would restore the lost glory to Israel. And in that electric excitement, in that fever pitch, they were surrounding Jesus, making their way through Jericho on the road up to Jerusalem, to Olivet, down into the Holy City. It was a time propitious and auspicious. In the midst of that, because He was nigh to Jerusalem, the prophesied City of God, and because they thought that the kingdom of God should immediately appear, Jesus spake this parable unto them. And the meaning of it briefly is this: that the King is to be rejected, that the King is going away, and He’s going away for a long time. But in His going away, He’s going to entrust the matters of His kingdom to His servants. But some day He’s coming again. And when He comes again, He will call all of His servants before Him and He will ask them to give an accounting of their trust, of their stewardship. And then, at that final day when the kingdom comes, when the Lord returns, in that final phase, God will reward us according to the faithfulness by which we have been stewards of the trust He has committed to our care. Do you see one tremendous truth here in this parable? The king is to be rejected, and the king is to go away to a far country, and the king is to stay a long time. And in that period of time-we call it the age of grace, this dispensation. We call it the age of the Holy Spirit. We call it the age of the church. It can also be called the age of our stewardship, the age of our holy committal, the age of the day, the time, the era, the dispensation when the King is gone away. And during this time and this day and this age, He has entrusted to our care the matters of His kingdom. And my text, OCCUPY TILL I COME. And He delivered unto those servants the matters of the kingdom, “the stewardship of the mysteries of God,” as Paul calls it. And He said, “Occupy till I come.” In other words, the things that we have are not ours, but they belong to the King. They belong to God, and we have them in our hands for a brief little while. The air that I breathe is not my air. It belongs to God. The land on which we live is not our land. It belongs to God. The stars that shine above us and the sunshine of the day is not our sunshine. It belongs to God. The time of our life and of our ministry is not our time. It belongs to God. This is not our world. This is not our home. This is not our land. This is not our firmament. This is not our place. It belongs to somebody else. It belongs to God. And God said, “Occupy till I come. Until the day I return, I commit it to your care.” And this is the way that He judges His stewards in the day of His coming. When the Lord returns and establishes a kingdom, what kind of a kingdom shall it be? Well, when we think about the coming Lord and the New Jerusalem, almost all of us speak of it in terms of the apocalyptic description of the New Jerusalem. The kingdom comes and it will be a beautiful city. It will have golden streets. It will have gates of pearl, and it will have all of the habiliments and the embellishments and the accoutrements that only God could endow a holy city. And we think of the kingdom of God and its consummation in the form of those beautiful descriptions. I don’t have any fault to find, nor do I seek to inveigh against it. It’s of God and it’s in the Bible. But there is something in that kingdom that I have never heard anybody stress, and I have never heard anybody mention, and it’s in my text and it’s in this parable tonight. The kingdom of God in its final confirmation is far more than a beautiful city. It’s far more than the New Jerusalem. The kingdom of God, when He comes and when it appears-the kingdom of God is a divinely ordered society for a divinely redeemed people. And in that society, in that kingdom that is to come, the Lord God shall have stewards, faithful trustees, faithful men who will reign with Christ in that kingdom. Did you ever hear anybody preach on the text? I never did in my life. Those passages in the Bible, and especially in Revelation where it says, “And we shall reign with Him forever and ever.” We shall reign with Him forever and ever. In the kingdom that is to come, the Lord shall have by His side administrators, faithful trustees, and rulers. And they will have different segments and sections of that kingdom. Like in the government of the United States, you’ll have a great leader, our president. Then you’ll have the governors of our state. Then you’ll have the leaders of our districts. Then you’ll have the judges of our counties. So in the kingdom of God there shall be a divine and holy organization for a redeemed and holy people. And we shall reign with the Lord God. Some shall have ten cities. Some shall have five cities. Some shall have one city. Some shall be lesser in the administration of the kingdom of God. But in this era now, in this time while the King is gone away, the Lord is testing His stewards. If we are faithful in the matters of the kingdom, some of these days in the coming of the Lord, He shall place us in that kingdom, give us a place to reign by His side according to our devotions, according to our faithfulness in our trusteeship here in this world, in the matters that He’s committed to us now. And the king, when he comes back, he calls in his servants, and he says to the first, “How did you do?” And that servant said, “Lord, I took this pound that you gave me, and all that I received, the pound alike.” That’s a picture of the mystery of the kingdom of God. They’re given all to us alike. They’re not just given to me. They’re given to him. They’re not just given to him and to me, they’re given to us. They’re not given just to us, they’re to all of us. All of us receive the mysteries of the kingdom of God alike. All of us have it. It’s our trusteeship. It’s our stewardship. And the lord came to the first servant and said, “How did you do? How did you do?” And that servant said, “Lord, look how I did. I was true. I was faithful. I worked. I cried. I poured into that cause my utmost and my best. And here’s the increase, Lord, look. Here’s the increase.” And the lord said, “Good, good, thou faithful servant. Because you’ve been faithful in this, I’ll make you ruler over ten cities.” And he came to the second, “How did you do? How did you do?” “Lord, I did my best for thee. I was faithful and I was true. And lord, look: I have an increase. Five pounds has gained five other pounds.” And the lord says, “Good, good, faithful servant. Be ruler over five cities.” In this period of time, this age of grace, while the King is away, this is our age of stewardship. And the Lord has placed into our hand all of these things that He’s given us. And someday, when He comes again, He will judge us according to our faithfulness. And the purpose of this stewardship is that God shall develop among us men and women, people, saints who can reign with Christ in that glorious and coming kingdom. Another thing in this parable: a pound. I think the Lord used that purposely. How much is a pound? Oh, a pound is ten dollars, fifteen dollars. It could not be beyond thirty dollars. It was a small amount of money. He gave to each one a pound, a little bit. And when he came back, he asked for a reckoning of that little bit. Why do you suppose he did? He needed the money? Hmmm. He was busted and broke? He was bankrupt? He needed what these people can give? Listen: he had just received the kingdom! Well, what is he interested in, then, about these little pieces of money and how they did? I don’t think the Lord, when He comes, nor God in heaven now-I don’t think He needs anything that we have. Nothing at all. He already possesses it. He says, “No.” He says, “The gold and the silver is Mine.” He says, “The cattle are Mine on a thousand hills.” In the fiftieth Psalm, He says, “If I were hungry, I would not tell thee.” I don’t think God needs our gifts, our money, what little bit we can offer. I don’t think He needs it. Well, then, why the reckoning? Why does he call his stewards here? Why does he look upon how they did with what they had? Why does he want it? I’ll tell you why. It isn’t because God couldn’t do this without us. It’s because God is developing great stalwart Christians among us. God is developing true stewards among us, and God says, “I can’t do that without first testing My people and committing to them these possessions in order that they might grow, and be able to know and to learn and to understand how to use them, and to be faithful to Me, remembering all of it is Mine.” Did you ever think in the Old Testament, the Jew, when he brought his gift to God-did you ever think what became of that gift? Many, many times it was burned up. It was burned up. But it had to be the best that the Jew could bring. And it was burned up many, many times-the finest gifts, the first of the flock, the best of the firstfruits. God demanded it. And when it was brought, they burned it up as a whole burnt offering. Why? God didn’t need the first of the flocks. God didn’t need the firstfruits of the fields. All God wanted to do was that the man be taught faithful stewardship. This thing belongs to God. It’s not mine. It’s His. And this is a token, this is an evidence, this is a mark of my trusteeship. “Occupy till I come.” And the great purpose of God in this stewardship program is not that He needs us to run His kingdom and couldn’t live without us. We don’t complement God in bringing back to Him what He’s given to us. But God does it in order to develop in us stalwart characteristics, that we might learn here to be the rulers in the kingdom that is to come. I read this past week about a neighbor that watched his farmer friend across the way. The man had six boys, and the farmer just worked those boys hard. And his friend came to him and said, “Sir, you don’t need to work those six boys so hard in order to make a crop.” And the farmer replied. He said, “Neighbor, I’m not worried about raising a crop. What I’m doing is raising boys.” That’s the same thing about God and His kingdom’s work. God’s kingdom work isn’t dependent upon us. He could raise converts from the rocks if He pleased. These very stones He could make into children of Abraham if He so chose. But what God is doing is developing us. He’s growing us. He’s making us and He’s committed these things into our care that we might learn how to be true and faithful unto Him. So we look at His stories and at His stewardship. He committed these things into the care of His servants. Let’s see how they fare, how they fare now, and how they’ll fare in the coming day of His kingdom. How do they fare now? Well, whenever I see a church that is faithful in its matters of stewardship, I’ll show you a church where the people are growing spiritually, where they’re fine and strong, where they’re faithful and good. When a fellow brings his tithe into the storehouse, he not only makes it possible to have meat in God’s storehouse, but he also opens the windows of heaven and lets in the blessings that are so full and great and rich that our hearts cannot receive them. Whenever you see a church that’s spiritually decayed, this is the way the church will be run: they’ll have raffles and lotteries and bingo parties and bazaars, and they’ll have a thousand other things in order to raise money for the kingdom work of God. They’ll invite us over to a dinner and sell tickets to the dinners in order to raise money for the church. It’s an eloquent testimony that the people are bankrupt in their hearts, in their souls, in their stewardship. I don’t know how many preachers I run into-innumerable-and they have difficulty with their budgets. They have difficulty with their stewardship appeals. They have difficulty with their monetary programs. Why? Because the people are faithless. Men of God that are true stewards of the mysteries of the kingdom of Christ never fall into those needs and into those lacks. All of it is provided by the servants of the Lord. I say again, not only does the tithe provide meat in God’s house, the care for all of our needs, but it also brings those rich treasures of blessing that exalt the ministry of the church and make it holy in the sight of God. Now, our stewardship here, that’s that. And what of it in the day that He comes? Well, there are three classes of people here that He speaks of in His parable. The first class, the citizens that hated him. Sent a message after him saying, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” “And those enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me.” That’s the first class. There are people who say, “I will not bow my knee before Jesus Christ.” There are those who say, “I will not confess the Lord Jesus as my Savior.” There are those who say, “If you were to preach a thousand sermons and if I were to listen to you all thousand times, I still would not go down that aisle and take the Lord as my Savior. We will not that this man shall reign over us.” Then what in this great and final day of reckoning? Then what? “Then shall the Lord slay them by the word of His mouth and by the rod of His anger.” “Oh, Preacher, but I don’t believe in the wrath of God, and I don’t believe in the judgment of God, and I don’t believe in the perdition of God, and I don’t believe in that final day of awful reckoning.” But God says it. And I cannot but tremble before Him for you and you and you. “I will not have this man reign over me.” And in that great and final and terrible day, it means an awful judgment and a terrible perdition. “Bring those enemies that would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before Me.” That’s the Lord God speaking. Hell is an awful place. Damnation is a terrible thing. Perdition is an unspeakable destiny. And the man who dies outside of Christ, who refused to bow the knee before the Lord Jesus Christ, the man who refuses to have Jesus reign as king over his soul and heart and life-that man some day shall be destroyed in the presence of God. Oh, that tonight, that tonight you might turn, that you might come, that you might confess the Lord Jesus as Savior! There’s the first. The second: there’s a fellow here that came before the Lord and said, “Lord, this stewardship that you gave me, Lord, I kept it laid up in a napkin. I didn’t do anything with it. It was such a small thing, such a little thing. I didn’t think it mattered, Lord, what I could do, what I have. Just a pound, ten dollars, twelve dollars, fifteen, not more than thirty at the most. Lord, I didn’t do anything with it. I didn’t do anything with it. “Now, Master, had I been wonderfully gifted, I would have done something for Thee. Yes, I would. Were I rich like”-and call a man’s name-“O Lord, what I would do for Thee if I were rich like that man!” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 27: S. OUR HOPE IN HEAVEN ======================================================================== OUR HOPE IN HEAVEN 12-12-54 Rom 11:25-32 [sic, Rom 13:11-12] You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled, OUR HOPE IN HEAVEN. In our preaching through the Word, we’re in the 14th -- in Rom 13:1-14. And this is the last message from that chapter. And it is a sermon based upon a text, or at most an aside or remark of Paul that he made as he was discussing something else. As he speaks along of these different Christian virtues and admonitions, he says, in Rom 13:11-12, "In that knowing the time, it is high time to break out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. "The night is far spent. The day is at hand." "For now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. "The night is far spent. The day is at hand." Paul lived almost next door to the other, the upper, and the heavenly world. To him, it was just right over there. Not far away, but close, close by. I can see that in the apostle far more by the inadvertent, unplanned opportunistic remarks that he makes, more than by the theology that he will write. This is one of them. This little aside that he writes here about our Christian living and the Christian virtues that he had just incidentally said, "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believe. "The day is at hand. Therefore, we ought." Could I give you one other? In 1Co 7:1-40 letter as he is talking about home and marriage and life and this world and its fashion. He will suddenly stop to say, "But this I say, brethren, the time is short. The time is short. "It remaineth that they that weep as though they weep not. They that rejoice, as though they rejoice not. And they that buy as though they possess not. "They that use the world is not of using it." "The fashion of it is passing away. The time is short. The Lord is at hand. Maranatha, the Lord is at hand." And that was all through his life. It first began with him on the Damascus road and there was the Lord Jesus. The one that he was persecuting, there He stood. Above the brightness of the Syrian sun, there He was. Just in the road. In the way. It was in his life in Corinth, discouraged and ready to quit and to leave the city, the Lord appeared to him and said, "Not so, Paul, I have much people in this great city. You must stay." It was again in the story of the terrible storm in the Mediterranean Sea that resulted in the terrible shipwreck. While Paul was praying and fasting, there appeared unto him the Lord Who spake to him and said to him, "Don’t be afraid, you are to stand before Caesar and I have given thee also them that are with thee." The other world, I say, to Paul was just over there. Here were the angels. And there was the Savior. And just beyond were the vistas of the golden stairway and the celestial city and the people of God. When he faced his final departure, he said, "My departure is at hand. "I have fought a good fight. I have finished my course. I have kept the faith. "Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give me at that day." And you can just see the Lord standing as He did for Stephen when Stephen was martyred. The Lord standing there to receive the spirit of the great apostle. He was just over the way. Now that is the Christian faith and the Christian hope and the Christian gospel. To us, it is almost incredible that there should be men who renounce such a faith. And who scorn the hope to us that is so dear and precious that it is almost inconceivable to us, unthinkable to us that there should be men of learning and scholarship, men of thought and academic achievement, men with philosophical insight, men of learning, that they should scorn and ridicule such a presence to us. And yet, through the centuries, that has always been true. They’re not all mad men either. They’re not all fools or fanatics who reject this conception of God, of Christ, of immortality, of heaven, of the hope to come. They are learned men and wonderful men, many of them. For example, one of the strangest text in the Bible to me is this, in Mat 28:1-20, the Lord gave word to His disciples. Now, His disciples, He gave word to His disciples that He would meet them upon a certain mountain in Galilee. There would they see Him. But He was raised from the dead, He appointed that rendezvous up in Galilee. Now, in this Bible it says, "Then the eleven disciples went away in Galilee, into the mountain where Jesus had appointed them." And in 1Co 15:1-58, we found that there were five hundred of those brethren. Not only the eleven, but five hundred of them. "And when they saw Him, they worshiped Him. But some doubted." That text, "But some doubted." There on that mountain, appointed of the Lord was the raised, resurrected, immortalized, transfigured Lord Jesus Himself. And yet, as they stood there and looked at Him and talked to Him, there were some of His own disciples who did not receive it. They didn’t believe it. They doubted it. Though there the Lord Himself stood before them. Then how much more down through these centuries are there those who scoff and scorn and ridicule the idea of immortality of heaven and of the hope we have in Christ Jesus. Now this morning this message follows this kind of a turn. Of an outline. We’re going to look at these men. They shall be typical. We’re going to look at these men who through the centuries have scorned and ridiculed, scoffed and sarcastically spoken of the hope we have in God. Then we’re going to look at some who have embraced that faith and have confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth. Now, to begin with. Those who have rejected the idea of immortality, of a heaven to come, of a world that is yet to be. First of all, in the days of the Lord Jesus Christ, they were called Sadducees. The Sadducees were pragmatists. Practical results were the criteria of all truth. In the coin of the realm, everything had to be changed. And if it were not something that could be handled and held, if it was not something to be possessed, to further one’s cause or pleasure or joy, then it wasn’t. That is the Sadducees. And they ridiculed the idea of immortality, of a heaven, of a resurrection, of an angel. Of any of the spirit world. And they had a stock story. And with that stock story, they annihilated their enemies. The story is one that you already know. According to the levirate marriage, if a brother died and he had no child, lest his family perish and the tribe perish from the earth, why his brother must take his wife and raise up seed, raise up a son to him. So their stock story. There was a brother who had a wife and he died having no child. So the second brother took her and then the third, and then the fourth, fifth, sixth and the seventh. All seven brothers were married to her. And they all died, the seven. And then finally the woman died. And then the Sadducees drove home their barb of sarcastic ridicule and unbelief. Now, in the resurrection whose wife shall she be for all seven had her? Ho, ho, ho. And with that story, they annihilated their enemies. Those are the Sadducees. In the days of Christ, they laughed and scorned and scoffed at the idea of a resurrection and a life to come. In the days of the Apostle Paul, typical of those whom he met were in Acts 17:1-34, the Epicurean and the Stoic philosophers, they listened to Paul in the Agora, in the marketplace as he spake and they were enticed, intrigued by the gods -- plural, that he preached. For Paul was preaching Iesous and anastasis. Iesous was plural anastasis was feminine. Iesous, "Jesus," anastasis feminine, "resurrection." And they thought he was preaching a strange pair of male and female gods that they had never heard of before. They heard of Jupiter and Juno. Of Adonis and Venus. They had heard of Osiris and of Zeus. And they had heard of many combinations of gods. But they never had heard of Iesous and anastasis. So they took Paul and put him in the center of the court of the Areopagus and said, "What is this strange doctrine and these strange gods?" So Paul stood there and when he mentioned the resurrection, they laughed at him and some of them being more courteous said, "We’ll hear thee again," and bowed out. They were the Epicurean and the Stoics. The Epicureans were philosophical hedonists. They sought the criteria of all life in pleasure and happiness. The highest good is happiness. One of their stock mottos was, "Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die." They had the atomic theory of the universe. Of this materiality was made out of coarse atoms and the soul was made out of finer atoms. And in death and dissolution, why the body would go back to the coarser atoms and the soul made of finer atoms would go back into space. And those finer atoms. And to them, the idea of a resurrection was ridiculous and funny and silly and laughable. So the Bible says when Paul preached the resurrection, that the Epicureans laughed. They just laughed out loud. It was funny to them. It was silly. It was inanity. The Stoics were more courteous. The Stoics, "We will hear thee again on the matter." And they bowed away. The Stoics were pantheists. That is, everything is a manifestation of God. And God is everything. And there is a world soul. And to the Stoic; when one died, he was just enmeshed again. He was dissolved again into the great world soul. So pantheism. And that there should be a resurrection of the dead to the Stoic was intellectually untenable. So when Paul reached the resurrection to the Stoics, why, he just bowed graciously and courteously, "We’ll talk to you again." And left. Now, he had one other in the Bible here in the day I say of Paul in the 2 Timothy letter, Paul says here of these who have heard of Hymenaeus and Philetus concerning the virgin birth saying that the resurrection is passed already. "And they have overthrown the faith of some." That is, they were spiritualizers. They took the resurrection and said, "Why, that’s already done. That’s already past. A man is resurrected when" -- and in those days they had sophists who went everywhere and tried to induct the people into the agnostic life. Into the mysteries of all true knowledge and truth and they would say, Hymenaeus and Philetus, that "the resurrection is a spiritualized matter. It refers to the -- refers to the inward man. It refers to his initiation of the mysteries of the divine knowledge of which we will tell you for a certain price." "The resurrection is past. That’s something that a man has gone through when he is initiated into the divine mysteries." Well, in the days of Paul, they scoffed and laughed at the doctrine of a resurrection. Now, in the days of the early church fathers, there was a brilliant Platonist, a philosopher by the name of Celsus. And he lived say, somewhere to 150 to 180 A. D. And there is no argument, there is no argument brought against Christianity, ancient, medieval or modern that was not brought against it by Celsus. Origen is the one who answered what he says. He did it at the instigation of Ambrosius who said, "This man, Celsus, is a power in the world. And he must be answered." And you will find in Celsus arguments against Christianity that are as new as the argument you’ll find down here in this Fifty-Five Theater about a week ago, when the play ridiculed and scoffed at the Bible, the Word of God. Now, the days passed. And we come to the days of the great Reformers. Shakespeare refers to -- he uses an adjectival form also. Machiavellian. Machiavelli was Florentine statesman. And his most famous work is The Prince. And his model in The Prince is most infamous scoundrel of all history, Caesar Borgeia. And his thesis is that any means, however treacherous and murderous and unpardonable and unspeakable is justifiable for a ruler to hold in subjugation his people. Machiavellian is an adjectival form of his name that refers to anybody who is treacherous and crafty and unscrupulous. He is a Machiavellian. Now, I say what brings it to my mind. The greatest preacher of the medieval age was Savonarola of Florence. And there never was a flame that burned and shined like Savonarola. He was a monk who was a burning star of the Reformation. And there in the great Duomo, that vast cathedral you will see in Florence today, he stood there and preached the Word of God. And he did it powerfully, wonderfully and the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, Savanarola. Now, Machiavelli went to hear Savonarola preach time and again. And he would stand there. They don’t have any pews in those ancient churches. People stood up to hear a man preach. Machiavelli would stand there and he’d listen to the great Florentine Savonarola. And as he stood there and looked at him and listened to him; he did so with a smirk, with a smile of irony and sarcasm on his face. To him, the doctrine of truth, of virtue, of righteousness, of immortality, of a heaven to come, was inanity. It was ridiculousness. It was silliness. And no man of intellectual bearing or stamina or strength or achievement would ever embrace such inane and childish fancies as that. And so as he stood there, and listened to Savonarola, he laughed and he smiled sarcastically. Now, let’s come on down to our modern day. In our day, there have developed three tremendous philosophies that have overrun and overturned our world and plunged it into tremendous, tremendous sorrow and present fear. And the men, the men who brought about those philosophical concepts, those men were contemporaneous. They lived at the same time. One of them was named Friedrich Nietzsche And the other one was named Karl Marx. And they were contemporary. And both of them were Germans. Friedrich Nietzsche devoured avidly the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. And he developed a system. He developed a concept of life, a philosophy of life that went like this. He said the degradation of the German people were due to the Judeo-Jewish Christian tradition. He scoffed at democracy. He laughed at the Christian virtues of care for the weak and philanthropy and alms for the poor. And he developed a doctrine that war was to be coveted and sought after because it proved the might of the mighty. And would ultimately produce the super man. And his philosophy was inculcated in the “Iron Chancellor” of Bismarck. And finally, in Kaiser Wilhelm II. And again in what we know today as Fascism. The doctrine of the super man. There are people, Prussians, Friedrich Nietzsche would say, there are people, Prussians, who are ordained to rule the world. They are a super race. They are super men. And the way to prove their right to rule, is by conquest and by triumph. Now, before you could ever succeed in teaching a people a doctrine, a philosophy like that, you must do away with the Christian faith. You can’t believe in God and in Christ and in humility and meekness and in care for the sick and the poor, you can’t believe in that and at the same time believe in the march of a super men. So one of the first things Nietzsche had to do was to do away with the Christian faith. I just want to quote from Nietzsche from his, The Will To Power. Listen to him. "I have searched the New Testament. All its cowardice. All of its closed-eye self delusion. Christianity is a typical form of decadence and moral sulfanny [sic] of hysteria amid a general hodgepodge of races and peoples that had lost all aims and had grown weary and sick. "Christianity is a degenerated movement, consisting of all kinds of decay and extra-mental elements. It is opposed to every form of intellectual movement, to all philosophy. It takes up the cudgels for idiots and utters curses upon all intellect." That’s Friedrich Nietzsche. And he inculcated that in the German mind. In the come German universities. In the German king. In the German Fuhrer. And the result was the Fascism, the Nazism as they call it there, that plunged us in to utter grief and the World War II. Now his contemporary was Karl Marx. And I need not expatiate and neither will I take time, because you already are familiar with the doctrines of Karl Marx. The doctrines of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and Jaures, their doctrines resulted in what you know today as communism. And the by-word of communism toward our faith is this, that religion is the opiate of the people. That is the purpose of the minister and of the church is to lull the people and to make them satisfied with their poverty and misery, promising them pie in the sky by and by. And communism could never succeed and never will until first, faith in God is destroyed. That’s the reason that it has to war against the church. To live it must annihilate faith and religion. That is communism. That is the doctrine and the philosophy of Karl Marx. I have in my study at home, I have a cartoon out of Russia. Down here below, are the churches and the ministers of Christ and the Bible all destroyed and in an upheaval. There is a great ladder in the cartoon, way high and it leans against the cloud. And on top of that cloud on the ladder is a workman, a Russian workman, and he has a hammer in his hand. And the hammer is upraised and before him, above the cloud are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. And the caption underneath says in Russian, "As we have destroyed with this hammer God on earth, now we shall destroy God in heaven." That is communism and the teaching of Karl Marx. Now, there is one other in our day and in America. In America we have developed the doctrine of materialism, of secularism. And as an exponent of that, I have taken a man who has died because I don’t want to speak of anybody living. I have chosen Clarence Darrow. I have chosen Clarence Darrow maybe personally because, I was always intrigued by that lawyer. I used to read about him in the paper. I used to follow those trials that he -- that he tried to champion maybe somebody that ought not to be championed. But he was a wonderful man. When he wrote The Story of My Life, I bought it immediately and I read it and I devoured it. Clarence Darrow was the epitome, the personalization of modern secularism, of American materialism. And I quote from that book, The Story of My Life. "If there is one scrap of proof that we are alive after we are dead, why is not that scrap given to the world? Certainly, under all of the rules of logic, the one who assumes and apparently a dead person is still alive to be able to produce substantial proof, not only is there no evidence of immortality, but the facts show it is utterly impossible for us that there should be a life beyond this on earth. "The whole conception of immortality and heaven is too illogical. Absurd and impossible to find lodgement in any healthy brain...." Clarence Darrow. Well, they seem so final and they seem so conclusive and that’s, that. But somehow, it isn’t that. Somehow there is more to it than that. Pity him who never sees God beyond the cypress trees. Who hopeless, lays his dead away. Nor ever taketh time to pray. There is more than that. Well, what more then? We’re eager to hear and to know. What more? This more. Somehow, however you think, however you study, and however you try, somehow to explain Jesus away is an intellectual task that I think is beyond the grasp, the achievement of any philosopher that ever lived. Just Jesus. The fact of Jesus Christ. How do you explain away a life like the life of our Lord? How do you explain away the words of our Lord? How do you explain away the lift and the hope and the joy and the light that have come into the world wherever Jesus Christ has walked? Somehow, our world has not been nor will it ever be the same again since the Lord Jesus lived and died in it. And however you may think or write, or whatever the philosopher may say, there He stands, His cross, His life, His resurrection, His ascension, His promised return. And He grows greater. He fills the whole horizon. It is in earth. It is in heaven. It’s in the sky. It’s in life. It’s in death. Somehow, to explain away the fact of Christ is an impossible intellectual attainment. Again, I say, there is something more to it than that. Again, in the roll call of the faith, the saints of God through the years and the centuries, their lives are at large on your pages of history. They are men who fashioned government. They are men who wrote great literature. They are men who spake great words. And they were inspired by the holy, lowly, meek and humble Nazarene. When Julian the Apostate tried after Emperor Constantine to pull the Roman Empire back away from the cross into the pagan religions, dying on a battle field, the Julian the Apostate said, "Thou, O Galilean, Thou hath conquered." And he said, "Truth," he said, "truth, the lives of these saints, all through these centuries comes down to us like a song. Like a shaft of sunlight. They color our world. They lift it up. They sanctify and halo our days." God’s children who have loved and followed in the train of the Lord Jesus Christ. Another fact. Another fact. The tremendous blessing that the Christian message and the Christian faith are to those who live in a dark country. Whose minds and whose hearts are filled with all of the ignorance and superstition that comes from religions and from civilizations and from cultures that have not been introduced to the faith and the culture of the Lord Jesus Christ. I sat in a home of a missionary in Hiroshima in Japan. And while I was there, their Japanese teacher came. He was a very scholarly, precise Japanese gentleman. And he was teaching the missionary and his wife the Japanese language. And after the lesson was done and he was gone, I was much interested in him. He was so smart and so gentlemanly and he was so nice and precise. He much interested me. And so I asked if he were a Christian yet and how come he to be a Christian and this was it. First he was a commander of the ship in the war and was interdicted from having any office in Japan by General MacArthur because of his military background. And the way he became a Christian was this. He first was in the Japanese army in the war against China. And after the war was over and his contact with missionaries, he said, "When I went with the Japanese army. Wherever the Japanese army went, there was rapine and rape and violence and bloodshed and war and hatred and greed and death." But he said, "In China, place after place after place, I followed and saw the work of the missionary. And whenever the soldier of Christ goes," he said," there was the church with a spire pointing up to heaven. And there was the orphan’s home and there was a hospital. And there was the school. And there were the people of God." And he said, "The contrast was so great and so violent, I could not escape this ultimate and final conclusion. I embraced the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ." I cannot escape that fact either. Wherever the gospel of Christ, in truth and in earnestness is preached, there you will find the people lifted up. The children are cared for. The sick are remembered. The poor are mi ======================================================================== CHAPTER 28: S. OUT OF TRIBULATION, HOPE ======================================================================== OUT OF TRIBULATION, HOPE Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 5:3-4 08-01-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. And this is the Pastor, bringing the morning message-which is the evening message. I just refuse to get in a rut. Every time they set this program, they say, at the morning hour, he’s going to preach such and such. And the evening hour, he’s going to preach such and such. And you would think by that that I prepare a sermon for the morning hour and another kind of sermon for the evening hour. Well, I don’t do it. I prepare as earnestly and faithfully for the evening hour as I do at the morning hour. So, today, I’m going to preach the sermon for the evening hour right now. And this morning’s sermon, I’m going to preach tonight. And the invitation will be either one you entertain. This was the morning text: “Therefore being justified by faith”-In our preaching through the Bible, we’re in the fifth chapter of Romans: Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And that’s the morning sermon. This is the evening sermon: And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope. And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. And the announced sermon for tonight was: “We Glory in Tribulation.” And if I could turn it a little bit, I’d like to title it: Our of Tribulation-Out of Sorrow-Hope. Rom 5:3-4; Rom 5:1-21 -I read the text again: And not only so; but we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope. And hope maketh not ashamed; because of God… . In Phillips’ translation, in his unique and wonderful volume, Letters to Young Churches, he translates that passage like this: Sorrows and troubles brings about patient endurance. This, in turn, develops a mature character. And a character of this sort produces a steady hope-a hope that will never disappoint. And Weymouth translates that same passage in Romans like this: We exult in our affliction, knowing that affliction produces endurance; and endurance, rightness of character; and rightness of character, hope; and this hope never disappoints. And then, I wrote out here a literal translation of that Greek passage. It’s not beautiful when you write it out literally, like the published translations. But, taking those Greek words literally, one right after the other, this is it: We rejoice, or we glory, or we exult in tribulations-you could translate it “hardships, sufferings, troubles”-knowing that trials and troubles produce constancy-or fortitude or patient endurance-and constancy produces veteran character-that is the character of a veteran, as opposed to a raw recruit; and veteran character produces hope, which never disappoints. Isn’t that a strange thing: out of trials and tribulations, endurance; and out of endurance, maturity of experience and character; and out of maturity of experience and character, hope? But, we’re leaving out the middle of it: we exult in trials and hardships and tribulations for, out of these, come our great hope. Now that’s the opposite-that’s contradictory to everything I ever thought for and everything that this world has ever thought for. Isn’t that the way of the world: we have hope when things are favorable, when things are propitious, when things are getting better, when things are looking up? In these favorable circumstances-in these fortunate situations, we have hope. In the thermometer of our emotional experience, we are happier; we are gladder; we are lighter, when things are going better-when everything is propitious. And out of these favorable circumstances, people have hope. Now, that’s the world. This, in Paul, is the diametric opposite. When things are unfavorable; when they are unpropitious; when things are dark-within the days of our trials and our troubles, says Paul, that we have our great hope-just the opposite, just the opposite. Isn’t that strange? Isn’t that different from anything you ever heard of in your whole life? And the secret of that difference is the heart and the essance and the nature of the Christian faith. And it is my proposal today that that heart and that essence and that nature is emotional. I can remember that, for the last 30 years, for the most part-I can remember its development most distinctly. And as I review it, there has been tremendous and unbeleivable change in the outlook and the attitude of the people of the world and especially here in America. I was eight years old in 1918 and I remember the blowing of the whistles and the ringing of the bells. I remember the rejoicing from one side of the continent to the other. The armistice had been signed and we had won the War. Not long after that, the peace pact was signed, implementing that victory. It was a war to end wars. It was a war to make the world safe for democracy. The world had a new stage and a new hour and a new hope. The future was great and glorious and beyond compare. Not only had we won the war, and not only were the opportunities that lay ahead rich and glorious indeed, but there a flood of new inventions, a flood of new discoveries, a great world of wonderful new things in our lives. The biological and medical frontiers were pushed back greatly. In physics, in mechanics, in technology, in astronomy-on the seas, in the skies, on the earth, underneath the earth-everywhere, there were new horizons. These discoveries brought optimism home to the whole world. I can remember the great psychologist, Koch, who came over here and was lecturing. And all of us were taught to say-you remember it: “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.” And that outlook was typical of the bright attitude and spirit of optimism of the entire world. The future was to be better and better. And it was brighter and brighter in prospect than anything the world had ever known heretofore. That spirit of brilliant optimism entered into all of our school lives. The professors laughed at the idea that we might ever need God. That was an old medieval superstition that we had grown beyond. Humanity had gotten beyond all that theological baggage. Not only did you find that doctrine of inevitable progress, a corollary-an addendum to the accepted notion of evolution-that things were just going up and going on and going forward, we were headed fort he kind of time that we had never known before, but along with that spirit of optimism and inevitable progress, there was a university professor, was found in the teaching of philosophy. It was also found in the pulpit. All of the modernist preachers also preached of the inevitable progress of man and human ingenuity and ability. That was the period of the roaring ‘20’s, as I remember it. Hope? Everyone had hope. It was the propitious hour, headed for a golden state. Then, the ‘30’s came. That’s when I began my ministry. What a time that was. The “Stock Market Crash” was a phrase-and I was just a boy, in my teens-and I didn’t quite know what it meant, until I caught on to the business world, and it affects all of our lives, with its economic rise and fall. I remember the first town in which I had my first pastorate. I remember talking to a man, walking over there and talking to him. He said, “I don’t know what’s going on. I can’t sell my goods-I can’t sell my goods.” None of the stores or workers could sell their goods. I went out and visited with a bunch of cotton farmers. And they couldn’t sell their cotton for even five cents a pound. And that was the beginning of what you know as “the Great Depression.” Out of that Depression arose two sinister, and terrible, forces. One of them was called Communism. The other, its opposite, was called Fascism. And with one of them on the east of us and the other on the west of us, we soon found ourselves in another world conflagration. And the ‘30’s ended. Then, the ‘40’s came. And when the ‘40’s came, America was plunged headlong into that great holocaust. And as we entered the War, that led to the beginning of the atomic age. Hiroshima was absolutely destroyed by an atomic explosion. And a few days later, Nagasaki met the same fate. In the wake, the prince and the rulers of imperial Japan took it upon themselves to sue for peace. And in the explosion of that atomic bomb, America won the War. But, a strange thing happened. Ever since that day, there is an undercurrent in all our statecraft. There is an undercurrent in all our international relationships. There is an undercurrent in all the editorials and all the commentations and all the discussions. In all the current literature, there’s a disillusionment; there’s an echo; there’s a sounding-somehow, ever since we exploded that bomb over Hiroshima, there has been an lingering fear, an uneasiness in America. Do you remember Pliny the Elder? He ended every speech in the Roman Senate with a famous appeal: “Carthage must be destroyed.” And soon Carthage was destroyed. The Romans razed Carthage to the ground. And at the moment Carthage was destroyed, Poleubius, the Roman historian, was there with Pliny the Elder. Pliny said, “It is a glorious moment, Poleubius. But, I have a foreboding. I hear that the same flame may someday destroy my own country of Rome.” Five years later, the hordes were storming the gates of Rome. Who could believe that Rome, built up by the conquest of the entire known world, could fall? But, it would happen very soon. Though we have not been party to it, it has happened to England and France and Spain. On the other side of the world, there are millions and millions who have lived under tyranny. In Africa, in India, in the Orient, in China, in Indonesia, the people are terribly exploited-instruments of self-aggrandizement-and it has hardly been noticed by people in the West. We’re not interested in their souls, in their salvation. We’re not interested in their lives. And they’re being exploited. The Americans, the British are just not interested in these people-people we spit on. Our economists, our politicians, just exploit them. The Western world does not care about the poor, the uneducated, the ignorant, the untaught. And I read to you the immortal words of Edwin Markham, in his poem “The Man and the Hoe”: Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, The emptiness of ages in his face, And on his back, the burden of the world. Who made him dead to rapture and despair, A thing that grieves not and that never hopes, Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox? Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw? Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow? Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave To have dominion over sea and land; To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; To feel the passion of Eternity? Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns And marked their ways upon the ancient deep? Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf There is no shape more terrible than this-- More tongued with cries against the world’s blind greed-- More filled with signs and portents for the soul-- More packed with danger to the universe. What gulfs between him and the seraphim! Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades? What the long reaches of the peaks of song, The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose? Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop; Through this dread shape humanity betrayed, Plundered, profaned and disinherited, Cries protest to the Powers that made the world, A protest that is also prophecy. O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will you ever straighten up this shape; Touch it again with immortality; Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes? O masters, lords and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon with this Man? How answer his brute question in that hour When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores? How will it be with kingdoms and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world, After the silence of the centuries? [Edwin Markham, “The Man with the Hoe”] And I think back to the “Roaring ‘20’s”-and I think back to the professor and the pulpiteer and the statesman and the politician and the commentator and the editorial writer and the whole world that was confident of the coming golden age and the shallowness of their optimism. Then, there is the opposite view: we’re just cannon fodder anyway. So, “Three cheers for everything” and “three cheers for nothing.” One of the men in our city was told, “If you don’t stop drinking, you’ll die.” Then he was told by a friend, “I see you’ve gone back to drinking.” The man answered, “I drink because it’s not worth living.” Underneath-underneath, there is a spirit of defeat and despair and fear of what lies ahead. But, we still follow the emotional thermometer. When things are happy, we are happy. When things are propitious, we are propitious. We’re like a weather vane. When the winds of the circumstances of life blow in a favorable way, we go that way, too. But, when the thing goes down, we go down. When things aren’t propitious, we lose heart. When things are uncertain and full of fear, we cringe and are afraid. Oh, oh. What a difference. What a difference. Out of tribulation, out of hardship, out of suffering, out of despair arises our hope. That’s an autobiography there. He’s talking out of his own life experience. Five times, he says, “I received forty stripes save one.” Many times was I beaten with rods. I was stoned and left for dead. I was in peril from my countrymen, from robbers, from the sea, perils in the wilderness. I went through suffering and hardship and trials and I developed a hope-a hope-a hope. You know, you never can forget that Paul, in a prison epistle, in the Epistle to the Philippians, said: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, always rejoice.” He said that in pain and in prison. How can I ever forget? He was in prison and it was out of pain and despair and heartbreak. Out of these comes our hope-our hope. And not only so, but we glory in trials and troubles because they work endurance; And endurance works mature experience; and mature experience produces hope that never disappoints. Fortunate circumstances may last for a day and then be gone. Difficult circumstances may last for a year and then are gone forever. The rise and fall, the trials and trouble produce in us a hope that will never disappoint because-because the love of God is in our hearts through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Our hope is not tied to our circumstances and our economics. It is grounded in the trials we face and grow through. That kind of hope from God will never disappoint, no matter how much suffering and tribulation you face. The prophet said, “The Lord will receive the praise of his people.” The Psalmist, in Psa 42:5, says: “Why are you cast down, my soul? And why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God… .” In the Book of the Hebrews: “God, who could swear by none greater, swore by himself, for it is impossible for God to lie… which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast”-never moved, never moved. In the midst of the sea, when the anchor is thrown out, it grasps the great immoveable rock. And the anchor holds-and this is an anchor for the soul, holding onto our rock, our hope-our hope in God-in God-in God. I close. Did you ever notice-did you ever see the end of this glorious Christian’s life who wrote these words in the New Testament record? How does it end? How does it close? Why, you would think that such a marvelous story would close in a blaze of light. You would expect that such a marvelous record would close with victory. Does it? Does it? No. It closes with Paul’s head on a chopping block, with him appealing to Timothy to come and see him one more time before he loses his life. How does it end for Simon Peter? He was crucified-nailed to a cross. How does it end for so many in the early church? They were persecuted and many of their lives were exterminated for their faith. That’s how it actually ended. But, what was Paul’s attitude in all this: “Looking for that blessed hope, and that glorious appearing of the great god and our Savior Jesus Christ.” How did it end? On the lonely Isle of Patmos, John, left to die of exposure and privation, lifted up his eyes and saw a vision. And in those visions, he saw the triumphant Son of God. He saw Armageddon and he saw the end of the human race. He saw it all in his visions. In Rev 20:1-15, he saw an angel come down from God out of heaven and bind Satan in a bottomless pit. Then, in the twentieth chapter, and the twenty-first chapter and the twenty-second chapter… ======================================================================== CHAPTER 29: S. OUR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY ======================================================================== OUR GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 18:9-10 01-17-54 In our preaching through the Word, we have come to Acts 18:1-28. And this is the third sermon that the pastor has preached on Acts 18:9-10. And the sermon tonight will be the fourth sermon on that text. Used to, I felt a great compulsion to hurry. And in these last several years, I have just quit that. When I come to a place in the Bible where so many things cry out to be spoken, I just stop. If there are six sermons on one text, then we just wait before going on to those six messages. So this morning for the third time, Acts 18:9-10. This is a revival. Look at it: “Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: For I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city" [Acts 18:9-10]. "Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee. And I-I have much people in this city." The Lord and this city somehow, the two go together. I used always to think of the Lord as being out there on the mountainside by Himself. And that is right. And on the waters alone at night in Galilee. That is right. And in the little city of Nazareth. That is right. And as you look at the Lord more closely, you will find in His heart the compassion for the big cities. The Bible says that our Savior steadfastly set His face toward the city-the Lord and the city. The Bible says that the Lord deliberately, volitionally chose to die in the city-the Lord and the city. And the Bible says that when the Lord came and saw Jerusalem, that He we wept over the city-city. And from His throne in heaven today, He has compassion on the city. "For I have much people in this city." And in the glorious incomparable faith chapter, the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, speaking of the old patriarch, the Bible says, “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. . . , seeking a better country; . . . "wherefore, God also is not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city” [Heb 11:13-16]." And in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation, "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven" [Rev 21:1]-the city of God. The work in the city is hard and laborious and disturbing and difficult. The reason the Lord appeared to Paul in the night in Corinth was because of the immeasurable, illimitable, indescribable discouragement of the missionary as he sought to build the work of Jesus in the city. In Athens, he left discouraged and in Corinth the prospects were no easier, nor the future any brighter. And after laboring there in the great city of Corinth, Paul purposed in his heart to leave. It was then that the Lord appeared to him in the night in a vision saying, "Paul, not so, not so. You’re to stay in this town in the heart of this vast city, for I have much people in it." The discouragement of the city are not peculiar nor are they local. They are vast. For the spirit of those who work for Christ in any place, in any state and in any country, in the sixteenth chapter of the First Corinthian Letter, Paul, writing to this person from Corinth, said: "I have determined to stay in Ephesus-the great capital city of Asia-I have determined to stay in Ephesus unto Pentecost. For a great door, and effectual has been opened unto me and there are many adversaries" [1Co 16:8-9]. And it is always true. And there are many discouragements-many despairs, many adversaries. I have been pastor of most every kind of a church to speak of. Fourteen years I have preached out in the country and in the small villages. The church was easy. There, I would preach a sermon Sunday morning and Sunday night, Saturday night. Oh, that would do until I came back again. Those fine people, out plowing in the field and thinking about the services, turning over in their mind what the pastor said. Going home, no place to go, meditating on the Word. When I came back, there would be a multitude of things. Many of them would ask me about the sermon I preached two weeks ago, or a month ago if it were quarter-time or half-time church. In the small towns where I was pastor, we would have a revival meeting. Everybody from the ends of our road, from the parts of the creek, from the head of the hollow, everybody came. And if we had a big preacher from the city, why, it was an event. It was an epoch in the life of the small town. In the city, why, they hardly know you are here. They pass you by the thousands and the thousands. They are in a rut. They are busy. They are building empires. They are making fortunes, or losing them. There is always entertainment. There is a show. There is a brothel. There is a wrestling match. There is a sortatorium [solarium]. There is a Fair Park. There is an operetta. There is an opera. There is everything. And the people in the city are engrossed. And the poor preacher and the poor missionary and poor Paul, the work in the city is difficult. And the Lord appeared unto Paul in the night saying, "Paul, you are not to leave. You are not to despair. And you are not to be discouraged. For I have much people in this city." So here we are in the middle of it, in the heart of it, in the center of it. And how are we doing? How are we faring? Well, good. Good. And while in our church and its ministry, Sunday morning it looks good. Our Sunday school and our preaching attendance and our financial program and the ministry of the organized life of our church, it looks good. And I am grateful for it. And I do not think I could stand in this pulpit and say that this Sunday or last week or last year or any year I have been here, I have done my share. Have you? As fine as we do, and as good as we have done, and with all that we have poured into this ministry, we still can do better, much better, a lot better. I look at our Sunday school. I have said before, repeat it now, I have not changed in that purpose. I think any Sunday that we fall below three thousand in attendance, we are not doing good. We are not doing as good as we ought. We should do better. Oh, this week, Dr. Dobbins speaking to us about our Sunday school, I conceded to him we had a solid barrier there. These fellows that drive these jet planes say that up to about seven hundred fifty miles per hour the plane will do pretty good. But somewhere is a barrier, a solid barrier that exceeds the speed of sound. And when they broke that, the plane trembled and quivered. And it had a tremendous effort to break through the sound barrier. But once he said you are on the other side of it, then you can see it is easy. And in our Sunday school, we get to twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine hundred. One time we went over three thousand-weeks, months ago-but we stagger at it. We stagger at it. The furthest barrier for our Sunday school used to be about three thousand. And we quivered. It is hard. Yet we can do it. The people are here. They are God’s people. "I have much people in the city." Our Sunday school-let us rise to do it. We can. By the spring, every Sunday there ought to be at least three thousand down here being taught the Word of God. I look at our baptisms. The people we win to Christ. We have another solid barrier there-three hundred. We win two hundred seventy-four, two hundred seventy-one; two hundred seventy-three. But we never get to that three hundred and beyond. We can, we ought, we must, we should. "I have much people in this city." And in our leadership, there are not nearly, not nearly all of our people in places of responsibility. My impression of the church is that a few of you do practically all of the work-three or four hundred of them; five or six hundred at the most. Out of the thousands that belong to this communion and fellowship, three, four, five, or six hundred of us carry all of its responsibility. And in the whole setup, as I look at it, grateful to God for it, thankful to heaven for the work that we have done, but oh, we can do better. We can do better. And we must. We can. We shall. And we will. Now how? I have two or three suggestions to make in the time they have. First, we will do it. We will achieve it by keeping in us and working it around us, the spirit of youth. You see, you expect me to say pray and to visit and to win souls. That is right. But these are some things we do not ever mention and we must never forget. First, the spirit of youth. To the young, to the vigorous, to the active, to be alive, to be quickened, to be counted, the church with a spirit of youth all through it. Everywhere. Everywhere. The big day, let them come. The great hour, we shall arrive at. The spirit of youth. Oh, this week, listening to my old professor teach that class, Dr. Dobbins, several times he referred to a church saved in my memory as I try to pastor this downtown church in the Dallas. And it was a tremendous church. In Louisville, Kentucky, in the heart of the city. And it had a gloriously eloquent pastor. His name was Carter Helm Jones and he was the pastor of the Broadway Church in Louisville. One of the richest churches in America and within of the greatest and one of the most famous. I heard Carter Helm Jones when I first went to the seminary. Eloquent, oh, he had everything that a polished orator ought to have. He stood in the pulpit where he unraveled I suppose in school, this eloquent symmetry about the Lord Jesus. Carter Helm Jones’ father was the chaplain to Robert E. Lee in the Confederate Army. I remember one time Carter Helm Jones describing when his father, the chaplain sent him to Robert E. Lee with a message. Doctor-and Robert E. Lee in reply to that message got on his horse, Traveler. And he picked up the little boy, Carter Helm Jones, and placed him in the saddle. And so they rode together in answer of the appeal of the chaplain-his father. Oh, he was everything. And the church loved him. And the people thronged to hear him. So they came to the Broadway Church to listen to Carter Helm Jones. And Carter Helm Jones died and the church died and desired just to listen to a master sermon of the brilliant orator. And they lost their young people, and they lost their babies. And the church groaned in his heart, in his soul, in his outlook. And the church died. And you would drive down Broadway in Louisville, Kentucky. And where that glorious church of Carter Helm Jones once stood, there is an empty used car lot there now. The church is gone. The stones are gone. The spire is gone. The building is gone. Everything is gone. Just a memory of some of our-who knew us there and who knew the great preacher, Dr. Jones. My, dear people, everybody in this church has to stay young. Everybody. Everybody. All of us have got to stay young, all of us. Nobody here growing old. Our faces may wrinkle; but our hearts, never, never, never. Staying young. Seventy years young. Seventy-five years young. Eighty years young. What do you mean by that, Preacher? I mean, that in the outlook and in our vision and in our planning and in our work, all of us are like kids, working for God. There is a tendency among people, as there are pastors, you have seen it and maybe get a lot of myself. A kid, listen to him, man, he has got all of his life ahead of him. What if he makes a mistake? And when you get older, you get more conservative. I need to harbor this little bit they have. I do not have but so much. If I were to lose it, I could not rebuild it. I could not reclaim it. So you get cautious and very conservative and hard to enter into a new program. No. No. All of us young. All of us. Look at them. Every deacon I have matches a sixteen year old-every one of them. Now, if you had the spirit of the sixteen year old and had the head of a seventy year old man, what a board of deacons we would have. Ah, ah, our hearts are young, our spirits of young. We are not old, none of us, any of us, nobody among us. Oh, I see it, let’s go. Let’s do it. Sure we can. Sure we can. If we have that spirit and it has made our life and our spirit. Robert Browning, whom I grew to love down there majoring in English in Baylor. Robert Browning, after he grew to be an old man-eighty years. He lived impetuous life. He was a young fellow in repartee, in doing, in coming. Until he died, he filled of the intensity of everything. You notice that little poem, "Come." That is all, "Come," "Come." Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!" Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be. The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith “A whole I planned. [Youth shows but half,] trust God, see all, nor be afraid. [Robert Browning, “Rabbi Ben Ezra”]. And when they buried Robert Browning, they had one of those songs, melancholy, cadaverous protocol, funeral services. And he had a friend, an artist by the name of Berne Jones. And I copied from Berne Jones what he said about that funeral of Robert Browning: "I would have given something"-this is from his friend Berne Jones-"I would have given something for a banter or two, and much would I have given if a chorister would have come out of the auditorium and rent the air with a blast of a trumpet." I have a problem with some preachers. I have a problem with them. "Look how solemn I am and morose I am." You can meet preachers, "I am the most sober, decorous, conservative, dead and starchy critter you ever saw. I got religion. I got religion." Listen, you are no better than a funeral service. Man, you are not dead. God just moved us from this life. To a better one to come. You that remain behind (inaudible). You hold it high. I have just gone to another land and another country, the wish of God. To be young in your heart, in our spirit, in our interest. We have more kids down here, come on down. Come on down. I beg you to come on down. They are going to be in our school. They are going to be in our gym. They are going to be in our activity center. They are going to be in our craft room. Come on down. Come on down. Well, Preacher, Charles Evans said in his old age; he said: "You know I can do as much as a young man for about one hour a day." Come on down. Come on down. Come on down. Give us that one hour. Come on down. Eight of you think it by relay. You give an hour, and then turn it over to somebody else. You turn it over to somebody else, but stay young with them. With these kids down here, meet with them, play with them, eat with them, be with them. Go out to the camp with them. Come on, grab a hold. Be with them. Our church will welcome them. I do not know of a honky tonk, I do not know of a fancy cigarette, I do not know of a quart of rum. It is fun to [be] going down there to that downtown Baptist church. Play with them and grow with them and watch your church. Watch your watch. Problems at home? A headache like this to keep up with them. Do it. Do it. Oh, what it means to the church. Play with them. Stay with them-young, all of us young. Well, my time is done. I want to say one or two other things. It will keep your church vibrant and alive-the spirit of youth, the spirit of movement, of conquest, of attack-not afraid. No, sir. The Lord appeared unto Paul in the night and said, "Be not afraid. Be not afraid." There is not any problem we cannot whip. There is not any task that God wants done that we cannot do. We can if He wants it done. To move. To move. To attack. To advance. One of those Greek warriors told Philadadus. He said, "Sir, the barbarians are like the sands of the sea in number. And they shoot their arrows until the very sky is darkened." And Philadadus said, "Fine, fine. Then there will be no sun in the shade." We have many problems to face. I know. I know. The world has never been malleable and pliable in the hands of God’s servants. It has always been hard and bitter and unresponsive. I went to an Associational Baptist Meeting one time and the preacher [said] everything was going to the dogs. Everything was in the hands of the Devil. And he left me with the most woe you can describe. Dr. Andrew, the secretary, got up and he started off his speech with a little sentence. He said, "My dear brothers, the world has always been bad." That is right. It has always been bad. It was bad yesterday. And it is bad today. And it will be bad tomorrow. The world will be unmalleable in the hands of God’s people. That does not matter. That does not matter. Go on. Do it for the Lord. In the times that are distressing, with the threat of atomic war and with the threat of a worldwide conquest under communism. And now with the word of the recession and depression. But the world has always been full of wars and recession. When I was preaching in the thirties, they used to say, "Oh, if we can just get out of the thirties, we will be all right." But the forties were as fierce as the thirties. I do not know what the fifties are going to be. It does not matter. A fellow compiled a little table. He started in 1396 B. C., clear through to 1954. And in those years, we have had three hundred [thousand] one hundred years of war. And two hundred and sixty-seven years of peace. And from the fall of the Roman Empire until now, the wars have been getting fiercer and more vicious and more intense and longer and in driving greater destruction and numbers of men. It has always been that way. It will continue to be that way. I think God looks to the end to the final Armageddon. The days will never be propitious. The hours will never be favorable. We must keep these things in our hand. Whatever the discouragement and whatever the time, and whatever the hour and whatever the day, move, advance, go on. Go on. We have a thing to do for God. And if He wants it done-if He wants it done, the resources and the evilness and the wherewithal and all that it takes, God will place in our hands. Let is just do it. Let us just do it. This last week, I was reading like a lot of times I do, I like to go back and read about those old days. Paul and the prophets and those Greeks and the world in which they live. And in this last week, just for my own soul’s doing, I read once again the story of the Leonidas, King of Sparta, and the Battle of Thermopylae. The Persians came across-of Darius and Artaxerxes, came across like the world’s key was opened. They came by the hundreds of thousands. The brother of Aeschylus, the great Aeschylus-the brother of Aeschylus, held on to a Galle with one hand and it was severed with a Persian. He held with the other hand and it was severed with a Persian. And he held on with his teeth. And Leonidas he had six thousand Greeks with him. And he could have held that pass indefinitely. But a traitor showed the Persians a secret trail. And Leonidas found himself with the enemy in front and the enemy in behind. He repeatedly dismissed all of his group’s allies and kept his three hundred warriors by his side. For it was against the law that a Spartan soldier should ever flee in the presence of the enemy. He stood there with his three hundred Spartan soldiers attacked in the front and attacked from behind. And they stood there until the last man was cut down. And then the council described this epithet above their grave Battle of Thermopylae. Stranger-stranger with this word We pray thee of Sparta, Here we are in distraught Faithfully keeping the law. [Or, "Oh, stranger, tell the Lacedemonians that here we lie, obedient to their traditions"-ed., Herodotus 7.228 quoted in Edwin M. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 206]. "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." Some people say that means the crown of Jesus. If you hang on we will be saved. No, what Jesus said be thou faithful in spite of death. "If it costs you your life, and I will give you the crown." "I will give you the desire of your heart. I will give you the achievement as a reward and recompense for your effort. "Be thou a good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of thy Lord. I have much people in this city." Oh, blessed church, fellow members, it is our golden day. It is our opportunity. Our time to come. All right let us sing our song. Let us sing our song. While we sing it anywhere somebody you, somebody you give his heart to the Lord. You come and stand by me. Somebody you, put your life in the fellowship of the church. While we sing the appeal, you come and stand by me. Is there a child here today, or a family here today, somebody, you today anywhere. In that topmost balcony, from side to side any where; while we make appeal. While we sing our song. Today, would you make it now? Would you make it? Into that aisle and down here to the front. Stand by the side of the pastor. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 30: S. PAUL'S IRON CHAIN ======================================================================== PAUL’S IRON CHAIN 06-13-54b Acts 28:20 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled: PAUL’S IRON CHAIN. The message today, the one this morning and tonight, closes the life of the apostle Paul as we have followed him through the book of Acts. This is in the last chapter, Acts 28:1-31. Two or three verses, one Acts 28:16. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard. Acts 28:17 : And it came to pass that after three days, Paul called the chief of the Jews together and when they were come together, he said unto them. And then Acts 28:20. This is the close of what he said: For this case therefore have I called for you to see you and to speak with you. Because that for the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain. Acts 28:20 : Because for the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain. When you read the epistles of Paul, when you read the story of his life in the book of Acts, you will find him frequently referring to that chain. Often times, he will speak of himself in prison, in bondage, in bonds. And often times of that chain. When he stood before King Agrippa. Agrippa said -- as Paul preached to him: Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. And you remember Paul’s reply: I would to God that not only thou, but that all that hear me this day were both almost and altogether such as I am except for these chains. In the passage in II Timothy out of which we chose our scripture reading today, Onesiphorous came to Rome. And he visited Paul. And refreshed him. He did that at the peril and cost of his life. For Paul said: He was not ashamed of my chain. In the beginning of that scripture, Paul’s appeal to his young son, Timothy in the 8th Verse was this: Timothy, be not ashamed of the gospel, nor of me, the prisoner of the Lord. Several times in the epistles will Paul use that expression: I am a prisoner of Jesus Christ. He does so in Eph 3:1, and in Eph 4:1 : I, Paul, the prisoner of the Lord Jesus. And I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ. Isn’t that a strange thing? Not a prisoner of the Roman government. Not a prisoner of Caesar, he was a prisoner of God. God held the other end of his chain. When Paul said that he wanted to go to Rome, so as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you, that are at Rome. It was the ambition of his life to preach the gospel in the imperial city. But he never dreamed, he never supposed how God would answer that prayer. When he came to Rome, he came chained to a Roman soldier. And he was delivered to the praetorian guard, a prisoner of the state. It is hard to think of Paul as active as he was, as vigorous as he was, as full of life and quickening spirit as he was, aiming with the missionary endeavor, it is hard to think of the eagle in a cage. Heretofore, he’s been in prison often. In tumult and in peril. But somehow, with always thought that tomorrow there will be an earthquake as in Philippi, and he will be delivered. And he will be on his way to the next province and the next city, to the next people, preaching the gospel of the son of God. But you know, when you come to this Roman imprisonment, it just sounds different. It has a different feeling about it. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered Paul to the captain of the guard. There is something of a finality of that, this Roman imprisonment is different. And that chain somehow, weighs heavier on his hand. There is a key to the ponderous iron door beyond which Paul has been placed in Rome. And the key hangs in the house of cruel and merciless Nero. You just have the -- you have the intuition, you have the feeling that somehow this is the end. He will never be loosed from that chain. And if he is, it will be but for a while and he will be back in fetters and behind those iron doors once again. So a hero, uncrowned came in prison and chains, come to the end of the story that we know here recorded in the book of Acts. He’s bound. He’s chained. He’s in fetters and in manacles. What can he do? What can a man in chains do in what can a prisoner do? Well, he has a new ministry. A different one. An unusual one. One you would never think for or guess for. The soldiers to with which he was chained doubtless did not stay more than eight hours. So that would mean that three different soldiers were chained to Paul everyday. As they took shifts. And when you have a man like Paul, one man, one soldier is a congregation. I can just see Paul chained to that Roman soldier. I can just see him as he sits there in his little hired house near the Mammertine prison. As he sits there in his cell or in his room, chained to that Roman soldier. I can just see Paul as he takes the scroll of the Holy Bible. And to the wide-eyed rapt attention of that heathen man, I can just see Paul as he breaks to him the bread of life. Soldier after soldier, as Paul talks to the man about the grace of God in Christ Jesus. And I can just see that soldier as he sits there or stands there, chained to Paul. I can just see him as he listens to what Paul says to others. Epaphras, Epaphroditus, Arastarchus, Onesiphorous, Mark, Luke, I can just see that soldier as he listens to what Paul says to these visitors from Colossae and from Ephesus and from Asia and from afar. So much so was that true, until in one of those prison epistle Paul says to the very church at Philippi: I would not have you ignorant, brethren, I want you to understand how that the things which have happened unto me have fallen out unto the furtherance of the gospel. So that my chains in Christ are manifest through all the praetorian, through the praetorian guards and in all other places. And many of the brethren, the Lord waxing confident by my bonds are much more bold to speak the words without fear. Paul said: Because of that chain, the entire praetorian guard has come to know the gospel of the son of God. There were ten thousand men in that praetorian guard. It was a personal corp of the emperor. No Gall, no Greek, no man of any other nationality could belong to it. No one but a native Roman. They were the elite SS troops of the Caesar himself. And chained to those soldiers for two years and then longer again, I would think that all ten thousand of them had sat down by the apostle of Jesus Christ and had heard from the apostle himself the glorious story of the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. What can a man do who is chained? What can he do? What can a man in prison do? What did Paul do? Every Roman soldier of the elite that belonged to the Roman Caesar heard the gospel of the son of God. That’s what a man in chains can do. One other thing, what can a man’s chain do? What can a prisoner do? What can he do? Had it not been for the bonds of Paul, our New Testament, I suppose under God would never have been as you hold it in your hands today. I do not know what God would have done. It is not for me to know. No man should ever think of that. Just to see what God could do, he put Paul in prison. He fettered him and bound him. He put an iron chain on his hand. What can a man in prison do? What can a man chained do? What can he do? He can think. He can meditate. He can pray. He can speak God’s great truths. I don’t think Paul in this latter years of his life would have ever taken time out for meditation or solitude. For the writing of those prison epistles: Philemon, Philippians, Colossians, Ephesians, II Timothy. He would never have taken time out to write those great truths had God not put him in prison with an Iran chain. And there is another thing about it in passing. I don’t think the letter that he would have written would have had in them that marvelous Philippi transforming power had there not been thrust into the life of the man who wrote them that terrible battery and suffering and incarceration. That was inflicted upon him by the rage of man. The prison epistle comes from the heart of a man who knew what it was to suffer, to be chained, to be hated, to be despised and finally to be martyred. Those epistles come from that iron chain. And what our churches yesterday, today, and forever owe to the imprisonment of Paul to that chain is known but to God. What can a man do what is chained and in prison? He can write. He can send letters. Did you ever see how few people there are that will listen to a man preach, no matter who the man is? No matter what his vast audience. Relatively few ever come into the sound of his voice. But somehow when a man writes a letter, there is embodied the living truth and it waits and it saves and it abides. Generation after generation can read it. So was Paul’s prison epistles, chained to the a soldier, fettered and bound. He wrote what he otherwise could not effectively said and deliver. And those letters we have as our encouragement and our inspiration today. What can a man do in chains? What can a man do who is in prison? I want to take up Paul’s thought there for a moment. A prisoner of the Lord Jesus Christ. God holds the other end of the chain. The Lord put that chain on Paul’s hand. It is a compliment of God, that chain. It is a handicap of heaven, that chain. There are a lot of you fellas who are still in school and still in college. And a lot more of us who have been in school and in college. A handicap is a compliment beyond which we reach. Do you know that? Here is a race and you have a runner who can out-distance in the field. So in order to make the race equal they handicap their best runner. They pull him back. All of the rest of them are up there. But they put a handicap on their best runner. And he has to start oh, twenty feet behind. It is not comparable. It is a handicap. And you call it a handicap. A good golfer -- now, brother, when you have me out there which I never go. But when you have me out there, I want the land perfectly level. I want it all fairway. I want the greens to be perfectly level. In fact, I want them to kind of roll in toward that little hole in the middle. A real golfer, is challenged by the handicap. Brother, don’t put him on an easy course. Put him out there where every fairway has a lake. Make him shoot around a golf lake. Put him out there and put a sand trap on every side. Put him out there where there are lakes he has to shoot over. He is complimented by the handicap. I heard of a woman in a tennis match. She noticed that the ball so many times went into the net and she said, “Why don’t they take down that net?” A handicap. A handicap. Out there in the west where I grew up, those old cowboys they looked with contempt on a fella that when he rode a bucking horse he grabbed for leather as we call it. But a real cowpoke, he liked a horse that would pitch and sidestep and would buck. And with one hand, he would raise his hat. And the other hand, he would hold hard on the reins, brother. He could ride them rough and tough. Handicap. It was a compliment to him. Did you ever think about the world of artistry? Man, if I had about an hour this morning, what we would do. Michelangelo passing by saw an enormous piece of marble that had a big crack in it in the quarry. Looked at it for years. He said, “That’s what I want.” I went in Florence to see that heroic statue, titanic in size. Michelangelo gave it. The top of the thing and the bottom of the thing is it still rough so minutely did he put that statue carving out of that great piece of rock. Michelangelo, the handicap of it. The Italian women had in their room for years the Madonna of the chair about that big around. One of the most beautiful paintings in the world was in the palace in Florence. Raphael drew that glorious picture in a little plate, round. It was a handicap. The poet writes with a fettered word and follows the rhythm and the meters and the stanza and the verse. But the handicap is a compliment. A handicap also is a compliment from God. The chains is a compliment from heaven. What can a crippled man do? What can an invalid do? What can a man afflicted with loneliness and melancholia, what can he do? What can a fella who has everything against him, what can he do? What can a man in chains do? Handicap. Handicap, they are God’s compliments. What can he do? What can he do? I won’t read it this morning. I brought it here to read, though. To me the most beautiful sonnet in the world is Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. There is not a sonnet ever written by Shakespeare, by no one else that to me rivals in beauty and meaning Milton’s sonnet on his blindness. He lived in a terrible day. And on behalf of the great Protestant movement under Cromwell, he devoted his life. And his eyes burned out and he went blind, writing, writing one of the great Cromwellian Commonwealth in Great Britain. And blinded -- When I consider how My life is spent Or half my days In this dark world and why. And then that beautiful sonnet that ends: And they also serve Who only stand and wait. To me, that last verse would be in God’s Bible well and appropriate. They also serve Who only stand and wait. I couldn’t tell you the number of times, dear, blessed, sainted members of this church come to me and say, “Pastor, I’m invalid and can’t come. I’m sick and not able to leave this house. And all I can do is to pray. All I can do is to pray.” As though they are going to stand before the throne of God and intercede for this ministry and this work, would be a small, a trite, a little thing to do. Handicap. Handicap. It may be the instrument and the means of the greatest blessings our church could ever, ever know. Handicap, not a cane. And I can pray. I can pray. I can telephone. What we can, we do. There is an illustration of that. John Bunyan, twelve years God kept him in prison. That’s why can you have the incomparable allegory Pilgrim’s Progress. That iron chain. The hymn, they were singing when I was converted: There’s a fountain filled with blood. Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins And sinners plunged Beneath the flood, Lose all their guilty stains. William Cowper, William Cowper, had he not been driven, had he not been lost, he had not been in spiritual despair and then finally, found the savior you would have never had that hymn, never. They had a terrible snow storm, and the organ was ruined. And the choir didn’t have any accompaniment, so the pastor and the organist got together and said, “It’s Christmas and we don’t have any music in the church.” They wrote a hymn to be sung without accompaniment and that’s why you have Silent Night, Holy Night, the prettiest hymn of them all. Because they didn’t have any nice soft beds to put her little baby in, she wrapped him in swaddling clothes. And laid him in a manger. And that’s the reason we have a great high priest who can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He knew what it was to be poor and friendless and to struggle, it is a handicap. Silver and gold have I none, but what I have, give I thee. What I have, give I thee. Dear people, I close. There is not any one of us but that there is something wrong with us. Did you know that? There is something wrong with all of us. All of us. Sometimes it is this and sometimes it is that. And sometimes it is the other. But there is something wrong with all of us. And there’s not any life that is lived among us but that sometime shall know its sorrow, its imprisonment and its pain. A heart that is bleak and break or speak and can’t walk or hands that can’t work or eyes that can’t see, sometimes, somewhere it always comes. What do you do? What do you do? What do you do? What can a man with an iron chain do? What can a man who can’t speak do? What can a man who can’t walk do? What can a man who’s broken do? What can he do? Give it to God. Give it to God. And he will sanctify the handicap. He will consecrate that thing. He will use it as an instrument to the glory and the praise of the great Lord who in his wisdom, a wisdom we can’t understand gave it to us. And I wanted to sing. I didn’t pick a hymn this morning. You know sometimes we have the persuasion, I tell you, Preacher before I come down that aisle, I just got to be just so. It means when I come down that aisle, I am the perfect man or the perfect woman. When I come down that aisle, it means that I have got everything just right and fresh in my life. That’s what it means. So you don’t come. You don’t come. That’s exactly what it has done to me. If a man is all adequate and all-sufficient, he doesn’t need to come. He doesn’t need to come. It is only the man who is crippled and needs God to help him walk. It is only a man who is a sinner and needs God to help him with his sin. It is only a man who is broken and needs God to put him together again. It is only a man who is weak and needs God’s strength, he’s the one that comes. He’s the one that comes. It is because we really need Jesus that we come. We need him. Can’t live without him. Can’t save myself, Lord, I look upon Jesus. That’s the reason I wanted you to sing this hymn: Just as I am. Don’t even need a book. Just as I am. Broken, here I come. Broken, here I come. In need, here I come. Just as I am. Just as I am. Oh, lamb of God I come. Dragging a chain. Dragging a chain. I come. I come. I come. In this balcony round and from side to side, wherever God shall say the word of appeal, while we sing it, would you come? Two hundred twenty-five, choir, while we sing it would you come. Into that aisle and down here to the front. Pastor, today, this day, give I my heart and my life to the Lord God. For I am coming into his church this day. This is my family, here we are and here we come. Anybody, somebody, you. While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 31: S. PREDESTINATION ======================================================================== PREDESTINATION Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 27:20-34 05-23-54 In our preaching through the Word, we are in Acts 27:1-44. And, as I preach the message tonight, if you have your Book, you can turn with me as we look at some of these verses in God’s Word. The sermon tonight is entitled, Predestination: The sovereign, fore-ordaining decrees of Almighty God. The reading of the Word will begin at the twentieth verse and we’ll follow through to about the thirty-fourth. Acts 27:1-44, beginning at Acts 27:1-20 : And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away. But after long abstinence, Paul stood forth in the midst of them and said, `Sirs, ye should have hearkened unto me and not have loosed from Crete and to have gained this harm and loss. And now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be no loss of any man’s life among you, only of the ship. For there stood by me this night the angel of God whose I am, whom I serve, Saying, "Fear not, Paul, thou must be brought before Caesar;” and lo, God hath given them-all two hundred seventy-six souls-God hath given thee all thee that sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer, for I believe God that it will be even as it was told me. Howbeit we must be cast upon a certain island. But when the fourteenth night had come, as we were driven up and down in Adria, about midnight the shipmen deemed that they drew near to some country; And sounded, and found it twenty fathoms, and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms. Then fearing lest we should have fallen upon rocks, they cast four anchors out of the stern, and wished for the day. And as the shipmen-the sailors-were about to flee out of the ship, when they had let down the boat into the sea-another little boat, a lifeboat-under color as though they would have cast anchors out of the foreship, Paul said to the centurion and to the soldiers, “Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved. Then the soldiers cut off the ropes of the boat and let her fall off-and be dashed against the shore. They were all in there to live or to die together now-And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them all to take meat saying, “This day is the fourteenth day that ye have tarried and continued fasting, having taken nothing. Wherefore I pray you to take the meat, for this is for your health-you will need it to get to the shore-for there shall not a hair fall from the head of any of you. And when he had thus spoken, he took bread and gave thanks to God in presence of them all... . "And they were all full of cheer" and good bread: Two hundred three score and sixteen souls; two hundred and seventy-six souls. And then the rest of the story: How the ship was run aground. The violence of the sea broke it in pieces. Those who swam, and those who couldn’t, clung to pieces of wreckage and debris. And, thus, they all got to land. And it came to pass they all escaped safe to land, according to the decree of God. Now, we’re going to take a look at a mountain. We’re going to look at it. I didn’t say we were going to explain it or say where it came from. We’re going to look at it. We’re going to take a journey and look at one of God’s works, what God does. I don’t propose to explain it. We are just going to look at it: What God does. An old woman went to the zoo and she looked at a giraffe. It was the first long-necked specimen of an animal like that she had ever seen. And she looked at that giraffe and she said, "There just ain’t no such animal." She didn’t believe it, looking at it. Now we’re going to look at a work of God. God’s works are many and manifold. There is no man that can explain any of them. You just can’t. No man. You just look at it and describe it and delineate it and say how it is. But you don’t know why or wherefore. No man. No man. One of the most silly things that you will ever try to follow in your life will be when you pick up a magazine and the scientist there is going to tell you where the world came from. He’s going to tell you where life came from. And he spews and he sputters and he stutters and he hesitates and he writes sentences and he says words and then, finally, has to break down and confess he is just an ignoramus like all of the rest of us. He has no idea. No idea. We just look at it. We just look at it. We just look and see what God does and that’s all. I went to the World’s Fair in Chicago. And while I was there, I went to the planetarium and looked on the inside of that planetarium and they had all of the stars and heavens up there. Little specks of light, you know. And they changed them and they showed us how the heavens were at seasons of the year and how at that season of the year. And they showed how far it was here and how far it was there. But all you can do, all any astronomer can do, is just look at the firmament to see what God has done. There is not any astronomer who can explain to you how it was done and how those stars got there and who made them and where they came from. And man, you’ve got one of two alternatives: Either this matter in this universe, these stars and this firmament and this earth, is eternal or God is eternal. One or the other. One or the other. Either it came here itself and made itself and produced you or God made it. It is one or the other. You take your choice. The only thing for me is, I never saw matter make anything at all, did you? Did you ever see a rock make anything? Did you ever see a rock produce life? Did you ever see anything born of life out of something dead and inanimate? That’s God’s world and all we do is just look at it and marvel at it. I studied botany when I was in school. Botany. And we took a microscope and looked at a little leaf. That little leaf was made up out of cells and, on the inside of those cells, there is protoplasm. And on the inside of those little protoplasmic cells were little chlorophyll bodies. Chlorophyll, green-colored bodies, chlorophyll, green colored. That’s what makes the earth green. And the little chlorophyll bodies were going around and around and around and around and they were making tree plant sugar, glucose you call it. They were making sugar. And, sometimes, when it goes into the roots of a tree, it will turn into starch, like in a potato. And all of our life is dependent upon little chlorophyll bodies. And when you watch them work, they just go around and around and around and around. And they take energy out of the sunlight: Photosynthesis. They take energy out of the sunlight. And they take a little molecule and they store that energy in a little molecule. Those little green chlorophyll molecules just go around and around and around and around. What makes them go around and around and around? Nobody knows. God does that. He makes them go around and around and around and around. And He puts energy in them. And you eat them and that’s the way you live. No man explains that. You just look at it, that’s all. You just watch it. When I was in school, I took several pre-med courses. I ran down a cat and killed him and skinned him and put him in a barrel of formaldehyde. That was the cat course. And I started at the tip of his nose and went clear down to the end of his tail and I dissected that cat. And I drew all of its parts and all of his organs: Its arterial system and its venous system and all of its works and all of its organs, all the way through. But, there is nobody in the earth that can tell you why its tail grows there and its ears grow there and its eyes grow there. Nobody can. Why don’t his eyes grow on the end of his tail? Why don’t they? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. That’s God. That’s the Lord. That’s God. Now, God not only has a material nuclear molecular world-not only has that kind of a world-and He not only has an animated world, a world of life, physical life, animal life. He not only has that. He has another world. He has a spiritual world. And the same Lord God that makes and governs the stars in their courses and the development of life that you see-the same Lord God-has great sovereign decrees that He pronounces in our spiritual world and here is one of them in this chapter tonight. That’s the reason I’m preaching about it tonight. We run across it again in the Bible. And, I say, I’m not going to explain anything to you tonight. I can’t. All I can do is just say, “There’s the star and it shines and it is a glorious sight and God made it. There it is, just look and worship.” That’s all I’m going to do tonight. I can’t explain these things to you. We are just going to look at them. The Lord God made a decree in His sovereign will. He said, "My chief apostle must preach before Caesar in Rome." God made a decree: "My Apostle Paul shall go to Rome and preach the gospel in the city of Rome." And that decree was repeated. And what do we read? The Lord God made that decree and everything under high heaven, everything under the shining sun and everything in the blackness of night arose up to defy and to defeat and to deflect and to deter and to delay and to deny that decree. Everything did. And upon one of those occasions, there were two hundred seventy-five souls along with Paul. And all of them faced certain and inevitable death. And the Lord God said to Paul, "Paul, you’re going to be saved. You’re going to be safe. And not only you, but I have given the rest of those two hundred seventy-five souls, I have given to you also." And the Lord God told Paul, "You’re going to lose the ship. The ship is going it sink." And the Lord God told Paul, "You’re going to be cast upon a certain island. But there is not a hair of any man’s head that is going to fall or to fall or to perish. Every man will escape." God said so. All of that zig-zagging of the ship-it went this way and that way and that way and that way-that didn’t defeat the purposes of God. God said, "They will all be saved” and that Paul would stand before Caesar in Rome. And the wind blew fiercely. And it beat on that ship. And they even cast out the tackle of the ship and downed the rudders and let her ride, let her drive before the tempestuous storm. That didn’t matter. Whether that ship was driven to Adramyttium. Whether it was driven beyond the Gates of Hercules. Whether it was driven back up into the Black Sea. That didn’t matter. God said, "They will all be saved," and that of Paul-to preach in Rome. And there is not anything that can defy or deflect or decry or delineate that decree is going to happen. God said so. The Lord said so. Now, every kind of a death here seems to fall upon Paul. There was the death here of drowning in that awful storm. There was the death here threatened by the sailors-“Except these men stay in the ship to guide it as it shifts on the ground, we all perish"-There was death here threatened by the soldiers. The soldiers said to the centurion, "We must slay all of these prisoners lest they escape." And, finally, in this next chapter we come to the next Sunday. There was a snake that fastened on Paul’s hand, a poisonous snake. And when the people saw it, they said, "He will immediately convulse, swell and die." He didn’t convulse. He didn’t swell up. He didn’t die. Why? God said, "He is to preach My name before Caesar." And there is not anything that can happen to change the decree of Almighty God. Look at Paul. He’s just as serene as he can be, there in the midst of that awful storm, fourteen days and fourteen nights. No light at night. No light in the day. No sun, no stars. Yet, just as serene as he can be, standing there in the midst of those wretches, all of whom think they are inevitably, certainly, to die. Paul stands there and he says, "I pray you eat. Eat! Eat! Restore your strength. You will need it. Eat, for there shall not an hair fall from the head of any of you." And he took bread and he thanked God and he gave to them all and they all were persuaded by the great optimism of the preacher. In a vessel that was certainly going down, in a storm incomparable… . Usually those tempests are brief in the Mediterranean. This thing lasted, apparently, for two solid weeks. Now, in the midst of it is this preacher of God, unperturbed, undisturbed, with a smile on his face, with hope in his heart, with an assurance from heaven. "Come," he says, "Break bread with me." And he gave thanks to God, serene, undisturbed, there in the midst of the howling wind and the fierce tempestuous sea. That’s the reason God writes over here in this Book all about the future of the church and the future of His people. I tried to preach to you this morning that this sea of life, this ocean upon which we sail will never be altogether placid, mirror-like. It is going to be tempestuous. It is going to be terrible. We have had our Tamerlane and our Genghis Khan. And we’ve had our terrible Hitlers and our unspeakable Tojos and Mussolinis. And we’ll have them again. They are coming, God’s Book says: fierce adversaries, false prophets and false beasts and false teachers and false leaders and false teachers, preachers. And God says that the end of this world is going to be in a flame of fire. Armageddon lies ahead. Tribulation lies ahead. The days of “Jacob’s Trouble” lie ahead. Terrible things like ahead. But God says, "Don’t you be disturbed. Don’t let it come to mind. Don’t you tremble, because the rock on which you stand will never move. You, His people and His church, are coming out triumphant." Whether the sun shines or not, whether the stars appear or not, God says we shall have an ultimate victory. That is for our day and predetermined and predestinated. God says it. And, like Paul in the midst of a world of conflict and tension and darkness, we’re to lift up our voices and sing. We’re to praise God. The victory is ours. Now, I want us to look again at this predetermined, foreordained decree of Almighty God: "Paul, the boat is going down and you’re going to be cast on a certain island. But not a single life is going to be lost." God said so: The foreordination of God, the decree of Almighty God. Now, I want you to look at the human response to a sovereign decree of Almighty God. You look at these. They were saved in the most commonplace sort of way that could imagine. And they labored and they toiled and they worked as though there was no such thing as the decree from Almighty God. Look here in this Book. It says that, when they got to land, some of them swam. And, Brother, to swim in an ocean-those swells and breakers, if you have ever tried it-to swim in the ocean is a hard job, anyway. Think of swimming in an ocean where there is a terrible driving wind and the mountainous waves are pounding against the sea. It would take all of the strength and energy that a man could command. The Lord decreed they were going to be saved. But they swam with all their hearts and all of the strength of their bodies, those that could swim. And those that couldn’t swim, some of them got a piece of the mast. And some of them got a great big timber. And some of them got a great big plank, anything that they could find that was loose as the ship began to break up. They got everything they could. They hung on to it. And they did all of their might to get to the shore, even though Paul had said, "Every last one of you is going to be saved." Yet they toiled and they labored, as though there was no such a thing as a decree, a sovereign decree from Almighty God. When Paul made that announcement, why, they did everything that the skill of the sailors could command. They sounded after Paul said that, took the sound. And then they hoisted the mainsail and they unloosed the rudders. And those sailors did all of the things that only a seafaring man would know to do in order to guide the ship, even though God said, "You are certainly going to be saved." Now, that, I think is an ultimate answer for our hearts and our lives about the sovereign, foreordaining, predestinating decrees of Almighty God. He does it and He runs it and He chooses and He elects and He guides and He says certain things and they inevitably come to pass, just like it is written here in the Book. And yet, and yet, with us, down here in this world, there’s no violation of our moral integrity or our free choice or the sovereignty of our own lives. The two go together. The great decree of Almighty God leaves me absolutely and perfectly free. I am not bound. I’m at liberty. The decree of God has in it my own free choice, and the two are not antagonistic. They go together in the will of God. Way back yonder in 1643, one of our Baptist associations wrote a confession of faith and this is it: God has decreed in Himself from all eternity by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever come to pass… . Brother, that’s the old-time doctrine: "God has decreed in Himself from all eternity whatever comes to pass." That’s what those old-time Baptists wrote. Yet, now look at the second part of that long sentence: Yet God has decreed from all eternity everything that comes to pass, yet so is thereby, neither is God the author of sin nor has any fellowship therein. Nor is violence offered to the will of the creature. Nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away. But rather established. That contingency of second causes means this: Even though God made the decree that you shall certainly be saved, yet Paul says when those sailors started to get in the boat and escape from the ship-Paul says, "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved." Now, how do you reconcile both of those? Right up here, Paul says: "There is not a hair of your head that will perish. Everyone of you will be saved." And, then, right here, Paul says, when those sailors go to get in the boat and flee the ship and leave it to the ignorance and inexperience of men who knew nothing about a boat. Paul said, "Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved." That’s what these old-time Baptists were saying. God has decreed unto Himself from all eternity everything that comes to pass, yet He has done it: Given us liberty and the contingency of second causes. My reckoning to make a thing come to pass is not taken away, but rather established. Good night alive! I’m over my head! Let’s get in the water real deep now, while we’re in it, way down deep. No need wading out here just a foot. Brother, this water is unfathomable. So let’s go on out. Let’s go on out. You are elected. You are elected from before the foundation of the world in Christ. You are. I didn’t say that. Brother, if I said that, that wouldn’t amount to anything. I told you we were just going to look at this mountain, that’s all. I can’t explain this thing to you. All I do is just look at it, in the Book: "according as He hath chosen you in Christ, before the foundation of the world." Now, you look again: "having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ." You, you are elected in Jesus, chosen from before the world was made. "And you are predestinated unto a adoption of the children of Jesus Christ" (Eph 1:4-5). And that’s just one passage. You can multiply them endlessly. You, before the world was made, your name was written in the Book of Life. Before the foundation of the world, you were chosen. You were chosen. And yet, and yet, God also says, "Except ye repent, ye shall in no wise be saved." And God says, "Except ye are born again, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God." There, God says you are elected from eternity. And then he turns around and says to you, "Brother, you’ve got to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ or you can’t be saved." And, there they are, side by side. Just look at them. Just look at them. Just look at them. Well, let’s take another one here, while we’re at it. The death of the Lord Jesus was foretold, prophesied minutely, a thousand years before Jesus came into the world. A thousand years! God said, “It will be this way. It will be this way.” God delineated minutely. If I had another hour here tonight, we would just follow the minutia that enters into the description of the crucifixion and death of Jesus. A thousand years before Jesus died… and it came to pass just like God said, just like God decreed. That is the sovereign purpose of Almighty God. Now, when Jesus died, were those who killed Him not responsible, because God said it is going to be that way? You look here and see what Simon Peter says. In Acts 2:23, Him (Jesus) "being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God,” He was crucified by the counsel determined before the foundation of the world. He was "the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world." "Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken and by wicked hands, ye have slain." God said it was going to be that way, and the men who did it, on their hands was the blood of a murderer. And there is both sides: God decreed it and the men who did it were responsible for His death. May I choose one other passage of a like? Listen to them. In the fourth chapter of Acts, in the twenty-seventh verse: For of a truth against Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together for to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done. They were doing exactly what God said they were going to do. They were going to take His Son and they were going to drive nails through His hands and His feet and pierce His side and spill out His blood on the ground. God said they were going to do that a thousand years before they did it. And they did whatsoever God, by His counsel, did determine before that they were to do. And Jesus died just like the Lord said a thousand years before. Well, one more wading into the deep. In the tenth chapter of the Book of John, the twenty-seventh and following verses: My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of My hand. My Father, which gave them to Me, is greater than all;-anything in the earth-and no one is able to pluck them out of My Father’s hands. I and my Father are one. If a man who has trusted in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has been born again, if there is one man that fails of heaven, God is not sovereign. The eternal purposes of God have failed and fallen to the ground, if one of the Lord’s chosen doesn’t make the shores in the storm and the sea of this life. "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 32: S. REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING ======================================================================== REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING 10-17-54b Rom 8:17-25 We pick up this evening at Rom 8:17-25. In Rom 8:17-25. And now we read God’s word: “If children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be, that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together, for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who had subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together unto now. And not only they, but ourselves also who have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting are the adoption, to wit; namely, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, for when a men seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that, we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” The title of the message is: “Redemptive suffering.” In the re-creation of the world. For the world shall be re-created. All of it. The firmament above, and the earth below, the fowls that fly, the fish that swim, the little creatures that creep, and the man who walks in the earth. The flower that buds, the tree that dies, the grass of the fields, everything that God has made, will be remade. All that God has created will be re-created. There shall be a new heaven and a new earth. That is the eternal, unwavering plan of Almighty God. In these three verses, one can record, can read the entire work of God in creation, from the beginning to the ending. In Gen 1:1-31, on the sixth day, at the conclusion of God’s work, the Bible says: “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very, very good.” The 2nd verse is in this text; Acts -- Rom 8:22 : “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” And Rev 2:3 and Rev 22:3 : “And there shall be no more curse.” That is the course of this entire created work and purpose of God. In the beginning it was perfect. It was marred, but some day, it will be perfect and unmarred again. Those three verses are the past and the present and the future of God’s work in this created universe. What was and what is, and what is to be. The perfection in the beginning that the man marred. And the punishment that he now bears. And the glorious hope for which all of us now move. In the beginning, God saw all that he did, and it was very good. And the now, for we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now. And the glorious hope that is to come. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. And there will be no more curse. In that glorious scheme. In that magnificent, incomparably blessed plan of God, Paul here writes some marvelous things. In the 19th verse, he says: The whole creation is on tiptoe, waiting, expectant for the manifestation. The Greek word there is Apocalypse. And in many of your Bibles, many of these translations, you won’t find the last book in the Bible called the Revelation, you call it the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is the Greek word for “unveiling.” It is translated “Revelation.” The Apocalypse, the uncovering, the whole creation, Paul says, all of it is earnestly waiting, expecting, on tiptoe for the unveiling, the uncovering, the Apocalypse of the children of God. For the whole creation, Paul says, was made subject to vanity, to futility, to unproductiveness, not willingly, not of itself. It was cursed for man’s sake. God never made the ground to bear thorns or thistles. God never intended for there to be a Sahara Desert to rob the earth of his glow. God intended for the whole creation to be like the Garden of Eden. But the creation was made subject to futility, to unproductiveness, to vanity by reason not of itself, but it was cursed for man’s sake. The whole creation was made subject to vanity and futility, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope. God did it. God cursed the ground on account of the man. But he did it with the infinite goal of that marvelous consummation that reaches out through the ages. And some day shall bring us a better heaven and a better earth. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. All of the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. There will be a day when the soil will no longer bring forth thorns and thistles. There will be a day when the animals of the field will no longer suffer and die. Every time you pass down the sidewalk and there is a little creature that has been stepped on mashed out and flattened and it is dead. Every time you drive down the highway and there is a possum or there is an armadillo and a car has run over it or a little squirrel out there on the street where we live. Everywhere in this world that you see the carcass of a poor earth creature, it is but a reminder of the bondage of corruption into which this earth has been plunged because of man’s sins. God never made a creature to die. God never made a creature to have a fang or a tooth or a claw. God never made a creature to be poisonous. He never meant for the rattlesnake or the asp, these things were brought in the world by virtue of the sin and the transgression of the man who disobeyed the commandment of Almighty God. And the entire creation is in the bondage of corruption. And the death that we see everywhere is the great “Amen” to that terrible curse that fell upon our world. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together. That looks forward to the birth. Whenever you have somebody traveling, that word is used altogether either figuratively or actually with regard to birth. And we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. Travailing, there is to be a new day. There is to be a new day for all of this world, not just for the humanity. Not just for the people. But for all of God’s creation. All of God’s world is to be delivered out of the bondage of corruption. I can’t say this, but it will be exactly like this. But all I can say is, that God’s book looks that way, it turns that way. It moves in that way. The bird that dies, the bird will live again. The animal that died, the animal will live again. The insects that dies, it will live again. All earth’s creation will be liberated out of bondage. And then it won’t have a sting in it and it won’t have an ant bite in it and it won’t have a cockatrice’s poison in it. It won’t have a fang in it or a claw. But tell be perfect like God intended for it to be. Do you ever look at the butterfly. Sometimes they are the most gorgeous creatures. God meant all of his little insects to be beautiful like those butterflies. Even a snake. Did you ever see the marvelous colorings of a snake? God created that serpent in the Garden of Eden, it was a perfect animal. And some of its beauty can still be seen in those configuring colors that sometimes glorify the body of that animal of the dust. It is because it was cursed that it crawls on its belly and eats dust all of the days of its life. But God never intended that. And some day there will be the re-making of this whole universe. And the birds will be beautiful and perfect. And God’s insects will fly like beautiful butterflies. And everything will be just as the hand of God could make it. And behold, it will be very, very good. When we go to heaven, we’re not going to be up there by ourselves. Lonesome like. Everything gone. We’ll have trees there. The trees will be re-made. And they won’t die. They won’t shed their leaves. The leaves are for the healing of the people. And it bears fruit, not just in the autumn when the apples are ripe. Not just in the early part of the summer when -- what gets ripe? Cherries. When the cherries get ripe. Not just in the winter when something else gets ripe. But they will ripen all year long. The trees will be like God intended for his trees to be. Bearing fruit every month. And the rivers won’t overflow their banks. And we won’t have any hassles and cares knocking at our doors. But it will be perfect. Everything will be just as God intended it. Now, we’re in the bondage of corruption, but we travail in pain, looking toward to the new creation. Not only they, not only all creation suffers, but we ourselves also who have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, namely, the redemption of our bodies. Isn’t that a funny thing? Isn’t that a strange thing? The Lord God began with a man’s body, with this house of clay in which he lives and tabernacles. God began with a body. And God ends with our bodies. The re-created, immortalized, glorified body in which we live. I was preaching one day. And I was preach nothing Luk 24:1-53. I was preaching on that passage where Jesus said: You are frightened as though you were looking at a spirit. I’m not a spirit. Handle me and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones such as ye see me have. And he said: Have you any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish of and an honeycomb. And he ate before them. And in the passage in John, the same experience. Come and put your hand -- put your finger in the nail print in my hand and thrust your hand into my side. That it is I, myself, that you are seeing. I was preaching that in the resurrection, in the new world, out there in glory, in heaven, that heaven is a place. And has to be a place because a body has to be in a place. You might put five thousand spirits on a part of that little doohickey there. I don’t know how many spirits you can put right there on that doohickey. But I know this, you can’t put bodies on that thing. A body has to have space. And Jesus has a body. He was resurrected from the dead, in the body in which he lived in the days of his flesh. And we shall be resurrected like him. You’ll be you, and I’ll be I. Only you’ll be better and I’ll ought to be. By God’s grace shall be, all of us, all of us. Re-created. That’s what I was preaching. And there was somebody there -- there was a somebody there from another faith. And another religion. And in that faith and in that religion, they say mind is everything and that when you are sick, you know, you just got a trickle in your mind, you are not really sick. And that you don’t die, you just think you die. And that you don’t have body and you don’t have materiality, oh, that’s just thinking, you know. And it is that religion. And somebody was there in that religion listening to me preach. And when they went out, they were very, very disgusted. And they said to the family that brought them this once, that one said, “I never heard such a crass material preacher. Never.” Why, said that one, “These things are great spiritual trues. We’re not going to have any materialitys. We’re not going to have any bodies. We’re not going to have any of objects of the earth or of time or of tide. But over there, all of us are going to be spirits. And all of us are going to be mind. And all of it is going to be thought. And all of it is going to be intelligence.” Well, if that’s what it is, I’m not interested in going there. I don’t to live the rest of eternity with just a bunch of spirits; disembodied spirits. Scares me to death just to think about. I don’t even relish the idea. Don’t even like it. Don’t even like it. And I’m not the only one. Paul doesn’t like that either. In the II Corinthians letter and in 2Co 5:1-21, the apostle Paul writes, saying: How glorious it is going to be that when we -- when earthly house is dissolved, we have another house, one made with God, eternal in the heaven. For this we groan. Just like he says here: “For we ourselves who are in this house, we groan within ourselves waiting for the redemption of our bodies.” In 2Co 5:1-21 letter, Paul is saying: Not that we would be unclothed, not that we would be naked; that is, not that we want to be a disembodied spirit. Nobody who has any intelligence or religion or knows the book would look forward to a disembodiment. Paul says: Not that we would be disembodied, unclothed, but clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up. Paul is saying there: What we look forward to is a new body, a new house, a new tabernacle, one that doesn’t grow old. One in which our hair doesn’t turn gray and our hair doesn’t turn loose. A body in which your eyes stay good. One that your limbs stay strong. One in which you won’t grow old. But you always are like God intended for us to be. That’s what we want. And that’s what I look forward to. I would like to be handsome, wouldn’t you? Oh, think of. Well, brother, I’m going to be handsome some of these days. Some of these days. And wouldn’t you like to be pretty? Don’t have to go to the beauty parlor, just made that way and stay that way. Get a permanent and it will last all of eternity. Think of that. Think of that. Isn’t that glorious? It is wonderful. And that’s what God’s book says. God’s book has nothing about disembodiment. Could I say it like this? The holy scriptures, God’s book abhors disembodiment like nature abhors a vacuum. Nature cannot bear a vacuum. It rushes to fill it up. So with this holy revelation. The book of God cannot bear disembodiment. God’s word cannot bear the death of the body and the liberation of the spirit and the spirit just stay a spirit. No, sir. Jesus said: And the third day, I shall rise again. The third day, live again. The third day, I shall be raised incorruptible and he was. And he was and he is. And he has a body and he’s in glory. And some day, we’re going to be raised. We’re going to be raised incorruptible. We shall have a body and the whole creation shall be re-made with us. What a glorious prospect. For we are saved by hope, no. For we are saved unto this hope. We are saved into this state of hope. We live as Christian people in this hope. Their hope in sin is not hopeful. When a man sin, what doth he have hope for? We don’t see it yet. We are still dying. We’re still suffering. We’ve still in this body. We’ve still enthroned in this house in which we live. But if we hope for that, we see not. Then do we with patience wait for it. It is coming. Some of these glorious, marvelous days, it is coming. Now, modern materialism and atheistic infidelity look down through the years that lie ahead and all they can see, all they can know, all they can discover is just death, light, darkness, the end. That’s all. When they think of us, mankind, crass materialism, blatant infidelity. All they can see and know is just that the man is a pawn in the hand of forces he cannot resist. We are just a play before powers that are dumb and inexorably and impersonal and passionless. We’re just so many automata slaves. The product of the caprice of circumstance and heredity. That’s all. That’s all. But to the Christian, to a man of God, to the one who believes the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in all of this vast created earth and its history and its travail and pain, in it all, God has an infinite and a glorious plan. Now, may I speak of that plan? As Paul has presented it here. But I reckon that the sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For we are the children of God. Joint heirs with Christ. If so be, that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. And then the go back: For the creation was made subject to vanity, to futility, to death. Not willingly, not of itself, but by reason of God who subject it the same in hope. God allowed all of this and God did all of this. The curse when the man transgressed and the death that comes upon us. God did it all and God allowed it all. Because there is an infinite reaching out of the Almighty toward some glorious consummation, toward that final and holy end for which God made us and this world. Now, in that plan of God, in that reaching out, God’s plan included suffering and trial, discouragement, temptation, all of the weariness and burden of life. What he says: The groanings within ourselves. It has a place. It has a part. There is a vast difference between God’s creating and God’s redeeming. When God created this world, he did it at no cost at all. He just said it and that’s it. Just spoke and there it was. God just said: Let there be light. And there was light. God said: Let the heavens appear and the firmament and the division of the clouds above and the waters in the sea below. And there it was. And God spoke into existence by fiat all of these things. And he made the stars also. And he just threw in those five hundred million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, centillion, the rest of them he just threw them in extra. He just did that on the side. That was just nothing. That was just the way God made the world. It was nothing to him to make all of that. Just did it just like that. But the Lord God did something. He made a man whom he could love and who could love him. To whom he could talk and to whom could talk to him. And he made that man in his own image, morally free. And when he did, God laid himself open to an infinite hurt. As long as what is on the outside is kept on the outside, it will never bother you. Never bother you. A star, whatever that star is or isn’t, all of those created works of God, they’re outside of God’s heart. They are outside of God’s soul and his love. He just created them and they were on the outside. But when the Lord God made a man, the man could love God and God could love the man. And the Lord God took the man into his heart and loved him. And gave himself to him. And the Lord God looked upon the man as someone who could respond. And when he did that, God laid himself open to an infinite, unbelievable and indescribable hurt. You see, to create, he could do it by fiat. Just say the word. But to redeem, he had to suffer and to die. Because he loved the man. And Christ died for the man and Christ is God in the flesh. God dying, and God suffering for the man that he made. And create, but you can’t redeem without suffering. As long as it is on the outside, it is nothing. But when it gets on the inside, it suffers. And God suffered. And in that infinite plan, suffering has an infinite part. Christ suffered. And out of his suffering came the cross, came the gospel, came our redemption. And out of the suffering of his apostles came this New Testament. And the Lord Jesus received his suffering from the hand of God. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? My Father gave it to me. What meant that terrible draft? What meant that terrible poison in that cup? No, God did it, says Jesus. God did it. The apostle Paul’s attitude was the same. Men put that chain on Paul’s arm. No, sir. Paul says: God put that chain on my arm. That’s God’s chain. Caesar put you in prison. No, sir, says Paul. I’m the prisoner of the Lord. It is God’s world. And I’m suffering as from the hands of God. Now, in this creation, in this new world, God has a place for us. One of the most unusual passages in the Bible is in the I Colossians letter and in the 24th verse: “We now rejoice in sufferings and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” In the redemption of this world, suffering has a part in the infinite plan of God. Christ suffered, Paul suffered, the apostles suffered, and we have a part in that trial of our faith. And that groaning of our soul and that suffering in your lives. We have a part in it, too. We are to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, that is, Christ suffered completely for our salvation. And our atonement is far from finished. But in the plan of God, there are many, many other sufferings that Christ does not bear. You bear them. You pay that price. And in the created order of God, we have a part. And that’s why it is a glorious type. In I Peter, Peter said: The trial, the tribulation, the burden of your faith is precious though it be tried by fire. And in another passage in the 4th of Corinthians, Paul says: “For our afflictions which is but for a season worketh for us a far more eternal and exceeding way of glory.” And in the text here, in Rom 8:1-39 : “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Our trial, our tribulation, our groanings, our burden of spirit and of life, all of these things are but God’s way of making the new heaven and the new earth and fitting us for a more glorious citizenship than any we have ever known here below. Our trials have a part. They are from God. They are from his hand. He planned them in an infinite all-gracious love. Into a mystery which I cannot understand. But they are from his hands. They seek us. Have you been out to the fair? I’m glad you don’t go on Sunday. Glad you’re here. But I think all of us ought to go to the fair during the week. And not any of us go to the fair on Sunday. So we’ll go to the fair on the days of the week. And all of us ought to. Many of these visitors that have been with us the last two Sundays have come from afar to visit the fair. And our glorious church. And you have been a blessing to us. When you go out to the fair, by all means, I think, you ought to see the Winston Diamond of New York and all of those glorious diamonds that are possessed by Winston. You will see the Hope Diamond. The most historic and colorful and dramatic of all of the jewels of the world. You will see the Brazilian Diamond out there. You will see many others. They are wonderful things to behold. Never could buy one. Wouldn’t have it unless somebody gave it to me. I’d be afraid somebody would knock me in the head if I walked down the street with it. I’m glad they have it and I don’t. But it is a glorious thing to see. Well, when you go out there, you’ll see a man and he’s grinding diamonds. He’s polishing diamonds. He’s taking those little old ugly, dirty-looking, off-colored, discolored looking worthless little rocks. And he’s grinding them out there and he’s making out of them those beautiful, beautiful gems that so beautifully are graced by you glorious girls. I didn’t say that they grace you. You grace them. Over there in Siam I went to a gem factory. That man was a Dutchman. He came from Holland. He was grinding diamonds up. And went down there to Bangkok in Siam where they mine oh, many jewels in India and in Malaya, and especially Zircons. He had over two thousand girls work nothing that gem factory. And they were taking those dirty little old stones, those lack-luster things and they grind and grind and grind them and pretty soon, they would come out like a piece of God’s heaven. And as I went with him and looked all through that wonderful place and then finally, to his office. And he opened up those great safes where he had those jewels by the pocket full, by the bucket full, he had more than I ever saw than what was in the world. He looked at several of them and sent them to me. And then he took his hand and picked them up and let them fall like that. And they would sparkle under that glorious sun. It looked like they belonged to heaven itself. It looked like it came out of glory. As he did that, he smiled and turned to me and said, “Fellow, who would ever have guessed that these beautiful gems would come from those dirty-looking little stones that you saw a moment ago?” What makes them shine? What makes them glorious? What makes them full of the splendor and the light of Almighty God? You know what? It is the grinding and the grinding and the grinding and the grinding. Without the grinding and the grinding, they look like dirty-little rocks to me. They look like sorry little pebbles to me. They don’t shine. They are not pretty. They don’t have any color. They’re not anything. And a diamond or a jewel or an emerald or a ruby or a zircon, nothing, nothing, it looks like just another rock. But they take it and they grind and they grind and they grind and they grind. And they liberate the splendor and the fire that God put in its soul. That’s you. That’s you. The grinding and grinding, and the toil and the groaning. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 33: S. RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT ======================================================================== RECEIVING THE HOLY SPIRIT 01-24-54a Acts 19:2 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message from the first part of Acts 19:1-41. In our preaching through the Word, last Sunday, we closed, we stopped on the first part of Acts 19:1. "And it came to pass that while Apollos was at Corinth" -- and that’s where we stopped. While Apollos was at Corinth. Now we continue in Acts 19:1-41. "While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coast came to Ephesus." The capital city of proconsular Asia, the Roman province of Asia came to Ephesus. "And finding certain disciples, "He said unto them, `Have you received the Holy Spirit since ye believed?’ And they said unto him, `We have not so much have heard whether there be any Holy Spirit.’ "And he said unto them, `Unto what then were you baptized?’ And they said, `Unto John’s baptism.’ "Then says Paul, `John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on Him which should come after Him, that is, on Christ Jesus.’ "When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. "And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied. "And all of the men were about twelve." That possibly is one of the most difficult passages to understand in the whole New Testament. For example, you have here a generation after John the Baptist is dead, you have disciples of John the Baptist. John has been martyred for more than thirty years. And yet here are disciples of the John the Baptist. And not only that, but these disciples of John the Baptist in this Acts 19:1-41 are not on the banks of the Jordan River nor are they even in the wilderness of Judea, but they are in Ephesus. Far, far away in the capital city of Asia. And if you remember in the few verses just above, you have another disciple of John the Baptist, the eloquent Apollos who hailed from Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, on the other side of the Mediterranean world. That causes an unusual question. Disciples of John the Baptist. A Baptist movement that had its origins in the great forerunner that continues on through the years and the years. Where did they come from? Who are they and what became of them? Then you have another problem here. The baptism of John. That was the only baptism that Jesus had. It was the only baptism that the apostles had. In fact, the qualification for a man to be an apostle were two. One, He had to be baptized by John the Baptist. And second, he had to be a personal witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet in this passage are disciples of John the Baptist who said they were baptized in John’s baptism. Whom Paul baptized again. That was to give your casting aspersion and discredit upon the baptism of John. That’s just some of the problems that lie in this passage. So let’s start out on them. Because in finding an answer, there is in it a marvelous truth for us who are Christians. The first startling fact when you began to pull back into those days, the first startling fact you will discover is this, that there was a movement, the John the Baptist movement that was parallel to and alongside the Christian movement. They, too, were side by side. May [have] simultaneously developed. You and I think of the great forerunner as announcing the coming of the Lord, preparing disciples for the Lord and that his movement was enmeshed and amalgamated and finally, encompassed by the Christian movement. That’s not true at all. The John the Baptist movement continuous alongside the Christian movement. And John made disciples and those disciples made disciples. And Jesus made disciples. And those disciples made disciples. And the two movements went along side by side. And almost from the beginning, there was a bitter antipathy and antagonism between the disciples of John the Baptist and the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have time this morning, barely to refer to that conflict. But you look at it. In John 3:1-36, beginning in John 3:22 it said, "After these things came Jesus and His disciples into the land of Judea and they tarried there and baptized." So Jesus is there in the land of Judea, baptizing. "And John also was baptizing, in Aenon near to Salim, because there was much water there." Whatever baptism John was using, he had to have lots of water. Not a cup full. Not a glass full. Not a trunk phone [sic] fen full, but lots of water. A tub full. A baptistry full. A river full. A pond full. Now, "John also was baptizing in Aenon because there was much water there and they came and were baptized, "Because John was not yet cast in prison." The two are side by side. Making disciples, baptizing those disciples and making converts. "Then there arose an altercation between John’s disciples and the Jews about purifying." Now, what was that purifying? Look at it. "And they came unto John and said unto thee [him], `Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan to Whom thou barest witness, behold the same baptizeth, yet He is more popular than you. You have lost your rabbit’s foot. It is Jesus that is the song on the lips and the praise from the heart and all men come to Him." And the disciples of John the Baptist were taking it hard. They were taking it hard. That altercation over purifying was over baptizing. Baptism is a purification. It is a sign of purification. It is a sign of washing and of cleansing. The cleansing of the soul and of the heart are a sign and a washing of the body. And they were in an altercation as the disciples of John the Baptist said, "The true baptism is from John. He got it from heaven." And the disciples of Jesus were saying, "The true baptism is from Christ. He is the great Messiah promised." They were having a lot of trouble there among those Jewish people. Now, you take one other. The disciples of John the Baptist made a direct frontal attack upon the Lord Jesus in the days of His ministry. Here in Acts 5:33 [sic, Luke], "And they said unto Him, `Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers? But Thou, Brother, all You are doing is eating and drinking and having a good time.’" "You’re over there staying with that bunch of kids. And You ought to be praying. You are up there with these men in those bowling lanes and you ought to be fasting. Then You wouldn’t have enough strength to bowl. "You are around there with this crowd out at Mount Lebanon in a camp out there with these young idiots. And You ought to be there down on your knees. Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers and you, you eat and drink?" You’ll find the same thing in Mark 2:1-28. And the disciples of John came to Him and said, "Here we are fasting and look at You. Look at You." Now, I haven’t time to go into that. Let’s continue on. I am pointing out to you that even in the days of the flesh of our Lord, there was antipathy and jealousy and conflicts and antagonism between the disciples of John and the disciples of the Lord Jesus. I kind of hate to preach like this because I haven’t the beginning of time to encompass it all. And there is a lot more to this than I am saying. John the Baptist was loyal. And he died loyal to the Savior. John the Baptist was raised of God to introduce the Lord Jesus and he did it. And the true disciples of John the Baptist entered the Christian movement. John, the man who wrote the fourth Gospel, Simon Peter, Andrew, all of the apostles of the Lord Jesus were disciples of John the Baptist. But there was a difference in them. Some of the disciples of John entered the Christian movement, but a great host of them didn’t. And as we go on, that will appear. But in no sense, must you get the idea that John was not faithful to his witness and loyal to the Lord Jesus, and he died that. Now, let me go back. From the beginning, I say, there was conflict and altercation and jealousy and enmity between many of the disciples of John and the popularity and prestige and growing fame of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when John died, that did not in any wise take away from his prophetic stature. Even in his prison, the disciples of John loved their master. And Herod gave them opportunity to visit him and to minister to him. And when John was beheaded, it just made him a greater prophet in their eyes. You remember Mat 21:1-46 and other Gospel. The Lord Jesus Himself said, "John’s baptism, was it of men or was it of heaven?" And the Jews said, "If we say it is from heaven, why, the Lord will say, `Well, why didn’t you believe Him and accept Me as the Messiah?’ But if we say it is from him, why the people will stone us. Because” -- the Bible says - “all men took John for a prophet.” And he’s been dead and is beheaded and yet, beheaded and dead, he was still the stature of the great prophet before the people. So the death of John the Baptist made no difference in the worship of the disciples as they remembered their glorious master. Now, that John the Baptist movement continued like the rippling out of the waves to a drop of a rock in a lake. The John the Baptist movement went out and out and out until it conquered the entire civilized world. For one thing, many pilgrims came to Judea, to the feast and they heard the great prophet preach. And they repented of their sins and they were baptized by John. And when they went back home, they took the message of the great forerunner with them. And they made converts and the movement went on. You will find over here in Alexandria I say, Apollos is a disciple of John the Baptist. And here in Ephesus, you will find these twelve men who are disciples of disciples of John the Baptist. Then when you go beyond the veil of older Scriptures, you will find these church fathers, those early ecclesiastical historians, you will find them mentioning the disciples of John the Baptist. One author is Justin Martyr. He refers to the disciples of John. As Justin was martyred in 110 A. D. Then you will find in Hegesippus. Hegesippus was an early church historian. And he lived about 160 A. D. And he mentioned the disciples of John the Baptist. And there is a pseudo literature called the Clementine Homilies and the Clementine Organization. They have been reported to have been written by Clement who was reported to have been a bishop in the church at Rome. And they are an unusual collection of literature. And the heart of the Clementine literature is this: they are struggling with problems in their own day. Say about 200 A. D. So Clement, the early bishop, pastor of the church at Rome is writing back there what happened back in the apostolic day. And so have Peter and John and the rest of them giving answers to problems that they are meeting in 200 A. D. It is a spiritual epigraphic literature. It is a soft literature. It is not authentic but it shows you the time. And this -- these Clementine recognitions I’m going to read a passage, a little brief passage. Look at it. "And behold, one of the disciples of John asserted that John was the Christ and not Jesus. Inasmuch as Jesus Himself declared that John was greater than all men and all prophets. "If then, said he, he be greater than all, he must be greater than Moses and of Jesus Himself. But if he be the greatest of all, is not he then the Christ?" The disciples of John the Baptist, two hundred years now after the Lord Jesus. The disciples of John the Baptist are declaring that the great forerunner is the Christ, the Messiah Himself. Now, I can find that thing here in the Bible. John the sainted author of the fourth Gospel. John lived to be about one hundred years old. And in 100 A. D., John was still living and he was at Ephesus. He was at Ephesus, the city of Ephesus. And he pastored the church at Ephesus for many, many years. Now, John said that if you were to try to write down everything that the Lord Jesus did, the world itself could not contain the book[s] that could be written. So John says he picked out this little bit, what little bit that he has written here in the Gospel, he has chosen that in order that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Now, it is perfectly -- in his perfect selection of what he is going to write about the Lord Jesus, John in Ephesus is careful to write down even in the little bit that he chooses, he is careful to write down the testimony of John the Baptist concerning his being the Christ. John 1:20, "And John confessed, John the Baptist confessed and denied not. But confessed, I am not the Christ." Well, who said he was the Christ? There were lots of people saying John was the Christ. There were many disciples of disciples of John the Baptist who were saying the forerunner was the promised Messiah. So here in the Gospel of John, John took pains to turn aside and write down the testimony of the Baptist. And the whole chapter there, that whole section which I haven’t time to read is the testimony of John. And that’s the strongest way you can say it, "He confessed, denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." Now, the reason that Luke wrote this passage here in the 19th chapter of the Book of Acts, where we are preaching from this morning. It was a libation in the first Christian century, these disciples of John the Baptist. So Luke was writing here how Paul dealt with the problem. And gave that illustration. Now let me tell you something that is one of the most unusual things you could ever dig out. There are disciples of John the Baptist today. In the Mesopotamian Valley, there are about two thousand souls who call themselves, Mandaeans. Or disciples of John the Baptist. And they have a John’s book and they look upon John as the promised teacher and Messiah who was to come into the world. Now, what kind of a religion was that John the Baptist movement? What kind of a people were they? Well, it is easy to answer that question. The John the Baptist religion, the disciples of John the Baptist and the kind of people they were, they were severe and aesthetic. John the Baptist himself was one of the most impressive of all of the men who have ever appeared across the stage of human history. He looked like and he talked like a prophet that had stepped out of the pages of the Old Testament. His beard was unkempt. His hair had never been cut for over thirty years and hanged in jagged, and hung in shaggy locks around his shoulders. He was dressed in poor camel cast cloth with a leather curtain around his waist. And he thundered the repentance and the judgment and the coming fury of the kingdom of God. And he was bold and impressive in his implacable and inflexible countenance. And John and his disciples were amazed at the congeniality of Jesus. And the disciples of the Lord. They were rigorous. They are monastic. [But these others,] they were common. And the movement had in it a tremendous appeal to all classes, to people who are classless and aesthetic or the worldly religion. So as time went on, people who thought that the Christian movement was dilettante. It was effeminate. It was effete. It was too much here down in the world. And they liked the fury and the judgment and the preaching of the fire and the brimstone of John the Baptist. So they just kept on in that religion. And the thing echoed and reverberated and made converts and continued through the years and the centuries. So when Paul came to Ephesus, he looked at those twelve men. How did he know there was something wrong with their religion? Why, to the discerning eye of the apostle, I can tell you exactly how Paul saw it. Was sensitive to it. And in solicitude and in love and in anxiety searched it out. Whenever you see a people who have lost the optimism of their religion. When you see a people that have lost the triumph of their religion. When you see people who have lost the glory and the happiness and the joy and the fullness and the look and the work and the gladness and the ecstasy of their religion there is something wrong. There is something wrong. Because religion puts a soul in man’s heart. Religion puts a smile on his face. Religion puts a persuasion, a feeling of triumph in his life. Whether we live or whether we die. Whether we have or have not. Whether we are sick or whether we are well. Whether we are here or there. True religion in the face of the Lord Jesus Christ has a song even in the night. So Paul looked at those twelve disciples. They were twelve men, twelve heads bowed. Twelve faces lined with austerity. And the monasticism and the severity of a religion of fear and subservient and resentment. They were pulled out of the world. The world wretched and vile. And when they touch it, the violin is an instrument of the devil and we must never bring it into the church. So said the Monastics. And they -- the whole set up of the creation is vile and iniquitous and we must pull out from it. Now, how do I preach and be misunderstood again? We ought to pull out from the compromise and iniquity of the world. But we ought to stay down there in the world where the folks are. If they live on the breach of hell, our church ought to be on the brink of hell trying to minister to the people who walk around on its verge. Where the people are, the church ought to be. Where the young people are, the church ought to be. Where the folks are, you ought to be. Whether you have all eternity to live up there in glory, God needs somebody down here, just like you. Just like you. And that’s what Christians say. The Christian religion is a down-to-earth religion. Get lost in the dust of the ground. It will be for the people, it knocks at the door. The Lord Jesus said, "I come to break bread at your house this day." So Paul looked at them and they were the lugubrious, sad, pathetic monastics. And Paul looked at them and said, "My soul, my soul. Does religion affect you that way?" The judgment of God coming in this way? We have a message of hope. So he asked them a question, "Tell me, did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? Was there a gladness of regeneration in your heart when you found religion? Did you find God and victory and triumph, did you?" And they said, "This Holy Spirit? All we know is monastic aesthetic. We never heard of whether there ever be any Holy Spirit or not." Now, there is a key that I can see what kind of people they were. And now, I cannot pass by the little comment on the movement of John the Baptist. As the movement progressed, some of it was good like Apollos. He wasn’t that type. Apollos had the same baptism Jesus did and the apostles did. And he was a true disciple of the John the Baptist made ready for the coming of the Lord. And when Aquila and Priscilla told him about the Lord Jesus, immediately he was ready and received him. That’s the true John the Baptist movement from the Lord Himself. But these men, the disciples of John the Baptist made disciples. And these disciples made disciples. And these disciples made disciples. And this made disciples and finally, they got away from the original intention and meaning and purpose of the Baptist movement altogether. So these men here never heard of the Holy Spirit and yet they said they were disciples of John the Baptist. Why, they didn’t know anything about God. Tell me, when John the Baptist preached, didn’t he preach like this? "I baptize you in water. But He that cometh after me Who is greater than I, He shall baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Did he do that? Yet these men had never heard about the Holy Spirit. Never heard about the Holy Spirit. They got away altogether from the true meaning of the movement of John the Baptist. So Paul when he looked at them he said, "Listen here, that baptism that you have is nothing. And that religion that you have is worse than nothing." So he told them the truth of the faith by the Lord Jesus. And then they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Now, the best I can, may I encompass a whole hour’s appeal in a few sentences? One, one, baptism, this baptism, the baptism in water, the baptism they are talking about here, baptism and the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as any meaning in baptism apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit. You might as well go out there and let the president of the Chamber of Commerce dunk you in a pool as to say, "My baptism has meaning apart from the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit." It has no meaning at all. It has to be upon a confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you must be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. An unconscious influx, a somebody who is not converted, one who is not prepared for baptism, it is nothing. It is nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Apart from the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, a baptism in water is nothing, nothing. And another word regarding the baptism itself. The baptizing itself. Paul then said, "Then you must be baptized again." Or re-baptized. "You must be baptized again." There that briefing that you will find here in that action of Paul, one is, Paul refused to allow Christianity to dissolve, to fall in the empty, hollow, ceremonialism of the Jews’ religion, of Judaism. There is no rite. There is no ceremony. Baptism or any other rite. There is no other rite in the earth that has in any effect or any meaning or any spiritual power aside from a regeneration in the heart. The movement of God in the spirit and in the soul. And the rite on the outside is nothing at all. Nothing at all. Because you have been baptized means nothing at all. Nothing at all. "But Preacher, I get baptized and I belong to such and such church." It means nothing at all. It has to believe. It is a moving of the Spirit on the inside. The thing is genuine and real according to the inside and the outside is just a token symbol, a pronouncement, a heralding. First, Paul refused to allow the Christian faith just as it stands in the heart of ceremony. I baptize. I am in the church. I’m on the way to heaven. "Not so," says Paul. "Not so." You may be good and you may read the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, but you are lost. No matter how many times you are baptized or how many preachers told you belong unless there is something that is moved on the inside of the soul and the heart. All right. The second thing here. Paul also insisted on the right administration of the ordinance. You can baptize, yes. But were you baptized for the right motive? Were you baptized for the right purpose? Were you baptized by the right administrative? Were you? Were you? Paul insists. He insists that a true baptism, to be a baptism must be the right purpose, the right cause, the right meaning, the right person and the right administrator. And you have here the Scripture for the insistence of your present pastor and many, many men who stand by his side or by whom I stand, you have the Scripture here why we insist on the rebaptizing or the real baptizing of these who come to us and say. And now may I make illustration just a moment? I do not know how many and this will be typical who will come to me and say, "Pastor, I want to join the First Baptist Church. We love this church. And we love to go hear the Word preached. And I want to join the church." I say, "Welcome, a thousand times welcome. Have you given your heart to God?" "Sir, I’ve been saved. I’ve been converted." "Have you been baptized?" ======================================================================== CHAPTER 34: S. SAVED BY HIS LIFE ======================================================================== SAVED BY HIS LIFE Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 5:10 08-08-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas. And this is the Pastor, bringing the message from Rom 5:1-21. In our preaching through the Word, last Sunday night we closed with Rom 5:5. This morning, we begin with Rom 6:6 and reading through the tenth-Romans, Rom 5:6-10 : For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. This is a message of Christian assurance. And it says in the text, on the worst day that we lived, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son. “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” A little summary of the thought that Paul follows here is this: our Lord Jesus was delivered for our offenses and raised again for our justification. In the blood of Christ, the wrath of God was taken from us and received in His own body on the tree. He died our death. He suffered our penalty. He paid our ransom. We are declared righteous-acceptable to God-through the atoning death of Jesus. We are justified by His blood. Now, what becomes of me? I have been justified by the blood of Christ. I have been saved by the atoning grace of Jesus. I was, at one time, an enemy of God, without hope, without inheritance, an orphan, a stranger, cast outside, condemned. Now, I have been made an heir in the family. Now, I have been received into the household of God. Now, what shall become of me? Having been justified by the blood of Christ, and declared righteous through the atoning suffering of Jesus-now that I no longer face the possibility of falling into hell, there are still some things before the Lord shall gather His own in glory. Having been justified by the blood of Christ, I, who at one time was alienated from the house of God, now, having been adopted, having been accepted, shall at last no longer fall prey to the power of Satan and, ultimately, into hell. What will become of me now-now that the Lord has saved me by His blood on the Cross, what difference-what difference does it make in my life-in our lives-as we live every day? I found myself weak before God, without strength, without faith to live on a daily basis. And I found myself a sinner, guilty and condemned. Then, I found the Lord Jesus, my righteousness and my Savior, who died for me, in my stead, in my place-Now, do I have the strength in myself to run this race? Do I have what it takes for me to achieve that final goal? I found myself unable to bear the penalty of my own sins. But, Jesus bore that penalty for me. Now, having been justified, having been forgiven, is it left to me now to run this race by myself? No, sir. If it were still up to me, I’d still fall into hell. I’d still die lost. There is not enough in me-in my strength, in my eagerness-to live God’s way and go to God’s heaven and be with Him at the golden gate in Paradise. But, that blessed Lord who died for me-who gave His life for me-that same merciful Savior said, “Not only for your past sins did I die and pay the penalty, but I swear-I have promised that I will keep and protect and preserve your life against that great and final day of future judgment.” Now, that is what Paul meant when he writes in these words: “if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled-being justified by His blood, being accepted into the family of God-much more now we shall be finally saved and finally delivered by the resurrection life of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He not only died for our sins, but He lives for our justification. Paul said the same thing in Rom 4:25 : “Who was delivered for our offenses-He died for our sins-but he is raised again for our justification.” He lives that we might, someday, have a taste of glory. Now, that’s something to preach about. Amen! So many times, as we listen to a man teach about the death of Christ on the Cross-and I may have left the pulpit the last few Sundays with the same impression-so many times, as you listen to such teaching about the death of Christ on the Cross, there is the lingering persuasion, as you listen to a man teach about the death of Christ and the Cross, that the work of Christ is an isolated historical event that happened back there 2,000 years ago, and that the work of the Lord is just there. He died for our sins, and all of our experience of Him is encompassed in that moment when He died on the Cross. But, that’s just the start. The atoning death of Christ on the Cross is just the first-initial-step. It was a tremendous experience-an incomparable thing. We must not minimize it. It does not end there. Having won our salvation, He also guarantees our sanctification. But, did He do it all on the Cross? As time marches on, it was an impossible thing. But, what we have in Christ is not isolated. It wasn’t just there on the Cross. Our relationship with Christ Jesus is dynamic. It’s life giving. It has a sequel. It has a follow-up. It has an after. It has a story. It has a history, but it comes forth from God and continues on to the last eon of eternity. … Having been reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved-delivered, we shall be saved by the life of the Son of God. He lives now-He lives now. That was what Paul meant in the sixth verse of the first chapter of Philippians: “For we are confident of this one thing: that he who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” That’s the same thing Jesus meant in John 14:19 : “Because I live, ye shall live also.” I live. You too shall live. I live through the Lord Jesus. All through this blessed Book, all through these Scriptures, the Son of God is seen to in His life and His trials and He lives and breathes and dies and lives again for us. We are justified by His death and saved by His life. He’s not just a hero. He’s not just a martyr. We are saved by the present victorious life of Jesus. He lives! He lives! He is somebody. If I should get out binoculars and train them on the theological and wonderful Jesus, who dies for us and who lives for us-why, He’s not just a hero; He’s not just another man. When it says that we are saved by His life, we are talking about the Son of God. He was pre-existent. He always was. He’s the One who said, “Before Abraham was, I am.” He’s the One who said, “I and my Father are one.” He’s the One about whom the Apostle John said: In the beginning was the Word-the Lord Jesus-and the Word-the Lord Jesus-was with God, and the Word-the Lord Jesus-was God. This one-the Lord Jesus-was in the beginning with God. He who holds us in the palm of His hands always was, and He always was God. He is the Lord God omnipotent of heaven-that’s who he is! He is the one who says, “I will see you through.” I couldn’t help but be a little amused the other day. I came across a fellow who was describing an incident that was famous 100 years ago. There was an infidel who was teaching. And he was deriding the Lord Jesus Christ. And among the things that he was saying-he said that the Lord Jesus was a man, just like any other man. And he said that Christianity is losing its power in the world. And when he said that, a dear sainted old woman stood up, and just in the middle of a sentence, she said, “That’s a lie”-That just struck me as the funniest thing: “That’s a lie!” But, she’s right. Jesus is not just a hero. He’s not just another man. He’s the Son of God, who delivered us by His death and justifies us by His life. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, how much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Did you ever sit down and think how the Lord might have decided to save us? He could have been high and lifted up and demanded to be treated as a king-I don’t know. But, instead, he chose to come down here and live like a man in this earth. He grew up like you grew up. He lived like you live. He was mistreated and suffered greatly at the hands of His fellow men. But, if He hadn’t lived that life as a man, we wouldn’t have the miracles that He did and the wonderful parables that He taught. Think of all the deeds that He did. Think of the suffering in His life. He came into the world to die-to bring the dawning of the morning. Jesus came down into the world and lived and suffered all that He did on our behalf that He might understand. In the fourth chapter of Hebrews: For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with our infirmities; but was in all points as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. He knows our lives. He knows our pain. He experienced and understands all the things that cause suffering in our lives. We can go before the throne of grace. He understands. And He sympathizes. And He sees. And He cares. He has been there and felt it. I have made some visits to the homes of our people. And as I listen to them-oh, the pain they feel and the burdens upon their hearts. But, thank God-thank God that Jesus is on the throne of grace and he sympathizes-He understands. Somehow, in the midst of these days of crime and loss and pain and heartbreak, what a joy it is to know that there is someone who understands and suffers as you suffer. Jesus is on the throne and that He sympathizes. He suffered like you suffer. He knows everything-everything that you are going through. We have a great high priest who has been there and who sympathizes. How can this be? It is because He lives-because He lives. Then, there is the enduring life of Christ in our hearts-in our souls-in the inner man. What a beautiful thing! In the third chapter of Ephesians, Paul says: For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, … That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith… . Oh, the wonder of the Christian faith. Faith is not only what justifies, but what sanctifies us as we live every day. In the last verse of the first chapter of Hebrews, it says that angels are “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” And that’s where we get our idea of guardian angels: that God has assigned angels to guard and watch over his children. And Elisha asked the Lord to open the eyes of his servant. And when he said, he saw that the mountains all around the town were filled with the angels of God. There are people who believe like that. It’s kind of beyond me. But, those ministering spirits are there, assigned by God. God protects the life of His children. Is it the angels? No. It is God who is all-powerful. That is an encouragement and an inspiration. So, what is the heart of the Christian faith? It is the Lord Jesus Christ living inside, as we go through all the trials and tribulations of life. We are reconciled by His death and we are saved by His life, being lived out through us. It is “Christ in our hearts by faith.” Can the Devil seize us and cast us into hell? We are living in his world. We have to live there every day. No! Because of the indwelling Christ-Christ lives on the inside of your life. The essence of religion is not a church. It is Christ, who lives within. It’s not a system of theology. It’s a Lord. It’s not a philosophy. It’s Jesus, raised from the dead. It’s not a promise of salvation. It’s the Lord Jesus, who saves. It’s not a question of substitution. It’s the Lord Jesus, who was our substitute in paying for our sins. That’s the Christian faith. At the heart of it is the Lord living, in your hearts and in your souls. Too many of us have distorted views of our religion. Too many of think of Christ as a stained glass window in a church, who just comes down here on Sundays. They see Him then, but then they leave Him here until the next Lord’s Day, when they come and see Him again. Ah, He’s not like that-not the Lord. When you go to bed at night, there He is. When you rise in the morning, there He is. When you drive in your car and when you make your way to the office, there He is. In the tasks of the day, there He is. He’s there, by your side: your Savior, your friend, your teacher, your reconciler. “If… we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, how much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life”-that life, which is now in heaven, in glory. Did you ever hear that “He is able-He is able to save to the uttermost.” He is. And it doesn’t matter who’s against us: “… Neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor principalities, now powers, not things present, nor things to come.” It doesn’t matter what it is. Christ is able to save us to the uttermost! There, at the right hand of the Father, the Savior lives-lives-lives. “He always lives to make intercession for us.” It doesn’t matter what the enemy says or does, because “He always lives to make intercession for us”-1,954 years our Lord has been at the right hand of the Father, making intercession for us. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 35: S. SOUL-WINNER TRUETT ======================================================================== SOUL-WINNER TRUETT Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 1:13 7-11-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. And, this is the Pastor, bringing the morning message. Our flowers, today, are dedicated to the memory of an incomparable preacher, a glorious pastor, a soul winner, a minister of the unsearchable riches of Christ. A prince of preachers, for seven and 40 years, lacking one month, he was pastor of this wonderful church. He was the recognized leader of our Baptist people in all the earth. By far, he was the greatest preacher that our Southern Baptist people have ever known. His name is George W. Truett. This is the tenth anniversary of his death. I wonder, this morning, how many of you here, in this congregation, never heard Dr. Truett preach in the flesh. All of you here, this morning, who never heard Dr. Truett preach, would you raise your hand, all over the house? It is as I thought. A vast multitude, in these 10 years, a vast multitude, who now belong to the church and who are caring for the work of the Lord, never saw and never heard that incomparable preacher. In Rom 1:1-32, out of which we are preaching and shall be for a long time, is a personal word from Paul. The Rom 1:13 : Now, I would not have you without knowledge, brethren, that often times, I purposed to come unto you, (but was hindered hitherto,) that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. In writing to the people in the church at Rome, “I want to come to see you, to visit with you for a while,” because of what? Everybody that I have ever known that goes to Rome, goes to visit the city, to look at it, to walk through the Arch of Titus, through the Arch of Constantine, walk around in the Colosseum, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel and go through the great museum there-all of the other historical things connected with the city of Rome. And, if you think Rome is an interesting city today, I have been through it twice, walked all over it, spent days there looking at it-If you think Rome is an interesting city today, you should think of the imperial queen of the Tiber and the capital of the Roman Empire when Paul was writing. Now, practically everything that you see outside of the Vatican is in ruins. But, oh, to have seen Rome in its glory. It was in those imperial days that Paul was writing. But, his visit to Rome moved his heart not at the prospect of seeing the greatest city the world has ever known. His heart was moved at the prospect “that I might have some fruit among you also,” that is, that in visiting the church, the Lord might make it possible, for him, that there, in the imperial and eternal city, he might win somebody to Jesus. In the ministry of the great pastor, preaching in the capital city of Argentina, a city-I am told; I have never been there-a city that is remarkable for its spacious, glorious buildings, its wide thoroughfares, its beautiful boulevards, its magnificent public palaces. It is supposed to be one of the great cities of our world-Dr. Truett preached there in his South American tour a long time. But, in the day that he was there, he refused every social engagement, not one did he accept. In the days that he was there, he refused to visit any part, or to look upon, any section of the city. He gave himself without reserve, with all of the energy within his life, one thing, one thing-he gave himself to the preaching of the gospel, to the winning of the lost. And, that remarkable thing about the great pastor was true of his spirit and of his life, throughout the long years of his preaching: He was a soul winner, he was an evangelist, he was a seeker after the lost. When the cowmen in the West, holding every year a revival in churches, under tabernacles, in brush arbors, out in the country, in the heart of the city, in big auditoriums, in small places, everywhere, this man, George Truett was ever a seeker after souls, “that he might have some fruit among them also.” Now, my doing this today is not perfunctory, nor is it professional, nor am I trying to curry the favor of the people who belonged to this church for a generation and who loved the memory of the great man. The reason I do this is out of the depth of the admiration and gratitude of God in my deepest soul for the man whom I thought was the greatest man I ever saw. I did not know him personally. I had no opportunity. When he was in his glory, I was in a little bitty town that nobody ever heard of, much less my poor family in it. I just saw him at a distance. I would see him at a convention. I heard him at our Baptist World Alliance. I would just see him from afar. I did not know him personally. But, I never heard anybody preach like that man preached. I never saw anybody look like that man look. Nor have I ever been in any services that were affected like that man could turn a service. It was an indescribable thing: the pathos in his voice; the shepherdly care manifest in his attitude, in his manner; the way he stood; the gestures of his hands; the inclination and instruction of his sentences. All of it-you couldn’t describe-it was of God. So, this morning, on the tenth anniversary of his death, and seven years pastor of this church, I wanted to present the great preacher as a soul winner. So, I got the material together of his life, and begin to sift it and read it and recreate it and came out with an altogether different thing. You are going to be surprised this morning at what I speak of. But, as I looked into his life and read and thought and turned it over in my mind and read it again and sifted the material, there is a reason for that man. And, it lies in his mother. His father did not become a Christian until he was 45 years old. But, his mother-I wish I could have seen and met and visited with that plain, simple, mountain woman. Mary Kimsey, his mother: She belonged to a preacher’s family. Her father, James Kimsey, was a North Carolina mountain preacher. He was an evangelist, with a tremendous voice-golden, silver voice. And, he preached, revival and evangelist, winning people to the Lord. As he lay on his last deathbed, a friend told him he couldn’t live. To the crowd gathered round, he exhorted that they take Jesus as Savior and died, exhorting the people around his bed to come to Christ. That was Mary Kimsey’s father. James Kimsey had a brother, Elijah Kimsey, who was an exhorter, a preacher, evangelist, an exhorter. Do you know what an exhorter is? Ah, this flimsy, effeminate, washed out, colorless religion we have today. What is an exhorter? Could I give you an illustration? In Oklahoma I was preaching to the Creek Indians. They have a place in Tuskegee Tabernacle and, once a year, the Creek Nation gathers there. And, I was preaching to them, pouring out my whole and my best. And, we had the people sing while I pressed the invitation. And, the song leader, full blood Creek Indian there, was leading the singing as I pressed the appeal. And, I didn’t succeed very well. And, there weren’t many people who came to pray. After I had done my best, I turned to that Creek Indian, and I said, “I turn the service over to you.” I meant for him to take it and to dismiss it into prayer. I’d done what I could, but he misunderstood me. He was an exhorter. And, when I got through preaching, and I said, “Sir, I turn the service over to you,” he thought that I had meant that I turned the service over to him for him to exhort the people that they come to Christ. And, when I turned the service over to him, up and down those aisles and backwards and forwards and from side to side, that Creek Indian pled with the people. To the right hand and at the left hand, to the front and to the back, they come to Christ. And, it does something to your soul when a man like that, with a passion, begins to plead with the lost and they begin to respond. That is an exhorter. Elijah Kimsey, James’ brother, was an exhorter. And, the young boy, George Truett, as he attended those evangelistic services, listened to him as he preached and as he exhorted men to come to Christ. And, it made an indelible and everlasting impression on his life. He was converted when he was 19 years of age in a country Baptist church in Clay County, the mountainous, western part in North Carolina. The young evangelist, who had come to help the pastor said, “This is the last service.” It had been going on for a week. So, he ended his revival and left. But, that night-Sunday night-to the amazement of the people, when the services began, down the aisle came that evangelist, mounted the pulpit and said to the people, under a strange compulsion of the will of God, “I have returned. God wants us to continue this revival for another week.” And, in the service that night, wonderfully blessed of God, among the many who came forward was this 19 year-old young school teacher in a mountain school in North Carolina. Down the aisle came that 19 year-old boy, George Truett, giving his hand to the preacher and his heart in faith to God. The next morning, he described, getting up early to get on his pony, to ride away to school. But, his mother was up before he was. She had breakfast prepared for him. And, sitting there, just those two-the boy sat and his mother-they talked about the night before, when the boy had given his heart to Christ. And, George Truett describes it as an hour of deep and great joy, as mother and son talked about the new-found hope and life in Christ Jesus. The following Wednesday night-this the reason I took time to tell you what an exhorter was-The following Wednesday night, after the evangelist had done preaching, he turned the service back to the pastor. And, the pastor turned to that 19 year-old man, George Truett, and said to him, "Brother George, won’t you stand up and exhort these hesitating people that they come to Christ and be saved." With fear and trembling, the young man stood up for his first testimony. And, then, carried away by the spirit of compassion for the lost, up and down the aisle and back and forth, to the right and to the left, he began to plead and to exhort men and women to come to Christ. It was a tremendous service. Then, suddenly-the psychology of a thing like that you can hardly explain, but I can see-then, suddenly, it just dawned upon him what he was doing. Then, he sat down in great shame and humiliation. As soon as he could, he slipped out of the country church, down the country road, to his home and to bed. Father and mother came in later in the night, from the service, after all the meeting was over. And, his mother sought him out, came into the room and stood there by the bed. And, the young man, looking into the face of his mother, said, "O Mother, I am so humiliated and I am so ashamed at my miserable talk tonight." She knelt down by his bed and kissed him, and said, "Son, I doubt, whether in all of your life, you will ever make a more effective testimony for Christ then you did tonight. Son," she said, "Don’t you think you ought to be a preacher?" The family moved to Whitewright, a town up here north of Dallas. And, soon thereafter, the boy came-George Truett and his brother, home with the family, in northern Texas, on the blacklands of our state. Upon a Saturday afternoon, they used to have conferences. I pastored churches where we had our conferences on Saturday afternoon. If you grew up in a country church, you would know what I mean: Saturday afternoon, church conference. He went to the conference on Saturday afternoon, and the house was filled. And, he thought, “Isn’t it strange that a house filled with people, Saturday afternoon, there is a solemn atmosphere in that house in Whitewright?” And, so, after the church was called into conference, the oldest deacon arose. And, with great emotion, he said, "This an hour concerning which we have been praying a long time, a long time. And, we have come to a definite and certain assurance that this is the will of God. I make a motion that we ordain young George Truett to the gospel ministry, to preach the unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ." It was seconded, and the young man stood up, appalled at what the church was about to do. I can imagine that they just did it. They felt God had called him to preach. He wanted to be a lawyer. Over his remarks, pleading that they desist, with great feeling and persuasion they were in the will of God, they voted to ordain him to the gospel ministry, at the eleven o’clock hour, the following day, Sunday morning. Then, the church conference dismissed. Then, the young man went home and, there again, his mother. She said to him, "Son, that is the voice of God. These are God’s people. This is God’s church. After long prayer and looking to heaven, they have done what God has told them to do." And, he gave his life to the gospel ministry. And, at the eleven o’clock the next Sunday morning, he was ordained a preacher of the gospel of the Son of God. The pastor there wrote to B. H. Carroll at Baylor University-under death, was staggering and gasping for life-The pastor there wrote to B. H. Carroll and said, "One thing I know about George W. Truett: whenever he speaks, the people do what he asked them to do." Carroll sent for him, 23 years of age. Carroll sent for him and gave him the task of saving Baylor University. After prayer, he accepted the assignment. And, all over Texas he went, speaking for Baylor, raising money for Baylor. When the campaign was done, he brought to Dr. Carroll, at the front of the church in Waco, the last check: A sum making up $92,000-then, in 1890, a colossal amount of money. And, the school was saved. Dr. Carroll took the last check, lifted his voice to God and cried, "It is finished." And, somehow, after the strenuous days, Dr. Truett sat down on the steps of the church there in Waco and cried like a child. The tremendous effort and burden of the campaign had almost, had almost undone his life. Sick in body and weary in soul, he went back home. And, his mother took him and treated him like a little child and strengthened him and comforted him and nursed him back to health and strength. Which reminds me of one of the times that I heard Dr. Truett speak. And, he told this in a way that just moved you so. The greatest orator of the South was Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Georgia. In the days of the Reconstruction, oh, what a task upon those men: Out of the ashes, and out of the dust of the ground, out of poverty, out of the years of war, to raise that. Dr. Truett, describing Henry W. Grady and the work and responsibilities laid upon him-the great preacher said, "The orator, weary in soul and heart and body, turned his back on the big city, turned his back on the people, turned his back upon his great work, sought out his mother on a little farm in Georgia. And, he said to his mother, `Mother, once again, tonight, let me be a little boy, just once again. Read to me like you once did out of that Book, pray for me as you once did, with your hand on my head. Tuck me in bed, Mother, just one more time, like you used to do. And ,kiss me goodnight, Mother, like you used to do.’” And, the mother took the great orator, Henry W. Grady, and he was her boy once again. Ministering to him, putting him to bed, tucking the covers around him, kissing him goodnight. And, then, strengthened, he turned back to the great work of his day. You know where George Truett found the feeling he poured into his story. He was just describing the experience of his own heart and his own life. I never heard him refer to his mother but one time, as I heard him preach here and there. At Ridgecrest, in one of his sermons there, that I was attending the conference-in one of his sermons, he described his mother. And, he described the time he left home, there in North Carolina. And, his mother walked with him out to the gate. And, he described the parting and the words that she said to him. "Too hallowed," he said, "ever to be repeated, but treasured and remembered in his heart forever." I wish I could have been here, in this church, when he presented his mother to this congregation. I have heard some of the people who were here describe that moment. And they said to me that no nobleman ever presented his queen as wonderfully and beautifully, as gloriously, as the great preacher and pastor presented that humble, mountain woman to the congregation of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. Were you here, if you were, I covet your remembrance of that beautiful and precious hour. Now, I have time for just one other word. Dr. Truett, as the days passed and the years multiplied, came to be looked on as the greatest preacher of his generation. He was known a thousand miles from here as well as he is known here. He was known abroad, in the other continents and cities of the world, as well as you knew him here. Wherever you go in our Baptist world, George Truett is the name from America that they most revere: Charles Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of London, England and George Washington Truett, the great Baptist preacher of Dallas, Texas. Those are the two giants of our Baptist record, our heritage and our history. I just wanted to say a word about our church and that pastor. He came here in 1897. He was 30 years of age, had a wife, had a baby girl, had just graduated from Baylor University. He had been invited many places, but felt God had called him here. The church had 715 members, had a twelve-thousand-dollar debt, had one well-to-do member: Colonel Slaughter. He took up the first collection. The church said, "We think we can give $25.00." George Truett said, "I intend to give more then that myself and Colonel Slaughter, here will surely give $100.00." And, they laughed uproariously. They thought that was a good joke-that Colonel Slaughter. But, the church grew. And, the preacher grew. And, the Slaughter family grew. Without the Slaughter philanthropies, we couldn’t be what we are today. Oh, how God blessed that little group who, here in this little place, started to raise a great standard for Jesus. Dr. Truett was invited to be Pastor of the Euclid Avenue Church in Ohio. That was when John D. Rockefeller, Sr., was superintendent of the Sunday School there. And, they came down here to get him. They offered any amount of money. They offered him anything. They said, "You just say anything." He refused to go. They said, "Can you be moved?" And, Dr. Truett said, "Yes." And, they said, "What would it take to move you?" And, the great pastor replied, "Just move my people, and I will go.” Just move my people. Just move my people. That is the heart of the pastor. When they asked him to be president of Baylor University, he said, "No," and then replied one of the prettiest sentences I have ever heard: "No, I cannot go. I have sought and found the shepherd heart," and stayed here until he died. And, what a place he built, and what a church. When I came to Dallas, 10 years ago, I met one of the big businessmen on our downtown streets. He was not a Baptist. He shook my hand and said, "So you are the young pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas." He said, "I want you to know there is more religion to the square inch in that church than any other place in God’s world." And, I have found it to be true: more religion-the praying, the gifts, the going all-out to build, to sacrifice, to go the extra mile, to look up. Dear people, I also, in these ten years, have gone up and down our land. I have looked at our churches. I have visited among our people. In pardonable pride, and, indeed, humility, do I see, at least to me-there is not any church in God’s world like the First Baptist Church in Dallas, our church. There is not. There is not. Its depth of compassion, its spirit of seeking, its great missionary commitment and a thousand other things beside. Like you, I love this church-everything about it. I am not saying we are not full of faults and failures. And, I am not saying we don’t make mistakes. And, I am not saying that we don’t fall short of the glory of God. But, I do think that our hearts are in it to try. And, with His help and with His Spirit, we are still trying to carry on: Reaching more people for God, teaching more children the Word, giving more, the evangelization of the world, with His help and our arms around our city and our state and our lost and weary world. Now, I have to quit. May the Lord bless this Word, that somebody, this morning, give his life to Jesus. May the Lord bless this hour that somebody-you, put your life with us in this ministry, by baptism, by confession of faith, by statement, by promise of letter-however God should say the word and lead the way. In the balcony, from side to side, somebody-you, today, would you come? Into the aisle and down here to the front and take my hand, and, “Pastor, today, I give my heart to God. And, I give my hand, in token thereof, to you.” Would you come? A family of you, here: “Pastor, all of us are here.” All the way through it, constantly-in that topmost balcony, to the last seat anywhere-while we sing the song, would you come? Would you make it now, while we stand and while we sing? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 36: S. THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED ======================================================================== THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED Dr. W. A. Criswell 11-07-54 Rom 9:1-33; Rom 10:1-12 We’re in Rom 9:1-33. And we’ll read through Rom 9:5 : I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ -I could wish that my own soul were damned and forever in perdition, if by that I could be the instrument of saving my brethren, … my kinsmen according to the flesh; Who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God and the promises; Whose are the fathers and of whom concerning the flesh Jesus came. Now, in the tenth chapter of the Book of Romans, he begins the same way: Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for my people is -In the King James version you have “Israel.” In the Greek, he says: “for my people.” Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for my people is-for Israel is, that they might be saved. For I bear them recourse that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being without knowledge of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone that believeth. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (to bring it down from above-as though it hadn’t been brought:) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring it up again from the dead-as though Christ were not risen.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith, which we preach; Namely: If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. For with the heart, one believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. But there is no difference now-no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. “I say”-it begins with a lament on the part of the Apostle Paul in behalf of his own family and his own people and his own race. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh; … Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for my people is that they might be saved. The first thing that comes to my heart as I read that prayer and lament of the Apostle Paul is this: that he wrote this letter to a Gentile church. The letter is addressed to the church of God in the city of Rome, and it was a Gentile church. And Paul was the called apostle of God to the Gentiles. Simon Peter; James, the Lord’s brother; John, the son of Zebedee-in the great conference in Jerusalem with Paul and with Barnabus, divided up the civilized world. And in that division, Paul was to go to the Gentiles, and Simon Peter and James and John, and the rest of the apostles, were to go to the Jews, to the nation of Israel. But, when I pick up the Book of Romans, and read Paul’s letter to a Gentile church, I find in there not lamenting and weeping and crying over the loss among the Gentiles. But, in the letter, he laments and weeps and cries and prays in behalf of his own people and his own nation. I think that’s altogether understandable and explicable and pardonable. I think all of us are made like that. However we are interested in other nations and other lands and other tribes and other families and other peoples, our first prayer and our first lament and our first burden and our first cry for God is always in behalf of our own. In our trip around the world, I could hardly describe to you what a feeling it is in your heart when, after days and weeks, you’ve heard nobody speak the English language, and you come across somebody from your own country, speaking your language. You could never forget going through those lands where our men have fought, where they died on foreign fields and where their bodies have been gathered together and are there buried in an American military cemetery. And the American flag flies overhead. And there will be three or four attendants there from our native land, taking care of the graves, the memorial places of our fallen men. However we may be interested in foreign missions-is the Chinese-is he saved? Is the Indian-is he saved? Is the Indian-is he saved? Is the African-is he saved? However much our church may pour itself into an intercession and into an appeal for the great foreign mission enterprise, I say, it is altogether understandable and explicable when a man writes and says, “But my first prayer and my first intercession and my first burden is always in behalf of my own people, that they might be saved.” I tell you truly, under God, and according to this Word, however this church might be accountable to God in its great missionary enterprises, if the people who live up and down our streets, who speak our language, who belong to our families, who name our names, who breathe our air, who live in this city and who abide under the shelter of our native land-if they are lost, however we may be successful in our great missionary teaching and giving and enterprise, in God’s sight and in the sight of this holy Apostle, who wrote this Bible, we still-we still are derelict and fallen short of the great glory and expectation of God. I ought to be interested in the foreign mission fields. But, my first interest ought to be of my own people here in this city. I have often-I’ve often wondered about some of our-about some of our families and some of our people. I’ve often wondered at them, in their tremendous interest and prayers in behalf of people a long way off, far, far away, but never are interested at all in people who are close by. I went to the Foreign Mission Board one time and watched them receive 11 appointees there for the foreign field. And one of them was to the Jewish nation, an Israeli. And the president of the Foreign Mission Board asked this missionary appointee, “You’re going to Israel. You’re going to preach the gospel in Israel. You’re going over there to the Jew, over there in Palestine. Tell me, did you ever win a Jew here in America? Did you ever seek them? Did you ever search them out? Did you ever try to win them to Christ here in America?” And to my amazement, to my amazement, there, at the Foreign Mission Board, that appointee broke down, cried and answered that question and said, “No, I never have. I never did.” With great reluctance, our Foreign Mission Board said, “I don’t know whether this man ought to be appointed or not.” And as I watched it there, I felt the same thing in my heart. How is it that we could be so interested in our Jewish mission, an Israeli, and never take time to interest ourselves in the Jews who are here in our city? Oh, my friends, it would surprise you with what open heartedness most of them will talk to you about the things of Christ. I say, as Paul found, we don’t win many of them, but some of them we do. Not long ago, at a midweek prayer service, there came down the aisle in our church here a Jewish doctor. And I baptized him several weeks ago. Not many of them will respond, but most of them will be finally interested, and a few of them will be saved. I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness… That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. … for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. And as Paul was with his people there, we ought to be with our people here, day and night, a consecrated, earnest, prayerful intercession that God will take our Sunday school and the energy of our people and the consecration of this congregation and turn it to the holy and blessed end, that people might be saved. Everything we do here ought to be turned to that holy and blessed end. When we teach, it ought to be to teach that people know Christ; when we visit, that we visit that they might know Christ; when we have our congregational meetings here on the Lord’s Day morning and evening, that we’re gathered here that people might come to know Christ And whatever we do that is not sanctified and hallowed by that holy and heavenly purpose, we could well do without-all of our organizations, all of our assemblies, all of our gathering, all of our praying, all of our intercession that the people who are lost might be saved, “for I could wish that myself were damned, accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” Then, Paul discusses why they’re not saved-God’s own chosen people: “I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.” And that’s my record. After 2,000 years since Paul wrote that, as I look at those people: “a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” I don’t mean all of them. But, I mean some of them, many of them. There’s only one part of all Jerusalem-the old city, that Israeli has. They have the little end of Mount Zion. They have the tomb of David, and that’s all. All the rest of the Holy City of Jerusalem is in Moslem-Mohammedan, Islamic, hands. But, Israelis, the Jews, have one little piece. They have this end of Mount Zion, and they have King David’s tomb. And King David’s tomb is a synagogue. And I went up there and stayed in that synagogue for a long time and watched those Jewish people, as they worshipped God in that synagogue built over King David’s tomb. It made a tremendous impression upon me. When they pray, they do not have public prayer like we do. We all bow our heads and somebody leads in the prayer. But, anybody prays-who cares to pray? And when he prays, he prays out loud. And they pray, facing the side of Solomon’s Temple, which is just over the way, now the Mosque of Omar. And they pray fervently-pray out loud, pray like I’m talking now. In a large room there, maybe 15 or 20 of them pray at the same time, earnestly-earnestly pouring out their hearts to God with their faces toward Mount Moriah, the site of Solomon’s Temple. Then, while I was there, I saw them take out of that sacred ark the Torah, the Books of Moses, and they unrolled it. It was an ancient, ancient manuscript on a scroll and they turned it and read it. And then, when they rolled it back again, they kissed it there, there, there, there and there. From the top to the bottom, all the way down, those men kissed that roll, that book, God’s holy Law. And then they put it in its case, in its sheath. And then they kissed the sheath here, there and there, and then sacredly, carefully placed it back in the holy ark. And as I stood there, and saw their zeal and the earnestness of their prayers, and the care by which they love the Old Testament part of that book, I felt in my heart that same heaviness that Paul speaks of here, when he says: I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness… That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. … for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. To me, they are another nation, another people, another language, another seed. But, Paul who belonged to them. I can just conceive the tremendous care by which his heart overflowed in behalf of his own, for, I say, as a stranger and as a Gentile, I felt it myself in their midst: people who know the true God, who call His name, who read out of that same Old Testament Scriptures that I have here in my hand, who love God, who have a zeal for God, but not according to the revelation of Jesus Christ. They cry without any hope. They pray. They plead. They intercede. But, heaven is brass. The whole ramparts of glory have turned to iron. Why? Because, in their zeal of God, they seek Him not according to knowledge. How important it is-everlastingly vital it is, that in our work we are careful to teach the truth of God to the people! A physician here-I see several of you here tonight. A physician could make a mistake and lose a man’s life. That is tragic. It’s tragic: the wrong diagnosis, treating the man for the wrong ailment, giving him the wrong medicine, and the man dies. But, that’s just his physical body. What if we teach the man wrong? We haven’t explained the way. We haven’t shown it to him according to the revelation of God. Of all of the people in the world upon whom the burden of a right message and a right teaching, the first is always ours. … A zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they being without knowledge of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the God kind of righteousness -the justification by faith in Jesus Christ. And this is the way that Paul says many of them do. Some of them, he says, say, “Now, a way to be saved is to study and to study and to study, to descend into the deep, to ferret out the will and the words and the way of God. For a man to be saved, he has to be a theologian. You have to be a learned man. He has to study. He has to read.” And O my soul, if you’ve ever been around the rabbi, all of that vast Talmudic literature, all of those rabbinical sayings by which they study and study and study and study, trying to be find the word and the will of God. “The way to be saved,” some of them said-as Paul is saying it here, “is to go down deep, go down deep, deeper still. We must study and study and study, and learn and learn, if we’re ever to be saved.” By the way, could I make a comment here that arises out of a meeting I had this past week with a state convention. Some of us were talking together and talking about our foreign mission enterprise. And I said to them, “This is my persuasion about the foreign fields. On the foreign fields, they make converts and sometimes they will take one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, a dozen years before they ever receive. And most of them are never received. Practically all, practically all of them are never taken by baptism into the church.” I tell you, if we did that thing in America, I felt our churches would die. This thing of becoming a Christian is not a matter of a man being learned. It’s a matter of a man being shown the few simple truths of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if a man is willing to stake his soul upon them, then he’s ready to be received and he’s ready to be baptized and he’s ready to become a member of the church. I said, “If I did that here in this church, what kind of a church would we have-the people coming down this aisle here, ‘Here, Son, how much do you know about theology? How much do you know about all of these things that we study that they teach there in the seminary?’ “ How many of us know? Most of us know hardly any of that at all. But, we know enough to trust the Lord Jesus. We know enough to commit our lives to him. What did the Ethiopian eunuch know? And Philip baptized him right there on the spot. How much did the Philippian jailer know? And Paul baptized him right there on the spot. Of all those hundreds and hundreds that I saw coming in Japan, I would have asked them, “Sir-you, do you take the Lord Jesus as your Savior? And do you commit your life to Him? And are you ready to follow Him all the way?” And I would baptize them, and then trust God to teach them in the way of the Lord, as we do our best to instruct them-just like we do here. This thing of being a Christian is not something that a man has to ferret out and seek out and dig out. It’s a few simple things that a child can understand, that a heathen can understand, that a pagan can give his life to, that you can give your life to tonight. The way to be saved is not down and down. Nor is the way to be saved up and up and up, as to say in thine heart, “Who shall ascend into heaven?” and bring it down from above. This thing of being saved is not a matter of being bitter every day: “Preacher, I’m not coming down that aisle. I’m not ready to come. I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do that and I’ve got to do the other. I’ve got to pack up this and pack up that. I’ve got to change this and I’ve got to change the other.” Oh, then you’ll never come. You’ll never get good enough to come. You’ll never prepare it enough to come. You’ll never climb up high enough to come. For the way to be saved is not by rungs, going up and up and up, and finally, we land into heaven. No, sir. Paul says the way to be saved is this: … The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach; That if thou shall confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved. It’s nearer than your hands. It’s closer than breath. “For with the heart, one believeth unto righteousness.” You can never be good enough. You never achieve salvation by merit, by our worth. But, in our hearts, we believe unto righteousness. God gives us the righteousness. “And with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.” I’m saved by trusting in the Lord Jesus in my heart, and by confessing the Lord Jesus with my mouth. And whoever we are, bad and good, learned and unlearned, wise and unwise, whoever we are, wherever we are, we’re all saved exactly alike: by looking to the Lord Jesus, trusting him in our heart and making confession of him with our mouths. All of us saved alike. This man, poor as he can be, who’s here tonight, how is he saved? He’s saved by trusting the Lord Jesus and confessing him with his mouth, coming down that aisle, standing by the side of the preacher. This man, here tonight, well-to-do and successful in this world, how is he saved? He’s saved by trusting in the Lord Jesus in his heart and confessing the Lord with his mouth, coming down here and standing by my side. This learned man, this unlearned man, this little boy, that man experienced with the years of the world, how are they saved? All alike-in our hearts, trusting in the Lord Jesus and making confession of him with our mouth, standing down here at the front, by the side of the pastor: “This day-this night, this hour, I give my heart in trust to the Lord Jesus.” The ark had one door, just one door. And in that one door, the great elephant lumbered in. And in that one door, the little snails crawled in. And in that one door, the great eagle swooped down out of the blue of the sky and went in. And in that one door, the little wren hopped in. And in that one door, Noah and Noah’s wife and his three boys and their wives-all of them, went in-all of them saved alike. No matter who we are-a Greek, a Jew; wise, unwise; learned, not learned; rich, poor; old, young-all of us alike are saved alike: in our hearts, trusting in the Lord Jesus, looking to the Lord Jesus, and with our mouths, making confession unto salvation, coming down that aisle, standing before the people, unafraid, unashamed: “This day, this hour I give my heart to the Lord.” And that saves us. That’s what makes us a Christian. That’s what it is to be justified by faith. I have a wonderful friend that I see once in a while when I go to these Southern conventions and these Southern meetings. He’s a very learned boy. He’s the author of several books and has several degrees-was a brilliant fellow when I went to school with him, and has studied and continued to rise in scholastic and academic power. And I’m proud of him and our whole Baptist people everywhere are proud of him. We were staying together one night and I asked him about his conversion. When he replied, he never mentioned the Hebrew that he can read so well or the Greek that he knows so well. He never mentioned his degrees. He never spoke of his theological training. What he said was this. He said, when he was a boy, he went to a service and the man preached about the Lord Jesus and gave an invitation. And he said, they sang a song that I’ll never forget. They sang: If you’re tired of the load of your sin, Let Jesus come into your heart. If you want a new life, begin, Let Jesus come into your heart. And he said, “That day, the best I could, I opened my heart to the Lord Jesus and took him as my Savior.” I would think any man, any Christian man that you would ever ask-any Christian man anywhere, if you’d ever ask him, he would reply to you that same humble way, “I didn’t get to be a Christian by studying the Hebrew language. I didn’t get to be a Christian by learning Greek. Nor did I get to be a Christian by wading through all of the Talmudic and Christian literature. But, there was a time in a service somewhere, like this tonight, when that preacher preached about the Lord Jesus, and then gave an appeal, and we sang an invitation hymn, and I opened my heart to the Lord. I took him as my Savior.” All of us saved alike: in our hearts, trusting in the Lord Jesus, and with our mouths, making confession unto salvation. And he closes: For… whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For there’s no difference… -All of us are alike. All of us lost alike. … And the same Lord over all is rich unto all-to save us alike. For the same Lord over all is rich in all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. I may sing about the Lord and be lost. I could even preach about the Lord and be lost. I could write books about the Lord and be lost. I could even become a theological professor in a seminary and be lost, teaching, handling the things of the Lord Jesus and be lost. I can be a member of the church and be lost. I can be baptized and be lost. But, there is one thing I cannot do and stay lost: I cannot bow before God and call on his name-“Lord, help. Lord, save. Lord, forgive. Lord, keep.” I cannot call on his name and be lost. Something happens. Something happens. God is sensitive to the cry of his people. “Moses, come here. I’ve heard the cry of my people and I’m sending thee to deliver my people. I have heard their cry.” “Gabriel, come here. Come here. Look at Hezekiah, down there, on his knees, crying in behalf of his people. Gabriel, I’m sending you tonight to go down there and to annihilate all of the forces of Sennacherib, for I have heard the cry of my people.” And upon a day, the Lord God in Heaven called his Only Begotten Son, and said: “Son, I’m sending you. I’m sending you into that planet below, into that earth below. I’m sending you into that world of sin below, for, Son, I have heard the cry of my people,” for “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” While we sing tonight, while we make appeal tonight, while our people in prayer, in intercession-while our people ask God for you tonight, into that aisle and down here to the front, would you come? “Pastor, tonight, the best I know how, I give my heart and my life to the Lord Jesus. In my heart, I take him as my Savior. And Pastor, it is my commitment. It is my will. I’ll follow Him all of the way.” Will you? “If he wants me to be baptized, I’ll be baptized. If He wants me to be a member of His church, I’ll be a member of his church-wants me to worship Him with his precious and blessed people and congregation, I’ll do it, Pastor. In my heart, I will look to the Lord Jesus, the Lord and keeper of my life and soul. I’ll do it now. I’ll make it now.” And some of you into the fellowship of the church: “Pastor, here I come and here’s my family-all of us are coming. Pastor, this puts our home together, one of us already here. I’m coming, and this puts our home together.” Or: “Pastor, this is our son or our precious little girl. She’s coming. He’s coming to give his heart tonight to the Lord.” However God shall say the word, however the Lord shall make the appeal, while we sing this song, into that aisle, down here to the front and by my side: “Here I come, Preacher, and here I am,” while we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 37: S. THE ATONEMENT ======================================================================== THE ATONEMENT Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 5:11 08-08-54 In your Bible, turn to Rom 5:1-21. Rom 5:1-21. Rom 5:1-21 and the message tonight, is in Rom 5:11. You will find the word in that verse that is used nowhere else in the New Testament. It is used only there. That is in the Bible you are holding in your hand, the King James-Authorized Version. Now, let me read the context. The ninth verse-“Much more being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him” [Rom 5:9]. Tenth verse-“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” [Rom 5:10]. That was the message this morning-If when we were lost, condemned, guilty undone sinners, Christ died on the cross and therein made reconciliation, justification atonement, found forgiveness. Brought salvation for us in his death. If He did that in his death, how much more certainly shall we be finally delivered at the gates of glory because Christ rose again. He lives. He lives. Being reconciled, how much more than shall we be saved, guarded, kept delivered by his life. And this is the sermon tonight, The next verse-“And not only so, but we exalt in God-we glory in God-through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement” [Rom 5:11]. And the word is the“atonement.” No other place in the Bible will you find it, The Atonement. Atonement-it is one of the great words of our language. What does it mean? What does it refer to? The Greek word katallage that is translated here “atonement,” is used in eight other places in the Bible-all of the instances by the apostle Paul. It is used twice here in the tenth verse. “For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled”-translated “reconciled”-“to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled”-there it is again-“we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received”-and there is that word again, they translated it here-“the atonement” [Rom 5:11]. Now, may I read one other context in that word katallage-one other place you will find Paul using it several times. In the fifth chapter of the second Corinthian letter it is used several times. Listen to it: And all things are of God, who hath reconciled-there it is again-us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation-there is the exact word again, “reconciliation”- To wit, that God was in Christ reconciling-there it is again-the world unto himself, not imputing the trespasses unto them; and hath committed the word of reconciliation-there it is again. Now, that we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’ stead, be ye reconciled to God”-and there it is again [2Co 5:18-20]. So let us go back over here and let us look at that word. If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received. And the word atonement simply means “reconciliation.” The word everywhere else is translated “reconciliation”-the word “atonement.” Where did they get that word “atonement”? I say it is one of the great words of the English language. It has come to have a tremendous theological significance. If you ever go to school and study systematic theology or biblical theology, one of the tremendous subjects that you will study will be the theology of the atonement. It has had a history in the theological word for two thousand years. And I suppose this room would hardly hold the books that have been written on that one word, the atonement-the atonement. But it means reconciliation. And they translate it reconciliation everywhere else as Paul uses it. By what did they mean by translating it atonement here? That is an interesting thing. That word atonement is built together out of two little simple words with a suffix. The word is a-t, “at”; o-n-e, “one”; and then the suffix, ”ment.”-at-one-ment. Back yonder in 1611, when this Bible was translated, the word reconciliation and “at-one-ment” were synonyms. They meant the same things. “At-one-ment”-here is a man and there is a man and they differ. But when they are reconciled, they are “at one” again. And in the English language, that word at-one-ment, it came to mean reconciliation. At-one-ment-and the English pronunciation of it atonement-at-one-ment. The differences have been resolved. They are not angry any longer. They are no longer estranged. They are together. Atonement has been made. At-one-ment has been accomplished. Reconciliation has come to pass. And that’s the meaning of the word here. Now, may I read once again? “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the reconciliation; by whom we have received this atonement” [Rom 5:10-11]. Now, isn’t that a strange way of saying it?-“through our Jesus Christ, by whom we have received, we have received the atonement.” Who is it reconciled? For whom is atonement made? Is the reconciliation on our part? Or is the reconciliation on God’s part? Who is it that is estranged? Who is it full of wrath and anger? Who is it that poses a tremendous judgment against those who have violated his holiness? Who is it that is atoned, propitiated, made favorable? Who is it that is reconciled? Now, when you answer that question, you are going to walk into a theological world. There are those who say the reconciliation is on the part of man. God doesn’t need to be reconciled. He is already reconciled. And I will speak of that in a moment. But in that theological world, I do not go. To me, it is another word for infidelity and unbelief. I go into this theological world-according to the Scripture, they say that “we receive that reconciliation.” We receive that atonement. It is something done for us. And that means that the one who is atoned, the one who is propitiated, made favorable. And the one who is reconciled is God. And the theological basis for that is this: that the one who is angry and the one who is full of wrath and the one who holds in his hand-a terrible judgment upon those who have done wrong-is God. In the prison of the justice and the righteousness and the burning and the fire and the judgment of Almighty God, all of the wicked are lost. All of the wicked are lost. Now, why is it that a lot of theologians hold away from that? Simply because they are not willing to admit that God is a God of wrath and must be propitiated. That God is a God of justice and sin must be atoned for. That God is estranged from the human race and must be reconciled to the man that’s lost. The modern theologian refuses to accept that. But I do not know of a clearer revelation in God’s Book than this: that the wrath of God is at enmity, warring like a war that burns, against the sin of mankind. And unless there is atonement made, propitiation made, all mankind shall fall into hell-into the bottomless pit where we stand condemned before the judgment of a holy and a righteous God. The reconciliation is in God. There has to be a basis of peace for God to accept a sinful man. God in his holiness, in his justice, in his purity-God in his heaven will not deign to accept a man in his guilt and in his sin. He will not. And the judgment of death is upon all of our sins and we have sinned. There has to be a basis of peace, there has to be a basis of reconciliation between God who is offended and whose wrath burns against iniquity and all of us who are condemned in our sin. And that reconciliation was made by the Lord Jesus Christ and we receive it as a gift from God. It is God who reconciles. It is God who is atoned. It is God who is propitiated. It is God for whom some basis of peace had to be made in order for the Lord to forgive us our sins. The atonement is in God and we receive it as a gift from heaven. What is a preacher? A preacher is none other somebody than a man who stands and proclaims to the world. “God is conciliated to man. God is reconciled to sinful man. Now, sinful man, be ye reconciled to God. Accept from his hands forgiveness, reconciliation, atonement, salvation.” That is what it is for a man to preach. He preaches that God has been reconciled. Now come, receive from God’s hands that forgiveness, that reconciliation, that atonement. We rejoice in God. We exalt in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement. Now I say when I go that way, I walk into an altogether different theological world than if I go that way. So let us look just for a moment-for there is no other way for you to learn God’s Book and, God’s Word and God’s revelation. There is no way for you to learn it quite as effectively as to listen to the critic who objects to the things that we say-God’s Word reveals. And then look at it. So we’re going to look at it tonight. The objection of the modern intellectual theologian to this preaching that I am preaching to you tonight that it is God who is reconciled. That the atonement is in him. That the reconciliation is in him. That God’s wrath must somehow be propitiated lest we all die in his presence. All right-the first objection. The first objection of the theologian, some of them to that is this: that, that kind of a reconciliation, that kind of an atonement, is altogether unnecessary. It is unnecessary. They say that God is already reconciled to mankind. They say that God is a God of love. God is a God of mercy. God is a God of patience and longsuffering and loving kindness. And all that a man has to do in order to be forgiven of his sin is to come to the Lord God in repentance, in contrition, in tears and confess his sins to God and a loving God will forgive him of his sins and that is all that is necessary. You do not need to crawl. You do not need Christ. You do not need atonement. You do not need the blood. You do not need the agony of Gethsemane. God is a God of love. And if a man will repent, his tears and his penance and his confession will count for righteousness, that’s all it takes. That’s the first objection. This atonement on the cross by Jesus Christ is unnecessary. All right what about that? What about that? If I know God’s word at all; God’s word is this: that no matter how much a man may cry, how much he may mourn, how long he may confess, how deep may be his own repentance; it is never enough. It never suffices for the covering up of the sin of his life. You cannot atone, make reconciliation, do propitiation unto God by your tears or crying or confession or penances. It does not cover your sin. The first story you read in the Bible is a parable of that and it never changes all the way through. When our first parents sinned, they knew they were condemned and ashamed of their God. And they made for themselves aprons of fig leaves and covered their nakedness. And when the Lord God saw them, they were ashamed and abashed and condemned and guilty. They had transgressed and they were lost. “In the day that thou eat thereof thou shalt surely die” [Gen 3:4]. And they died spiritually and later died physically. And they covered themselves with aprons of fig leaves. And the Lord looked upon it and, if what a man could do would suffice to the covering of his shame and his sin, God would have been delighted to walk with the man and his wife as they covered themselves with their fig leaves. But the Lord said: “It is not enough. It is not enough. It does not suffice.” And somewhere in the Garden of Eden, He took an innocent animal and slew it and that is the first pouring out of blood. He took an innocent animal and slew it and the ox drank up its blood. And he made coats of skin to cover up the man and his wife. And the shedding of blood, for the remission of sins has been the same, same, same story and revelation of God through all of the centuries and through ages. “The life is in the blood” [Lev 17:14]. And I have given it unto you for your souls to make atonement for your soul-“When I see the blood, I will pass over you” [Exo 12:13]. It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. It is the blood for the new covenant shed for the remission of sins. “These are those-these are they who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood, in the blood of the lamb” [Rev 7:14]. Glory be to him who hath redeemed us by his own blood. There is never any deviation of that through all of the word of God. Well, why, Preacher, why? Why is it for a sinful man cannot come before God and by his tears and by his repentance and by his confession, why cannot he be saved? Why isn’t that enough without the cross and without the death and Jesus. Why can’t it be? Here is a judge on the case. And he is to administer justice in the state. And the judge has a son. And he loves his son. And the son has transgressed and violated flagrantly a statute on the law books of the land. And the judge sits on the bench. And the boy, a culprit, says in the presence of the judge, his own father. And the father loves the son. And the son weeps before the father. I have sinned. I have done wrong. I have transgressed. I have in cold blood, I have framed my friend. And the boy is repentant and he weeps and cries and he confesses. Does that keep the judge from opening the statute book? If that judge lets that boy go, every citizen of the state would rise and say: Justice has been violated. Had it been some other boy, he would have been sent to the electric chair. But in dealing with his own son, justice is violated. Love and mercy in the heart of the father has overwhelmed his sense of what is right and just. You could not have justice, nor could you have statutes, nor could you administer the law of the land. If by the boy’s tears and his penitence he stood there and the guilty was set free. There are statutes in God’s Book. There are rules in God’s Book. There are judgments in God’s Book. And God says: “the soul that sins shall die.” In the day that you sin, thou shalt surely die. How shall we live? By our tears, they never suffice. By our confessions, they never suffice. By our repentance, they are never sufficient. The law of God must be honored. It is blood. It is death. In is penalty. And in the penalty of Christ, in the death of the Lord Jesus, in the cruel blood of the corpse, blood justice and God’s moral government is honored and upheld. And we are debt-free because of our substitute, the death, the suffering of our savior who paid that price for us. All right, that leaves for the second objection. But Preacher, what an irrational thing-what an irrational thing, what an unreasonable theology. Do you mean to stand in that pulpit and tell me: I who am a reasonable, rational man-are you trying to tell me that Jesus Christ took the penalty and the judgment of all of our sins and that in his death all of our sins were atoned for? The whole penalty was paid? Are you trying to say that? I am trying to say that. You know what basis? This is the basis-this is a basis; on the basis-on the basis that Jesus is more than a man. On the basis that Jesus is God. And on the basis that the death of the Lord Jesus was of infinite merit and of infinite value. And that the punishment and the suffering and the agony and the death of the Son of God will do the penalty, the crown of penalty upon all of the judgments and all of the sins and all of the people and all of the world. It has that merit and that value. Preacher, my soul, my soul, [I] do not see that. Then may I illustrate it? It is the same way that the Lord Jesus told it to you. In the camp of Israel the people were dying. They were bitten by fiery serpents. They had transgressed the law of God. And the Lord sent-did you hear that? God said, the Lord sent it was a judgment on the people. The Lord sent fiery serpents and they bit the people and the people were dying [Num 21:6]. And they cried to Moses saying: What shall we do and how shall we live for we are bitten by these fiery serpents and we are dying [Num 21:7]. And God said to Moses: Take a brazen serpent, take a serpent of brass and raise it in the center of the camp and it shall be that if a man is bitten by the serpent, if he’ll look, he’ll live [Num 21:8]. Why didn’t God say to Moses: Moses, take a dead serpent, and put him on a pole in the midst of the camp. Had Moses done that-killed one of those venomous, fiery, tenuous poisonous things; slain one of those things and put it on a pole and raise it up in the midst of the camp-had Moses done that, it would have been just another snake that deserved to die. It would have been there just as a reminder how many other snakes there were that were still alive. But the Lord God said to Moses: Make a representative snake, a representative snake, dead, limp, with its fangs extracted, and raise it up on a pole in the midst of the camp. It represents the death of sin. It represents all that sin could ever do to hurt and destroy. It has been destroyed itself. It is on the pole, limp, lifeless, dead, its fangs extracted-a representative. And in the looking in the face and it would heal. A man bitten by the serpent could be faced. The Lord Jesus Christ is not just another man. He is not just one of us. He is not a man who deserved to die for his own sin. The Lord Jesus Christ-and the rest of this chapter is about that-He is the representative man. He is the head of the spiritual reign. As Adam is the head of the natural man and in Him we die, so Christ is the head of the spiritual man and in Him, we live. And in that spiritual man, the head of the race, the representative man, the man without spot or blemish, God of very God, He was made to do sin for us. He took upon Him all of the wrath and all of the sickness and all of the penalty of all of our sins. He gathered it to Himself. And on the cross he died your death. He paid our penalty. If He was just another snake that died, if He was just another man that was crucified, if He was just another somebody, that deserved to die for His own sin, then there is no atonement made and we are still lost. But Jesus Christ was God. And in the merit of His atoning grace and in these grace advocacy of His blood and his suffering and His death, there is virtue come out; there is strength and power to make atonement to pay the price of the judgment upon all of the sin of all of the world. It is not I that could die nor anybody else that could die. I just deserve to die for my own sin. And every other man would deserve to die for His own sin. But in Christ, God died. God died. Infinitude-infinity; the God, the very God, He died and in that death, atonement was made for all of the wrath, all of the judgments, all of the sin of all of the world. It depends upon who did the thing. If it was a man, it was irrational. If it was God, oh, my soul. What does it mean for God to die for the world? Another-Preacher, that thing is an incredible mystery. I do not understand it. Therefore, I cannot accept it. I not only saw, but we rejoiced in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement. You see, the atonement. Preacher, it is an incredible, an incredible mystery. I cannot accept it. I cannot believe it. It is beyond me. I do not see. I cannot grasp. I do not understand it could be for me. I cannot accept it. That granted-the atonement of Christ, the propitiation of the wrath of God in Christ, the assumption of the suffering of all of our sins in Christ, the atoning death of our savior equal to all of the penalty of all of the sins of the world-it is granted, it is an incredible mystery. No man can grasp it. No man can fathom it. No man can understand it. But my, brother, it does not have to be a barrier to faith. It is beyond a man’s rational, intellectual grasp. Because I cannot enter into its final secret-because I cannot stand in this pulpit and explain it fully-is no barrier to the fact of its reality, of its power, of its great virtue. After all, it is just a part of the whole pattern of the revelation of God that I see all around me. There is no part of God, nor any thing that God has done that ultimately my poor finite mind can ever completely grasp or contain. It is all a mystery around me. But that does not mean it is any less real, and it does not mean it is a barrier to faith. Tell me, is not everything around you then a mystery beyond our grasp? Isn’t it? No man can reach it and encompass it-the starry skies above us, these universes that float in space-is there a man that could stand up here in this pulpit and say: Brothers and sisters, listen to me. I will explain to you the mystery of the universe. I know where it came from. I know where it is going. I know its yesteryear and I know its destiny. Floating out there in the Milky Way. Floating out there through the siderial hemispheres, floating out there in the infinitude. And we among them. That mystery I cannot enter into it. It is God’s-a part of God. I cannot enter into the mystery of anything that God does. Those flowers. Where were they hidden down there in a little seed? Where did they come from? What made that stem grow and turn green, and the caliph open and on the inside that little bud? And who painted the petals that golden yellow? And who dipped his pen and painted those beautiful leaves? Where did it come from and how did it grow? I cannot see. I cannot grasp. I cannot get it. It is just one thing again in the hands of Almighty God. In my soul, my spirit, on the inside of me, who made it? What makes it live? Love? Feel? Desire? Want? Long? Remember? Who is “I”? Where did “I” come from? This mystery on the inside of the house that is called you? How do you enter into it? How do you explain it? Where did we come from? Who created us? What of our future and our destiny? What about the tomorrow? And I live like that. My every day is like that. Everything I touch is like that. The whole world is like that. Finally, how can I enter into the secret of the personality of God? Where did we come from? He always was and I cannot understand it. And how is it that He made out of nothing this universe? By fiat, He said it and there it is. I cannot grasp it. I just worship in His presence. So is the mystery of the atonement of the Son of God. You are not talking about a man when you are talking about Jesus. You are talking about God. God, the very God, the God who made this world and who created us. We are talking about Him, “For when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet maybe for a good man, some would dare to die. But God commended his love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”-in my stead [Rom 5:6-8]. As a king may die for his people, as a soldier may fight for a battle and die on the battlefield, as a chief may lay down his life for his clan; so Christ, God’s Son and, God, the very God through Christ died for us. We are now justified by His blood. We shall be saved from God’s wrath, God’s penalty against sin. Through him, for if “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we rejoice in God”-we exalt in God-“through the Lord Jesus Christ, through him now we have received that atonement” [Rom 5:10-11]. What lies back of it? What was the love that prompted Jesus to come into this world? What was the passion that moved the soul when he volunteered to pay the penalty for our sins? And to die in our stead? How do you enter into it? How do you sit down and discover its secret? To do it is to begin to understand the heart of God. I just see a little reflection of it just once in a while. Like this, sitting in the midst of a great group, of half-naked, so darkened, mind filled with superstition and ignorance, sitting in the midst of a great group of half-naked savages… [end of transcript] ======================================================================== CHAPTER 38: S. THE ENMITY AGAINST GOD ======================================================================== THE ENMITY AGAINST GOD Dr. W. A. Criswell 10-10-54 Rom 8:5-8 In our preaching through the Book, we are in Rom 8:1-39. Tonight, I hope you brought your Bible. And in Rom 8:1-39, tonight speaking of: The Enmity Against God. That text is in Rom 8:7. Now, I’m going to read from Rom 3:8, beginning at Rom 3:8 : For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. Now if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: But if ye through the flesh do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Now, Rom 8:7 -and I’ll read Rom 8:6 with it: “For to be carnally minded is death, because”-my text, Rom 8:7 : Because the carnal mind is enmity again God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. The Enmity Against God. Where do you suppose you would find it: the enmity against God? Well, in searching for the enmity, we see the violence and the rebellion against God. In searching for the enmity against God, we would find it in the pit of hell. That’s where you’ll find it. If you were looking for the enmity against God, you’d go to the pit of hell and there you’d find it. Well, that might be right. If you were looking for the seed of the enmity against God, where would you look for it? You would like for it in the counsel of the inferno. That’s where you would find it. Well, that might be right. You’d look for it in the counsels of Hades. The enmity against God, the seed of rebellion and wickedness against God, where would you find it? Well, you would find it in the heart of Satan. That’s where you would find it. The arch-enemy and arch-adversary of all that God stands for. That’s where you would find it: in the heart of Satan. That’s right. Well, all of those things, I suppose, are correct. If you seek for the enmity against God in the pit of hell, I guess that’s right. The Bible doesn’t say that, but I guess that’s right. If you find it in the counsels of the damned, in the fallen angels, I guess that’s right. The Bible does not say it. But, I suppose, that’s right. If you are looking for the enmity against God, you’d find it in the heart of Satan. I guess that’s right. I suppose that’s right. But, what the Bible says is this: The enmity against God is found in the human heart and in the human soul. And isn’t that a terrible thing to discover? And what a colossal thing to have developed on the scene of human history and in the story of human life: the enmity against God is in the human soul and it’s in the human heart and it’s in the human life. When you think of how God made the first man, perfect in all of his ways-devout and holy and reverent in all of his attitudes, God’s perfect workmanship, and look at this text-he is now the enemy of God. Oh, the colossal thing that has overwhelmed him and overtaken him. It is the same thing as if an ancient Carthaginian that walked through the streets of his beloved city now made heaps of ruins by the Romans, looking upon the heaps of ruins, burst into tears. It is the same thing as the Jew who would walk through the street of his beloved Jerusalem today and look upon the Jewish quarter of it, looking at the most endless indescribable debris. One, anything that you could find in Germany-all destroyed. For the beauty of the beloved city, the joy of the world marred-same thing. Some years ago, a star appeared in the sky above the brilliance of any other star that had ever been seen. It has been confirmed since then that star was a world burning up. It was a world on fire. That’s what happened to us. Our world was destroyed, our house burned down. Our humanity was wrecked. The enmity against God is in us. It is in the human heart. Do you know that this is a noun here? It is not an adjective-the carnal mind, the mind of the natural man. Is that enmity against God? No, sir. The Bible says the carnal mind is enmity itself against God-the carnal mind. The mind of the natural man is not black. It is darkness itself. It is not rebellious. It is rebellion itself. It is not wicked. It is wickedness itself. It is not envious. It is envy itself. The essence of sin, what sin is, is found in the human heart. The human heart is enmity against God. The whole spectrum of the man God made has fallen. He has fallen in his mind. His mind is wrath. He is fallen in his soul. His soul is destroyed. He has fallen in his life. He life it filled with transgression. He has fallen in his desire. The man that God made has fallen. And the sentence upon that man is the sentence of death. “For to be carnally minded is death,” Rom 8:6. Turn over one page back: “For the wages of sin is death.” Turn the pages backward, and in the book of Ezekiel, the prophet said: “The soul that sins shall die.” And turn the page back to the beginning: “In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.” The carnal mind is enmity, enmity itself-It is enmity itself. It is blackness itself. It is wickedness itself. The natural man is the enemy of God. And the sentence of God upon that enmity is death: universal, everlasting, eternal death. That is the fate of the natural, unregenerate man. Well, knowing a theology like that is ever presented and people not think about it and talk about it and look askance upon it and sometimes seek to repute it? They certainly do. If you’ll sit down in any theological library and turn to those books, you’ll find all kinds of things said about the Pauline Anthropology, the Pauline presentation of the natural man. For one thing-for one thing-now you look, for one thing, there are wonderful theologians and there are great preachers and there are mighty philosophers who are gifted in the language of the books and who know the Christian faith. There are men of great homiletical erudition or men of great learning and power. There are men who said that this presentation of the natural man-of humanity by the Apostle Paul is not right. It is not correct. It is not so. For say they-now, listen to what they say-for say they, a man is born good. The soul is born pure. The life is conceived wholly. And a man is a sinner only because he imitates a sinner. A child will be good if you will teach that child goodness. He learns to be a sinner by being taught to be sinful. But, by nature, we are pure and holy and uncorrupt. And we only become sinners by imitation, by being taught and trained. Now, the Pauline Theology says that we are born fallen and corrupt and in sin, that the carnal mind-that is, the natural mind, the mind that we are brought into this world with, that is the enemy of God. And there are those two things. And they’re opposite. Now, to look at that for a moment with you: Paul says, into this world we come with a disposition, with a soul, with a mind, with a body that is already corrupt, already undone, already sinful. They tell me-I’m not an expert on crocodiles, but they tell me that, when a crocodile is broken out of its shell, that the minute the little crocodile breaks out of its shell, that it takes the posture of attack and opens its mouth as though it was taught and trained. It is born that way-a crocodile: to attack and to bite. I see in the paper, often, pictures of little kittens, pretty little kittens. They are tiger kittens. And while they’re little bitty tiger kittens, I’ll see in the paper, somebody played with those little kittens. And they are so fluffy and they are so soft and they are so nice and they are so amusing. But, on the inside of that little kitty, kitty, kitty, there’s a tiger heart. And the day will come when there’s nobody in anybody’s house that would want to play with the pretty little kitty, born that way, with a tiger in its breast. A wolf may be asleep, but it is still a wolf. A serpent may slumber among the pretty flowers, but it is still a serpent. And Paul says: “However in a man’s mind and in a man’s noble life he may rebuff and become a poet or a philosopher-he become a scientist, he become a scholar-however a man’s mind may reach up and out, grasp the part of the sky, take into and encompass the infinitude and the magnitude of God and of space,” Paul would say, “However a man may learn and however he may give himself to the great evolution of God’s universe,” Paul says that “he is still depraved and lost and undone.” The stars are not heaven and the sea was not God. Nor does a man achieve his regeneration through solid erudition and philosophical learning. They are lost. They are undone. Could I see that in our present moment in which we live? You tell me of whom are you the most afraid? Are you the most afraid of one of those typical criminals? Could I describe him? He has a low brow. And his eyes are vicious. And he has a frame like an ape. He has heavy arms and hands. And in one pocket he has blackjack and in the other pocket has a ferret. And on one such leg, he has strapped a pistol. And there, on the nother, he has a blueprint of the robbing of the bank, with the overwhelming of an innocent somebody. Do you ever tremble before people like that? I never give them a thought. It never enters my mind, the typical criminal. But, there’s not a single soul in the civilized world today that doesn’t tremble for himself and his city and his country and his nation and his world. There is not a single one of us today that doesn’t tremble before that awful and terrible scientist who has discovered the secret of God’s universe. You can check it out with his credit wide open. He can say to the uranium atom, and use it to bombard the hydrogen atom, and can use it to explode God’s world. And you tremble in your soul, because he’s smart, because he’s learned, because he is a scientist, because he knows. But, the man who is a scholar is as depraved and wanton as there is-as it is in the brow and the thick skull of a man, heavy-handed with a club or a black jack or a pistol in his hand. That is the Pauline theology. We are lost, lost-depraved. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” That’s the mind of the scholar. It is the mind of the philosopher. It is the mind of the businessman. It is the mind of every man. Whether degenerate natural-“the carnal mind is enmity against God.” That is the Pauline theology. Now, I want to take one other. We could take dozens here tonight. These things are things of the world and of God and they are mighty things. What about that Pauline Anthropology, his doctrine of the carnality of the human mind? You: unregenerate man. He is a fallen man-a fallen man. All right. Here’s what some of our greatest theologians and scholars and philosophers and teachers say about the Pauline Anthropology. All right. A second thing they say-they say that unregenerate and ordinary man, the carnal man, the human race or the human family-they say that those things that happen to us now are-and I’m thinking of one tremendous philosopher now, as he describes it. He says these things that are happening to us now are caused in a great tide, and he says we go down, maybe in the World War I, and he says, then, we come up higher. And then he says, we had another fall in the World War II, and then, we come up higher. And he says to all of the generations and through all of time and through the passing of the centuries, mankind is going up and will fall like the wave of the tide. It will be down, but it comes up. And it never goes down as low as it was. It goes up and up and up and up and up. And of course, the consummation is that, some of these days, mankind, in its evolution, will come up and up and up and up until, finally, we’ll not only become angels-as one of the men I read said: “We shall become archangels in the presence of God and we shall do it through the processes of evolving.” We are going up and up and up. And these things that we fall into now are mistakes. They are stumbling. But, they are stumbling-the humanity that is groping and seeking and, as a corollary, we are finding and achieving. And some of these days, we shall achieve final and infinite success. Now, that’s what the philosopher says. The Pauline theology says that, however a man may go and whichever way he may turn-that he produces, he reproduces, himself. And that himself is carnality; that himself is wickedness; that himself is enmity; that, left to himself, man is a fallen creature and reproduces his kind; that the sin in our day and generation shall also be the sin of our children and of generations. And it echoes from soul to soul, and generation to generation, all through the centuries. To be carnal-minded is death. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” “It is not subject to the law of God neither can be.” Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting. The carnal mind is full of corruption. The carnal mind reproduces itself. The carnal mind condones carnality. And the carnal mind reaps carnality. The natural man sows the natural man. And the natural man reaps the natural man. There is no such thing, Paul would say, as a carnal man sowing and reaping a spiritual man. There is no such thing as a sinful generation sowing and giving birth or reaping fruit in a holy generation. That’s the echo and the repercussion of the transgression and wickedness and sin as in our day. It was in our father’s day. It will be in our children’s day. And there is no breaking of that vicious circle according to the law of God. Kind reproduces kind and carnality is sown. The human mind, the human life, the human flesh-carnality, counsel-the unregenerate man reaps its kind, its like, reaps carnality, reaps unregeneration, reaps wickedness, reaps enmity against God. Now, I say that is a law of God in every realm of God’s created universe. It is a law of God in the realm of the vegetable world. If a man were to come to me and say, “Preacher, guess what? I sowed ten acres of wheat and one of them came up.” And another man would have come to me and said, “Preacher, guess what? I planted-I planted onions and I reaped turnips.” I’d say that you are slap, dab crazy. That’s what I’d tell him. And I’d be right. It would be a lunatic that would say a thing like that. That’s the according to the law of God in the vegetable world: kind reproduces kind. The same thing in the animal world-that’s the law of God. Dogs don’t have cats. And cows don’t have horses. According to the fixed law of God, cats have cats. And dogs have puppies. And cows have calves. And horses have colts. And that’s the law of God. That’s the law of God. God made it that way. Now, that law is the same law in the realm and in world of our manual skills. If a man has been taught la-like you, if a man has been taught law, like you, I would not call you if I had to have my innards taken out. I would not call you. No, sir. No, sir. I’d call-I’d call for a doctor, wouldn’t I, Dr. Bagwell? That’s right. That’s according to the law of God. The man in his labor, the man in his work, he does according to his kind. His hands are taught how to carpenter-or a man to be a watchmaker. If he’s taught law, we don’t look to him to practice medicine. He’s taught and trained in these things, and that’s his kind. That’s the truth of God in the spiritual world. And that is a terrible and an awful law. It is true in the spiritual world: what we are, we reap; what we sow is our fruits; carnality breeds carnality-enmity, enmity; transgression, transgression. There is no breaking of that terrible law. Jacob deceived his father. He took the coat of a kid-took the skin of a kid, and put it on himself. And when his blind father, Isaac, felt of him, he was hairy like Esau-weathery, outdoor Esau. He was a hairy man like Esau. So, when the blind father felt of Jacob, he was hairy like Esau. And he said he was Esau. And he stole his brother’s blessing. The years passed, and upon a day, the sons of Jacob came to their father and they did what? We found this coat and held it up before Jacob their father. It was Joseph’s coat of many colors. And this-what? Blood dyed it red. It was the blood of a kid. And when Jacob saw it, he said: “A wild beast has slain my son, Joseph.” That’s a terrible law. David slew a man to hide his transgression. And the prophet said: “And the sword shall never leave thy house.” Maximus, built a bridge, a thick one, to drown Constantine. And he drowned himself crossing his group. Haman built a gallows for Mordechiah. The hangman was hanged on Mordechiah’s gallows. The emperor Stalin took a band of devout Christian people, put them in a ship, sent them off to sea and burned the ship up. Upon a day, the Galls invaded his kingdom, he fled to a cottage, and they burned the cottage down. Henry III was stabbed to death in the very same room where he plotted the infamous massacre of the first Protestants. Alexander VI was poisoned by a wine he made for another. Marie Antoinette, on that gorgeous bridal procession through the streets of Paris to Notre Dame, when she was married to the Dauphine, later Louis XVI of France-she gave orders to her soldiers to go up and down the procession and go outside and send away all of the ragged and the poor and the crippled. “I can’t bear them in my sight.” And a few years later, down those same streets was she carried, bound, to an executioner court, as she walked between lines of granite and stony hearts. I remember Herman Goering saying-as they bombed the British and destroyed Coventry and ruined London, I remember Herman Goering saying: “I assure my German people no bomb shall ever fall over the Rhine. I don’t know why but God wills that chain together. Like produces like. The carnal mind reaps carnality. What you sow, you reap. Let’s be a little different for the moment. A farmer wrote a letter to a newspaper. And he said: I dare you to print this letter. This was the letter that he wrote: “Dear Editor: I plowed my field on Sunday. I planted my crop on Sunday. I cultivated my crop on Sunday. I harvested my crop on Sunday. I sold my crop on Sunday. And the harvest that I reaped and the yield I received and the price that I got was better than anybody else’s, and I did it all on Sunday. I dare you to print this letter.” The next issue of the newspaper came out and his letter was printed, just like he had written it. And underneath, edited, post-scripted: “God does not always collect his debts the first week in October.” It is an inviolable link-it is a chain, this thing of Almighty God. Who breaks it? Who breaks it? “I’ll study and I’ll break that chain.” You’ll study and study and study, but it’s still there, molded, hard and unbroken. “But, I’ll be good. I’ll be good. I’ll break that chain. I’ll reform and do better. I’ll quit that and I’ll break that chain.” No, you won’t. It’s put together by Almighty God and it is still there. It is still there. “Oh, I know what I’ll do. I’ll join the church. I’ll go out here and I’ll sit at such and such, you put my name on the roll. I want to join the church and I’ll be a member of the church.” But, that awful thing is still there, willed by Almighty God. What breaks it? What breaks it: that terrible and awful thing, sin and death-sin and death? “To be carnal minded is death.” “If you live after the flesh, ye shall die.” The unregenerate man is doomed. What will I do? And where shall I turn? Who breaks that awful chain? Who? That is Rom 8:1-39 : There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus… For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free-has broken the chain of-the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh… condemned sin in the flesh-broke that terrible chain; That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us… For they that after the flesh mind the things of the flesh; they that are after the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. If you be in Christ, you’re dead to sin, for the Spirit of life is the Spirit of righteousness. And the spirit of life in a man forever breaks that awful and terrible and welded chain, for the law of the spirit of life has made me free from the law of sin and death. If I’m going to live-if I’m going to be saved, I can’t do it myself. I cannot. I can never study enough to learn how. And I can never be smart enough to achieve. I can never run fast enough to overtake it. I can never be good enough to possess it. The holiest of men are the first to admit they are derelicts. The man with the finest garments is always the first to see the spot on his robe. The man who has the greatest diadem is the first to notice the jewels that are lost from his crown. We can’t do it. It comes as a gift of God. It comes from the gracious hand of Jesus. In my hands No price I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling. I can’t save myself, can’t redeem myself, can’t be good enough to climb those rungs of the ladder that reaches to God in heaven. I can’t, Lord. I can’t. In my weakness, in my carnality, in my flesh, in my soul-lost and fallen, Lord, I come to Thee. Master, in my hands place the gift otherwise we will never win. Lord, give me Thy Spirit, Thy grace, Thy abundant salvation. Do it, Lord, do it. And that’s all that it takes. But, it takes that. I don’t try, Lord. I turn it over to you, God. You save and you keep. My hand is open. Place in it the gift. My heart, Lord, is wide open. Come in, Holy Spirit of Jesus. And that’s it. That’s it. That’s liberty. That’s freedom. That’s triumph. That’s the salvation. That’s the gospel. And that’s what we offer in the name of God and the Lord Jesus tonight. Will you take it? Would you? “I can’t do it myself. But, I’ll let Jesus do it for me. And I’ll hide my soul in him. And here I am, and here I come.” Somebody, to put his life in the church, however God shall say the word and open the door. While we make appeal, would you come? Would you make it now? Would you? On the first note of the first stanza, step into the aisle and down here by my side: “Here I am, Pastor, and here I come.” Would you do it now? Make it now, while we stand and while we sing ======================================================================== CHAPTER 39: S. THE FAITH THAT SAVES ======================================================================== THE FAITH THAT SAVES Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 4:1-12 07-25-54 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled The Faith That Saves. In our preaching through the Word, we have come to Rom 4:1-25. And it will greatly bless your heart if, while I preach, you follow the words in the text. Turn in your Bible to Rom 4:1-25, and the message is taken out of the passage we read for our Scripture this day. I shall read part of it again. In Rom 4:1-25, Rom 4:1-5, “What shall we say then, that Abraham our father have found? “For [if] Abraham was justified by works, he hath the glory but not before God. “But what saith the Scripture, ‘Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness.’ “Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. “But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justified the ungodly, [his faith is] counted for righteousness.” And again, the subject must be his faith. His faith was counted for righteousness. If you will turn the page of your Bible to Rom 2:16, you will find it concluding with two little words, “my gospel”-“In the days when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel.” Paul said, “The message that I preach, I received it not from men. “Nor did I receive it from the other apostles. But I received it by direct revelation from God. I was taught it by the Lord Jesus Christ.” And he refers to it as “my gospel” that is, the gospel he personally received by revelation from the risen, resurrected Lord Himself-“my gospel.” Now, the preaching of that gospel precipitated turmoil and tremendous opposition. Before I begin, could I just leave out of Paul a summary of his gospel? That’s what the Book of Romans is about. And that’s what we’re preaching these days, that gospel. Rom 3:10, “As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’” Rom 3:23, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Rom 3:27, “Where is boasting? It is excluded.” No man can stand in the presence of God who is a lost sinner and say, “How good and fine I am!” Twenty-eight, “Therefore we conclude”- Rom 3:28 -“that if a man is justified at all he will have to be justified by the mercy and the grace of God, without the deeds of the law.” Then Rom 4:5, “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly; his faith is counted for righteousness. “ Now, Rom 4:24-25, “For us also to whom it shall be imputed”-this righteousness-“if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, “Which was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification.” This is a little summary as we sweep through those two chapters there, a little summary of what Paul calls “my gospel.” I say, it precipitated tremendous opposition among those who heard Paul preach that message. It precipitated a tremendous opposition when he first stood up to preach, after his conversion on the Damascus road. He first preached Jesus in Damascus. And because there was a plot to destroy his life by the Jewish people he was let down over the wall in a basket to escape. He next preached the gospel in the city of Jerusalem. And it created such turmoil and opposition that the disciples sent him away to [Caesarea]. Finally, returned [from] home once again and they found him in the temple, and the Jewish people began to beat him to death. And had he not been [rescued] by the chiliarch, the Roman legionnaire, the commander of the post and garrison, had he not been rescued by the chiliarch they would have destroyed him in the temple. Not only did that gospel precipitate a tremendous opposition on the part of the Jewish nation, but it likewise precipitated turmoil and opposition in the first church, in the Jewish church. The first Christian church was a Hebrew church. It was a Jewish church. And it likewise precipitated like opposition in the church, this gospel of Paul. First in Antioch when they come down from Jerusalem, and that [altercation] ended in the Jerusalem Conference. But it didn’t stop, it continued. And the reason Paul wrote to the churches of Galatia was these who oppose the gospel of Paul swept away the churches of Galatia, that they’re all defensive. They all turned aside from the gospel of Paul and followed these, what Paul called false apostles. I don’t know a better way to sit and write that opposition what Paul’s message was and what its antagonist was than to describe it like this: the message of Paul is diametrically opposite of legalism, humanism, self-righteousness, all summed up in the word Pharisaism or Judaism. It stands, I say, poles apart. When anyone is persuaded to follow a philosophy of the adequacy and the ableness of a man to work out his own problem, of a people or a nation to achieve their own destiny whenever they follow a teaching of humanism, the sufficiency of man, you will find yourself going in diametrically an opposite direction to the gospel that Paul says he got from Jesus, because the foundation of the message of Paul is this: that by nature we are corrupt, that by nature we are totally depraved. I don’t mean by total depravity that we are as bad as we can be. But I mean that all times after that sin has entered all of the faculty of the human mind and the human soul and the human body, that there’s not any area of a man’s life or in his thought or in his soul or in his heart or in his action that are not colored and turned by the presence of sin. That is everywhere. It is in your legislature. It is in your courthouse. It is in your city. It is up and down every street. It is in your church. It is in your life. The great fundamental principle upon which Paul biased his message is this, that we all have sin, and there is none righteous, not one. He begins there. And that’s an affront to human pride. That’s an affront to humanism. That’s an affront to Pharisaism. That’s an affront to those who find in themselves all the adequacy and self-sufficiency. May I continue that for a moment? Pharisaism is an affront to God because Pharisaism, that is self-righteousness, that is human pride, that is a persuasion of our sole sufficiency and adequacy. It is an affront to God because it is independent of God. The self-righteous man, the Pharisees, the self-adequate man, he comes before God dressed in righteousness all his own. He comes before God demanding God’s approbation. And that’s the reason I say keep your Bible open. That’s the reason Paul says here in Rom 4:4, “Now to him that worketh is a reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt.” When you read that it doesn’t mean much to you. If I could put it in my language it is this, when a man works, what you give him is not a gift, but you pay him. I should say, is not a gift, it is a debt. When a man works and you pay him, you don’t give him anything, he earns it. And you’re paying a debt to him. He worked for you. And you’re paying him the debt you owe him. Now, Paul says there, when a man works for his salvation it is no longer a grace of God, no longer a gift of God, it is no longer a mercy of God. It is a debt. God would have to pay it. If any man can come before God and say, “Look, I [achieved] my salvation; I warrant this by the worth and the merit and the goodness of my life,” and then for a man to be saved is no longer grace. It is no longer mercy. It is no longer faith. It is a debt that God owes you. That’s what he means when he says, “To him that worketh.” For your salvation when you work for it, what you get, the word of salvation, is not grace, mercy, the gift of God. It is a debt, it is a thing that God owes you. Now the fundamental principle of Paul is this, that no man is able to stand before God and say, “I am in my life worthy for this great gift of salvation. I have won it myself. I have earned it. It’s my reward.” I say the gospel of Paul and the gospel of a self-righteous life are poles apart, they are diametrically opposite. May I continue? I talked to a man within a week. You know what? This man is very successful. And his attitude is, the tragic problem I face, I will work it out myself. These issues that lie before me, they’re my responsibility. And I will do it myself. I’ll work it out. I’ll find the answer. It’s my problem. And I’ll do it myself. I’ll do it. That is a gospel of a self-righteous man. That’s the gospel of a Pharisee. “I will work it alone. I will do it myself. I am able. I will work it out.” What is the end of that man? I can prophesy the end right now. As he staggers before the problem, as he faces overwhelming issues, first he will begin to drink. They will press his soul. He will begin to drink. “Any less, anyhow, it is my case and what I cannot do.” And finally, he will commit suicide. The gospel of Paul is that life and death paled in heaven and the issues that are to come are beyond what my soul can encompass. O God, I’m a weak man, I’m a weak man. O God, I’m a sinful man. I’m a sinful man. O God, I’m a lost man. O God, upon Thy mercy and upon Thy grace I cast myself. I need You O God, don’t leave. That is the gospel of Paul. In my hand no price I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling. “To him that worketh is a reward, not of just grace, but of debt.” In my hand, “Not of grace but of debt.” In my hand, O God, no price I bring. Simply to Thy cross I cling. Helper of the helpless, O God, help me. Help me. That is the gospel of Paul. There was a little child in little town of Serampore, which is, was, 18 miles up the Ganges River from Calcutta. I stood at one of the greatest Baptist landmarks of the world. I stood at the grave of the father of our modern missionary program, William Carey. And I read this inscription of his tombstone. Listen to it. Listen to it. “A poor, miserable helpless worm, on Thy kind arms I fall.” Well, you could hardly speak of it. This man of God who is so small in stature towered above the great Christian leaders of his age and is looked upon by all Christian people as a father of modern missions who began in that place of [Leicester], England, the movement that is engulfed by all: the preaching of the cross to other nations-one of God’s saints of all times. Yet on his tombstone when he died is this, “Poor, miserable helpless worm, on Thy kind arms I fall.” Help me. Help me. Now, I am trying to present here the best I could what it was that was so diametrically opposite between self-righteousness, self-character, Pharisaism and the gospel of the apostle Paul. All right, now, let’s continue on with it. Having seen it is opposite, now let’s see the thing itself, this message of Paul. It starts off with Abraham in the fourth chapter of the Book of Romans. What shall we say about Abraham? He is using Abraham as the illustration. Abraham was the father of the faithful. Abraham is looked upon as the father of many nations. Abraham is looked upon as the father of the Hebrew people. He is looked upon as the father of the Moslem world. He is looked upon as the father of those revelations that finally changed in all of its glory fulfilled in his seed, his son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Christians, Muslims, Hebrews all of us alike look back to Abraham. So he’s using Abraham as an illustration of how a man is saved. And the point that Paul will make as he enters into the discussion is this, that if a man is saved, if he is ever saved, he is saved by the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness of God apart from work, apart from his own merit. So he starts off with Abraham. “If Abraham were justified by works, if he were saved by his good deeds, he had whereof to glory.” “See what I am and what I have done, O God.” And he looks in the face of God as an equal. “Look at me, God, look at me.” “If Abraham were justified by works and if he were accepted, pleasing to God by the good deeds that he did, he hath whereof to glory.” Look at what that verse says, the concluding part of it, “But not before God.” Where? Not before God. Abraham might boast before me that thou would not [have] been any better. Abraham might boast before some of his neighbors, and they might not know [they are] better. Abraham might boast of the merits and worth of his life before people who didn’t know and get by with it. But Paul says he can’t do it before God, because God knew Abraham, God knew his soul, and God knew his heart, and God knew his life. And a part of that life of Abraham is written in God’s Book. And what God has chosen to reveal there is anything but complimentary to Abraham. If you want to see a first-class liar, look at Abraham. If you want to see a man who was willing to sacrifice his wife to the likes of other men in order that he might save himself, that’s the life of Abraham. And see if he can boast before a man who knew his life! See if he could. That’s what that verse means there. If Abraham were justified by works, he hath [before] us the glory. But he couldn’t do it before God. God knew him. God knew him. Just like he knows you. Just like he knows all of us. We don’t glory before God. No man does. The secrets of the hearts and the secrets of your soul and the [wrong] of your life and the sin of yourself, all of us are alike. We don’t boast before God. And neither could Abraham, the father of the nations. “For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath for us the glory, but not before God.” Well then, how was he saved? How was he saved? How was Abraham justified? Look at the next verse. But what does the Book say for Paul, for the testimony and for the Scripture, how was he saved? Look at it. “Abraham believed God, and his faith was counted unto him for righteousness.” Abraham was saved, not because of the sublime pristine beauty and purity and holiness of his life. His life was not that. But Abraham was saved like all of the rest of us poor devils, saved like all of the rest of us lost sinners. He was saved because he cast his soul upon the mercies of God. Abraham believed God. He trusted God that God would have saved him and it was imputed unto him for righteousness. Then he applies it to us all. The fifth verse, “To him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” How can a godless man, a sinner man, a man like you and me, how could we ever stand before God? How could we ever look into the face of God? How could we? How could we ever be saved? We are going to be saved, Paul says, like Abraham was, by believing “on him that justifieth the ungodly.” If God justifies a sinner, then the sinner doesn’t need to try to justify himself. He can’t do it. He can’t do it. The more he argues with God and the more he tries to present his merit to God, the more that that the recesses of his life appear, the blackness and the darkness that are in all of us alike, that sin, our fallen nature, our depraved souls. All of us poor, warped with the sentence of it in our bodies and in our souls, we try to justify ourselves before God, it’s in vain and it is ridiculous and silly. Paul’s gospel says it is the Lord that justifieth the ungodly. That’s the reason Jesus in Mat 21:31 said to the Pharisees-you look at this, it says that [of] a Pharisee, “Verily I say unto you, that the publican and the harlot will go into the kingdom of God before you.” Why can’t we muster [sic] and know that the sinners and prostitutes and the harlots in thy day were marching through the pearly gates into the golden streets and into the beautiful street, while on the outside were those clothed in their own righteousness, the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the leaders of the people. Then how? Mat 21:32, the rest of that verse, because when John came and preached the gospel of the kingdom, the harlot and the sinner and the publican believed John. They were ready to accept the Lord Jesus, while the Pharisee gathered his righteous skirts around him and said, “I have no need of Thee,” and refused to turn and to repent. It is God that justifieth the ungodly. God does it. God does it. It is God that heals the sick. If you want to try it yourself, put a little wound there in your hand. Heal it back together. Put a wound there in your hand and watch God mend it back together. It is God that heals the sick. It is God that heals the sick. The days of the righteous, whatever came to call to repentance [sic], they that are whole need not a physician. The man who is saying in his pride, in his self-sufficiency, he doesn’t need God, he is a physician to himself. It is a sinner that God saves. It is the hurt that God heals. It is the ungodly that he justifies. “For him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, [his faith] is counted for righteousness.” “Now, Preacher, my soul is putting a premium on sin.” No, there is a basis on which God justifies us in our sin. There is a basis on which God justifies the ungodly, you and me. He does it on the basis of the atoning grace and merit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, look at Romans Rom 4:24-25, “But for us also it shall be imputed”-that righteousness of Jesus-“if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. “He was delivered for our offenses and raised for our justification.” Now, in Rom 5:6, “For when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly.” Rom 5:8, “But God commended his love toward us in while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” And look at Rom 5:11, the triumphant one, “We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement”-the atonement, the Lord justifies the ungodly on the basis of the atoning grace and merit and worth of the Son of God Who loved us and gave Himself for us. The Lord does not justify me on the basis of my fear, of my prayer, of my penance, of my good works. Yesterday, I had a funeral service-one of the blessed old saints of this church. So many of his friends were there. Dear, blessed saint, lived by herself; neighbors found her dead. Just to talk to some of the members of the beloved class, one of the dear old ladies, sweet and precious of this church. They sang a song there at that funeral service. You know what it was? Could my tears forever flow, Could my zeal no languish know, These for sin could not atone, Thou must save and Thou alone. That’s the reason she was a saint. That’s the reason she was a saint: looking to Jesus, trusting Jesus. Somehow our fear could never be enough. Our prayers could never be prayed enough. Our good deeds could never be good enough. In Thy hands, O God, I lay and cast my soul. O God, on the basis of Thy worth and Thy merit, remember me, remember me. And that is the faith that saves: the faith, the faith, [wholly] and completely in the Lord Jesus Christ according to Paul’s gospel. “To him that worketh not and but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” We are saved by wholly, completely, trusting, depending on, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the faith that saves. I am not saved by trusting Jesus and my good works. I am not saved by trusting Jesus and my fear. Not saved by trusting Jesus and my fear. Not saved by trusting Jesus and joining the church. Not saved by trusting Jesus and being baptized. I am saved-the faith-are saved with the faith of trusting wholly, completely upon the Lord Jesus. “To him that justifieth the ungodly, believing, his faith is counted for righteousness.” All through the Book, as you turn the pages of the Book, that is the same gospel on every page, in every syllable and in every sentence. Jesus said to the righteous Pharisees, to Nicodemus, “Whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus said to sorrowing Mary and Martha in the eleventh chapter of John in the twenty-[fifth] and twenty-[sixth] verses, “Listen, I am the resurrection and the life. He that liveth and believeth in me shall never, never die.” Simon Peter preaching to righteous Cornelius, the centurion of Caesarea, the man who praises God always and gives alms for the people, Simon Peter said in Acts 10:43, “To him-the Lord Jesus-give all the prophets witness that in his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins.” Paul and Silas preached to the jailer in Philippi, “Believe, believe, [just] cast yourself, upon the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Gal 2:16, “Knowing that a man is justified not by his works, not by the deeds of the law, but by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.” “To him that worketh not but believeth on him that justified the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” A man is saved by giving himself to the Lord Jesus. One time I prayed with this Book opened before me, and I said, “Lord, show me in the Book, show me in the Book where it says what it is to trust in the Lord, what it is to believe in the Lord Jesus. Show me, Lord, where it is in the Book.” And the Lord put that wonderful passage in my mind, 2Ti 1:12, “For I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him, committed unto him, against that day. I know whom I have believed.” And what is it to believe in the Lord Jesus, the faith that saves? “He’s able to keep that which I have committed unto him, which I have committed unto him against that day.” If I have a little life saving and I go to the big bank down there and I commit it to them, I don’t commit it to them if I hold it myself. I commit it to the big bank and I leave it down there and go out the door and they have got it. I have committed to them. I believe in their integrity and promise, and I left it there. And there it is, that little savings I might have. I have a precious letter, a dear letter, so important a letter. I go to the mailbox. I don’t commit it to the post office if I keep it in my hand. But if I drop it in that little slot and I see it fall into the box, it is up to them. Uncle Sam has got to make good. I trusted them with the letter. And my soul, and my soul, and my soul-I have committed it to Jesus. When I come to the Lord and say, “Lord, such as I am, kind of poor, I know, kind of a fool, I know, full of sin, I know, not lovely at all. I’m full of imperfection. “Every day I fall short, Lord all of the time. Such as I am, I cast my soul at Thy feet. And if I perish, Lord, hear I die. I perish with Thee.” And the Good Book says, and the Good Book says, John 6:47, “He that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out.” Never was a sinner ever saved, but that the Lord drew him in the fullness of the gracious promise. “And to them, I give eternal life and they shall never, never perish.” All in the words of His words to sorrowing Mary and Martha, “And he shall never, ever die.” Faith. Faith. Faith. Delivered. Delivered. Justified. Justified. Forgiven. Forgiven in the grace and in the merit and in the mercy and in the forgiveness of the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us dedicate but a day, a gift that comes from His blessed hands. That is the gospel of Paul. And it is the gospel of the Son of God. I come together with [song number] 104, “Only Trust Him.” And while we sing the hymn, while we sing it, on the topmost balcony to the last row in this great throng from side to side and on this lower floor, somebody you, you give his heart to the Lord. Or come into the fellowship of this church. Would you make it now? Would you come and stand by me? “Here I am, Pastor, and here I come. There’s a whole family of us, Pastor. All of us are coming.” Or just one somebody you, a child, a you. As God makes the appeal, while we sing this hymn of grace, would you come and worship and looking to Jesus. While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 40: S. THE FUTURE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL ======================================================================== THE FUTURE RESTORATION OF ISRAEL Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 11:24-29 11-2-54 The sermon tonight is the conclusion of the message begun this morning on the text in Rom 11:1 : “I say then, hath God cast away his people?” Is God done with the children of Abraham? Is there no future for the Jewish nation? In the sermon tonight, there will be a lot of reading, a lot of quoting from God’s Word. But I’d like to take a moment to show you how the apostle Paul himself, when he preached and when he wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, how very, very much he quoted and read from God’s Book. Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36 a great parenthesis. From Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Rom 4:1-25, Rom 5:1-21, Rom 6:1-23, Rom 7:1-25, Rom 8:1-39, he’s talking about our salvation by faith. Then, in Rom 9:1-33, Rom 10:1-21 and Rom 11:1-36, he is discussing the problem of Israel’s unbelief. And now, you just look: I shall follow them one right after another. You look how he quotes from the Bible. He quotes Gen 18:10, Gen 25:23, Mal 1:2-3 and Exo 33:19. He quotes Isa 19:16, Hos 2:23, Isa 10:22, Isa 28:22, Isa 1:9, Isa 8:14 and Isa 28:16. He continues in Rom 10:1-21 : Deu 30:12-14, Isa 28:16, Joe 2:32, Isa 52:7, Isa 53:1, Psa 19:4, Deu 32:21, Isa 65:1 and Isa 65:2. Then in Rom 11:1-36, he quotes 1Ki 19:10, 1Ki 19:18, Isa 29:10, Deu 29:4, Psa 69:22; Psa 23:1-6 and Num 15:19-21. He quotes Isa 59:20-21. He quotes Isaiah 40:13-14, Job 35:7 and Job 41:11. In this little section of chapters nine through eleven, he quotes that many times from the Holy Word. When a man preaches like the apostle preaches, he preaches God’s Book. When a man delivers a message like apostle Paul or the rest of these men of God-when he delivers a message-he will deliver a message from the Book. They preach the Word, like the Lord Jesus himself did. There was placed in his hands the roll of the prophet Isaiah, and he found the place where he read, and then he read it and preached from the Book. So tonight, may I say as I said this morning: These are not my ideas. They are not concoctions or imaginations configured out of my brain. I’m just a voice: A preacher of the Word. And we are going through the Bible and these things are in the Book. This morning, we began with the Jewish nation, the Jewish people, in their unbelief. And the terrible trial and tribulation, the sorrows and tragedies, that have characterized those people of God all through the centuries and the millenniums. And now tonight, we speak of their future. Do they have a future? Has God cast away his people? The answer of Paul is: God forbid. God forbid. “God hath not cast away his people whom he foreknew.” Then he says: “For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery lest you be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” And then when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, then “all Israel shall be saved. As it is written: There shall come out of Zion the deliverer and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” “For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance, without change.” The covenants that God has made stand forever and the promises God hath made are never annulled. So we begin tonight looking at the covenant promises of God to His chosen people, Israel. The first covenant that we shall mention and the first promise is the promise of the Lord God to Israel that they shall have the land of Palestine forever and ever. Now, we read from the Word, in Gen 17:7-8 : And the Lord God said to Abram: I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all of the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God. That is the covenant. God called it a covenant that he made between Himself and Abraham and Abraham’s seed. Forever they were to have the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. Now, look again at that same covenant in the twenty-third chapter of the prophet Jeremiah: Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall upon reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. In his days, Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name whereby he shall be called, The Lord our righteousness. Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall no more say: The Lord liveth, which brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, But, the Lord liveth, which brought up and which led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all countries whither I had driven them; and they shall dwell in their own land. God says: “I have given that land to Israel forever and ever.” And God says in Jer 23:1-40 : “I shall gather them from all of the countries whither they are driven and they will dwell in their own land.” And once again in Eze 11:17 : Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord God: I will even gather you from the people, and assemble ye out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. And they shall come thither, and they shall take away all of the detestable things thereof and all of the abominations thereof from thence. And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh. That they may walk in my statutes, and keep my ordinances, and do them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. “And I will give you the land of Israel.” That covenant was made with Abraham and with his seed forever and ever. And it was renewed by the prophets, in an unconditional categorical promise to the people of Abraham: the land of Palestine, forever, by an eternal covenant, witnessed to by God himself. The land of Palestine was given to the seed of Abraham for an everlasting covenant and everlasting possession. And God says in his Word that someday they shall be gathered into the land of Palestine. And they shall be there as a people collected from all of the nations of the earth and they shall have their own king to reign over them: King Jesus, the promised greater Son of David. All right. Now let’s look at that covenant. We have just read the covenant of God to Israel, that the land was to be theirs forever. And, someday, they shall go there and it shall be theirs for a possession forever. All right. God also says here’s the second covenant. God also says that the Hebrew people shall have a King over them, who shall reign forever, a greater Son of David. Now, listen. In 2Sa 16:7, God made a covenant with David: “And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever.” That is the covenant that God made with David. He should have a Son that would sit upon his throne forever and ever. Now we carry that covenant through. In Jeremiah, the prophet, Jer 33:1-26, I begin reading at Jer 33:20. Listen to it: Thus saith the Lord: If you can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season; Then may also my covenant be broken with David my servant, that he should not have a son to reign upon his throne. If you can change day and night, then you can also change the covenant God made with David, that he would have a son to sit upon his throne. Moreover, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah saying: Considerest thou not what these people have spoken, saying, The two families which the Lord had chosen, He hath even cast them off? Thus they have despised my people, that they should be no more a nation before them. Thus saith the Lord: If my covenant be not with day and night, and if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; Then will I cast away the seed of Jacob, and David my servant; so that I will not take any of his seed to be rulers over the seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, For I will cause their captivity to return. They will have a King over them. The King, the greater Son of David, and his throne will be established forever. All right, we read again, this time in Amos, the Amo 9:11 and Amo 9:15 : In that day, I will raise up the tabernacle of David that has fallen, And close up the breaches thereof; and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build it as in the days of old… And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.” That has never been fulfilled, like the rest hasn’t been fulfilled. God says they are to have a King. I will build up the tabernacle of David that has fallen: his throne. And I will send my people back to their land, and I will never pull them up again, but they are to abide there forever. Now, once again, in Luk 1:1-80, when the angel Gabriel came to the virgin Mary, he said: Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and he shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Oh, spiritualizing exegetes come along and say: “That promise made to Mary about that son she was to have. He is to sit on the throne of his father David forever. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob. Why, that’s the church.” Who ever heard of Jesus being the king of the church? Who ever heard, who ever read in God’s Book, of the church being the kingdom? David’s throne is to be set up in this earth. And the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of David, is to sit upon that throne. Well, what about the Lord Jesus now? The Lord Jesus is not on the throne of David. Listen to Rev 3:21 : “And I also have overcome and am sat down with my father in his throne.” The Lord Jesus is seated with God the Father on the Father’s throne in heaven. But he is not on David’s throne. The house of David has been cast down. The children of Israel are scattered abroad. And the kingdom has not come. Any time anybody says: “You are now living in the millennium kingdom,” I say he ought to have his head examined. Brother, if this is the millennium, may the Lord help us. What have we to look forward to? No, Sir. There is no King David’s throne in this world anywhere. And there’s not any king reigning on this earth that even approximates the Lord Jesus. In this world there is nothing but war and rumors of war: Fear by day and by night; sin everywhere and certain death for every man. And if you think that we’re living in a millennium kingdom, Brother, look around you. Read the paper and watch your own body grow old and senile and die. No, Sir. No, No. There is yet to be, says the Holy Book-there is yet to be the great establishment of the kingdom of God in this earth and Christ shall reign personally and visibly. And His people shall be the first Christian nation, and, through them, all of the world is to be converted and will be saved. And that’s the millennium. But it isn’t now. It isn’t now. Let me tell you how to tell whether the millennium has come or not. When somebody says: “We’re in the millennium,” go out to the graveyard. If our dead are still dead, Brother, we’re not in it. For the first thing that shall come to pass in the millennium is this: That the dead in Christ shall rest first. And if they are still down there in those graves, you are not in the millennium. You are still in the world of sin and of age and of death. And someday, God’s going to change that, he says. Well, let’s go back now to what I was talking about. We’ve got lots of time tonight. I’m just not going to quit tonight. We are just going on. And you just seat yourself nice and quiet-like. Preacher, when are all of these things to be? That’s what the disciples asked the Lord Jesus. In Acts 1:6 of the book of Acts, when the Lord was about to ascend into glory, the disciples came to the Lord Jesus, and they said: “Lord Jesus, you’re leaving, you’re going away. And the kingdom hasn’t come. Lord, what of the kingdom and what of Israel? Lord, wilt now at this time, restore the kingdom to Israel?” Do you remember that question? Well, that question has to have an answer. What about the kingdom and what about Israel? And what about the Lord Messiah, King David’s greater Son. What about that? Well, the Bible has a lot to say about it. I cannot tell you the time that it will come. The Lord Jesus said: “It is not for you to know the times of the seasons.” But I can tell you what the times and the seasons are like. And we are in them right now. We are living in an age of dispensation, a season. And we can look at it and God has told us how it is going to be. So we are going to do that tonight. What is that future? What is that future? Now, all of these great prophecies, they all center around the Messiah. They all center around the greater Son of David, His coming. All of those prophecies center around the first coming of the Lord and the second coming of the Lord. In the first coming of the Lord-if we had just worlds of time tonight-in the first coming of the Lord, the prophets describe minutely how it would be. Daniel even said the time of his first coming. And they described just exactly how he would be. He’s going to be born, said Micah, over there in that little town of Bethlehem. And he’s going to be brought up in Nazareth. And he’s going to be meek and lowly and humble. And the spirit of the Lord is going to be on him. And he’s going to love poor people. And he’s going to preach the gospel to the poor. And they said all through the book of Matthew, that it might be fulfilled. And they said he’s going to offer himself as the promised King of Israel-going to ride upon the ass. And he’s going to his house, his Temple, suddenly and immediately. And he’s going to be rejected by his people. And he’s going to be crucified between two malefactors. And he’s going to be buried in a rich man’s grave. And the third day, he’s going to rise from the dead. All of those things and a multitude of others that I haven’t time to mention-all of those things were prophesied hundreds and hundreds of years before the Lord Jesus came into this world. Now, many of those prophecies concern the second coming of the Lord Jesus. Are you persuaded that the first prophecies, describing the first coming of the Lord, are fulfilled minutely, just like it says in the Book? But the second prophecies, those prophecies that concern the second coming, they are to be spiritualized away. They are not to be fulfilled. No, Sir. They’re going to be fulfilled just like God said in that Book. He prophesied the first coming of the Lord Jesus. And it happened just like the prophet said. And when the Lord Jesus comes again, it is going to happen just like the Lord Jesus said and as it was prophesied concerning him. Now in the deliverance and in the restoration of Israel, there are three of them. All three restorations were by the hand and the intervention of Almighty God. The first time Israel was brought back to his land was out of Egyptian bondage and God did it. The second time that Israel was restored to the land was from the Babylonian captivity and again, the Lord did it. The third and the last time that the Lord intervenes to gather his people together and to send them back to Palestine will also be in the intervention and in the will and in the grace of Almighty God. They, first, will go back, gradually gathering back in unbelief, as they are today. And some of these days, when the Lord Jesus appears, when he comes personally, they are going to be gathered from wherever they are. And they are going back to their land, this time converted, this time saved, this time the evangels and the preachers of grace and the love and the kingdom of the Son of God. All right. Where does it say in God’s book that any such thing as that is ever going to happen? Then let’s read together. In the thirty-first chapter of the book of Jeremiah, listen to the prophecy of the prophet of God: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they break, although I was a husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days-in the end time-saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts, and will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord. And I will forgive their iniquities and I will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea from the waves. The Lord of hosts is his name. If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall cease from being a nation from before me forever. Thus saith the Lord, if heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth stretched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord. They’re going to abide-they are going to live-in the presence of the Lord forever. And they are going to be a converted and a new people. And everyone of them will know the Lord. For God will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more, and put His will and His law in the inward parts of their hearts. All right. Look again. In the twenty-third chapter of the Book of Matthew, the Lord Jesus says: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent ubto me, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings and ye would not? Behold your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth till you say: Blessed-blessed-is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” There is a day coming, says the Lord Jesus, when Israel shall look up and say to Jesus, their Christ, their Messiah, their King: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord!” And until that day says the Lord Jesus, all of the house of Israel shall be in desolation. They will be despised and scattered among the nations. But the time is coming-the time is coming-when they shall look up and say: “Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Look again. Look again. In the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans, Paul says: “Blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in; and then shall all Israel be saved.” All Israel is going to be saved when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. Now, listen to the Lord Jesus: And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let them not enter into the countries or enter in there to. For these be the days that all things which may be fulfilled. Woe unto them which are with child, and to them that give suck in those days, for there shall be a great distress in the land and harass upon this people. I had a couple come to me who wanted to have a family and refused. Because she said to me, “It says in God’s word: “Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days for there shall be great distress and wrath upon the people.” And she said, “What if I were pregnant or what if my child were nursing and those days were to come?” I said, “Oh, my dear child, listen. That prophecy concerns-that prophecy concerns-the terrible destruction of Jerusalem when the Lord Jesus said: Not a stone shall be left upon another in this vast and beautiful temple, but it shall be utterly destroyed. And when you see those armies gathered around Jerusalem, then flee Judea, flee Perea, flee to Lebanon, for there shall be awful tribulation in those days. And woe unto a mother who is pregnant and can hardly walk. And woe to a mother who is giving suck to a child and she can hardly run. And that is Jesus’ way of saying of those awful days.” I said to that girl: “That isn’t now. That concerns that terrible day in the destruction of Jerusalem.” And I have a good ending to that. They had their baby and their family and they have been happy. I tell you when you read the Book, you need to read it with the enlightenment of God upon you. Now I am going to continue. “There shall be distress in the land and wrath, and they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive in all nations.” That was literally fulfilled. And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. The prophecy of the Lord was what happened forty years after. Jerusalem is going to be destroyed and it will stay trodden down of the Gentiles. The Gentiles will possess it until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And when that time comes-“when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in”-“all Israel shall be saved.” That will be the sign of the coming of the Lord God. Did you know that this last war between Israel and the Jordan kingdom, the kingdom of Transjordania-did you know that there was a vigorous band of those Jewish soldiers that took Jerusalem, and had they taken it and kept it, the Lord Jesus Christ would have had to come or His Bible is not so? And his promises are not true. But, what happened? The time has not come for the return of the Lord Jesus and the end and the consummation of the age, and nobody knows why. But that Jewish army retreated. And when the thing was finally settled, and the line of demarcation was made by the U.N., all of the city of Jerusalem, all of it is still in Gentile hands. If the time ever comes when Jerusalem is given to the Jews, then the times of the Gentiles is done, and the Lord Jesus shall appear in glory and all of the final denouement of the age will begin, as it is written in the Revelation and these passages from the lips of our Savior in Luke and in Matthew. Now, for a moment may I speak of the fullness of the Gentiles (Rom 11:25): “until the fullness of the Gentiles, and then shall all Israel be saved.” And then Jesus preaches the same thing. He says: “Jerusalem is to be trodden down until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” What does that mean: “until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in and then shall all Israel be saved?” What that means is this: The plērōma of the Gentiles, the full number of the Gentiles. This is the day and the age of grace. This is the day of the preaching of the gospel. And there are an elect that are known to God: the plērōma. In Eph 1:23, Paul speaks of the plērōma, the body of Jesus, “the plērōma of him that filleth all in all.” The body of the Lord Jesus is now being made up, and it has in it a plērōma, a certain number known to God. And then, and in this age and in this grace, we are under the Great Commission of the Savior: “to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and all of the uttermost parts of the earth.” We are preaching the gospel of the Son of God. To what end? To convert the world? You will never convert the world. To make Christian nations? You will never make a Christian nation. You will never win one community completely to the Lord Jesus. You’ll not win all of Dallas. But, we are preaching the gospel for the purpose of the Lord calling out his elect. He is calling out his people. And the church is called in Greek, a calling out. The ekklēsia, the church, is the elect assembly, the plerōma, the certain number that make up the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when the last one has come in, when the last one that is elected of God and that’s known but to God, when the plērōma of the Gentiles be come in, when the last one has been saved, then the fullness of the Gentiles is complete and the Lord Jesus shall come and “all Israel shall be saved.” Now, a final word. The salvation of Israel, what will it be like? How is it? I am trying this evening to go over a part of the thing this evening that I wanted to present this morning and did. But, I had to do it rapidly. When the Lord Jesus is come, Zechariah-that is the prophet which I read out of this morning-Zechariah, and then Rev 1:1-20. Zechariah says that his feet are going to stand, they are going to touch the top of the Mount of Olives. And when his feet touch the mount, it is going to cleave up yonder-All of the things in the day when the Lord Jesus comes. Then it goes ahead with those marvelous prophecies of the things that are going to come to pass. And among those things, Zechariah says, they’re going to be able to look upon Him-Israel is. Judah is-They are going to look upon Him whom they have pierced, and they are going to weep and they are going to cry and they are going to repent. And they are going to say: “Where did you get those wounds in your hands?” And He is going to say: “They came from you. They came from the house of my friends, My own people. I came unto my own and my own received me not. Like the Lord Jesus, in the Book of the Revelation, and He cometh with clouds: “Behold, he cometh in clouds and everybody will see him and they also which pierced him.” And Israel is going to weep before the Lord. They are going to repent before the Lord. They are going to cry before the Lord. And then shall come to pass those passages that I read in the prophets where it says: And a nation shall be born in a day-in a day-a nation shall be born in a day-in a day. Israel shall be converted overnight. It will be the first Christian nation. And you have many adumbrations of the future of Israel in the Revelation. Over here in Rev 7:1-17, in that terrible and awful tribulation after the church is taken away, there is sealed of Israel, of Judah, twelve thousand; of Reuben, twelve thousand; of Gad, twelve thousand; of Asher, Naphtali, Manasseh, Simeon, Levi, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin-all of the twelve tribes-there is sealed twelve thousand. And they are the emissaries and the preachers-after we are taken away-of the gospel of the Son of God. And look at the multitude that they win! ======================================================================== CHAPTER 41: S. THE GIFT OF GOD ======================================================================== THE GIFT OF GOD Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 6:23 09-26-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas, Texas. And this is the Pastor, being the message from the last verse of the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans- Rom 6:23 : “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is one of those tremendous sentences. Like Mic 6:8; like John 3:16; like John 5:24; like Acts 16:31; like Rom 8:28; like Rev 3:20, this verse-this sentence-is one of those tremendous statements that sum up the entire Bible, the whole story of redemption, the lost and helpless condition of mankind, and the hope and promise we have in God. Sometimes I say that, in the Scriptures, there are sentences that seem to sum up the total of all of the redemptive story of God for lost humanity. And one of those sentences is my text today: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “For the wages of sin is death”: that is the story of our humanity in all its hopelessness. “Sin and death”: that is the story of humanity in all its history. “Sin and death”: it is the story of our first parents and their second-born son, slain by their first-born, when the blood of Abel cries out from the ground. How much more did it cry out when they looked at the fruit of their hands and the reward of their transgression? It was death in the story of the great flood that covered the whole earth-that deluged the world. Every rotting corpse, floating on the bosom of those terrible waves, was an “Amen” to this terrible sentence: “The wages of sin is death.” It was death, in the days when fire fell out of heaven from God and obliterated the cities of the plain-Sodom and Gomorrah-every burning heap, every charred body, was an eloquent commentary on this statement for the ages: “For the wages of sin is death.” It was death, in the day when the angel stalked through the land of Egypt-on that terrible and awful night, when the firstborn in every Egyptian home was taken away. And the cries and the tears and the laments of the Egyptians are but a commentary upon this verse: “The wages of sin is death.” It was death, in the day when the heavy-handed angel passed through the camp of the Assyrians and Sennacherib’s host of 185,000, the next morning, were nothing but dead corpses. It was death, in the day when our Savior, the Lord Jesus climbed the steep and rocky hill of Golgotha and died for the sins of the world. It was death, in the days of Titus, when Jerusalem was inundated with blood, then destroyed, under the hands of the Roman legionnaires. It was death, when the Nazi government created the flaming catastrophe from the skies and became an almost unprecedented instrument of death. It is death, when the capital cities of all the nations of the world dedicate the tomb of the unknown soldier. In every city, in every hamlet, down our street and, inevitably, in every life, every man shall bow in defeat when the grim reaper comes. “The wages of sin is death”-a world of sin-universal sin-and a world of death-universal death. It doesn’t matter who you are-the rich man in his mansion or the poor man in a hovel; a king in the throne room or a queen in the boudoir; a philosopher or a peasant-all must face that inevitable hour. The harlot in her dean and the society matron both must face that awful hour of sin and death. Now, we all do sin and we all do die. How do we meet, and how do we face, those awful realities when we are at death’s door? I know I shall be humble and righteous and holy. And he will laugh when he comes-that pale horseman of death. It doesn’t matter whether I spend my days in agony over my sins or renounce everything in the world. “I will give up-I will set aside-everything in this life. I will die in a monastery. I will die in a hermit’s lodge. Even if I die of self-flagellation, I cannot escape the reality of sin and death.” I live in a world of sin and death. I think of the beginning of the greatest allegory that was ever written: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. It opens with a man named Pilgrim standing with his back to his own house in the great city. He has in his hand an open Bible. As reads in that book, he cries, no longer able to control himself. He breaks down, and with a lamentable cry, he says, “What shall I do? And whither shall I go?” And he looked this way and he looked that way. Not knowing where to go, he stood still. And there came one up to him named Evangelist, who asked, “Whither dost thou cry?” And Pilgrim replied, “Sir, I perceive from the Book that I have in my hand that I am going to die and, after that, the judgment. I am not willing to die and I am not able to do otherwise.” And Evangelist said, “If this is your condition, why standest thou still?” And Pilgrim replied,” Because I know not where to go. If I move to Africa or South America or Asia; if I have a little house or a big house-wherever I go, whatever I do, that awful and inevitable death will come and knock at my door. I cannot get away.” That is true, because “the wages of sin is death.” It is in the helplessness-it is in the despair-it is in the grief and the sorrow of our humanity that God did something for us that we could not do for ourselves. The Lord paid a debt for us that we could not pay ourselves. The Lord achieved deliverance for us that we could not have done ourselves. “The wages of sin is death… .” But, but, “…the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Life-life-life-life eternal. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God-the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”-something done for us that we could not do for ourselves. We are like a man who is drowning in the middle of a vast sea, and he cannot help himself. But, a hand reaches down from God to save him. We are like a man in a vast burning desert, who is about to die of thirst. But, an angel comes and succors us. We are like a man about to burn up in the midst of a vast fire. But, a hand reaches down from God and saves us. “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” It is a gift because it is something that we could not achieve for ourselves. That leads us to “By grace are you saved through faith; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast”-I did it!-when no man could do it. As it says in Tit 3:3-5 : For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us… . “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God-the gift of God-It is a gift of great cost; it is priceless. No man could ever buy it: the grace and mercy and love of God. Our salvation is a gift because it’s been paid for-it’s been paid for. He doesn’t pay it and then charge us again. Jesus paid it all, once and for all, in the agony in Gethsemane and on the Cross of Golgotha, in the crown of thorns that he wore and the blood that flowed out. It is a gift of God. It is a gift because it is freely offered to everybody: “Whosever will may come.” Whosoever will, let him receive. Whosever will, let him believe. Whosoever will, let him be saved. “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God-the gift of God-the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”-eternal life, eternal life. A possession-have it now, have it now, have it today, have it tomorrow-is eternal life-eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord-a gift now-we have it now. As it says in Eph 2:8 : “For by grace you have been saved… .” John 3:36 says, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”-have it now-eternal life. John 5:24 : Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life… and is passed out of death unto life-eternal life. John 10:28 : “And I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish”-eternal life-life, everlasting life. And our passage: “And the gift of God is eternal life”-a present possession-eternal life. I have it tomorrow. I have it today-now-eternal life. “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” There’s no such thing in this Book, in god’s Word-there’s no such thing as a man being partly or sometimes saved or partly or sometimes lost. There’s no much thing as a man being saved today and lost tomorrow. If a man is saved, he’s saved. If he’s lost, he’s lost. There’s no such thing in this Book as a man being partly or sometimes justified or being partly or sometimes condemned. There’s no such thing in this Book as a man being partly or sometimes known by God and a man being partly or sometimes unknown by God. There’s no such thing as a man being partly alive or partly dead. “The gift of God is elternal life.” It is our possession now and forever. 1Jn 5:1 : “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”-has life. And it is eternal life, everlasting life, a life that will never fade away. Life, life, eternal life-“The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”-After a great victory, a Greek general called the procession for the dead “the procession into the always”-life, eternal life. I don’t have it now and then I lost it. I’m saved-saved. It is a gift of god. It is not something that I did. It is something that God did for me. It is not my promise to hold onto God. It is God’s promise to hold onto me. If God promised that He would give me eternal life, that never changes. I may change but God won’t. I may stumble, but He never will. I may fall, but He never will. “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”-a present possession and forever. And it never ceases. It never stops. It never ends. It is given to us now-it is given to us now in Christ Jesus. And it is eternal-it goes on forever-it is never-ending and forever. When I die-when I die, I’m not dead. My body has just returned to the dust of the ground. It has gone back to the grave. As it says in 2Co 5:1-21 : “Absent from the body, present with the Lord”-when we look at “The Reminder” and see those deaths-“Absent from the body, present with the Lord.” That’s why I had you read various passages of Scripture today: I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them who fall asleep in Jesus… For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. Even “those who sleep in Jesus” will come. He’s saying that, when God calls, all those are dead in Jesus Christ will come forth, alive. Our bodies will sleep, then our bodies will live. But, I thought that they had returned to the ground-had returned to the grave. No, their bodies are called forth from the grave. They live again. They are glorified. Their bodies are re-united with their spirits. They are receiving what God has prepared for those who have trusted Him. “The gift of God is eternal life”-never-ending life-“in Jesus Christ our Lord.” My fellow pilgrims and my fellow Christians, don’t you ever tremble before the Devil. He may seek to make you tremble, but he does not have the power to do so. Even the least of those who believe in the Lord have the gift of eternal life. As I quoted from John 10:28 : “And I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish”-eternal life. In that same chapter, Jesus said that He calleth His own by name-by name. You are not just a number or a statistic-not in God’s sight. In God’s sight, you are somebody important. And He knows your name-He knows your name. And He knows all about you. The hairs on your head are numbered. He knows everything about you. And He calls you by name. And he leads His sheep into the fold. And He shall make His children pass under the rod. When you go out into Galilee, everywhere-everywhere you will see the sheepfolds. And always, there in the corner, will be the place of protection, always with one entrance-always with one entrance. When Jesus says that he will cause His people to pass under the rod, what He is talking about is when they are gathering the flock in the evening, preparing to take them to the place of protection, he puts his rod-his shepherd’s staff-across that one entrance. Then, the sheep come, one at a time, under the rod, and he calls them by name: this one and this one and this one and this one. That’s why Psa 23:1-6 says: “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me”-the care and concern of Almighty God in keeping His flock-He calls them by name. Do you reckon that He might forget one of them? Do you reckon so? Do you suppose that, in that great and final day, that he will forget us? No! If there is just one whom God forgets, He has broken His word and His promises do not prevail and the whole universe is in confusion. That’s the reason your old-time forefathers used to sing: How firm a foundation, Ye saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith In His excellent Word. What more can He say Than to you He hath said- You who to Jesus For refuge hath fled. That soul who on Jesus Hath lain for repose, I’ll never, no, never, Desert to its foes. That soul, though all hell Shall endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no, never, No, never forsake. At the time of death, when the grim reaper comes-when the grim reaper comes… . ======================================================================== CHAPTER 42: S. THE GREAT CONFESSION ======================================================================== THE GREAT CONFESSION Dr. W. A. Criswell 11-21-54 Rom 10:9-10 If there could be a favorite text that this preacher likes to preach on, it is the text that lies immediately before us, as we are preaching throughout the Bible. It is in the Rom 10:1-21. The title of the sermon is: The Great Confession. And the text, in Rom 10:1-21, is this: If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead-that he lives, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart, one believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. For the scriptures saith: Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek; for the same Lord over all is rich unto all, that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. That’s the text. And I say, it is my favorite to preach on in the Bible: “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus”-into that aisle, down here to the front, before the world and the angels of heaven-“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that he lives”-that he reigns, that he has been raised from the dead, that he’s at the right hand of God, that he’s the living Lord-If thou shalt believe in the Lord Jesus in thine heart and confess him openly with thy mouth, thou shall be saved. “For with the heart one believeth unto righteousness… .” Man can’t work to do righteous. His works, God says, “are as filthy rags” in God’s sight. But, a man can believe unto righteousness. He can have an imputed righteousness. He can have a God kind of righteousness. He can have a perfect, unblemished righteousness. He can have the righteousness which is in Jesus Christ. “With the heart one believeth unto righteousness”-the God kind of righteousness,, the Jesus-imputed kind of righteousness, the righteousness which saves. “With the heart one believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” A man came to me after a long time that we had worked and prayed that he might become a Christian-A man came to me and said, “I hereby give you my hand. I take the Lord Jesus as my Savior. And from this moment on, I intend to follow him. I want to be a Christian and I take the Lord as my Savior.” I said, “Wonderful, wonderful. Now, down at that church you’re to come. And you’re to confess your faith in the Lord, and you’re to be baptized and you’re to-before the world, you are to be known as a Christian.” He said, “Preacher, I will believe on the Lord in my heart, and I will give him my life, and I will be a disciple of Christ. But, I will not go down that aisle, and I will not sit down there at the front, and I will not be baptized.” And I said to him, “Then, sir, you cannot be saved.” Now, what a funny kind of theology is that? Do you mean that a man is saved in coming down that aisle and in standing up before the church and in publicly confessing his faith in the Lord Jesus? You mean that saves him? Well, it all depends on what you mean. Does that save him? Our sins are washed away by the blood of the Cross. Our spirits are regenerated. We are made new and quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit. But, a man who has been forgiven in the blood of Christ, and a man who has been regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit in his heart, is a man who will come down that aisle and will stand by my side and will make a public confession of his faith in the Lord Jesus. And if he doesn’t do it, he hasn’t been forgiven, and he hasn’t been touched by the quickening power of the Spirit of God. A man who’s saved, the man who has become a Christian in his heart, the first thing he would want to do is to come down that aisle and to say: “Here I am, Preacher. Tonight I have given my heart to Christ. And I’m a disciple of the Lord Jesus.” The first thing a man would want to do who has had that experience in his soul is this: “Pastor, where is water. I want to be baptized. ‘See, here is water, what doth hinder me to be baptized?’ I want to be a member of the church and the fellowship and the communion of the Savior.” That thing is a concomitant when God has quickened a man and touched a man and he saves him. The first thing the man wants to do is to publicly avow it-go down before the church to say, “I’m a candidate for baptism. I want to be a member of the church.” Now, this sermon tonight is the logic of that. There’s a reason in it. And it is a rational reason. It comes from God and it is very, very patent and obvious. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus… for with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” All right, the first avowal is this: It is the confession of faith that is faith itself. That’s what it is. The confession of a man’s faith is the faith itself. And if the man doesn’t confess it, he doesn’t have it. What is faith? Well, it is something that a man has. Well, why does he have it? He’s got it in his pocket? No, sir. You can go through all of your pockets, and you haven’t got any faith in your pocket. Well, it is in the man. No, it is not in the man like that. Faith isn’t in a man like that. But, you say that man has got faith. His brains are in him. He has pituitary glands him in. A cerebellum is in him. His molars and bicuspids and incisors are in him. Sometimes his tonsils are still in him. His clavicles are in him. His lungs, his heart, and his pancreas are in him. His gizzard is in him. His femurs are in him. His fibia and timor are in him. His tarsal and his metatarsal are. And Dr. John Bagwell, his senbronsosis and his tensarpharslapus is in him. That’s in him. But, you can dissect a man-You can dissect a man from the top of his head to the bottom of his foot, and you will not find anything that looks like faith. Why? Because faith is something that a man does. Faith is the expression of something on the inside of a man’s spirit and his heart. Faith and love and hope: they’re all the same thing. Love is like faith: the expression of the thing is the thing itself. And if you don’t express it, you haven’t got it. I heard of a fellow that hadn’t kissed his wife in 20 years and he shot another man for doing it. He didn’t love his wife. It is the expression of the thing that is the thing itself. Every once in a while, a mother will come along to me and she’ll say, “Pastor, what in the world, what in the world, what in the world-this boy is the despair of my life. He won’t wash his ears. He won’t clean up. He won’t wash his neck. He won’t shine his shoes. He won’t wear a tie. He is a ragamuffin. He is the despair of my life.” I tell that mother, “Forget it. Don’t worry about it. Don’t let it come to mind. Just give that little boy a little time. And by and by, there’ll come traipsing along a little old floozy embellished thing with golden hair, blue eyes, and a gorgeous waist. And that boy of yours, man a-living, he will put axle grease on his hair. He’ll shine his shoes. He’ll tie his tie to his waist.” There is something inside that is it. He acts that way. And that’s the way it is: the acting of the thing is the thing itself. So it is with faith. Over here in Heb 11:1-40, you have a great faith chapter. And it says in that faith chapter-it says: “By faith, Noah being warned of things not seen as yet… prepared an ark, ‘ because he did it by faith, “to the saving of himself and his household.” It says he did it by faith. How did he do it by faith? Because God’s Book says he made an ark. He made an ark. And had he not made that ark, he would have drowned with the rest of them. But, he had faith to believe what God said 120 years ago: “I will destroy this world by water.” He believed God and built an ark by faith. He had faith. It caused him to build the ark. In the same eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, it says: “By faith Abraham, when he was called of God to go to a country that he would after receive for an inheritance,” by faith, “he went out, not knowing whither he went.” It says he did it by faith. How do you know he did it by faith? Because when God said: “Go out,” Abraham went out. He got up and left. That’s faith. That’s faith. It says, in that same Heb 11:1-40 : By faith Moses… refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; Choosing rather to suffer the afflictions of the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; It says he did it by faith. How do you know he did it by faith? Because he renounced the throne of Egypt. He refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. And he went out to suffer affliction with the people of God. That’s faith. That’s faith. Faith is something that people do. It is something that a man does. Faith gets out of his chair and out of his seat and out of the pew, gets in the aisle and walks down here by the side of this pastor, taking the preacher by the hand and says: “Preacher, here I am tonight. By God’s grace, I’ve given my heart and life to Christ. And may all of the creation know and see that I am unashamed of it. Here I am.” That’s faith. That’s faith. Faith: the expression of faith is the thing itself-that’s what it is. That’s what it is. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus… thou shalt be saved.” That second avowal-second avowal. It is the public committal of your life to God that is salvation itself. That’s what it is to be saved. The public committal of your life to God is salvation itself. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. But what do you mean? I mean, God has never-through all of the centuries and all of his generations, God has never changed the plan of salvation. It has always been the same. The Word of God comes to a man’s heart. The message of Christ arrives, and a man listens to it. And then, a man does it or he doesn’t do it. If he will obey the voice of God and respond, if he has faith enough to obey what God says, God saves him. If a man refuses, if he resists, then he’s lost and he’s damned and God isn’t going to ever change that. The way of salvation through all of the ages has always been the same. A man must publicly, openly, unashamedly, unreservedly commit his life to God. And that committal-public committal is salvation itself. That’s what it is. And it has never been changed. It is the same all the way through. If I had an hour tonight, we would just go through some of it. For at least a few minutes, let’s take one or two. Way back yonder, 1,500 years before the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, the Lord God said to all of the inhabitants of darkened Egypt: “Tonight, tonight, my angel shall pass over. My angel shall pass over tonight. And the firstborn in every house, and the firstborn of the beast of the field, and the firstborn of everything that liveth-the firstborn shall die tonight. Tonight, all of the wrath and the judgment of the Almighty God-tonight, the angel shall pass over.” “But,” said the Lord God, “there’s a way of escape. There’s a way to escape. If any man will take blood of a lamb and sprinkle it on the lintels and the doorposts of his house-if he will take blood of the lamb and sprinkle it on the side and the door posts of his house-if a man will do that, the angel of death shall pass over and, instead of death, there will be life in that house.” So, God gave His way and God gave His plan to the people in the land of darkened Egypt. Now, a man could have said: “So, the Lord says we’re to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the lintels and the door posts of the house. No, sir. No, sir. I don’t mind the blood of the lamb, and I don’t mind sprinkling it, but I’m not going to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of my house. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to put it back here somewhere. I’ll sprinkle it back there where nobody can see. I’ll put it back in and hide it away.” The Lord God says: “Not so. The man that is to be saved tonight is the man who shall open the gateway”-his faith in His promise-The blood is to be sprinkled on the front of the house, on the lintels and on the doorposts, where everybody can see. And everybody can know, this is the house of a man that believes in God. ‘Look, there is a sprinkling of the blood on the lintels and on the doorposts.’ The house is to be, openly and publicly, unashamedly, set apart. We are Christian people. We believe in God.” And there has never been any deviation from that great open plan of salvation. Who is on the Lord’s side? Let him come and stand by me. Or, again: “How long will you halt between two opinions? If Baal be God, serve Baal. If Jehovah be God, serve Jehovah. But choose you this day whom you will serve.” And here in the New Testament-Could I pause for a moment of exegesis on the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Mark. I don’t know who finished Mark. The end was lost. But, somebody picked up his pen, after Mark had written the Book, and he wrote this conclusion: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. And he that believeth not shall be damned.” It is the believing that makes the difference between a man’s salvation and his damnation. But, whoever wrote that, put that in there: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” What did he mean by that-that, in baptism, our sins are washed away? No, not at all. But, whoever wrote that-whoever ended the Gospel of Mark-the unended part of Mark-whoever wrote that, he lived in a day when men were beginning to accept the Lord Jesus in their hearts, but refused to come out openly in discipleship. And that man who wrote that was saying: “You can’t be a secret disciple of the Lord Jesus. You can’t be a follower of Christ and be ashamed of him. You can’t follow the Lord and be saved and deny him with your mouth. You have to come out openly, and above board, and be all out for God and all out for Christ.” And their way of that testing was in the baptismal waters. If a man refused to be baptized, he wasn’t all out a disciple of Christ. When he gave his heart to the Lord Jesus, if he said: “I’m willing to go all of the way. I am willing to be baptized, then he was a true disciple and he was saved.” That’s what he meant by that. And that’s what God means today: no man can ever be saved and be ashamed of the Lord Jesus. No man can ever be saved and be a secret disciple of the Savior. He must be all-out for God. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus… thou shalt be saved.” And there is a reason in that, I say. There is a logic in it: I could not think of anything more hurtful to the heart and soul of our Savior than for a man to refuse-to refuse to own the name of the Lord who died for him. The Lord said in the eighth chapter, the concluding verse, in the Book of Mark, Mark 8:38 : Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation;l of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with all his holy angels. Ashamed of the Lord Jesus: that was Simon Peter warming himself by the fire, the Lord Jesus being tried in the court of the Annas and Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, that awful and terrible night. And a little maid came by and another one came by, and the little girl came by and talked to Simon Peter, and said: “You’re one of the disciples.” “I’m not.” And again: “You are one of his disciples.” “I’m not.” And a third time: “You are certainly one of his disciples. You talk like him.” And he cursed and swore and denied with an oath. And just as he was in the acts of denying the Lord Jesus, the Bible says, through the open door that opened out in the courtyard, the Lord turned and looked upon Simon Peter. Simon, ashamed of his Lord: “I don’t belong to him. I never was one of his disciples. I’m not a member of his church. I’m not a follower of the Lamb-not I.” And while he was denying, the Lord turned and looked upon Simon Peter. And then, the Bible says, thank God, Simon had the heart to do it. The Bible says Peter went out and wept bitterly-wept bitterly-to deny the Lord, to deny the Lord. In this last and concluding chapter in the life of the Apostle Paul, he pleads with a young fellow. They are now in a day of persecution, where a man to own Christ means, sometimes, the dudgeon and, sometimes, the sword and, sometimes, martyrdom. And he’s writes to Timothy-the last letter before he died: “O Timothy, be not thou therefore ashamed-be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner.” For I am not ashamed, “for I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he’s able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.” The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain; But when he was in Rome, he sought me out diligently, and found me. The Lord grant him that he might find mercy of the Lord in that day; And I tell you what happened was this: Onesiphorus came to Rome and he asked: “Where is Paul, the preacher of Christ?” And they said: “Hush, hush. Hush. Hush. Don’t mention that name, Onesiphorus, for it is death in Rome now, if they know you are a Christian.” And he lifted up his voice and said-and he said it where everybody could hear it: “Where is Paul, my friend, the preacher of the Lord Jesus Christ?” And he wasn’t ashamed of his chain, and apparently lost his life. The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus-that he may find peace in heaven in that day; for he oft refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chain. “Whosoever shall confess with his mouth the Lord Jesus… shall be saved.” An open and unashamed committal of your life to Christ is salvation itself. That’s what it is to be saved. I have a last avowal: it is the courage of an open avowal-it is the courage of an open commitment that is discipleship itself. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. And when they came to Daniel, they said: “Daniel, it is signed by the king. It is the law of the Medes and Persians, if any man shall call upon the name of any God other than the king for thirty days, he’ll be cast into the den of lions.” And the Bible says: “As he was wont-as his custom was, Daniel opened his window toward Jerusalem and knelt down there three times every day and prayed to the Lord God in heaven.” And they came to Daniel and said, “Did you not know the decree of the king: if any man will call upon the name of any God for thirty days other than the king, he’ll be in the den of lions.” Unperturbed-because he was a disciple of God, unperturbed, he opened his windows and bowed down and prayed, as the Bible says: “as he was wont.” What it means-to be cast into the den of lions-What it means, to ignore the king? He belonged to the Lord God, the king of the universe. And went out and prayed, “as he was wont.” The courage of an open avowal is discipleship itself. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. They heated the furnace seven times hotter, and said to those three Hebrew children: “Except you bow down to worship the golden image, you’ll be cast into the furnace of fire.” Those young fellows, when all of the others bowed down in idol worship, following the popularity of the day, following the crowd-while all of the rest bowed down and worshiped before the golden image, those three boys, Meshach, Shadrach and Abed-nego, the Hebrew boys, they stood straight up, looking in the face of the Lord God. That’s what it is. The courage of an open avowal is discipleship itself. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. When I was in school, we had-in my senior year, we had L. R. Scarborough come down there. He had a revival meeting. And while it was a hard thing, the meeting just broke wide open. It just turned into a Pentecost down there, and all of us-And here’s what did it. Down the aisle-on Thursday night, down the aisle came our head cheerleader. And he asked Dr. Scarborough if he might not say a word. And the preacher graciously acquiesced. And our head cheerleader stood up there in front of all of those students in the university and he said, “When I was a little fellow-his mother and his daddy being dead brought up in his grandmother’s home-He said, when he was a little fellow, being brought up in the grandmother’s home-the only mother and the only father that he ever knew, that sainted grandmother; she was a faithful Christian and a member of the Baptist church.” He said, his grandmother grew ill and, before she died, called the little grandboy over to her, and told the little boy about his mother and his dad, who were in heaven, and told the little boy that she was going to heaven, and said, “Son, I want you to be a Christian and give your heart to God. And I want you to follow the Lord. And some of these days, I want to meet you in glory.” And that cheerleader said, “I have done everything but be a Christian. I have done everything but follow the last prayerful appeal of my grandmother. I’ve done everything except follow the Lord.” But, he said, “Tonight, tonight-I want you to know, tonight, I give my heart to the Lord Jesus Christ.” And he said, “My fellow students, I have led you in these rallies and I’ve led you to the football games. And I have led you into many other places.” “But tonight,“ said he, “I want to lead you to Jesus Christ.” And then, looking up, that boy said, “And Grandmother, I want you-I want you to prepare for me, because I’m coming home some of these days to see you and my blessed mother and father in heaven.” And he made an appeal like that-something like that. And when that boy got through-when that boy got through, it looked to me like all of heaven had come down. From one side of that vast Waco Hall to the other, the Spirit of God got hold of the hearts and souls of those young men and young women and I could not describe to you the scene: down there, from everywhere, side to side in the balcony, everywhere, those young men and young women, giving their lives to Christ, consecrating their days to him. It was, as I say, it was a bit of a Pentecost. Those things come through the courage of an open discipleship: Unashamed, unashamed, unreserved-oh, where everybody could see and everybody could know: “Here I stand. Here I am, so help me, God. In my heart, I do trust and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And before the world and the angels of heaven, I do confess him as my Lord and Savior.” And that’s what it is to be a Christian: If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shall believe in thine heart that he lived, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart one believeth unto salvation; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. That’s what it is. That’s what it is to be a Christian. And that’s God’s appeal to you tonight. While we sing our song of invitation, in the circle of the balcony around and from side to side, somebody-you, into the aisle and down here to the front and by the side of this preacher: “Here, I am, Pastor, and here I come. Tonight, this tonight, openly, unashamedly, I give my heart and soul to the Lord Jesus.” Or: “Here I come, Preacher, into the heart and life of this church. I want to put my membership. I’m coming by letter or by statement.” However God shall say the word, make it tonight, make it now. In that back row, anywhere-everywhere, a family of you or somebody-you, while we sing and while we make appeal, will you do it? Will you come? “This moment, Preacher, here I am.” All of this several thousand people here tonight, where everybody can see you-If the world were here to see you, it would be just the same. “I’m happy tonight and proud tonight to own the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior. Ashamed of His wounds, No. Ashamed of His Cross, No. Ashamed of His Name, No. Tonight, I give my heart and life to the Lord Jesus, and here I am, and here I come.” While we stand and sing, make it now. Make it now ======================================================================== CHAPTER 43: S. THE LORD STANDING BY ======================================================================== THE LORD STANDING BY 03-14-54b Acts 23:11 "And the night following, the Lord stood by him and said, `Be of good cheer, Paul.’" And the same text, "For there stood by me this night, the angel of God Whose I am, and Whom I serve saying, `Fear not, Paul.’" Fear not. THE LORD STANDING BY. And that’s been God’s shepherding care for His people through the centuries. And through the millennia and through the ages and through all time. In the hour of need, He is standing by. When Hagar with Ishmael her son was cast out and wandered throughout deserts of Beersheba, not bearing to look upon the starved, famishing, thirsting face of her dying son. She laid him down in the shade of a little desert bush and withdrawing herself, the Bible says, about a bow shot distance, she bowed her head and wept before the Lord. And while she cried, there came a voice out of heaven saying, "Hagar, Hagar, why weepest thou?" And she replied, "Because I cannot bear to look upon the face of my boy as he dies." And the Lord said, "Hagar, lift up thy face." And the mother lifted up her face and there was a fountain of water in the midst of the burning sand in the deserts of Beersheba. The Lord standing by. When Elijah fled from the face of Ahab, in the days of the terrible drought, he came to dwell by the brook Sharon [sic, Cherith]. But there was nothing to eat. There was a famine in the land. And the Lord sent His ravens and said, "Elijah," the Lord standing by. When the three Hebrew children were cast into the fiery furnace, when the king Nebuchadnezzar, looked through the burning door and saw those three bound Hebrew believers in cast, cast into the fire. He cried saying, "Were there not three? But I see four. And the face and the countenance of the fourth is like unto the Son of God." The Lord standing by. When Stephen was stoned to death. As they beat His broken body into the dust of the ground, he lifted up His face. And the only time in God’s Word where it said Jesus stood in glory, in heaven the Book says. Stephen saw the Lord Jesus, "standing at the right hand of the throne of God." The Lord standing by. And in this passage, in the life of the Apostle Paul, beat and imprisoned. Written [sic, Smitten] on the mouth, blasphemed and disowned and dishonored, cast and tossed around, as a thing of no consequence, as an enemy of his people and a traitor to his nation. In the nighttime, the Book says, "The Lord stood by." And a few years later after languishing in the prison at Caesarea, placed on a ship to be sent to Rome to be tried for his life. Fourteen days and nights, a terrible storm, without sun or stars or light. And when all hope had vanished that they might be saved, the Book said there stood again by the apostle the Lord saying, "Paul, be of good cheer, be of good cheer." You see Paul had stood by the Lord, and now in his hour of need, the Lord is standing by Paul. Paul stood by the Lord when he became a Christian in Damascus. When he sought to preach the Gospel of Christ to His people in Damascus. They made a conspiracy to destroy his life and to take his life from his earth. They let him down by the night by a basket and so he escaped, but standing by the Lord. On his first missionary journey, they stoned him at Lystra and dragged him out for dead. But Paul was still standing by the Lord. On his second missionary journey, they beat him in silence until the blood ran down. Put him in stocks and chains. Thrust him into an inner dungeon, but he was still standing by the Lord. On his last missionary journey, coming to Jerusalem here for the last time, they seized him and would have beat him to death had he not been rescued by the colonel of the garrison there of the Roman legions in the city of Jerusalem. But he was still standing by the Lord. And in the last letter that he ever wrote to his son Timothy he says, "At my first answer no man stood by me. I pray, God, it may not be laid to their charge. "Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me. And He strengthened me... "And the Lord shall deliver me from every evil work [and] will preserve me unto His heavenly kingdom to whom be glory forever and ever." And having written this, he put his head on the block and became an apostolic martyr to the faith of Jesus Christ. The Lord stood by him. And as the Lord received the martyred spirit of Stephen, the Lord received the glorious soul and spirit of the Apostle Paul. You see, God never lets us down. When we stand by Him, He stands by us. The old Psalmist said, "I am old. Once was I young. But in these years, I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." And in Heb 13:5, "For He hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." You stand by the Lord, and the Lord will stand by you. Young man, you stand by the Lord. Young woman, you stand by the Lord. And the Lord will stand by you. One of the mothers said to me, "Ah, that you say a word to my daughter." The daughter came to me. This was her problem. She was at that age where she was blooming and blossoming into womanhood, conscious of the boys. Wanting to be popular. She came to me and asked, "What do you think? My mother opposes it. What do you think? I want to dance. What shall I do?" This was my reply to this young woman here tonight. This was my reply. "All you have to decide in your heart is the kind of people you want to be with and the kind of a boy you want to fall in love with. And the kind of a home that you want to have. "There are a lot of boys that meet their wives on the dance floor. I know that. I know that. There are a lost [sic] homes that are made from the dance floor. I know that. "But girl, there are some boys that are not looking for a wife on a dance floor. And I know a lot of boys like that. Lots of boys. You will find them in the university by the hundreds and the hundreds. "You will find them in this church by the scores and the scores. There is not every boy that is looking for a wife and a sweetheart on a dance floor. “There are a lot of boys that are look for a girl who’s given her life to the Lord Jesus. "Who loves the church and the work of the church and is turned aside from questionable social amusements. And you will find a boy like that if you trust God. Put your life in His hands. Walk in His faith. You stand by the Lord and see if the Lord will stand by you." Saul said to Abner the captain of the hosts, "Who is this stripling or ruddy-faced, unshaven boy in his chains [sic] coming out there to champion God against the hosts of the Philistines?" Abner said, "I don’t know. I never saw him before." So they brought the stripling before Saul. And Saul said, "Who are you? And where is your father?" And the boy said, "My name is David. And I am a shepherd. I’m the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem." And Saul said, "You a stripling, a boy, you dare to go out to meet this giant and man of war from Philistia? You? You?" And the boy replied, "I was keeping my father’s sheep, and there came a bear to destroy the flock. And God delivered the bear into my hands. And there came a lion to destroy the flock. "And the Lord delivered the lion into my hands. And the same Lord God that delivered into my hands the lion and the bear, the same Lord God will deliver into my hands Goliath." Tall man of war whose spear was like weaver’s. Whose sword was taller than a man’s head. Whose shield was a weight no man could bear. "God will deliver him into my hands." That boy ran across the little valley between the two armies. Stopped at Elah and picked up five round stones. Put them in his little leather satchel. Went up clear up on the other side. And when Goliath saw it, he was insulted. Insulted. "You? You? Why, said Goliath, I’ll feed your carcass to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. You." And the boy replied, "You come to me with a sword and with a spear, but I come to you in the name of the Lord God of hosts." And the Lord stood by the boy. He doesn’t let him down. He won’t let you down. You trust Him. You believe in Him. He will see you through. See if He doesn’t. Young man, stand by the Lord. Girl, stand by the Lord. And the Lord will stand by you. In manhood and in womanhood, you stand by the Lord and the Lord will stand by you. All of the trials and fortunes that happen to other people sometimes come to us. The day, the night, somewhere, sometime, all of the ill you see around you, the heartbreak, you shall experience them. We all do. You stand by the Lord and the Lord will stand by you. In the little church where I grew up, we had testimony meetings often. Almost every Wednesday night. I used to share in them as a little fella. Stand up and quote a passage of Scripture or say something in my heart of gratitude for the Lord Jesus. Testimony meetings. One night in the little town where I lived, a burglar tried to rob one of the stores on the little main street. The town marshal who lived right across the street from us, the town marshal tried to prevent the robbery and the robber shot him. And the next morning when our little town awoke, they went down there to open up the store and they saw the town marshal in his own blood, cold and dead. On a post there, holding up the porch of one of the stores, there was a stream of blood all the way down that post, where when he was shot by the burglar, leaning against the post and falling to the ground, the blood coming out of his heart stained that post all the way down to the sidewalk. It was a tragic thing for us and for our neighbors right across the street. She was a blessed Christian woman and they belonged to our church. She had several little children. And in just a little while, she was to be a mother again. At the testimony meeting in our little church on Wednesday night, I was seated right close to her on the same bench with her. She got up to testify. And I remember for the years since what she said. She stood up and she told us there in our Wednesday prayer meeting, she said, "This great sorrow that has come upon us. I haven’t been prepared for us. I have nothing in the world. Nothing. Nothing. But Lord is helping me. And the Lord will see me through." Do you see He did? You know that He did. "I have been young and now I am old, yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread." The Lord standing by. And in old age, and it comes. And in senility, and it comes. The end of the way, and it comes. He’ll be standing by when nobody wants me and nobody cares for me. In age and in death, when even my own family and this blessed church will say, "Let us put your dead out of our sight." As such as Abraham loved Sarah, he went to the sons of the Hittites, and said, "Let me buy from you the cave of Machpelah that I might put my dead out of my sight, out of my sight." Out of my sight. Who shall care for me then? Who? It shall be the Lord standing by. The Lord standing by. I went to see an old man that belonged to our church. And finally, his eyes had gone blind and in his age, blind there and invalid and blind, I shook his hand and knelt down by his side and I prayed for him that the healing presence of Jesus might be with him. And he shook my hand and said, "Wait a minute, Pastor. Oh, no, Pastor, don’t pray that. Don’t pray that," he said. "Don’t." He said, "My eyes are gone and I can’t see. And my health and strength are gone and I can’t walk. And my family are gone and I’m by myself. And my friends are all on the other side. "Pastor, don’t pray that. Pray that the Lord Jesus will take me soon. I want to go. I am ready to go. Pray that God will liberate me that I might go, too." I did. "Lord, " I prayed, "this blessed brother in Christ, this man who trusts and loves Thee, he’s blind and can’t see. "He’s weak and he can’t walk. He’s old and his life is spent. He is forlorned and homeless. His friends and family are all gone. O God, take him to Thyself. Liberate him and let him go." And the Lord answered prayer. It wasn’t long until he slipped away. And I buried him in the faith and in the patience of Jesus. When the storms of life are raging Stand by me. When the world is tossing me Like a ship upon the sea, O Thou Who rulest wind and water, Stand by me. In the midst of tribulation Stand by me. When the hosts of hell assail And my strength begins to fail, Thou Who never lost a battle, Stand by me. In the midst of faults and failures Stand by me. When I’ve done the best I can And my friends misunderstand, Thou Who knowest all about me Stand by me. When I am growing old and feeble Stand by me. When my life becomes a burden And I’m nearing chilly -- Bob Miller is a city boy. Raised in the city. He never heard those old-timers sing way out in the country. Way up in the hills. I never heard one of them say, "Jordan” in my life. You know how that is pronounced. If you have ever been with those old-time people. When my life becomes a burden And I’m near chilly Jerd’n, O Thou Lily of the Valley Stand by me. "For there stood by me this night, the Lord." The Lord. Ah, we offer Him to you. Your Savior. The fellowship of this people, the glorious comradeship of this church, we offer Him to you. Would you stand by Him? Would you? While we sing our hymn of appeal, anywhere, somebody you. Somebody you. "I’ll take Him tonight as my Savior. I’ll follow Him. I’ll stand by Him." "I’ll put my life in the fellowship of this church." Would you do it tonight? Would you? Is there a family of you? Is there one somebody of you? Is there a youth or a child? As God shall say the word, shall make the appeal, would you come and stand by Him and with us? Would you? While all of us sing this hymn together. While we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 44: S. THE LOST BEATITUDE ======================================================================== THE LOST BEATITUDE Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 20:35 02-28-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, and this is the pastor bringing the morning message entitled THE LOST BEATITUDE. In our preaching through the word, we are in Acts 20:1-38. And this is the last message in that chapter, and it is taken from the closing words of the apostle Paul to the Ephesian elders before he kneeled down and prayed with them all. The reading of the Word is in Acts 20:1-38. And I shall begin at the thirty-second verse- Acts 20:32 : And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all of them which are sanctified. I have coveted no man’s silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, you yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have showed you all things, how that so laboring, you ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul’s neck, and kissed him, Sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more. And they accompanied him unto the ship [Acts 20:32-38], And then he went on his way to Jerusalem, to Caesarea, to Rome and to death. So the text, “and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” [Acts 20:35. And I have called it THE LOST BEATITUDE because, had it not been for this word of Paul, we would never have known that the Lord Jesus said that. You will not find it in any of the four gospels. It was a thing that our Lord said that was much spoken of and repeated among the first Christians. Do you remember the apostle John closed the Fourth Gospel-the Gospel of John with this word? That, “there were also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they all were written, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books, which should be written” [John 21:25]. What we have of the Lord Jesus is just a very small part, very infinitesimal part of what the Lord actually said and did. And among those things that were not recorded by the four evangelists is this beautiful beatitude: “it is more blessed to give than to receive” [Acts 20:35]. The Lord Jesus knew the human heart, and He knew our spirit, and He knew our response, and He knew how we feel about things, and He knew that it was a blessed thing to receive-and it is. Some body gives you a gift like the choir gave me that beautiful, beautiful watch, which I treasure and prize so highly. And so many other things people give me and they make me happy. Any body who is recipient of a gift is made happy. It is blessed to receive-to say words of appreciation and encouragement; to have people say fine things to you and about you makes you happy. It is blessed to receive. But the Lord knew the deeper spirit. And he draws from the fountains of our soul and he says, As happy as it is and as beatific, as it is and as wonderfully blessed as it is to be a recipient, to receive, it is more blessed and it is happier to give. It is more blessed to give than to receive. And you yourselves could testify to that. Do you love any body? A boy-a sweetheart; to give her a gift is a wonderful thing; and she receives it with gladness and joy. But she does not receive half the gladness, or know half the joy of the boy as he prepares it and happenings about it and plans it and buys it and finally bestows it. He has the happier heart and the more blessed spirit. I was amused one time in talking to Brother Dolph Johnson, the late and lamented deacon and clerk of our church who was with us here for forty-two years, I had made a trip around the world. And in coming back had spoken on a Wednesday night and once or twice here in the pulpit about some of the things that happened along that world journey. And one day, as I was standing by, he said to me, “Pastor, do you know what impressed me most about your trip around the world?” I said, “I have no idea Brother Dolph, what was it?” He said, “What impressed me most was this. When you told us that you gave your clothes away to the missionaries all the way around the world.” He said, “That impressed me the most.” Well, I got to thinking about that. I had got some shoes that are walking over there in Korea, right now, unless he has worn them out. I have got some suits in the Philippines. And I have got some clothes in Africa and in India and in Jerusalem and in Japan, in Indonesia. I have got some clothes, unless they have worn them out, all around this world. Then I got to thinking about that thing. The missionaries were kind to give me some little tokens of interest and love and remembrance as I made that journey. But I received far more joy of giving away my clothes than anything the missionaries gave to me. I remember that. And I had not thought about that until Brother Dolph mentioned it to me. It is a fine thing to receive, but it is a lot happier thing to give. I had to take a lot of clothes because in July and August we were in the tropical section of the country. And then we wound up preaching, in that preaching mission, in November in Japan. And it is cold in Japan in November. So as I went along the way, I just gave my clothes away. And after all I found, you do not need nearly as much as you think you do. Over there in Africa, there was a little colored boy-one of those African natives who came to one of our mission Sunday schools, and he did not have any clothes on. So he just never had any clothes on. They just do not wear clothes over there until they are about eleven or twelve years old-and then after that, they do not wear very much. Well, this boy came to Sunday school without any clothes on. And so, the Sunday school teacher said to the little fellow-the Sunday school teacher said, “Son, you go home and tell your momma to put some clothes on you. You cannot come to Sunday school without any clothes on.” So the little boy went home and told his momma that he could not come to Sunday school unless he had some clothes on. So the little fellow returned pretty soon and he was so proud. He was so proud with the clothes that he was wearing. Do you know what he had on? He had on a pair of suspenders-“remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Whom do you think was the more blessed? The men who received from the hands of the disciples the meat and the bread or that boy-a teenage boy who stood by the side of the Master, to whom he had given all that he had of the loaves and the fishes. And he saw the Master break it and multiply it and feed the five thousand. Whom do you think was the more blessed? The rich young ruler who turned away with all of his great possessions or Zacchaeus who said to the Master, Lord, at thy feet I dedicate every thing that I have and all that I am. Whom do you think had the fuller life? The rich and the well-to-do who pass by the temple treasury and out of their superabundance dropped in some gold coins, or the poor widow whom Jesus noticed, who placed into the treasury all that she had, even all of her living? Whom do you think has the fuller life? Lucifer, son of the morning, the created archangel of light who, in the beauty of his person and in the glory of his excellence became proud and possessive and arrogant and lifted up himself in confirmation, or the Lamb of God who emptied Himself and poured Himself out; who, as Paul said once again remember “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, yet for your sakes became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich” [2Co 8:9]. It is more blessed to give than to receive. So when we come down here to this church, and we join this church, and we are members of this church, one way we can come is like this, I expect to be ministered unto. I want the people to shake my hand. And I want them to seek me out. And I want them to smile upon me. And I want them to pamper and pet and praise me. And if they do not do it, I will be mad; yes I will. And I will draw away from there and I will say, they are unfriendly and uncharitable people and they made me unwelcome, because when I go down there and join that church, I want them to minister unto me. I go to receive. Or, somebody who comes down to the First Baptist Church in Dallas and this is the way they come. Here, give me your hand. I want to shake it. Here, look at me. I want to smile at you. Here, turn around, I want to speak to you. Here, Pastor, is there any thing you have for me to do? I want to help. I want to work. I want to make other people welcome. I want to make other people glad they have come down to the church. Ah, if all of us were like that, wouldn’t we have the most radiant sunshine shining around here that you ever saw in your life? Nobody has got a chip on his shoulder. Nobody has got his feelings stuck out where they can be brushed; nobody is sensitive; nobody mad; nobody angry; nobody sore; nobody finding fault. But everybody doing what they can to make every body else happy and glad-shake their hand; smile at them; say a good word; talk about things that are marvelous and good and glorious and fine. This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice in it and be glad. Wouldn’t that be like heaven on earth? Well, we would all start sprouting wings around here and just fly to heaven itself. We just would; we just would. Well, why not? It is just as easy to stand and shake some body else’s hand as to stand and wait for them to shake your hand. Well, I know what they say to me. Now, you must not speak to a woman until she first speaks to you. Ah, sure, speak to her any way; speak to her any way; let Emily Post go by the board. Down here at the church, speak. Speak. Hello. How do you do? And if she does not speak, well, that is all right. She will be thinking about it, and next time she will. You just cannot tell what might happen around here. You be nice, and you be kind, and you be gracious, and you smile, and don’t you come down here to this church for all of the other people to pat you on the back. You come down here to the church to pat other people on the back. Tell the song leader how good he did-whether he did good or not. That is not the point; tell him he did good; he did just fine, and he will do better next time. And every body around here. If we are not doing the things like it ought to be done; well, encourage us and we will do it better the next time. Oh, “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Now, I want to talk to you for a moment about us down here in the church. It is more blessed to give than to receive-and it is; and it is. And dear fellow member, and all who love and pray for this ministry, we need you. We need you. God needs you. And you will be happy in it, if you respond. We need you to help us in this tremendous program by which under God, we are seeking to further the kingdom of Christ in this earth. We need you to help us in our stewardship programs, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” as great a joy as you might have in coming down to our church and being blessed by its facilities and by its ministries and by its services, you will be far greater blessed if you will have a part in it; take a part of you and coin it. After all, that is all that money is. It is you. You take your time and your life and you trade it a day, a month, a year and you trade it for recompense; and take that recompense, all that you can and bring it down here and give it to God. And we need your help in this tremendous work of our church, Sunday by Sunday, in the giving program, fifty-one percent of what we bring down here in this giving program, we send away outside of this church for the ministry of Christ in the earth. Some of it goes all the way around the world. They are sleeping now while the sun is shining on us. And when we sleep tonight, the sun will be shining on them. And a part of what we bring is for the worldwide preaching of the gospel of Jesus. That we have it in our own city, these missions that we try to support, and how God has blessed them. And our hospitals and our orphan’s homes and the aged minister in how many glorious ways does God sanctify that fifty-one percent that is sent out of this church to the ministry of others. And then forty-nine percent of it is kept here for the work of the church that it might go on; building a great lighthouse for Jesus downtown. And we need your support and your help, God must have it. Besides that, about three thousand dollars every Sunday, we must bring down here to the church in order to pay for this building program. And we need your help. Pretty soon, beginning next Sunday, we shall prepare for that spring appeal by which our people shall underwrite for another year our indebtedness on this building program. For the next few years, Sunday by Sunday, let us bring here to this house of God an offering for your building program. “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.” To look upon it and say; I have a part in it; that is a part of me. Sunday by Sunday, to dedicate it is a blessing and strength to your heart-more than you could ever receive by sharing in the thing itself. How shall I do that? It is more blessed to give than to receive. I do not think the Lord would give us a great task without a way and a plan to do it. I do not think he would. I cannot conceive of God doing that. And through the years and through the centuries, all the churches of God have worried about and wrestled with this thing of under girding its financial program. They have sold indulgences how despicable and unnameable; and then the churches have had bazaars, and they have had pie suppers and box suppers. When I was a boy, I used to go to pie suppers and box suppers in the church, and they had to sell clothing and make quilts and sell it in order to carry on the work of the church. Even as a boy, I looked on it with askance. I think God who gave us this task to do and this ministry to keep. I think the Lord also gave us a marvelous way to do it. You listen to it. Upon the first day of the week, 1Co 16:2 : “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no collection when I come.” On the first day of the week, every one of us, every one of us, every member of the family-for they all share in the breadwinner’s way, in the father’s way. Every one of us on the first day of the week lay aside for God as God hath prospered us a proportion belongs to him. In the days of the long ago, so far back, no body knows when, God and Abraham and Isaac and all of those people, God and Moses and God through the prophets Malachi, they all said, “a tenth belongs to the Lord.” Proportionately, systematically-on the first day of the week as God has placed in our hands, take a tenth of it and dedicate it for the cause of the Lord. Bring it down here to God’s house and you will find the truth of the beatitude of the Savior, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” You will feel different. You will be happy in your heart. You will be prospered in your life. Mal 3:10 : “Bring ye all of the tithes in the storehouse, . . . and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out such a blessing as you are not able to receive it.” It is more blessed to give than to receive-a tithe; a minimum on the first day of the week, as God has prospered us. And yet shall it be unto you a more excellent way. It is more blessed to give than to receive. In 2Co 8:1-24 letter, Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, described the churches of Macedonia-how they gave. And in 2Co 8:1-24 he says this, “and this is the way they did it., not as we thought they would do it, but first they gave their own selves unto the Lord, and then they did it unto us by the will of God” [2Co 8:5]. But first they gave their own selves to the Lord. God needs you, and our church needs you, and this work and its ministry needs you. It needs you. And somehow things will turn, just to happen so. In my first pastorate out of the seminary, I was seeking to build up the child, to get those people back into the church. And I went visiting on an afternoon. And I stopped at a doctor’s office. The doctor, the physician belonged to the church, but he did not come any more. So I stopped in his office and visited with him and asked him to come back to the church. And after my little brief stay there, why, he pulled out his desk drawer and took a checkbook, and wrote a check and gave it to me-pushed it across the table to me. And I took it and looked at it. And I read there. it was a generous offering to our First Baptist Church. I put it back on the table and pushed it back to him, and I said, “I do not want it. I do not want it. You take it. You take it. I haven’t come for what you have, I have come for you. And if you want to give anything to us in that church and in the kingdom of God, you bring it down there to the church and you put it in the collection plate. You do it. I do not want it. I do not want your money, I want you. I want you.” I went next to the most successful insurance man. He had quit coming too. And after I visited with him, he did the same thing. He pulled out his desk drawer and opened his checkbook and wrote out a check and pushed it across the table to me. And I looked at it and I put it back on the table and shoved it back to him. And I said, “I will not take it. I do not want it. I do not want it. If you want to give anything to God, you come down to the church and you put it in the church. I do not want what you have, I want you.” I went to the man who was our State Senator who lived in that town. And I visited in his office. He had quit coming to church. And after I had talked to him, he did the same identical thing-pulled out that desk drawer and wrote a check and pushed it across the table to me. And I gave it back to him, like I had the other two with. I do not want it. I am not interested in it. God has the cattle on a thousand hills and the gold and the silver is all his. He does not even need what we have, but He needs you. If you want to give anything to God, you come, you come. Y’all come. Y’all come, and bring it to God and put it in the collection plate. You do it. We want you, not what you have. “They first gave their own selves to the Lord.” Ah, the time goes by. Dear people, you are going to see in just a minute one of the sweetest things you ever saw in your life, and I want to tell you about it before we stand and sing. As you know, I love your Good Shepherd’s Department. I had that in my heart ever since I came to this city. When we got our new building over there, it gave me the opportunity to organize it. Well, this week the boy who superintends the department, Pat Fitzpatrick and one of his teachers, Mrs. Jagog brought up to me in my study over there in the new building-they brought the sweetest couple; both of them blind, both of them blind. And they had in their arms, a new little baby girl-both of them blind, and the little baby girl is the sweetest little doll you ever saw. So after we visited a little while, why Mrs. Jagog and Pat went out so I could visit; and [they] took the baby with them so I could visit with the blind couple. She is coming by baptism, by confession of faith in baptism; and he is coming by letter. And so, as I sat down and talked to them, well this is what they told me. They said, “Oh Pastor, you cannot know, you cannot know the joy of these babies.” He said, “I work in the dark room at Baylor Hospital.” And being blind, isn’t that an ideal thing for him to do. He works in the dark room out at Baylor Hospital. And he said, “I so wanted to come down here to the First Baptist Church; so wanted to come but,” he said, “our street car lets us off. We have to get off at an intersection that is very dangerous downtown, and both of us being blind,” he said, “I could not come. We could not come.” He said, “And you know, on a day some body knocked at our door”-that is my Good Shepherd Department-“somebody knocked at our door and said, Why we will come by to see you, and we will pick you up, and we will bring you to the church. You do not need to worry about a busy intersection.” So he said, “Mr. and Mrs. Jagog pick us up every Lord’s Day and bring us down here to Sunday school and to church.” And he said, “You know what Pastor? Last Sunday, they took us home to dinner. We ate dinner out there at the home of the Jagog’s.” And he said, “We never had such a good time in our lives. We never had such a good time in our lives as we ate dinner there in that home-the guests of those dear people.” Giving yourself; giving yourself. I know-I have got sense enough to know that our church will not be prospered if we have financial difficulty in it. I know that. There is not a man here but that would lose confidence in this ministry if we do not carry on this church in a good financial way. And our deacons do a grand job, and you can trust them. And our men do a grand job, and you can trust them. But beyond the gift that we bring on the Lord’s Day; beyond it is that appeal for you. Oh, may God bless the men and women who take time out of their lives and work with our intermediates; who take time out of their lives and work with our young people; who take time out of their lives and work with our little children; who take time out of their lives and invest it here in the ministry of Christ. You, you, putting yourself in it: “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Giving yourself, you-my heart and my love and my time and my life and my day is all; Lord-all, here I am giving it to you. Well, we have to quit. That is the appeal we make this morning; any where, all over this great auditorium-that crowded balcony to the back seat, any where around, any where around, you can find those stairwells leading down here to this floor, from side to side any where; some body you, give your heart to the Lord. Preacher, I give my heart to the Lord and my hand I give to you; or, coming into the fellowship of the church; Pastor, here is my whole family; one, some body, you-any body, some body, you. While we sing this song of appeal today, will you make it now? I will make it now, Pastor, and here I come, while we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 45: S. THE MEANING OF BAPTISM ======================================================================== THE MEANING OF BAPTISM Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 6:1-5 09-19-54 Turn to Rom 6:1-23. And the message tonight is from Rom 6:1-5. Sunday mornings, practically all of our people bring their Bibles to the house of God. I wonder, tonight, how many in the evening hour of you also bring your Bible with you to church. I’ve never asked. I’d like to see. If you have your Bible with you, wherever you are-upstairs or down-just hold it up, if you have your Bible. Oh, there’s a multitude of us. Good for you! You can use it to follow the message, as you turn to it in your Bibles. Turn to Rom 6:1-5 : What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound. God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should also walk in newness of life. For if we have planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be-someday, some glorious day-in the likeness of his resurrection. That’s the text for tonight. And the sermon is entitled “Baptism Has a Meaning”-The Meaning of Baptism. Now, to the meaning of the Scripture: In the passage that I read, Paul is not speaking directly of baptism. That is, in Rom 6:1-23 here, his purpose is not to present an exegesis and an exposition of the purpose and mode and meaning of baptism. He’s doing something else. He’s talking about something else. And he uses baptism as an illustration of that something. But, the way he uses that illustration is so important, so pointed, so appropriate, so apropos, that it is useable in the hands of any man of God to present just exactly what baptism is-what it ought to be, its meaning and its method. Now, what Paul is speaking of at the start of this Rom 6:1-23. Rom 6:1-23 is about the multiplication of sin in this age, and about how, where sin abounded, grace also abounds. The more sin, the more grace; the more sinfulness and wickedness, the more the forgiveness and mercy from God overcome it. Then, he says in the sixth chapter: “What shall we say then?” The more sin, the more grace-So, let us sin more that grace might abound more? The way this is set up, it sounds like: the more we sin, the more God can love us and the more God can forgive us, for God can make His grace abound all around us. He goes on to say: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” It’s preposterous. It’s unthinkable. It’s impossible that it should be so. There is a very important historical reason: we have died to sin. We can’t live that way any longer because we are dead to the world and we have died to sin. It is not possible for us to live that way any longer. And then, he uses the illustration of baptism. Baptism, says God, is a burial. It’s a burial. It is a submersion and it is a burial plot. It’s the burial of an old life and an old body, an old outlook, an old love, an old sin. It’s a burying. It’s a burial-a taking away, a getting out of sight. But, baptism is also a resurrection, a raising again. What is it? Baptism is a resurrection to a new life, a new phase, a new hope, a new goal, a new life, a new triumph, a new victory in Christ Jesus. So, he takes the illustration of baptism and says: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so also we should walk-gloriously, triumphantly-in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. From the days of the future, we shall return to the great past of Paul’s message here about the triumphant Christian life. But, tonight we are turning aside to talk about death-the death of the Christian to the world-the death to sin and all that it could never offer and resurrection to the glory of the new life we have in Jesus Christ. And baptism-the best illustration of that, I say, is baptism. Baptism, then, has a meaning and that meaning is found in its mode. It is found in its form. And it has changed-it has changed the significance of baptism. It is the pattern that the omnipotent God has made in heaven. The meaning of baptism, I repeat, is in its sign, in its mode, its pattern, which was made in heaven. In the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans-Hebrews, the author of Hebrews says, in the fifth verse: … Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle; for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount. Now, back in the Book of Exodus-in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Book of Exodus, God says to Moses, “I have talked to you 40 days and 40 nights about the tabernacle.” When it closes, God says to Moses, “Look, make all these things as I have showed thee, according to the pattern I showed thee in the mount.” Now, in Exo 39:1-43, after they have worked according to the revealed will of God, they brought the tabernacle-the tent-unto Moses, with the furniture, the boards, the bars, the pillars, the sockets, the covering of rams’ skins; the ark; the table, the showbread, the lamps, the oil, the golden altar, the brazen altar, the hangings, the cords, the pins, the vessels of service-Then, it closes: … According to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the children of Israel made all the work. And Moses did look on all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the Lord has commanded, even so had they done it… . The pattern was in heaven. The sign was in the mind of God. And the Lord spake to Moses, and for 40 days and nights, he said, “Moses, you shall do this and this and this-just so, just so, just so.” And Moses gave this commandment to the people. And the people were painfully lost. That’s why they desperately needed the pattern from heaven that God gave Moses. At that time, there was no sense of the meaning of the pattern for the children of Israel. What did the golden laver-the golden altar stand for? What did that stand for? What does the seven-pronged lampstand stand for? What is the mystery of the Day of Atonement? It is all according to God’s pattern-all of those things-received from God in heaven. It had all been given to Moses: the specifications of how the tabernacle was to be built and how all its ordinances were to be observed. God had a meaning. God had a pattern. And the meaning and the pattern is exactly according to what the Lord had shown Moses in the mountain. So it is with baptism. Baptism is a pattern. It is a sign. It is a picture. Like the tabernacle, there is a pattern in heaven. In Mat 21:1-46, Jesus asked the Israelites: The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven, he will say, why then did you not believe him? And in John 1:1-51, the Apostle John tells of John the Baptist baptizing in the Jordan River. And the priests and Levites from Jerusalem came out to him in the wilderness. And they asked him, “Are you the Christ?” And John said, “I am not.” And they asked, “Are you Elijah?” And he said, “I am not.” And they asked him, “Are you the prophet that is to come?” And he said, “I am not him.” And they asked him, “Why, then, do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, or Elijah, or the prophet?” This was the first time in the history of the world that one man had baptized another man: when John baptized in the Jordan River. There were many situations in which a man would bathe himself ritually. There were many conditions in which a man would immerse himself. That signified purification. But, that was always done by the person himself. When a man bathed, he bathed himself. When a man baptized, he baptized himself. This was the first time that the world ever saw one man immerse another man, when John the Baptist did it in the Jordan River. That is why the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem were amazed by this new ceremony. That is why they sent the priests and Levites to see what was happening and to ask, “Are you the Christ? Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet who is to come?” When John said, “I am not,” he went on to explain why he had initiated this new religious rite. And the answer of John was clear and plain: “I baptize with water; but there standeth one among you, whom ye knew not.” Speaking of Jesus, he said: This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me. And I knew him not; but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me. Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. Now, this baptism of John the Baptist was a pattern and it came from heaven. When John was baptizing in the wilderness of Judea, when he carried out that form, that sign, that ordinance, he did not know what it meant. He just was faithful in carrying out the pattern that God had set forth from heaven. And when, finally, we come to know the meaning of the form, the pattern, from heaven, it means three things. First, it is a picture of the victory of the resurrection; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we were buried with Him in the likeness of His death and then raised in the likeness of His resurrection. When, finally, we came to know what the form meant, what the ordinance meant that John the Baptist carried out, it is, first of all, a picture of the glorious death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. In baptism, we are buried in the likeness of His death and raised in the likeness of His resurrection. Second, it is a picture of the gospel message of Jesus Christ. There are two ordinances in the church. The first ordinance is baptism and the second is the breaking of bread of the Lord’s Supper. The breaking of bread signifies the broken body of Jesus Christ for us, and the cup represents the blood poured out for us. The initial ordinance has a tremendous meaning: we are buried with the Lord in the likeness of His death and we are raised with the Lord in the likeness of His resurrection. And Paul says that is a picture of the gospel. What does a missionary preach, when we send him out to China, or Africa or South America, to preach the gospel? What does he preach when a man preaches the gospel? In 1Co 15:1-58, Paul says: … Brethren, I make known unto you the gospel which I preached unto you… … How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. The gospel is this: preaching the Lord Jesus, coming to die for our sins, buried and raised for our justification. And the initial ordinance of baptism is a picture of the gospel message of the Lord Jesus Christ: We died and were buried, like Christ was buried, and we were resurrected, like Christ was resurrected. In baptism, we see beautifully paraphrased gospel message of the death and resurrection of Jesus. It has a second meaning, this ordinance of baptism: We have been raised, through resurrection, to a new spiritual life in Jesus Christ. No longer are we identified with the world. We are now separated and holy and called out to a completely new kind of life. When they make fun of you for not staring at the worldly amusements that they do, remember that you have been separated by Christ to live a new life. You have died to sin. You have died to the world. You have died to that life and all that if offers, in order to rise to walk in newness of life. My interests are different now. I don’t do the things I did before. Now, I say, “I’ll see you there on Sunday night.” I’m interested in going to church. I’m liberated from their music and ballrooms and drinking and gambling and all the so-called “happy things.” Those things don’t interest me any longer, because I have a new life in Jesus Christ. You love the church. You love the Sunday school. You love the training union. You are no longer of the world. You are raised to a new life-a new life in Jesus Christ. And then, it has another-a last meaning: “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.” Baptism is a hope. It’s a promise. It’s a commitment from God. And that commitment is this: if I tarry, and then my body dies-in the dust of the ground and the heart of the earth, I believe, someday, the trumpet shall sound and the Lord shall appear and the dead shall come to life and meet Him in the air. This is the last thing about being baptized in the Lord Jesus: we believe in the resurrection of the dead. We have been buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, in the hope that, someday, we shall rise in the likeness of His glorious resurrection. “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be-someday, some glorious day-also in the likeness of his resurrection.” So, when you receive the ordinance of baptism, you receive it as a promise. It is also a commitment of your life. Baptism is sign, a pattern, given from heaven. And when it was finally understood what the sign meant-what the pattern meant-it focused on three things: the victory of Christ over the grave; the gospel message-Jesus Christ died, was buried and rose again and the picture of our spiritual resurrection-of our dying, being buried and being raised with Christ; and finally, the great hope we have of our future resurrection. If we die and are buried, we shall be raised in the likeness of our Lord, triumphant and glorious. Baptism has a meaning. And that meaning is found in its form, in its mode, in its pattern. If you change the mode-if you change the pattern, you do violence to its meaning and its significance. If the heavenly pattern is broken, it leaves nothing at all. How blessed-how blessed it is to keep this ordinance, which goes back to John, and which was kept by the Lord Jesus, and which was left for our keeping, according to the heavenly pattern of the ordinance! Now, for just a moment, may I speak of that heavenly ordinance of baptism, just one or two things? One: Baptism is accorded that high honor. Only one place in Holy Scripture is the Trinity seen related to baptism: in the baptism of Jesus, the Son submitted, the Holy Spirit descended and the Father commended: “This is my Son in whom I am well pleased.” And the Spirit descended in the form of a dove and lighted upon Him. And the Son submitted to the ordinance of baptism. The first recorded words of our Savior are, “Suffer it to be so now, for I have come to fulfill all righteousness. And he suffered him.” Those are the first recorded words in the public ministry of Jesus. And the last recorded words of our Lord in the Gospels are: Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 46: S. THE PROBLEM OF ISRAEL'S UNBELIEF ======================================================================== THE PROBLEM OF ISRAEL’S UNBELIEF Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 11:1 11-28-54 In our preaching through the Word, we are in the great parenthesis- Rom 9:1-13, Rom 10:1-21, Rom 11:1-36. And today, in Rom 11:1-36, we are to turn to the strong meat of the Word. Now, you cannot go to sleep this morning and the message mean anything to your heart. But, if you will stay awake-if you will listen-you will find here in God’s Word a message, a revelation, an apocalypse, a hope, and a promise that would give assurance to your life, to your trembling heart, no matter what shall ever happen, what headline you will ever read, or with what trembling and trepidation you might face any exigency-and God bless you for it! I have divided the sermon in two parts. And I am just hoping that I can encompass the first part between now and twelve o’clock, this noon. The sermon this morning is: The Problem Of Israel’s Unbelief. And the sermon tonight is: “The Future Fullness And Restoration Of Israel,” the Jewish nation. The great parenthesis of Rom 9:1-33; Rom 10:1-21; Rom 11:1-36, deals with the problem of the Jews, the children of Abraham. And in the tenth chapter of the Book of Romans, he closed, quoting Isaiah. Isaiah is very bold, saying-talking about us Gentiles: “I was found of them that sought me not. I was made manifest unto them that asked not after me.” We were going after Venus, and Adonis, and Isis, and Osiris, and Poseidon. And we were going after Jupiter, and Jun, and Jove, and Thor. We weren’t looking after God, nor were we seeking to call upon His name. But, in the providence of God-in the goodness and merciful kindness of the Lord, God so turned it that the Gentiles-and that’s you, that’s us-that the Gentiles, that we, are now calling on the name of the true Lord. “But to Israel, he saith”-to His chosen people he saith-“All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.” And that’s the way the chapter concludes: Rom 10:1-21. So, he begins Rom 11:1-36 : “I say then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” And then, he continues there with a remnant, an election, in the days of Elijah, the 7,000 that God said that have not bowed the knee to Baal, when Elijah said: “There is nobody but just I. I’m alone. All of the others have apostatized.” The Lord God said: “Not so, Elijah. There is a remnant according to the election of grace. Seven thousand haven’t bowed the knee to Baal.” Then, he discusses that. Then, in Rom 12:1-21, and before and after, he’s talking about the falling away of Israel being the meaning of our salvation. But, that’s not the end of it. “If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more will their fullness?” If they have fallen, and they become the channel of our salvation, what would it be if they were to come back-if they were to return to God? “For if the casting”-in the fifteenth verse-“For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?” And then he follows there the parable of an olive tree. The branches were cut off. The original branches were cut down. Israel was cut down. And we, the wild olive branches that didn’t belong there, we were grafted in-we Gentiles, contrary to nature. “But,” said Paul, “some of these days, what if those original branches were to be grafted where they belong?” Rom 11:24 : … How much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted in to their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: And this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes; but as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. He never changes, for, as in times past, and on and on. Now, lets begin: In Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Rom 4:1-25, Rom 5:1-21, Rom 6:1-23, Rom 7:1-25, Rom 8:1-39, Paul has developed for us-under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul has developed for us the revelation of the gospel and the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. The Jew, he says, is not righteous before God. And the Gentile, Paul says, is not righteous before God. He says that all alike-our kind of righteousness is as filthy rags in the sight of God. And by the works of the law, whether a Gentile, whether a Jew, we never are able to rise to the full measure of the holiness and perfection of God. And Paul says that all of us are lost alike. The Jew is lost and the Gentile is lost. We all have “sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Then, Paul reveals the God kind of righteousness, which is the righteousness of faith. It is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is an imputed righteousness. Not that we are good, but that He is good. He has kept the law and, by faith in Him, God forgives our sins and he saves us. And all of us are like, are in that day and dispensation of grace. In this day, in this hour, in this age in which we live, Paul says, God deals with all of us alike-the Jew and the Gentile. All of us are sinners. All of us are lost. All of us, if we’re saved, are going to be saved alike: through the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Now, that’s what Paul says from Rom 1:1-32, Rom 2:1-29, Rom 3:1-31, Rom 4:1-25, Rom 5:1-21, Rom 6:1-23, Rom 7:1-25, Rom 8:1-39. But, the Jew has a question to ask. In the Book of Romans, there are questions asked all throughout the book. The Jew has a question to ask. The question the Jew asks is this: “If God deals with the Gentiles according to a covenant of grace, then what about us, the children of Abraham? What about the promises to the fathers? And what about the covenant that God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And what about the covenant that God made with David? And what about the promises of the prophecies? “Has God cast away the Jewish people? Does he not deal with us anymore as a nation, as a race, and as a people? What about the promises to the nation? And what about the covenants?” Has God cast away the Jewish nation? Does the Jewish nation, and does the Jewish people, have no longer any future? Because God is dealing with us, in this dispensation and in this age under grace, through the faith in Christ Jesus, is, therefore, He through with the Jew and with the Jewish nation? And that is the exact question that Paul raises as he begins Rom 11:1 : “I say then, hath God cast away his people?” Is God done with the Jew? Is God through with the children of Abraham? Hath God cast away his people? Now the answer to that question from practically all Christendom is this: “Yes, God is done with the Jew. God is through with the children of Abraham. They are no more now in God’s sight than any other race, or any other nation, or any other people.” And they say further-practically everybody: “Has God cast away his people?” Is God done with the Jew and the Hebrew? They say that the new Israel is the church. And that all of the covenants and all of the promises that were made to Abraham and to his seed, and were made to David and to his son-that all of the prophecies and promises in the prophets of the Old Testament and all of those covenants and promises now pertain to the spiritual Israel: to the church. That’s what they say. I have three comments to make about it. Number one: If that is true, if God is done with Israel, if God is through with the Hebrew nation, and if the promises and the covenants that were made to Abraham and to David and to the Hebrew people, if they are now spiritualized and made pertaining and pertinent only to the church, I have this to say: that such a spiritualizing mode of interpretation brings to pass the exact thing that higher criticism claims for the Old Testament prophets. The higher criticism says that the Old Testament prophet is nothing more than a Hebrew patriot and dreamer, and that he was not able to rise above the natural provincialism of his day, and that his prophecies pertain just to those people there. Whereas, when you read the prophecies in the Old Testament, they pertain to Israel all through the generations, and all through the millennia. And those covenants were made forever and ever. And if, by a spiritualizing process, you can get rid of those covenants and those prophecies, then the higher critic is right. The prophet is no more than a patriot and a dreamer and his promises and his prophecies will never be fulfilled. They mostly fall to the ground. I have a second word to say. If God is done with Israel, and if the covenants and the promises are not to be fulfilled, then this thing that Paul says in Rom 11:29 is not true: “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” If the covenants and the promises of God to Israel fall to the ground, then the gifts and the calling of God are not without repentance. That is, they are not without shame. God will make a covenant with a people and, then, God will break it. One day, God will make a promise and, then, the next day-then, He doesn’t keep it. And if God will break the covenant that he made with Abraham and with David and with Israel, then how do I know that God will not break the covenant He makes with me when He says, if I trust the Lord Jesus Christ, He’ll save and keep me forever. If our God is a covenant-breaking God, and a promise-annulling God, then I have no assurance, and no promise, and no ultimate hope. And then, I have a third thing to say about that: If God casts away His people, if there is no future for the Hebrew race and the Hebrew nation-if that’s true, then what Paul says here is not the inspired Word of God. “I say then,” quoting Paul, Rom 11:1, “I say then, hath God cast away his people? God forbid.” That’s the strongest way Paul can say, “Not so! Not so!” And in Rom 11:1-36, Paul says they are not cast away totally as to individual salvation, and they are not cast away nationally as to an ultimate deliverance and restoration. And in Rom 11:25 here, “… until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in; and then shall all Israel be saved.” Shall all Israel be saved? According to the Word of God, the Hebrew nation will be here as long as God lives. According to the Word of God, the children of Abraham can never be destroyed. In Jer 30:1-24, the prophet said: “O my servant Jacob … O Israel … I am with thee, saith the Lord, to save thee. Though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee.” The Babylonian nation may disappear. The Chaldean nation may be destroyed. The ancient Ninevites may disappear from the earth. The Girgeshites, the Hittites, the Hyksos, and all of the other nations may disappear. But, I will save thee, O Jacob, and O Israel. “If I make an end of all of the nations of the world, yet will I not make a full end of thee.” And now, listen, again, to the prophet Jeremiah this time in the thirty-first chapter: Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars by night, that divideth the sea from the land, the Lord of hosts is his name: If these ordinances depart from before me... -if the night gets mixed up with the day, and if the sun gets mixed up with the stars, and if the sea gets mixed up with the land, “then,” says the Lord- … the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus saith the Lord: If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth beneath, I will also cast off all of the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord God. The Lord God says, “By Me, who made the light of the day and the moon of the night, and by Me, who made the land and sea-by Me do I swear that Israel shall abide forever and forever.” And so, Paul says as he begins Rom 11:1-36, “Has God cast away his people? No, no! God forbid.” And some of these days, all Israel shall be saved. It is a race and a people that shall abide until the end of time. Now, for a moment, to look at the strange and tragic story of Israel: no nation, no people, no race has ever been persecuted, has ever endured, the fury and the malice of the children of Abraham. Yet, they have been the source of the greatest blessing of all of the nations, and to all of the nations of the world. Moses was a Jew. And the basis of jurisprudence and statutory proceedings in all of the civilized nations of the earth is based upon the Mosaic Law. The Bible is a Jewish book, written altogether-Old Testament and New Testament-by Jews, except possibly Luke, the third Gospel, and the author of Acts. Our Lord Jesus Christ was a Jew. Under a hail of stones, a lad fell in the street, an object of bitter hatred. He was a Jewish boy. A godly woman, seeing it, walked over to the boy in the street, lifted him to his feet, took her handkerchief and wiped some of the blood from his face, kissed him on his forehead, and said, “Son, God bless you, boy. My Savior was a Jew.” That was the beginning of the conversion of Dr. Levine, who now leads the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews in Great Britain. The Savior was a Jew, and the Christian faith and the Christian religion is the product of the Jewish people. Paul, through whose letters I am preaching now; John, the beloved disciple; James, the Lord’s brother-all of these great beginning fathers and founders of our faith, all of them-with the possible exception of Luke-all of them were Jews. It is hard to realize the terrible and bitter hatred that race has sustained. Is it because they are criminals? There is less crime among them than any other nation under the earth, under the sun. Is it because they are thieves? They may be shrewd bargainers, but they don’t steal. Is it because they are objects of charity in the countries into which they go? No. No people ever cared for their own like the Jewish people. But, that terrible and bitter persecution has characterized their story from the beginning to this present day. In the days of Pharaoh, he became alarmed at their multiplication, and sought to destroy the race by giving the commandment that every male child of any Hebrew woman should be slain. In the days of king Ahasuerus, known to us in schoolbooks as King Artaxerxes, Haman, the wicked favorite of the king, sought to destroy the entire race, confiscate their property, and place it in the treasuries of the king. And he would have succeeded, had it not been for Esther the queen, who was a Jewess, and Haman did not know it. In the days of Titus, according to the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of Luke, all of the Christians fled out of Jerusalem and fled away from Palestine, over into Perea and in Lebanon, according to the prophecies of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ. And they were safe. But, all of the Jews of Palestine, thinking themselves to be safer inside the walls of the city than in the open places of the village and open country, as the Roman legions pressed in on every side, they fled before them and so came into Jerusalem. And Josephus says that the Roman soldiers slew 1,100,000 Jews. He took 100,000 of them and gave them to the markets of the world as slaves. Titus, seeing the beautiful Temple, gave orders for it to be preserved. But, the Lord Jesus Christ, one greater than Titus, had said 40 years before, “Not one stone shall be left upon another.” And a Roman soldier, Frenzek, threw a flaming torch into the Temple. And it was set afire, and, ultimately, completely destroyed. In the years that have passed, in our own day-a few years ago there were 15,000,000 Jews in this world. Hitler destroyed more than 5,000,000 of them. And in these present days, and in these present hours, there is not a nation in this earth that has a more precarious hold upon life than the Jewish people: scattered throughout the Soviet orbit; the Jewish people who live in the former Fascist-dominated countries, and the little nation of Israel over there in Palestine, that the king of Saudi Arabia said is like a cancer on our body and must be cut out. And here in America, anti-Semitism-it died down in our War against Hitler, but it is still here. Riding on an elevator in New York City, a Jewish man across from me stepped off. The fellow next to me said, “Look at him. You know who he is?” “Yes,” I said, “I know his race.” “We’re having a meeting tonight,” he said, “wouldn’t you like to come?” It was a Fascist meeting-anti-Semitism. And God’s Word says that there is yet to be a time of Jacob’s trouble, in the days of the awful Tribulation, when the nation will be sifted as it has never been sifted before. Through all of those years-I’ve tried, in this moment, to pray-there has been effort time and again to destroy them. And they fall from one tragedy into another. And yet, he’s still here-the Jew is still here: their race and their tribe. He is still here. He is indestructible. Jonah is a type of the Jewish nation. He is a type of the Jewish people. He disobeyed God, and he fled from the presence of the Lord, and he fell into great trouble, and he was swallowed by a big fish, prepared of the Lord. But, he was undigested and unassimilated. Jonah is a type of the Hebrew people. They have been swallowed up. They have been engulfed by the nations of the world. But, contrary to all natural law-when any other people, when any other nation is swallowed up, they become assimilated as they live among the people. But, the Jewish nation is contrary to all natural law. He has never been digested. He has never been assimilated. He still stands in America, in Soviet Russia, in Germany-wherever in the world he is, he still stands: a separate race, a separate faith, a separate religion. He is still a Jew. And if I could digress for the moment: being a type of Jonah, I say, the Hebrew race will be like Jonah. Jonah repented, and he cried unto God. And the Lord saved him and delivered him. And he was sent a second time, and he preached the message of God, and all of Nineveh repented. That is a type of a Hebrew nation: in unrepentance, in disobedience, they lie undigested and unassimilated. But, some day, some day, they will repent. They will accept their Lord and Christ, Messiah. The Lord Jesus shall appear. He will claim the throne of David and seat Himself upon it. And the Hebrew people shall be the first nation that is all Christian. And they will become the evangelists of the world-but, more of that in the eleventh chapter of Romans tonight. Now, may I return to Paul and the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans? “I say then, hath God cast away his people?” Is God done with Israel? Is God done with the Hebrew children? “Nay, God forbid.” And he gives seven reasons here why God hath not cast away the Hebrew people. And I speak of two of them briefly this morning. His first reason is: “For I also am a Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” And his second, beginning at the second verse and continuing for the next four or five-his second: there is a remnant of grace, an election of God. The Lord has not cast them away. He didn’t cast Paul away. And he has not cast a remnant of the Jewish people away. Now, let’s take this first one: “God forbid”-Has God cast them away? Is he done with them?-“No, for I am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.” It is a strange thing that in this great parenthesis- Rom 9:1-33; Rom 10:1-21; Rom 11:1-36 -that all three chapters begin with the Apostle Paul. They all three begin with him: the Apostle Paul. Conversion is itself a type. It is a model. It is a pattern. The Apostle Paul’s conversion is recounted three times in the short book of the Acts. His conversion is typical, a pattern, a model conversion. Of whom? Of whom? From the beginning years of my ministry, I thought Paul’s conversion was typical-it was a pattern of-our conversion. And it plunged me into deep distress and awful agony. I hadn’t seen any light from heaven. I hadn’t seen any angel. I hadn’t seen the face of Christ. The Lord hadn’t appeared unto me. And I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t been saved, all because I had not been taught the truth of the Word of God. The conversion of Paul is a pattern. It is a model. It is a paragon. But, the conversion of Paul is not a pattern of our conversion. There never has been a man converted like the Apostle Paul. He alone, of all of the followers of Christ, has ever been converted in that miraculous way, as he was saved on the road to Damascus. “Well, didn’t you say it is a pattern?” It is a pattern of God, Paul tells us. In speaking of his conversion, in the fifteenth chapter of the 1 Corinthian letter, and the ninth verse, Paul says: “And last of all, the Lord appeared unto me as of one born out of due time”-an abortion. That is, he was before the time. Paul’s conversion is a pattern of the conversion of the nation of Israel. He should not have been saved when he was, if he was saved at all. If he was alive at that time, he should have been saved in that way that Israel is going to be saved. But he says: “No, I was born before the time. I am an abortion. I am born out of due time.” Well, what does he mean by that? And what do you mean when you say all of Israel shall be saved, and all of Israel shall be converted unto God? According to the Word of the Lord, when the Lord is done with us Gentiles-“when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in”- Rom 11:25, “when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in,” when the last one, according to election, comes into the church and into the kingdom of Christ-then the Lord will take away the church. According to 1Th 4:1-18, it will be taken up to God in heaven, and then the Lord is going to deal with Israel. The Lord is going to deal with the Hebrew nation as a nation, and as a people. And in those days-in those days, the Lord God will appear unto Jacob. He will appear unto Israel. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son… And one shall say unto him: What are these wounds in thine hands? And then he shall answer: Those are which I was wounded in the hands of my friends… And in that day, his feet shall stand upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a great valley… And it shall come to pass that at evening time, it shall be light … and you have the glorious restoration of Israel. In that day, there shall be fountain opened unto the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. In the day after God is done with the Gentiles, after He is done with the church-after the last elect one has come in and the church is taken out of the world, then the Lord will begin to deal with the nation and with the tribes of Israel. And He will appear to them, and they will look upon him and they will mourn for him as an only son who was lost and is alive again-who was dead and is found. And according to the Revelation, “Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him and they also which pierced him.” The Lord will return, and Jacob-Israel, the Hebrew people-will look upon Him, and they will turn and receive Him and be saved. And a nation shall be born in a day. In the sixty-sixth chapter of Isaiah: Who heard such a thing? who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made forth in one day? Or shall a nation be born at once? But then rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her; rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her; And once again, in the third of Zechariah: “And I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.” Israel, the nation of the Jews, shall be turned to Christ in one day. The nation shall become Christian in one day, when the Lord appears to them and they accept their King and their Messiah and their Savior. Now, that’s the first answer of the Apostle Paul: “For I am an Israelite, one born ahead of the time.” Born out of due time, an abortion-typical of the day when the whole nation shall be born again, and all Israel shall accept the Lord Jesus, and “all Israel shall be saved.” Now his second reason: the remnant, the remnant. You know about what the Scriptures say about Elijah, when Elijah says, “I’m the only one. There is nobody else.” “Nay,” says the Lord, “but there are seven thousand that have not bowed the knee to Baal.” According to the election of grace, there is a remnant of Israel that even now trusts and believes in and accepts the Lord Jesus Christ. There has always been a remnant, faithful to God, through all of Israel’s history. In the days of Elijah, those 7,000; in the days of the Babylonian Captivity, the faithful remnant that never gave up the true God; in the days of Pentecost, all of those people who first believed. All of them were Jews. And through the ages since, some of the greatest Christians of all of the earth have been Hebrew Christians. Benjamin Disraeli, the great Victorian prime minister of the last century in Great Britain; Mendelsson, Sullivan, Rubenstein, some of those marvelous and immortal musicians and composers-they were all Jewish Christians; Neander, a kinsman of Mendelsson, the greatest Christian church historian who ever lived; Alfred Edersheim, who wrote The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, the greatest life of Christ ever written, a Jew; Rabbi Rabinowitz of Russia, of a few years ago, who was converted and was able to take his entire synagogue into the Christian faith with him; Adolph Saphir, who wrote the incomparable commentary on the Book of Hebrews-all of them great Hebrew Christians. And the last twenty-five years: there has been a greater turning to Jesus among Israel than at any other time since Pentecost. Right now, there is one out of every 66 Jews that is turning to Christ today. Out of all of the other religions in the world, there is only but one to every 525. Did you know that, this moment, and this Lord’s Day morning, there are more than 800 Jewish pastors who are standing in Protestant pulpits, and who are preaching the unsearchable riches of the gospel of Christ? Even though he is not a believer, I copied out of Albert Einstein: “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.” Then, when he was asked about the historical existence of Jesus, which some Jews deny, he declared: “I believe in the Lord Jesus in His history, unquestionably. No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus, His personality in every word. No man is filled with such a life.” And according to the Apostle Paul, if the falling away of Israel was our salvation-if the casting of them away temporarily was our reconciling in the world, some of these days, “what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?” How much more their fullness when “the times of the Gentiles” be done, and God converts all of Israel, and all Israel is saved, and they become the evangelist and the preachers of the world? “For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.” And I hate to quit. So much of what I have said is not established. But, I haven’t time. I will do it tonight. I will just conclude with this brief little word: The Lord said to Abraham, “I will give you this land, and to thy seed will I give it forever.” And the Lord God said to David, “Thou shalt have a son to sit upon thy throne, and his throne shall abide forever.” And the Lord God said to Israel, “I will gather you up out of the nations where you are scattered, and I will bring you back to your homeland, and you will live there and abide forever and ever.” The Lord God made those, and other covenant and promises, with Israel. If those covenants and those promises can be broken, and if the Lord is such a one that He changes and He turns, then what am I going to do when the Lord God says to me, “Trust in me; I will give you eternal life, and no one will be able to pluck you out of My hand”? “My Father who gave to me is greater than all, and no one is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” But, maybe God changes his mind, and I fall into hell after all. Maybe the Lord changed that promise, and I’ll be lost after all. Can I depend upon God? Can I? Can I trust in the Word and in the promises of God? Can I? “Hath God cast away his people?” Does God do that? Paul says His gifts and His calling are without change. And every promise he ever made to Abraham, every covenant he ever made with David, every promise that you read in God’s Book concerning Israel, will be fulfilled to the last jot, to the last tittle, according to the immutable word and promise of the living God. And when we turn to the New Testament, to God’s covenants and His promises with us, we can count on him. He will never fail. He will not leave us, nor forsake us. That’s our God, who never changes. The preacher-all he is doing is going through that Book. These are not my ideas. I’m just a voice. That’s all. I never heard of these things. I was never taught them. I have just been reading the Book. And I told you a long time ago, I had set myself to preaching this Word. And as we come, as we reach each page, we generally read it and believe God. And I don’t understand all of these things. And I don’t see them. But, they’re in the Word. And God said, “Heaven and earth may pass away, but my word ... the flower fadeth, the grass withereth, but my word shall endure forever.” And that’s every time I preach. It may not just be an evangelistic sermon itself. But, every time I preach, that is what it is. You can trust the Book. You can believe in the Word. You can give your life to Him who said it. And if you will, you come and stand by me. If you will put your heart and life and soul with us in this ministry, to make it known, to preach its message, by confession of faith, by coming in the church in baptism or by letter, however God would say the word. While we sing and make this appeal, you come, and make it now. Make it now. As the Spirit calls, make it now, while we stand and while we sing ======================================================================== CHAPTER 47: S. THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN ======================================================================== THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 28:1-10 05-30-54 You are listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. This is the pastor bringing the morning message. It is based upon the first part of Acts 28:1-31. In our preaching through the Bible, the last several Sundays, we were in Acts 27:1-44, which describes the ship wreck in a storm at sea that casts upon the island of Malta, which is south of Sicily, the apostle and two hundred seventy-five other souls. Acts 27:1-44 ends, and the rest, some on board and on broken pieces of the ship, gained to shore and got to land. And so it came to pass that they all escaped safe to land. Now today, we begin with the twenty-eighth chapter. And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita-modern Malta. And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, because of the present rain, and because of the cold. And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked on him that he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god-he is a God. In the same quarters were possessions of the chief of the island, whose name was Publius; who received us, and lodged us three days courteously. And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever [and of a bloody flux]: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him. So when this was done, others also, which had diseases in the island, came and were healed; -he uses a different word there. When Paul did it miraculously, he calls it the iaomai. When Luke does it and shares in it, he calls it therapueo-therapeutic. Luke was a physician. Who also-the Publius who also honored us with many honors: and when we departed, they laded us with such things as were necessary Acts 28:1-10]. And then after three months, they made their journey to Rome. Now the sermon today is entitled THE RELIGION OF THE NATURAL MAN. And it is presented in order that we might contrast it with the revealed religion of God in Christ Jesus. You see, it is only by contrast that you are ever conscious of anything. If the world were white, you would not be conscious of any color at all. All would be white. You would not even know of color. But when you contrast a color black, then white looks white. If it were all black, you would not be conscious of it. But if you have a white, then the black looks black. Blue and yellow and white, the contrast of the colors make you sensitive to them. Now, it is the same way about error and truth. I do not understand all of why God permits error in the world, but I do know this much: that were it not for error, we would never be conscious of truth. It is error here that points truth there. Or the other hand, it is truth here that so pointedly makes error what it is. Now [it is] the same about religion. It is in the contrast of the revealed religion of Jesus Christ with the religion of a natural man that you find what revealed religion is. So this morning we’re going to look at these barbarians. Now, may I explain that word “barbarians.” To us, a barbarian is a savage, an uncouth, uncivilized, untaught savage. He is a wild tribesman. In the Roman Empire, there were four cultural groups of people: the Greek, the Roman, the Jew and then it depended upon what nationality you were as to what you called the fourth one. A Roman would call the fourth one a ”provincial”; a Greek would call the fourth one a “barbarian.” Now, the word “barbarian” did not mean to them as it does today-that they are wild savages. But it was the cultural attitude of a learned Greek. That is one reason that I know Luke was a Greek. When he came to these Maltans, or these Melitans, he used the Greek term describing them. He called them “barbarians”; that is, they were not of a cultural family of either the Roman or the Jew or the Greek. Now, these barbarian people. They have a religion. Malta was a colony of ancient Cartage, and the Carthaginians themselves were colonists of ancient Phoenicia. So the religion of Malta in this day under he Roman Empire, the religion was Carthaginian-a Phoenician religion which is but typical of all of the religions of the natural man in the earth everywhere, everywhere. There are those who speak of the religion of the natural man, just any man outside of the pale of the revealed Word of God, there are those who speak of the barbarians and his religion as being altogether no good -nothing good in it. They describe the savage and the barbarian as half beast and half devil, and they see nothing good at all in their native, natural religion. And that is not true. You can go look at those people for yourselves. They have in many instances, the same great spiritual and ethical drive that you have as a Christian. You will find a mother devoted to her child. You will find great ethical principles running through everyone of the tribes. The lowest tribe that was ever discovered was the Terra del Fuegans that lived way down there on the tip end of South America. And when Charles Darwin saw them, and visited them, he said, “they are the missing link between his evolutionary theory of man and an ape.” And he said they were capable of moral distinction. A great Christian by the name of Captain Gardener heard that Charles Darwin said that, and he outfitted a missionary boat and went down to the Terra del Fuegans. And though he slowly starved to death because his boat of supplies later did not arrive and the whole party perished. Yet he so changed their life and character, and so lifted up the innate qualities on the inside of that pagan, heathen heart that Charles Darwin himself became a subscriber to the great Christian missionary movement to lift the Terra del Fuegans up to God and up to Christ. They have in them the same great God-given moral qualities that you have in you. On the other hand, there are some who look upon the barbarians and the savage as being all good. That is the aesthetic, who wants to say that civilization is nothing but a corrupting force-that a man in his natural state will be simple, child-like unsophisticated, gracious, hospitable and kind. They are altogether good and it is only the corrupting influences from civilization that make men evil and bad and vile and wicked and greedy, all of those things. Nor is that true; nor is that true. These barbarians here, their ancestors I say were the Carthaginians, and when they won a victory against Rome, they took the chief prisoners and burned them alive as offerings to the gods who had given them such victory over the Romans. You can trace this Carthaginian-Phoenician religion back on in the ancient days of the Old Testament. And many, many times did they, these Phoenicians, pull away Israel from God. And, as the old prophet would say in the Old Testament, “they would cause their children, their sons and daughters to pass through the fire unto their gods.” They offered them as burnt sacrifices to heaven. Many times these savages being kind and hospitable to a friend will eat and live off the body of his enemies. If you have ever been down in old Mexico City and go out to look at the Pyramids and the vast altars there, and then go into the museum there right by the great cathedral square, you will see pictures drawn by themselves of their sacrifices. And inevitably they are all humans. Human sacrifices-they take living slaves and pour out the blood in oblation and expiation before God. No, natural religion has in it great ethical potentialities because God put it in the man. But in itself, it has no sensitivity to the great moral value that you and I know in the Lord Jesus. And we will go back to it in a minute. All right, another thing about the religion of the natural man. The religion of the natural man is based upon the persuasion that there is a nemesis that ever follows which is wrong. When you do evil, there is always retribution. When the barbarians saw that venomous beasts, that poisonous viper cling to the hand of Paul-. You see this is in late November, and the late animal had crawled into a little place somewhere to spend the winter, to sleep for the winter, to hibernate for the winter. And Paul hastily picking up all of those twigs, picked up that sleeping viper. And when he placed the twigs on the fire, the warmth awakened it and it darted out and fastened its poisonous fangs in the hand of the apostle Paul. Now, when that happened, these barbarians looked at Paul and they said, This man no doubt is a murderer. He is a vile, villainous and wicked man, who, though he escaped the terror of the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. There is a nemesis of retribution. There are the whips and the scorpions of the furies that are following him and he cannot escape. That is a fundamental tenant of the religion of the natural world and of the natural man. It is the base of all of the theologies. The great Greek tragedies were written, without exception, on that basis-of the Nemesis, who is the goddess of retribution. And when a man did wrong, she hounded him to his death. The religion of the natural man is based upon the supposition that evil and judgment are always interconnected. Because a man has done evil, therefore he shall suffer for it. There is a sleepless adventure that by day and by night will follow him and will drive him. The sea will not bear up the murderer, nor will the scorpions fail to sting him. Wherever he goes and whatever direction he turns, a man who is guilty will suffer the divine retribution of Almighty God. And I say that seems to be an instinct in natural religion. You come across it all of the time. The whole Book of Job centered around this. Job fell into evil. He fell into all kinds of sorrow-lost his home; lost his children; lost his property; lost his health. So Job’s comforters came to comfort Job. And this is the way they comforted him. They said to Job, Job, confess your sins. You have done evil; therefore, all of these bad and terrible things have overtaken you. And that is the Book of Job. And they talk about it. Job says, I have not done evil. And it is not because I have sinned that these terrible calamities have overwhelmed me. Now, that is the Book of Job. Do you see it? Because evil has befallen you; therefore, you have sinned. That is the Book of Job. Or take it again-just for a minute using an illustration-there came to Jesus men who said, “these Galileans, whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, they were sinners above all of the other people in Jerusalem, because that thing has happened to them” [Luk 13:3]. Now the historical incident to which that referred, we do not have it in profane history. But there were some Galileans who were worshiping there in Jerusalem. And Pilate fell upon them with his sword and slew them. And when they died there in the blood of their own sacrifices, the people said: These men were wicked above all other men. A nemesis has fallen unto them. There they lie in their own blood. In other incident, they came to Jesus about “those eighteen men on whom the tower of Siloam fell” [Luk 13:4]. The wall fell on them and killed them. And the people said, those eighteen men must have been vile and wicked men because, look at the terrible calamity that has overwhelmed them and overtaken them. They are vile above all other men. Look what happened to them. The disciples said the same thing as they walked by and they saw a man born blind. They asked Jesus, “who did sin, this man or his parents, that he is born blind?” [John 9:2]. He is blind; therefore, it has to be a nemesis has overtaken him. That is the way life is put together. That is religion says the natural man. When you do wrong, there is a retribution. When a man is blind; therefore, somebody has sinned. I preached a sermon here several evenings ago. And one of the most discriminating men to whom I have ever preached in my life, Brother George Coll* who always sits right here in front of me. Wrote me a long letter. The sermon was on the judgment day. The final judgment of Almighty God. And George wrote me a letter and started it off. And he said, “Pastor, I have not read Emerson’s essay on “Compensation” in forty or fifty years. But after your sermon I went back and read it again.” Now, Emerson’s essay on “Compensation” begins. He had been to church. And he had heard a pastor, his pastor preach on the judgment day of Almighty God. And Emerson wrote that famous essay, one of the most famous in the earth and woven of the great literary masterpieces of all time. He wrote that essay “Compensation” in repudiation of what the preacher had to say. And the thesis of Emerson is this: there is a nemesis in this world, in this life, and in this time. And whoever does wrong and whoever is guilty is overtaken in this world and in this time by those avenging furies. So I just copied this from Emerson’s essay on “Compensation.” That you might see how he says it. Every act rewards itself. Men call the circumstance retribution. It is inseparable from the thing itself. Crime and punishment grow out of the same stem. Punishment is a fruit that ripens within the flower. This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis-that is a goddess-who keeps watch in the universe and lets no offense go unchastised. The avenging Furies they said are attendant on justice. And if the sun in heaven could transgress his past, they would punish him. When the Phoenicians erected a statue to Theogenes, one of his rivals went to it by night and threw it down until at last he moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death beneath its fall. Now, that is Emerson’s essay on “Compensation.” Whatever you do wrong, there is a nemesis that will follow you. And in this life, all of these things are balanced out wrong and judgment, evil and retribution. This man is a murderer, who though he has escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffer him not to live. Look at that, that venomous snake has buried its poisonous fangs in his flesh. And we will watch him die. We will watch him die. That is the religion of the natural man. That is the religion of the natural man. But it is only in poetry and in mythology and in Emerson’s essay that this is true. Actually in experience, it is not true. It is not true. I have seen the most sainted of all Christian people I ever pastored, I have seen them die in agony. In pain indescribable and excruciating. I have seen God’s people rise in sorrow and in suffering. I have seen an alcoholic whose much drinking has so weakened his heart, that when we came to the end of the way, though a young man, weakly, quietly, peacefully, he just quit breathing. His heart quit breathing and he went out in the most sublime manner you could ever describe. I have seen wicked people prosper and never be touched by ill health. And never seemingly be touched by sorrows that afflict some of God’s sainted members in this church. You say that because the tyrant has done evil, therefore his sleep is afflicted with all of the misery and the halting memories of the evil that he’s done. That is not so. He goes to bed and in many instances he sleeps like an innocent child. You can look this earth over, and you will never find that principle and that doctrine illustrated with unerring accuracy. The wicked do not always find themselves hounded to death by that nemesis. Nor do you always find it is the wicked who are bitten by that venomous serpent. Sometimes the innocent are. Sometimes God’s children fall a prey to the most dire, sorrowful misfortune that you could ever describe or know. All right, I have one third thing and then we go back to the three. The religion of the natural man, its God. They looked to see him die, swell up and die. He did not die. Then they said, “he is a god. He is a god.” Two times here in the New Testament does Paul come in contact with these barbarians. One in Lycaonia [Acts 14:11], and in Malta [Acts 28:6]. And in both instances, he is taken for a god. The religion of the natural man is the worship of the mysterious, the wonderful, the miraculous; the inexplicable. They stand in awe before a thing they cannot explain. And that becomes their deity; their god. They look up in the firmament at night and they worship the stars and the moon; or into the skies in the day and they worship the sun; or they look around them and they worship the phenomena of life into which mystery they cannot enter-the oak, the mountain, the trees, the rivers, the streams; or some times they take animals who represent great qualities of the true God and they worship the animals in token of the quality of the god. For example the hawk-eyed deities of ancient Egypt represented the omniscience of god. And they-and the ox, the Apis, the god Apis which is an ox representing great strength. And even in Israel they worshipped the brazen serpent, which represented healing. They worshiped the miraculous and the inexplicable and they stand in awe before the wonderful. And that becomes their god. When I went to visit the king of Eyo, the tribal king among the Urabas. There in his hallway were all kinds of little old things hanging down. Maybe a gizzard of a strange African bird-or a chicken head or a funny looking stone, and all kinds of little odd things hanging around, for he lives in grief and in fear. And he is full of superstition about the things he cannot explain. So he worships in a world that he cannot understand and stands in awe before things that he cannot receive. The first thing that happens to that kind of a religion, it turns to atheism, which is the religion for the most part of America-religious atheism, intellectual atheism. When you are able to explain the thing, then you do not accept it as a god any more. When the Spaniards came over here to America, the American Indian received them as a visit from the deities. They had never seen ships like that before. But when they came to know the Spaniards better, they did not worship any longer, not they. When the savage first saw the European fire arm, he bowed down and worshiped before a god. Later, when he became accustomed to the arm itself, he used it. When the Laplander sees the eclipse, he stands in awe and adoration before it. When he can predict its coming with unerring accuracy for a thousand years to come, he does not worship any more. You see, when you are able to explain or understand the phenomena, then it loses its awe and you become an atheist. So the people used to think of God’s lightning as being a bolt from heaven. When you go to the World’s Fair in 1933, and see them make those same terrific bolts in laboratory and the philosopher experiments with them, then you don’t worship any more, and you become an atheist. So the intellectual and the professor and the scientist, if he learns and he probes, he pushes the things back and back and back, until finally, he leaves God out of the universe and he is a material atheist for practical purposes. He has no god and no religion at all. Now in summary-that I tie into the religion of the natural man. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. The revealed of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is it like? First, in its virtue, in its merit and in its worth. The virtue of revealed religion are is the virtue in the mind and in the heart of Christ Jesus. How did He treat an enemy? That is revealed religion. How did He treat those who persecuted Him? That is revealed religion. What was His attitude toward those who cursed Him? That is revealed religion. Revealed religion in Christ Jesus is heart and mind and spirit. It shows the same front to those that hate us as it does to those who love us. And I am frank to tell you, I stagger at it most of the time. But that is revealed religion. The second thing. What is the attitude of revealed religion toward sin and suffering? First about sin-the nature of sin. In revealed religion, sin becomes an attitude and a character of a man and so it is inward. The publican and the harlot in the New Testament went into the kingdom of God, but the Pharisees stayed outside. The prodigal boy who had wasted his substance in a riotous and wicked living, came back to his father, while the elder son, in his pride said, “At no time did I ever transgress thy commandments” [Luk 15:29] is despicable in the sight of all who read the parable. Then it becomes a matter of the soul. I am a murderer if I hate. I am an adulterer if I lust. It is a matter of the inside. And it brings us all to the Lord Jesus for healing and atonement. He is wicked and therefore the nemesis is after him. And I am righteous; therefore, there is no nemesis after me. No, he is a sinner. I am, too. And he needs to be saved. But I do, too. And it does not behoove me to point my finger at him, unless I also point my finger at me. That is revealed religion. We are all lost. We have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the glory of God. And nothing condemns us. But one sin that we refuse the propitiatory, expiatory, the love and grace and atonement of Jesus on the cross. All sinners alike. All saved alike. All glory to the Lamb. That is revealed religion. And now hurriedly, the last-the God of revealed religion, the God of the New Testament. Did you know there is almost-to use the word contemptuous is not right, but I do not know what other word to use. There is almost a contemptuous attitude in the Bible toward the miraculous and the awesome. The reason I had you read the passage of Scripture this morning was this. The twelfth chapter of the [First] Book of Corinthians closes-the twelfth chapter closes with a word about the miraculous gifts-healing, speaking in tongues, working miracles. But Paul almost contemptuously says, “Yet I plead with you to seek after the better gifts; the more excellent way” [1Co 12:31]. Which is what? That you be able to work a miracle? That you be able to command the lightning of God? No, Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and I do not have the breath and pulse of love in my soul, it is nothing. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could be anything, do anything. And I do not have the love of Jesus in my soul. That is nothing, too [1Co 13:1-3. You see what is the miraculous? Nothing. Could I say that Jesus had that same attitude, without being too blasphemous about it? One time Jesus said, “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe” [John 4:48]. And again He says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; but no sign shall be given it” [Mat 12:39]. I am not quite like-when I use words like this, but I do not know how else to say it. Jesus looked upon miracles and signs and wonders almost contemptuously. They were just verification of the great eternal truth that he came to reveal. Well, what is that great eternal truth? It is this. It is this. The great eternal truth of Jesus is that God, our Father-God, our Father is known by another faculty that you have in your soul. I have the five senses. I can see and taste and hear and smell and touch. I have my five senses. Which are the great five avenues and knowledge of the scientists. He can wave this thing. He can see this thing. He can smell this thing. He can look at that thing. He can go to that thing and he can demonstrate that thing. But the Lord Jesus said there is another tremendous faculty in the soul, and that faculty is faith-faith. I can understand and I can know and I can respond and I can receive great revelations and great truths. And I can commit myself to great things by a faculty of the soul. Faith. I could not demonstrate them to save my life. I could not hold it in my hand. I could not wave them. I cannot show them to you. But they are actual and known by great faith. And with regard to Himself, the religion of Jesus Christ is not the standing in awe and in wonder of an incomparable miracle, the mysterious, the inexplicable. But the religion of Jesus Christ is the d ======================================================================== CHAPTER 48: S. THE SOUL-WINNING MINISTRY OF PAUL ======================================================================== THE SOUL-WINNING MINISTRY OF PAUL Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 20:20 f 02-21-54 Now, in our preaching through the Word we are in Acts 20:1-38. Acts 20:1-38. And this morning, as we turn our faces toward the season of the year that brings to us our annual revival, we are speaking today of the soul-winning ministry. Now, you look in Acts 20:1-38, Acts 20:20-21 and Acts 20:35. Ye know how I “have taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” [Acts 20:20-21]. Now the thirty-first verse, "Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn everyone night and day with tears" [Acts 20:31]. Paul was an unusual man. I do not think anything like most people think of him. He was a preacher and a missionary. And when we think of so famous of a preacher and so glorious an exponent of the gospel of Christ, we think of a man with a tremendous appearance, a tremendous oratorical ability, with capabilities of vast flight of oratory and perorations and flowing language. Now, he may have been that way. But his enemies, who went to hear him preach, said just the opposite about him. In the tenth chapter and the tenth verse of the Second Corinthian Letter, Paul spoke what his enemies say about his preaching. And this is what they say, “his letters are waving and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” [2Co 10:10]. Now, I do not say that is true, I am merely quoting what Paul said his enemies said about him. “His bodily presence is weak”-he did not look the part; and “his speech contemptible”-he did not speak the part; though he could write letters that would make you tremble in your soul. That is what his enemies said about him. Now, whether that is true or not there is bound to be some truth in it, or his enemies would not have repeated such a characterization. In any event, my point this morning is this, that the power of the Word of the Apostle Paul did not lie in his majestic appearance, nor did it lie in his eloquent sermon. But the power of the ministry of the Apostle Paul is found in his personal soul-winning. You remember that “I taught you publicly, and from house to house, testifying to the Jews, and to the Greeks, repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” [Acts 20:20-21]. And I did it “by the space of three years, . . . night and day with tears" [Acts 20:31]. That is Paul’s own characterization of his greatest ministry which occurred in the city of Ephesus, the capital of the Roman province of Asia. He has a conviction, a persuasion that men were lost without Christ. And that is a presupposition of the whole Christian faith. That is his first stone-that men are lost without Christ. When we were in Acts 10:1-48, there was described for us a Roman centurion who lived in Caesarea and this is the way he is described by the Bible, "a devout man, one that feared God" [Acts 10:1-48; Acts 22:1-30]; a philanthropic man who gave much alms to the people and he prayed to God always [Acts 10:30-31]. But the Bible said that he was lost. His goodness was not good enough. As fine a man as he was, as good of a man as he was, without Christ. He was lost and the angel said to this man who was praying, Send down to Joppa for one Simon Peter who will come and tell thee words whereby thou and thou house may be saved [Acts 10:32]. The Scriptures say that in ourselves, all of us are born in sin, and are dead in trespasses and iniquities. This is Isa 53:1-12, "All of us have gone astray" [Isa 53:6]. "There is none righteous, no, not one" [Rom 3:10]. Romans three adds to it, we all are alike-all alike, we are lost. We are undone. We need saving. And that is the presupposition of the Christian faith. We all are under the judgment and condemnation of the wrath of Almighty God. So Paul is out going from house to house, publicly and in private pleading repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ and warning everyone night and day with tears-the ministry of Paul. Another thing about him, he had a personal feeling, persuasion, conviction of being accountable to God for the people who are lost. In Acts 20:26 he says, "I take you to record this day that I am pure from the blood of all men.” I have done my part. I have done my best to get lost men to Christ Jesus. And my hands are clean. I have done my best. That was the second thing about his ministry. He felt a personal accountability for people who were lost. Now, a last thing about his ministry. He did it, he pursued it, he furthered it with a compassionate heart. “I ceased not to warn every one, night and day with tears” [Acts 20:31]. He was like his Master in that. Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem when it spurned His overtures of grace mercy. And when Paul pled with the Ephesians to turn to Christ and be saved, when they turned down his appeal, it hurt his heart. He cried. He wept. He was a compassionate preacher of the glorious gospel of the Son of God. Now, I want to turn to our ministry and our ministries today. I went on a two-week tour preaching on the east-on the eastern seaboard and in the south. And I look at our preachers. Preaching through evangelistic conferences, I hear many of them. And this time, not only in our only denomination, but preaching through a conference of another denomination, I look at ourselves. And as I lie down at night and think through the messages that I have heard and the men I have talked to and the work they are doing; and then these long trips on the plane, turning the thing over in my mind; a lot of things come to my heart and crowd into my soul. I want us to look at ourselves in those three categories that so graciously characterize the ministry of this man Paul. I want us to look at ourselves in those three categories. First-first that fundamental presupposition that men are lost without Christ; that there is in this ministry and in this appeal an eternal and a desperate seriousness. Now, I want us to look at ourselves. This is my judgment, my judgment, my sincere judgment. Religion to us is first a matter of options. If a man chooses to be religious, that is fine; if he chooses not to be religious, it is optional. He may do as he pleases. Over in Moscow, a city of seven or eight million people, there are fifty churches that are still functioning. It is a bad thing to be religious in the office of the communist world. In New York City, there are two thousand seven hundred operating churches. It is a good thing in the orbit of the free world to be religious. But what kind of religion? It is the kind of religion you find at the Marble Collegiate Church. It is the kind of religion that the psychiatrist was speaking about. As I go on these planes, I read all of the magazines that are on the thing. That is about the only time I ever go through all of that stuff that our public fills their head with by day and by night. Here is a psychologist-a psychiatrist and here is what he says. He says it is good to be a member of the church-all of the clubs. All of us who are active in social organizations, the psychiatrist says, “it is good for you to go to church.” The psychologist says it is good for you to be a member of the church. In the same sense, and in the same category that it is good for you to belong to the church or the philanthropic group or the fraternal organization or any other civic function. Good for you. Good for your personality. But that is all. That is all. It is optional if you want to improve your personality by going to church or a fraternal organization or a civic organization or get in some group that is helping crippled children or debilitative personalities. That is one thing. All right, another thing about them-another thing about them. Our attitude toward religion-our attitude toward religion. Now, I am not talking about the psychiatrist and the psychologist. I am talking about the preacher now, and the religious leader, the ecclesiastical functionary. I am talking about him. What is his attitude toward religion? All right, this is it. As I sit and listen, I get the idea that religion is a matter of culture. It is a matter of scholasticism. It is a matter of philosophy and metaphysics. As I sat in one of those conferences, where men were gathered together ostensibly for the purpose of selling themselves much winning a lost world to Christ, one of those conferences in which they had brought a man from afar-a distinguished theologian from Continental Europe and from Scotland. A great religious figure and leader in that conference, sat his manuscript before him and turned page after page after page as he discussed theology in terms of scholasticism, learning, intellectual ramification. Why, a man could listen to it five hundred thousand years and never get any of the impression of the Christian faith other than the fact that it is a matter of philosophical discussion. You think this, and he thinks that, and they think that, and I conclude this. Or another one. An illustrious college president at a conference where men were supposed to be said, “in order to win a lost world to Jesus, stand up there and if I could give a title to his message it would be this, the social implication-“The Social Implication of the Conflicting Cultures of the East and the West." Tell me, who is the history? What Albert Schweitzer is to the missionary is in Africa; and what Einstein is to the realm of mathematics and physics; Toynbee, a leader in the intellectual world of history, Toynbee is now writing a volume entitled, The Post-Christian Era of Civilization. And sometimes I think he is right; he is right. Whatever the thing is that these people had in the days of the Apostle Paul, where would you find it today? Where? Where? Augustine dreamed that he went to heaven and the gatekeeper at glory stopped him and said, "Who are you?" And Augustine replied, "“Christionous egostule.”-“I am Christian.” And the gatekeeper looked into the face of Augustine and said, "Sir, you are no Christian. You are a Ciceronian. When you stand up, you have all of that classic learning and you speak in classic illusions and you study classic style and you swore it for oratorical perorations. And in glory we judge men by what they think and what they do. Not by what they say they are. You are not a Christian. You are a Ciceronian." And when Augustine awaked out of his sleep, he set himself to the studying of the teaching of the Lord Jesus and to the preaching of the gospel of the Son of God. You look at this thing that Paul did: "by the space of three years, I ceased not to warn every one, night and day with tears" [Acts 20:31]. Warn every one night and day with tears. There is a judgment coming. There is a great God to face and what shall we do in that final day and that final hour? To warn every one night and day with tears. There is no metaphysic in that. There is no philosophical discussion in that. There is no theological hair-splitting in that. There is no learned manuscript reading in that. Man, we are a dying people. And we must face God Who is the hope to deliver us. That was the conviction of the Apostle Paul. Where is that conviction today?-lost without Christ. Over here in this country, you will have a presentation of a big public meeting, the Jew, the Catholic and the Protestant. That is here in Dallas and in America. In Japan, you will have the Shinto, the Buddhist, the Jew, the Protestant and the Catholic. In Hindu-India, you will have the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, the Protestant and the Catholic. In China, you will have the Confucianist, the Jew, the Protestant, the Buddhist, and the Catholic. It just depends on what group they are. And the presupposition in back of all of that is an eclectic outlook on religion that draws to light all [are] just the same. And what we need to do is take the good out of each one and develop it according to each one’s tendencies or attitudes or personality or character. It is the same thing as when I pick up a book of religion and it is entitled, The Great Religions of the World. And here is the picture of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Mahavera, Lastsay,[**] Zoroaster. And Jesus is just one out of all of those leaders of great religions, just one. And the Christian faith is just one of the many faiths of the world. And all of them just about as good as the other. Develop the best in each one and let each group takes its choice according to his own personality. Oh, my soul, my soul, whenever a religion gets down to a place where it is optional-you can or cannot, it is up to you-when it comes to that place, it is a matter of cultural development. Let us take the best and deliver it to the people enhanced and envalued with all of the other good things of other eclectic faiths. When we do that, it loses what the New Testament has-that earnest, desperate conviction that unless we give our hearts to Christ we are lost; we are lost. "There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved" [Acts 4:12]. If a man is in Christ, he is saved. If he is out of Christ, he is lost. He is lost. The religion of the New Testament is that kind of oracle. It is one or the other. We are saved or we are lost in Christ. In Christ. And that brings us to that second thing that Paul had-his compassion, his compassion, his weeping, his crying, his lamenting over people who turned down the gospel of the Son of God. If religion is a matter of culture, of eclecticism, who would cry whether anybody turned it down or not? Who is going to weep over a man’s philosophy, whether you believe it or not? Who is going to lament over the Socratic method, whether you accept it or not? Or Plato’s idea of the "idea" of the might whether you believe it or not? Who is going to cry and lament over that? But if this thing of being saved is a matter of life and death, of heaven and hell; if you believed it, who could help but lament and weep when men turn aside from the blessed invitation and the atoning blood of the Son of God? His compassion was wrapped up in his conviction that men were lost without the Lord Jesus. The preacher said to me over there, he said, "I want you to sit down there." So I sat down. He said, "I want you to look at this." And he stuck in my hand a little piece of paper and I sat down and read the thing. This is what it is. And I have an announcement to make this morning, it is something we are going to do. I haven’t got over reading that little piece of paper this hour. We are going to change something around our church. Why are going to do something. We are going to start out on something by the grace of God and His help, we are going to do it. We are going to do it. This is on a little piece of paper. It was a noon hour of a group of working men. And they were eating lunch. A bunch of working men, laboring men; they were eating lunch together and just talking. Finally, it got around to religion, and one of the men said, "I will tell you why I am not a member of the church. And I am not a Christian. I will tell exactly why-because they are all insincere, every one of them. There is not a one of them that believes what he says. Not a one of them." Most of the men were not Christians. But there was in the group a very devout, humble man of God, a devout Christian. And so he challenged him. He said, "Why that is not so. That is not right. You say that all of these people in the church are insincere and they do not believe what they say. That is not so." He says, "There may be some who are insincere, but the great hosts of the people are most sincere." “Well,” said the man, "you are a Christian, aren’t you?" “Yes," humbly he said, "I am." "And you are a member of the church?" "Yes." "You believe when you die you are going to heaven?" He said, humbly, "Yes. I have trusted the Lord Jesus Christ and I have the promise that if I trust in the Lord, He will see me through and He will take me to heaven." Well, he said, "You also believe that the rest of us who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are going to hell. You believe that?" He said, "I am sad to say it, but according to the Word, those who refuse the Son of God are going to hell. That is right. They are going to hell." "All right," he said, "we are going to hell around here. We are going to hell. We are going to spend eternity in fire and in brimstone and its fires and its flames. We are going to hell around here." "Yes," said the man, sadly, humbly, "I have to say yes." "All right," he said, "you have been working by our side twenty years. We have been down here working together for twenty years. You think we are going to hell and spend eternity in fire. Now, I want to ask you, In that twenty years, how many nights have you prayed that we might be saved from the fires of an eternal dam nation? How many nights have you prayed for us that we might be saved? Seven nights? Have you prayed seven nights?" The man said, "No, no, I haven’t." "Have you prayed six nights?" "No," he said. "Have you prayed three nights?" "No," he said. "Have you prayed one night? Have you spent one night in twenty years that we might be saved, have you?" He said, "No, no, I haven’t." "Well," said the man, "have you spent half a night, one-half of a night?" He bowed his head and said, "No. No, I haven’t." "Well, let me ask you one other question. Did you ever spend one hour-did you ever spend one hour for all of us, your friends who work with you twenty years, have you ever spend one hour that we might be saved?" He bowed his head and said, "I am ashamed to confess, I have never spent one hour pleading that you might be saved." Then the man replied, "Isn’t that I said? You are insincere and you do not believe what you say. You think we are lost and damned and going to hell and yet in twenty years, you’ have never got on your knees and spent one hour that we might be saved." Well, that has a turn to it that I had missed. It isn’t very good. It isn’t very-an accurate gauge of the sincerity of Christian devotion of a man. But I tell you, it did something to me. It did something to me. And here is what we’re going to do around at the First Baptist Church. Beginning next Sunday morning. Beginning next Sunday morning, I am going to call out thirty minute periods-thirty minute periods, and I am going do ask your people to take them. And we are going to start on Saturday. We are going to start in the daytime at first. And over there in that chapel, there is going to be a light on-there is going to be a light on. And there is going to be a rug down there at the front. And there is going to be somebody down there on his knees-on his knees before an open Bible, praying God that the Lord will help us in this church to win the lost to the Lord Jesus. We are going to pray. We are going to pray. There will be somebody down there on his knees all day long in thirty-minute periods before the open Bible, praying to God. And during the day, all of us who will-all of us who will, let us turn aside, go into that chapel, sit down and pray, quietly, earnestly and asking God, asking God in compassion, in mercy to save your lost. I think we ought to do that, or we ought to stand up in this church and admit and say-and I want to do it myself-and say, we think this matter of religion is optional. Whether a man is saved or not, it is no different. Whether he has accepted Christ or not is just a matter of personal choice. But if we believe this thing that outside of Christ, our people are lost-they are lost, they are lost; then we ought to get on your knees and take time and ask God, "O Lord in power and in wisdom and in love and in mercy, help us to reach the lost for the Lord Jesus." Now, my last word-this personal accountability. We are going off of the air, but to you who are here in this auditorium- A man came to me and shook my hand over there in South Carolina. He shook my hand. And he said, "Preacher, I went to your church there. I went to your church in Dallas." He said, "You know what impressed me about that church?" He said, "I had seen a church that big before. I had not seen a crowd like that going to God’s house. I have seen that before. It wasn’t it." He said, "Your choir sang gloriously. But that wasn’t it." He said, "You preached, but that wasn’t it." He said, "You know what impressed me in your church?" He said, "Evidently some time before, you turned to a man and said to that man, I am asking you to be responsible for the boy that belongs to a family down there at the front." And he said, "Down the aisle, that day, there came that man, bringing that boy and saying to me, `Pastor, you said to me, I should be accountability for this boy, here he is. Here he is, giving his heart to Christ. Won him to the Lord.’" Bob, wasn’t it the last Sunday night I preached here. A young man came down the aisle that morning and gave his heart to the Lord? And said to me, "Would to God, would to God my family would become Christians. Would to God they might be saved." And I turned to the people and said that we could win this family to God. That was at the morning hour. And at the evening hour, you came down the aisle with that family saying, "Preacher, the boy this morning, here is his dad and here is his mother. Here they are. Here they are. Here they are." He had gone out in the afternoon and had won them to Christ. "Here they are, Pastor. Here they are.” Here they are-a personal accountability. Dear people, I do not know how to put it on my own soul, much less do I know how to put it on your heart. But I do know, I do know that the religion of that Book and the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ is something that you get on your soul. It is a burden on your heart, "warning, day and night with tears" that they might be saved. My prayer and hope to God for my people is that they might be saved; that they might be saved. Dedicated in all of the energy of our life; dedicated to a tremendous soul-winning ministry. That is all. That is the faith. That is the Book. That is His church today. So lead us and help us, Spirit of the living God. Now, we may stand. And while we sing our song.... ======================================================================== CHAPTER 49: S. THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS ======================================================================== THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 8:2-9 10-10-54 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. We welcome to our congregation this morning more visitors than I’ve seen in a long while. You’ve come to Dallas to the Fair, for the merchandising marts, for business, for football, for fun and a host of you today, for the worship of God. And in this beloved church, a tremendous part of that dedicated worship is the innovation of our souls to its highest spiritual usefulness, the attendance upon the preaching of the word of God. The flower fadeth, the grass withereth, but the word of God abides forever. In this pulpit ministry, Sunday by Sunday, every Lord’s day morning, again in the Lord’s day evening, we are preaching through the Bible, where we left the service before, we pick up the service at present and carry it through. Our message today is in Rom 8:1-39. And in your Bibles turn to it. The message is found in Rom 2:1-29 -- in Rom 8:2 and Rom 8:9. And the title of the message is THE SPIRIT OF LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS. I read in Rom 8:1-39. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Now, Rom 8:9 : “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now, if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be not in you, the body is dead. The Spirit of life is a spirit of righteousness. And if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. If you live after the flesh, ye shall do I: But if through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.” The children of God. All of which is an elaboration of my text and my subject: THE SPIRIT OF LIFE WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS. From a boy, from a youth, all of us have been taught one of the great chapters of the Bible is Rom 8:1-39. Rom 7:1-25 ends in defeat. “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” There is a spirit in human hearts, the spirit of carnality. The spirit of sin. The spirit of defeat. And no man is able triumphantly and successfully to war against it. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver May from the body of this death? How can any man ever be saved? How could he? How can he? The answer is found in Rom 8:1-39. Paul said: There is a liberation, there is a deliverance, there is a salvation. And it is found not in the keeping of the law, not in morality, not in epicure philosophies. Not in regenerations of a man’s own ableness. Not in the power boy which he can refashion his life. But it is found, Paul says, in the gift of a new heart, of a new spirit, of a new inner dedication, a new inner motive. A new inner motive. The triumph is found, Paul says in the new spirit. We who are in Christ, are children of a different order and do follow and are dedicated to a different spirit. When Jesus was with his disciples going through Samaria, he set his face as though he would go to Jerusalem, which is an insult to any good Samaritan, and they didn’t receive him. So James and John came to the Lord Jesus and said: “Master, shall we bid fire down from God out of heaven like Elijah did and burn them up?” And Jesus said: “Nay, not so. Not so. For ye know not what spirit ye are of. And the son of man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save men’s lives. Ye know not what spirit ye are of.” You are of a different spirit. Ye are of a different kind. Ye are of a different order. And the difference lies in the spirit. The great thesis of Paul in Rom 8:1-39 is that. The difference in men. The difference in the Christian lies in his heart. It lies in his spirit. Now, could I digress to say for this moment that the difference in any man lies in his spirit. All the rest is peripheral. All the rest is external. All of the rest is on the outside. It is just incidental. It is not essential. It is not dynamic. The difference in men is difference in spirit. It is the spirit that makes the difference. A man can -- a man can live heroically and have a tremendous spirit. And be in a cage or a dudgeon or a cell. And a man can be a slave and live in a palace. The difference lies in the spirit. All else is transitory and temporal. The eternal lies in the spirit. I could keep on digressing for a moment, could I say that Napoleon was not an immense hurt to France. He did many noble things. He could have defied the laws of France. One of the great works of all time. He did many noble deeds. He said many great things. He was a genius beyond compare. Never has been in the history of the world a man of the dramatic ingenuity and battle strategy -- in battle strategy of Napoleon Bonaparte. But the man has to be judged by his spirit. And what kind of a spirit did Napoleon have? He was selfish and ambitious and grasping. Typical of him. Before the battle of Lotstead, his generals came to him and said: “Sir, if we fight this battle, we shall lose one million men.” And Napoleon answered incontumally: “What is the loss of a million men if my ambition to rule the world can be achieved?” He was inordinately selfish and ambitious. And if spirit makes the man, he is judged by his spirit. In contrast could I take the honored father of our native land, George Washington. In no way spectacular and dramatic and ingenuous and able as Napoleon Bonaparte. But he was wonderfully humble and his heart was filled with goodness for his people and toward his country. When an Englishman came across the sea to visit the continental Congress, he asked one of the men, “Which one is General Washington?” And the man replied, “When Congress goes to prayer, the man who kneels will be General Washington.” And the judge the man by his spirit. In back of all of these concordances and treaties, the United Nations assemblies and all of the things whereby on the international scene we are trying to achieve a lasting and orderly peace, it is as nothing, it is less than nothing unless there lies back of a nation to enter in those contract a worthy and a glorious spirit. It is the spirit that makes the man. Now, may I return to my text? Christ says: Our deliverance and our salvation lies in the new spirit; the new heart; the new regenerated soul; the new motive that is found. A gift from heaven on the inside of the child of God. “For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of his. It is on the inside. It is in the heart. It is in the spirit. The Spirit of Christ, and you’ll find it here as I open my Bible and look at it. The Spirit is capitalized. The law of the Spirit -- capital S -- of life in Christ Jesus. If any man hath not the Spirit -- Capital S -- the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Now, I am not able to enter into the mystery of the divine and holy and adorable Trinity. But the third person of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is God in us and God among us. God working. God moving. God doing. God manifest. The Spirit of God, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the Spirit of Jesus. Our holy savior was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Through the yielded life of a maiden girl, born, conceived of the Holy Spirit. His life was God because of his conception by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord was baptized, set aside, dedicated, his messianic ministry, through the Holy Spirit. Our Lord was filled with the Holy Spirit. Our Lord was led by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord died and was raised again by the power of the Holy Spirit. Apart from the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus himself was not able to do his mighty works. He was not able to speak the revelation of God. The yielded life of Christ in the hands of the Spirit of God achieved that holiness and that blessedness that we read and love and adore and trust in the Lord Jesus. Now, it is that Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that is to be our faith and our strength. Our inner motive. God dwelling inside. Be ye filled with the Spirit. Our whole life permeated with the Spirit of God. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus gives us a triumph and the victory, the dedicated purpose, the holy commitment that makes one the child of God. Now, the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus manifested itself in so many places, wonderful, excellent, beautiful ways. When I think of the spirit of our master, I think of holiness and reverence and goodness and enthusiasm and joy and victory and faith and assurance and triumph and obedience and dedication and compassion. All kinds of things comes to my soul as I think of the spirit of God manifesting itself in the life and in the ministry of our Lord Jesus. I thought this morning in the time that I had, I might take two or three and spoke of them. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. All right, the first one. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If a man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, the first one, it is the spirit of a great assurance and an illimitable trust in God our father. The reality and the presence and the ableness of God practicing the presence of God, living in the reality of God. Now, by that I mean this: When the Lord Jesus drew aside and knelt down to pray, he felt -- it was the Spirit of Christ. He felt, he was talking to somebody who heard. Now, if I stood by his side and I wouldn’t see anybody. I wouldn’t see anything. It would be just be as when you kneel in your bedroom by the side of your sleeping cot, by the side of your soft bed. You kneel down and there is nobody there. There is nobody you can see and nobody around. And a heathen and a pagan and an unbeliever could come and watch you and wonder just what are you doing? The Spirit of Christ was more of an illimitable trust in God. And when he knelt and when he spake, he was filled with the assurance that there was somebody who bowed down his ear to listen and to hear. And when the Lord stepped out on the waters, he had the perfect assurance there was somebody who was to sustain him and hold him up. And when he took bread to bless it and to drink it and to feed the five thousand, he did it in the perfect assurance that as he did it, God would multiply the loaves as he fed the fish -- as he fed the vast number of people. And when our Lord went about all of his ministry, he had the perfect assurance that when he spake, it would be done. When he spoke, and the dead were raised. When he touched the leper and the leper was cleansed. When he touched the eye of the blind and the blind could see. He did that in perfect assurance and in trust that God would see it through. And when the Lord died, he yielded up his Spirit. He gave it to God in the perfect assurance that in his death, God would take care of his Spirit and would raise him again according to his word the third day. He lived his life in absolute assurance, in complete trust in the reality and in the saving power and presence of his Father God. And that is the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If a man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. We are to be filled with the Spirit of persuasion, of assurance, of faith, of commitment, and the reality, the truth, the ableness of Almighty God our Father. When we kneel to pray, he’s there listening. When we seek to do our work in his name, he is there helping by our side. When we face the insoluble and the mystery that surrounds all of our life, somehow he understands and he will see us through. About your child, what will become of your child? You read the paper and you think about the things that go on in the world. And your child grows up. And how do you know? You don’t know? But you can trust God. Live in perfect assurance in God. And what of all of the sorrows and heartaches and pitfalls of our lives? What of them and what meaning do they have? Don’t understand. Don’t know. Can’t explain. Don’t have to. Just leaving it to him. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It is a Spirit of an absolute and utter dependence upon God. It is in his hand. It is in his care and that is enough. We live our life, in his will, trusting him. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, depending upon God. Now, I say the second one. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. The Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of an absolute and complete obedience to the father. In Rom 15:1-33, Paul speaks of Christ our example as not pleasing himself. He pleased not himself. In Heb 5:1-14, the author of Hebrews spoke of our Lord Jesus as this: “Though his son, though his son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” Our Lord Jesus in the gospel of Luke, as a youth, as a boy, our Lord Jesus, the Bible says went down to Nazareth and was subject unto his parents. That is, when his mother told him this, he did it. When his stepfather told him that, he did it. He was obedient to his parents. His life was committed to their care. And as they guided, so he walked. And as they spake and directed, so he did. He was subject to his parents all of the days of his youth. He was the only child who ever knew more than his parents. But he was subject to his parents. And when he became of age, and entered his messianic ministry, our savior again was subject to somebody else. As your savior, he was subject to God. No will of his own. But doing the will of God. He pleased not himself and he learned obedience by the things which he suffered. That is, what God called him to do was the thing he didn’t want to do. I don’t suppose any man on -- and Jesus was a man on -- I don’t suppose any man would rejoice in being cast out. In being repudiated by his people. In being buffered and slapped and spit upon. In being crowned with thorns and mocked and ridiculed and the crowd hailed: King of the Jews. With a regal scepter in his hand, I don’t suppose any man would look with anticipation upon a death by execution, by a crucifixion. He learned obedience by the things which he suffered. He was under authority. His will, somebody else’s. Not my will, but thine be done. The Spirit in Christ Jesus. So with the Christian. So with us. Obedience, doing the will of the Father. It is a path. It is a suffering. It is a commitment. But no man ever followed Christ except in those holy and terrible and awful and -- and tremendously costly words of our savior when he said: “Except a man deny himself and take up his cross and follow me, he cannot be my disciple. For if a man would save his life, he must lose it.” If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. Not our will, but God’s. Not what pleases me, but what pleases him. His will be done. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And may I take one more? The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. I turn now from the inward heart, our own souls stand naked before God. Praying, yielded, obedient, looking upon the face of God, speaking his favor and his will and his pleasure. I turn now to the Spirit of Christ as it is manifested in what you’ll see in us. What you’re able to observe. What you’re able to know. What you’re able to follow. As a man lives his life, the Spirit of Christ, it is always one of compassion. Of sympathy. Of understanding. Of goodness. Of yielded ministry. The Spirit of Christ Jesus. If you ever think, the most beautiful parable the Lord ever spoke of those parables of compassion, as he came down the road, the Lord said: A traveler, thieves set upon him, took everything that he had. Beat him and left him by the roadside to die. And then he told the story of the good Samaritan. That’s the Lord. Again, the Father who had two sons. And the younger was prodigal and left his father and wasted his substance in hilarious and drunken and riotous living. And coming to himself turned his face back home. And you have the parable of the compassionate father receiving once again his prodigal boy. There are not stories in all literature, in Greek, in Latin, in English, there is not story in language that the beautiful stories of the Lord Jesus, speaking of the compassionate heart. The beautiful Spirit of our Lord as it manifested itself in the work of his hand was one of compassion. A blind man moved him. The blind man, it had a reverberation, it had a repercussion in his heart. It was like pulling a string on the piano. It would vibrate. And when the Lord looked at a blind man, something on the inside of him vibrated. And when the Lord looked at a leper, going down the road with his hand over his mouth crying unclean, unclean, unclean. That one on the way, he was there stepped out on the road and in the way not to let him pass. And the Lord saw an unclean leper shouting that awful word as he walked down the street or down the road, it did something in his heart. There was a vibration, he felt it. When the Lord saw people weeping and crying, there was a strange thing about the Lord. When the Lord saw people crying, he cried with them. Jesus at the tomb seeing Mary and Martha weeping, he shed tears himself. And he knew what he was going to do. Did he cry because there was no victory? There was no triumph? Well, he had triumph in his hand. He had victory in his soul. It was a human manifestation of the human heart of Jesus. Just to see people cry, made him cry. The compassionate heart of the Lord Jesus. His great deeds of ministry were deeds of compassion. I don’t think there’s a sweeter verse in the Bible than in the 9th Chapter of the book of Matthew when Matthew described his Lord and said: And the Lord healed all of their diseases and all who were brought to from early in the morning unto late at night. All who were brought to him healed him every one, that it might be fulfilled the word which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet saying -- listen to it -- himself took our diseases and bare our infirmities. That is, it had a repercussion in himself. When somebody cried, he cried. When somebody was hurt, he was hurt. When somebody was downcast and troubled, he was downcast and troubled. When they were in the valley, he was in the valley with them. And that is preeminently the new Spirit of the Christian. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. I want to say a word this morning in defense of something you say now we ought to take him out in hang him. We just ought to do it. There is no man in America that ought to stand up and say what that preacher said. You ought to shoot him as a traitor. All right. It is the truth and you ought to know it. I’m going to say a word this morning in defense of socialism and communism. Socialism and communism is a Christian heresy. Don’t you ever sit down with yourself and don’t you ever ask yourself what is this thing? Here is a brilliant man. An intellectual, a professor and a great university. And he’s a communist. Don’t you ever ask yourself why? You read the paper and you say: Why he’s crazy. He’s inane, He’s insane. He’s dumb. You’re the one that is inane and dumb. Why don’t you find out why that intellectual -- and he may be a preacher. He may be the pastor of a wonderful church. He may be the head of a great denominational organization and he’s a socialist. Or he’s half-communist. Why don’t you ever ask yourself why? Another thing. Why do you suppose that there are people in this world by the millions who will don a uniform and will take up a gun and will fanatically lay down their lives against you and against anybody? For socialism and for communism. Oh, you say, they have all been fed opium. They are all drunk. That’s what our paper might say. But that’s not so. There are men who lie back of those moving, marching millions who are dedicated men. They are committed to a tremendous thing. What is that tremendous thing? Now, I’m going to show you. We had one here in America. Stuck him in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia and he died not long after he was liberated. He was a socialist. And rabid and a fanatical socialist. Did you ever hear -- because he died in your lifetime -- did you ever hear of Eugene B. Debs? All right. They stuck him in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia. He was leader of the famous Pullman Stripes. He was a pacifist. He was against war. They put him in the penitentiary. In that penitentiary, the life of the prisoners were changed. And the warden went up to Sam Moore and said to Sam Moore, an embittered man facing a life sentence, “What changed your life?” And that embittered, hardened criminal replied, “Gene Debs, he was the only Christ I ever knew.” In the Atlanta penitentiary, he drew up his creed. And I read it to you: While there is a lower class. I am in it. While there is a criminal element. I am of it. While there is a soul in prison, I am not free. How do they fool the people of Indonesia? How do they fool the people of India? How do they fool the people of China? How do they fool the people of Indochina? How do they capture some of the intellectuals of the world? How do they pull into their orbit? Some of our very preachers, I’ll tell you how and why. They are committed, some of them, the leaders. The men who wrote the philosophy, not the political battle men, but the men who writes the books and the men will achieve the philosophy, they are committed to a tremendous humanitarian ministry. And they never tell their dupes about their police state. They never tell their dupes of the awful concentration camps and the trips to Siberia. And the terrible tyranny of an awful dictatorship. The intellectual says all of that is a passing thing. And pretty soon you’ll have nothing but peace and goodness back again. I told you it is a Christian heresy. Who are the people who ought to be saying: For while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Who are the people who ought to be saying: As long as there is a poor man, starving and in need, in the city, I’m with him? Who is it ought to be saying that? You say a communist. You say the socialist. No. I say the child of God. The Christians who follow the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought to be saying those words. We ought to be counting -- have prayer for the uncounted masses of the poor and outcast in India. We ought to be ministry in the foreground to the great subjects of people of the world. It ought to be the ministry of Christ. Instead of that we have gone -- I don’t know what. And so the socialist and the communist sets in and he says: I am your hero. I am your champion. I am your savior. I am your liberator. And he’s a liar. He leads his people into death. And into tyranny and into dictatorship and totalitarianism and to destruction. He leads them into hell. He does. But the Christian who has the word of life, and ought to have the Spirit of Christ, he’s doing something else. Oh, Lord, oh, Lord. May the Lord forgive us as he forgave us of our sins. May the Lord help us as a people to champion the lost of the world. To pull our lives into the ministry of Christ. It is the as long as the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ. If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his. The Spirit of compassion. It is a care to us whether the people are saved or lost. It is a burden to our hearts whether the people know God or not. It is a care to us whether the orphan has a home or not. Whether a man has a job or not. Whether the poor or fed or not. Whether the nations of the world are oppressed or not. It is a care to us and the Spirit of Christ is one of compassion. Of care. It matters. It matters. We are sensitive to it. And we offer Christ and him in life and help. That’s what it is to have the Spirit of Christ in your soul. Now, I’ve got to quit. We’ll sing our song. On the first stanza, on the first word, on the first note, would you step into that aisle and down here to the front and by my side? Pastor, today, the best I know how, I give my life to the Lord Jesus. I give it to him. I give it to him. I trust in him. I want to put my life in the fellowship of this precious and blessed church. While we make appeal, would you come. In that topmost balcony chair to the back seat, somebody, you, anywhere, anywhere? On the first note of the first stanza, would you come? Would you come? Pastor, here’s my hand. I have given my heart and my life to God. And while we sing this song, would you make it now? Would you make it now? While we stand and while we sing? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 50: S. THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT ======================================================================== THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT Dr. W. A. Criswell Rom 8:14 10-17-54 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. And this is the pastor bringing the morning message from the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans. From the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans. In our preaching through the Word, for the last several Sundays now, we have been in this eighth chapter of Romans. One of the great chapters of the Bible and one of the great revelations of God. The title of the message this morning is: The Witness of the Spirit. And the reading from the text is in Rom 8:14-17; Rom 8:26-27. Rom 8:14 : For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the children of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage or of fear, but ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry: Abba (the Hebrew word for father). The “Spirit itself” you have in your King James Version-In the Greek, the word for spirit is neuter gender. So many languages do not have gender like we have in English. To us, a thing is masculine in gender if it is masculine. It is feminine gender if it is feminine. It is neuter gender if it is neuter. That’s the English language. But in many, many other languages, they have grammatical gender, not actual sexual gender. So in the Greek, the spirit, the word for spirit, “pneuma” is neuter. It is neuter gender. Now in translating the Bible, they translated the word grammatically correct. They were trying to do exactly like it said in the original. So you have it translated here, the “Spirit itself,” that is an exact grammatical translation. But it ought to be, if you translated in your English language, it ought to be masculine: “The Spirit Himself.” You ought never-we ought never, ever to refer to the Holy Spirit of God as an it, it. The Spirit of God is a personality. He is a member of the Godhead. He is one of the Trinity. So in your King James Version, when you read that, the “Spirit itself,” remember that is a grammatical translation. But we ought to read it as “the Spirit Himself.” So we’ll do it from now on. The Spirit Himself, beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. (Now, the twenty-sixth verse.) Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself-(Once again - pneuma auto)-the Spirit Himself, maketh intercession for us with groanings (sighs, yearnings) which cannot be said in our language (which cannot be uttered). And he that searcheth the heart knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit-(not that we could or can or do)-but the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints, according to the will of God. Now, the message is entitled: The Witness of the Spirit. And in this passage we have read, there are two. There is the witness of the Spirit within us, to us. There is the witness of the Spirit before God-Intercessor, interceding, intercessory supplication before God. Those are the two parts of the sermon. The witness of the Spirit to us in our hearts and the witness of the Spirit intercessorially in heaven before God. The witness of the Spirit within us is the witness that we are the children of God. Rom 8:16 : The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. (And in the verse above.) We have not received again the spirit of bondage to fear. Could I illustrate that? In the day that Paul lived that was far more regnant than it is today. To illustrate by scene that a world traveler would find today. The little country of Siam is one of the most interesting and unusual little nations of the world. And for many, many years, not because it is regnant dynamic today, religion over there is just nominal. But for many, many years, they lived in a Buddhist spirit world. And the spirits were everywhere. That’s the reason that in their rooftops when they build a roof, they will come down with the gable and out with the eaves. Go out like that. There was filled with spirits. And when the spirits hit a house, why, they soaked the roofs out like that at the end of it. Give it a little sweep like a chicken tail, lift it out like that, because a spirit always follows a straight line. So if you didn’t have that sweeping out, why the spirit would hit the roof and down right down there by the side of the house and come in the door. So they turn up the edge of the roof like that so when the spirit hit the house, they’re turned up and shoot out into the space and the firmament beyond and so don’t bother the house. Now, when you go to a temple in Siam, they are the most unusually colored and the most unusually made in architecture. They sometimes-in those porcelains, by which they made them-sometimes they’re breath-taking. And you look at it and you say: “Truly this is the product and the ingenious workmanship of one of the most unusual peoples in all of this world.” It will amaze you. There is nothing like it in the earth. But you go up there to that temple and stand in that temple court, and look around you and again, I say, you will be amazed. Because the gods that are there in bronze and in brass and in porcelain and in marble, those gods are the most fierce looking creatures that you ever saw. They look like they come out of the pit of the dark, out of the night of hell. And the whole religion is framed together and posited on the basis of an everlasting, unendurable fear-afraid of everything-afraid of the sun by day and of the moon by night. And afraid of the spirits that crowd and press from every hand. And that is typical of all heathen and all pagan religions. They live in cringing, mortal fear before everything. And their whole religion is one of placating the spirits. Now, to the child of God: Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption. The children of the Almighty and enlightened God of light and life whereby we cry: Abba (Father)… For the Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. Now, the witness of the Spirit is to the greatest conception and persuasion that a mortal man could ever have. When the seventy came back to the Lord Jesus, the Bible says: “And they came back rejoicing; saying to the Lord: Why even the devils are subject unto us.” They could do miracles. They could speak and it was done. They could put their hands on the sick and they were healed. The miraculous power of God was in their very fingertips. And they were rejoicing over such miraculous presence. And do you remember what the Lord Jesus said? The Lord Jesus said: In this rejoice not that miracles and power is in your very fingertips. In that rejoice not. But rather rejoice that your names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Rejoice that you are a child of God. Rejoice rather that you are saved. That some of these days, we’ll see God’s face when we die. That we will live forever. In that rejoice that your names are written in heaven. Now, if I could take the opposite of that. If the cause, the real cause, the only basic cause for a man’s rejoicing is that he is saved, that he is a Christian, that his name is in God’s book in heaven, then the opposite of that is true. A cause for infinite and indescribable sadness is this: That a man doesn’t know whether or not he’s saved. Whether or not he’s a Christian. “Are you saved? Are you a Christian? Are you born again?” “Well, Pastor, I hope so. I think so. I want to be.” Then sometimes a man will answer the pastor like this: “Well, Pastor, I go to church or I was baptized or I go to confession or I try to pay my debts or I try to live right or I try to give to the poor.” I was seated in an airplane that was filled and just had one seat remaining. And I sat down by a fine-looking man. He was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And as we were going through the air, he pulled out a little book and was reading it. It was about the first time I had seen a man on an airliner read a little book like that. I looked at it and followed the pages as he turned it. The book was entitled: How To Become A Christian. As we rode along, I finally summoned temerity to put my hand on his arm and say: “Sir, I am very interested in the book you’re reading.” He looked at me and said: “You are?” I said: “Yes. I see the title is How To Become A Christian.” I asked him: “Are you a Christian?” And his answer was this, he said: “Sir, I was made a member of the church-a formal ritualistic church. I was made a member of the church when I was a baby. A very small child, I was christened, I was baptized.” But he said: “In these years since, I’m afraid I haven’t done much about it, and we live in a community and we go to the church in our community. My family and I.” But he said, “Whether I’m a Christian or not, I don’t know. And one of my friends gave me this little book.” Well, I got to talking to him and he gave me that little book. He said: “My friend will give me another when I go home.” And he gave me that little book. And I took it home and read it myself. I thought as I sat by that man and talked to him, isn’t it a shame-isn’t it a shame, that so much of Christendom, and that includes all of us. I don’t look askance at them and not as us that so much of Christendom comes into the faith, into the fellowship, into the communion of the church and they come nominally. They do not come experientially. They do not come dynamically. They do not come with a vast and an infinite and an unspeakable and an indescribable assurance. But they live in a spiritual limbo: “I hope so.” I would like to think so.” “I should be.” But all these things are not enough. They don’t suffice. For a man to build his hope and to build his salvation on maybe a habit of going to church or upon something that happened when he was an unconscious infant, or upon some measure of morality for which he may give his life today, these things do not suffice. Our salvation, our assurance must rest upon something far more primary and fundamental and unsinkable and enduring than these things that a man might inhabit or having one time might have done. Now, this thing of being a child of God, how do I know? How shall I find? How shall I learn? With what assurance can I see? Such an all-important question is that. All right, let’s look at it. Who calls me a Christian? Who calls you a Christian? Well, the pastor says I’m a Christian-That’s all right. Or the deacon says I’m a Christian-That’s fine. My neighbor says I’m a Christian-That’s good. My business associates say that I am a child of God-That’s good. My whole neighborhood speaks well of me-That’s fine. I do not minimize any of these testimonies. But tell me you men who are lawyers, isn’t it true that in a court of law it is not so much what a man says, but it is who is saying it that bears weight in any court. A dozen rascals could swear to a lie. That doesn’t prove the truth. The man’s character and who he is, he is the one whose testimony bears tremendous and everlasting weight. Now, for the pastor to say I’m a Christian or the Sunday School Superintendent or the teachers or the neighbor or the family or the business associate-that’s good. But our great and primary witness must always be the collaboration of God Himself. In your heart, in your deepest soul, what does God say to you? “The Spirit Himself, God in us, the Spirit Himself beareth witness to our spirit.” With our spirit, deep in our souls, that we are the children of God. That we belong to Him. That we are saved. That we are Christians. “Whereby, we cry: Abba, Father.” Now, a word about that child and father God relationship. You are not a child of God by virtue of your physical and fleshly birth. You are not born into this world a child of God. Paul write-and we have been preaching on that for Sundays now; especially these Sunday evenings-Paul writes-(and if we accept the Word of God this is inescapable.)-Paul writes that by nature, by physical birth, we are the children of wrath. We are the children of judgment. By nature, we are not children of God. Well, what about that next phrase: The fatherhood of God and the fatherhood of man. In no sense is that a thing regarding spiritual things. We are the children of God by birth in the sense that a bug is. In a sense that an insect is. In a sense that a star is. In the sense that an ocean and a continent are. We are creatures of God, all of us in the sense that God somehow made us and created us. The bugs and the bees and the insects and the germs and the stars and the planets and the supernal spheres throughout the universe, in that sense, we are all the creatures of God. But in no sense is a man a child of God, a son of God until he is born of the Spirit, until he is born again. Until, as Paul uses the word here: He is adopted into the family of the Almighty. We are children of God by the re-birth-by being born again. One time born is not enough. A man to be a child of God, must be twice born-two times born-born of the Spirit. And when a man is born of the Spirit, he has the witness of God in himself: It is the Spirit-(and this is your scripture reading this morning we shared together-)It is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is true. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. A child of God has God in him. Has the Spirit of the Lord in him. And the Spirit of the Lord witnesses on the inside, to that man that you are God’s son. “You are God’s child:” He whispers that in your soul. Now, I do not think that any man of God ever fails to have that assurance. The witness of the Spirit on the inside of his heart: “You’re a child of God. You belong to God.” In Powhatan James’ biography of George W. Truett, the only place I have ever seen printed the story of the deep, intimate sorrow that came to the great pastor of this church. In a hunting trip, due to an accident by his own hand, the pastor killed a man. Because of the accident, the man’s life was taken away. The man died from the hurt and injury of that accident. And he was a wonderful, fine man; the Chief of Police I think in this city. And it plunged the great man into an inexpressible sorrow, into the depths of despair that only a sensitive spirit like his could ever know. And the people began to wonder: “Will he preach again? Will he stand in this pulpit again? Will he come back to this church again?” And in that biography by Dr. James, that intimate story is related. In the depths of his despair and in the night of his impenitent sorrow, there appeared to him in a vision the Lord Jesus Christ saying: “Do not be afraid. From now on, you are my man.” And the pastor rose to face the task of a world-wide ministry that increased in unbelievable power. And he never wavered. He never fell away from that tremendous assurance of the witness of God: “Do not be afraid, from now on, you are my man.” In the Boston Common, there is a statue of a great preacher named Phillip Brooks. And the marvelous thing about that statue is this: That the sculptor cast back of that wonderful preacher the likeness of Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus has His hand on Phillip Brooks’ shoulder. And the preacher stands there as the emissary and the ambassador and the spokesman of God. And right back of him is the Lord Jesus with His hand upon Phillip Brooks’ shoulder. The witness is from God: “You are my man. You are my church. You belong to me.” The witness of God and that witness is in every Christian’s heart, somehow, it is always there; somehow, we never get away from it-the witness, the whispering, that testimony of God, in your heart, in your heart. A. Backley was asked: “How do you know that Jesus lives?” And he said: “Why, I read in the Bible and I read in history.” And the unbelieving questioner said: “But I don’t believe the Bible and I don’t believe in history what it says about Jesus. I don’t believe He ever lived.” Backley replied quickly: “I know that He lives, because He lives in my heart. The witness is in my heart.” He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives today! He walks with me And talks with me Along life’s narrow way. He lives, he lives, Salvation to impart! You ask me How do you know He lives? He lives within my heart. [Alfred H. Ackley, 1933] The witness is in your soul. And you never get away from it. Never! Never! Not all of us live in the mountaintop all of the time. Not all of us give ourselves to intercessory prayer all of the time. Not all of us live to our highest usefulness all of the time. But you never get away from the witness of the Spirit. He whispered:, “You are a child of God. You belong to God. You’re a servant of the Lord.” I come into those things so many times in unusual and strange ways. In a little city in the state of Texas, holding a revival meeting in the downtown church-I was asked by a sobbing wife if I’d go out and speak to her husband. I went out. Guess where I went? Guess what he was doing? On the edge of town, he had a honky-tonk. On the edge of town, he had a beer parlor and a dance hall on the edge of town. And I went out there and introduced myself to him: “I’m the pastor of this church. And your sobbing wife asked if I wouldn’t come to see you.” He looked at me: “So you’re the preacher and the pastor of that church?” We went to the back, to a little room and he shut the door and sat down there by my side. And said:, “I’m so miserable I don’t know what to do. I’m so unhappy. Life to me is a burden.” I said: “You know why? You’re a Christian. You’ve been saved and the Spirit of God whispers in your heart every hour of every day and night that you run this joint: What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What you doing here? What are you doing here?” And as he talked to me, he just broke down: “That’s right. And I’m so miserable I could die.” That’s the witness of the Spirit. You never get away. “What are you doing here? What are you running this thing for?” Well to make it come out like most times, God makes it come out. He got rid of his place. He sold the thing. He got rid of the dump. And with his family and with his children, back in that glorious church, got him another job. The witness of the Spirit, it is in you. If you want to know whether you’re a Christian or not, go out and try the life of the world. And see if on the inside of your heart, there doesn’t rise up some other, up. He’s just like a man talking to you. And He’ll whisper: “What are you doing here? What are you doing here? You’re a child of God. You’re a child of the King.” “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God:” That’s the witness on the inside of the heart. Now, in the moment remaining, the witness of the Spirit to God: Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, our weaknesses. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. Now, dear people, all I can do is just go to the brink and look over into the unfathomable depths, the impenetrable mysteries of the wisdom and the grace and goodness of Almighty God. Or to turn it upward, all I can do is just go outside and look in God’s infinite and illimitable firmament and marvel at the stars and the universes and the infinitude of the great heavenly of heavenlies that rises above us. I cannot enter into the mystery of this verse: We know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. I remember back there in the second chapter of the Book of Exodus, the last verses of the Book of Exodus. I remember that word groaning used and God heard it. The verse goes like this: The children of Israel were down in the land of Egypt. (And the Bible says) And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage. And they cried, and God heard their cry. And God listened to the groaning of the children of Israel by reason of their bondage. And the Lord had respect unto the sighing and the yearning and the crying of the children of Israel. It is the same thing here. We, who are in this place do groan within ourselves. The twenty-third verse: And the Spirit helpeth our infirmities; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered. Burdened in this life, living in this house of clay, we don’t know how to pray as we ought. And we don’t know what to pray for as we should. Lost like sheep. Without our minds clouded and our spirits dulled and our bodies weak. Filled with every infirmity that flesh is heir to, burdened, what do you do and what do you say? And how do you pray? And what do you cry for? And how do you place in language, in sentence and in word some of those unutterable things that the spirit feels but can never say? What do you do? What do you do? How do you approach the great God? How do you stand before the mighty King? Like Abraham said: Behold, God, I have taken upon myself to speak unto thee, I who am but dust and ashes. How do you do? And how do you know what to say? And how do you say it? Our infirmities-this is the answer of the Book. We are to cast the burden of all of our weaknesses and of our infirmities of the things that we don’t know and cannot do, we are to cast them all upon the Holy Spirit. And He, He pleads for us. He prays for us. In our stead with sighings, with yearnings, with groanings that are not capable of being expressed in language, the great God our father, He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit grieves and prays and makes intercession for us according to the will of God. Just as God would have it done. You notice that word “intercession” is twice used there? “The Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us?” And in the next verse: “Because He maketh intercession for us”-God our Father… And when you put it in words like this, and I don’t know how to say it. Just like we’re tearing the Trinity apart, but I don’t know how to say it other than this: God our Father who made us and in whose hands all things are, God our Father-who has the judgment of our souls and of our will before Him, who holds this earth in the fine balance though it were just a piece of dust-God our Father. And at His right hand is Jesus, our Savior, interceding in heaven. And in us. And by us, and for us is the Holy Spirit pleading, interceding, pulling for us here in earth. And that’s the status of the child of God. The Lord Jesus able to save to the uttermost because He ever liveth to make intercession for us, Jesus interceding at the right hand of God in heaven. And the Holy Spirit with groanings which cannot be uttered, making intercession, pleading for us here in the earth. And isn’t that a glorious revelation of the infinite grace and mercy of God? The Lord Jesus. “Lord, if thou hast been here, my brother would not have died,” said Martha and said Mary to the Lord Jesus. And the Lord said: “It is expedient that I go away. For if I go away, He will come…” The paraclete-you have it translated comforter. You can’t translate paraclete-The Holy Spirit-“If I go away, He will come”-the Holy Spirit-the One alongside. It’s a little word: “The one alongside,”” the helper,” “the exhorter,” “the guider and keeper”-the paraclete, the one called alongside. “If I go I will send Him to you. That He may abide with you forever.” How close is God to you? This close-like my breath-that close; like my hand and my feet-that close! Like my heart-that close! God is that near-that paraclete. The Spirit bearing witness, our helper is at hand. In discouragement He says: “Be of good cheer.” In perplexity He says: “This is the way. Walk thee in it.” In our youth He says, “Remember! Remember!” And in old age He says: “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” In service He says: I’ll go with you to the ends of the world.” In our supplication He says: “I will answer thee.” In our giving He says: “Prove me and see.” In our faintness He says: “I will uphold thee by the power of My right hand.” In our burdens He says: “Casting all your care upon Him.” And in our weariness He says: “I will give you rest”-The witness of the Holy Spirit of God! And He talks to you this morning. Dear people, if it depended upon my poor sermon, and my feeble words to this day, you’d never make it. And if these services depended upon the poor stammering eloquence of this pastor, you’d never come. But the power of the message of God doesn’t lie with the preacher in any eloquent peroration. The power of the gospel message of Christ is in the Spirit bearing its word to your heart. And He speaks. He always speaks: To one that trust in the savior; to one in the city who puts his life in the church. And He speaks to your heart this day. Would you listen and would you respond: “Here I come pastor, today I’m opening my heart to the Lord Jesus.” To as many as receive Him to them gave He the right to become the children of God. Even to them that trust in His name. And some of you into the fellowship of this church, as the Spirit shall lead, and direct and say the word. While we make appear today, would you come: “Here I am pastor” or “Here is my family.” All of you, just one somebody of you, while we make appear in that topmost balcony, anywhere from side to side-would you come? Would you make it now: “Here I come pastor and here I am.” Give me your hand. Give your heart to God. Put your life with us in this church and in this precious ministry. Would you so, would you now, while we stand and while we sing? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 51: S. THIS GRACE WHEREIN WE STAND ======================================================================== THIS GRACE WHEREIN WE STAND Dr. W. A. Criswell 09-12-54 Rom 5:2 You’re listening to the services of the First Baptist Church in downtown Dallas. And this is the Pastor, bringing the morning message from the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans. The message this morning is from the first two verses of that chapter. The message tonight, at the evening 7:30 hour, will be in the latter part of the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans. In that chapter, you have answers to some of the questions of time and eternity. And reading from the 5th chapter of Romans, we shall speak of the origin of evil: where and whence did it come. We shall speak of why God permitted the transgression of Adam, how it is that little children and babies are saved-all of that in the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans. This morning, the first two verses: Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; tribulations work patience. Patience, experience; experience, hope; And hope never disappoints; seeing God and his love and his promise through the Holy Spirit is given without measure unto us. If I could choose a subject: this grace, this hope, this persuasion in which we stand. Now, by way of summary, to pick up the thread where we left off a month ago: Paul lived in a day of the judgment of Almighty God. When he wrote this epistle, he addressed it to the church at the capital city of the Roman Empire. In that letter, he begins, in the eighteenth verse of the first chapter, with this avowal: “The wrath of God-the judgment of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Then, the remainder of that chapter, he speaks of the day of wrath to come for the Graeco-Roman world, the civilized word in which he then lived. In the second chapter, the first part, he speaks of the judgment and the wrath of God against the pagan and heathen world. In the latter part of that chapter, he speaks of the revealed wrath and judgment of God against the Jew, who supposed, because he possessed the oracles of the Almighty, he was exempt from the visitation of heaven. In the third chapter, he speaks of the conclusion that all of the world is become guilty before God and all of the world stands in the judgment day of Almighty God. Then, in the fourth chapter, he turns to the precious and blessed hope that we have in Christ Jesus, taking Abraham, their father, for an example of the faithful, who against hope, believed in hope, and who staggered not at the promise of God. Then in the fifth chapter, a little summary there, in which my text is found. In this hope, and in this grace, we stand and rejoice in the promise of Almighty God. So, the Apostle, in the book of Romans, can tell of the judgment day and then of our deliverance in Christ. He has spoken of all of these tribulations through which this world inevitably does pass and then says, out of tribulation, cometh our hope and a hope that will never disappoint. Now, taking that as the day of Paul, could I draw a parallel between Paul’s day and ours? We, also-in our day and in our generation, we also live in an hour and a day of the judgment of Almighty God. One cannot help but stand in awe before it. I quote from a recent conversation of the premier of Canada: “We have reached an hour,” he says, “in the history of civilization, which I believe is one of the most crucial mankind has ever faced. We are living in an age in which we see the cumulative consequences of the defects in human nature coming to their climax. Today, when you talk to men in the business world, scientific world, the field of economics, politics, we find that most thinking, serious-minded people agree that present circumstances are such that they cannot continue very much longer without precipitating a crisis on the greatest scale humanity has ever known.” And another famous author, statesman and world traveler: “We have crossed the threshold of a new era. The world is at the crossroads. We are on the verge of a titanic cataclysmic collapse, unless God intervenes.” I say we stand in awe before the judgment of God upon the day and generation and world in which our lives have been cast. For one thing, the frightening success of the enemies who have sworn our utter annihilation and complete destruction could not but bring fear to human hearts. We have lost on the field of battle: a new day, a new experience for the Stars and Stripes, and for the power and might and glory that once was America. Do you realize that our enemies in Korea have no navy? Do you realize that our enemies in Korea have no air force? We bomb them by day and by night. Our navies on both sides of the sea shell our enemies. And yet, without navy, without air power, they pressed us back to the sea and finally won from us an inconsistent armistice. Do you realize that one of the great defeats of all time has been our defeat in Indo-China? There are a few breadbaskets in the world: Central America, the Midwest of America and one of the few others is in Indonesia, Indo-China. The breadbasket of the Orient is in the hands of our enemies. And not only that, we have 700,000 more refugees. I heard an article in the newspaper refer to them. We are so calloused to the misery and inhumanity of these present days until 700,000 more homeless, hapless people are as nothing-not to us today. Not only have we lost on the field of battle, but the success of our enemies in this war of words, the Cold War, is frightening beyond compare. The defection of those two illustrious members of the men to East Germany is a colossal blow. The loss and the collapse of the European community has so set back the hopes of America until there’s not a statesman in the earth who know what lies ahead. The weakness of France and of Italy are like straw men by our side before an enemy. England has been isolated. However, in days past we may have been able to count upon the support and help of Great Britain, Great Britain is now neutralized. She has no other choice. In any meeting that the going is tough, the leaders of Great Britain will always say: “But remember, within one hour-within one hour from our London, our Manchester, our Liverpool, our Glasgow-within one hour is an air force with those terrible atomic and hydrogen bombs that could destroy our Great Britain in a matter of minutes.” Japan is fast falling out of the sphere of the friendship of America. And America herself is being stripped of her allies one by one. And death by an enemy and by a force, a people, whose leader one time said: “What does it matter, if three-fourths of the population of the world be destroyed, if only the remaining one-fourth be Communist?” And the instruments in our hands of warfare today are beyond compare. They frighten just to say them. There was a time-oh, two or three years ago, there was a time when the city of Dallas was to be taught how to take care of itself in the eventuality of an attack. And Fort Worth and all of the cities were being taught how to care for themselves in an attack. All that is gone now. It is foolish to teach a city how to take care of itself. Our new plan of defense is this: If Louisville is attacked, then Indianapolis and Cincinnati and Nashville and St. Louis are being taught how to care for a city on whose head a hydrogen bomb has been dropped. And so all of the communities of the cities of America-if it happens to Chicago, then Detroit or St. Louis or Indianapolis and Milwaukee, and all of those cities-would go to the aid of a sickened Chicago. The frightening thing about that awful prospect is this: that the day is fast approaching when men with great scientific genius are being able to deploy guided missiles, pilotless missiles, that go through the air 70,000 and 100,000 feet up in the air, in the vast stratosphere above, and then come down at a given point. And against that attack, there is no defense-none known to us, none known to them. I heard in this conference in which I preached in North Carolina-I heard an army officer say: “We have in our hands a little instrument no bigger than a water pistol and as simply contrived in which, if a man came into this office, and there were about 3,000 of us there, with that little water pistol, he could destroy everyone immediately in this room.” And he said, “Not only that, but we have in our possession now a little drum, not over 18 inches long, that can be dropped in this valley, in which Asheville, North Carolina is located, and in just a matter of time every green thing and every living thing in the valley would be destroyed.” These weapons are not fantastic-in the imagination and in the scientific training of men who used to write those articles of who might come into the world and in other spheres and in other civilizations. These things are here and now. And they represent the great judgment day of Almighty God. Not only do we face that judgment day, nationally, internationally, and politically and economically, but we see a tremendous judgment day religiously. China was our greatest mission field. China is closed. One of the great missionaries of China is here with us today. She and her illustrious husband placed their life in that great country. To what end? To what avail? It is just a prayer and a hope now that, beyond that terrible persecution, those faithful Christians will be faithful unto death. But, it doesn’t stop there. When I was in India-when Dr. McCall and I were in India, one of the purposes of our going through the country was to ask for visas for our Baptist missionaries. They were denied. And not only were they denied to us, but all of the missionaries are fast being closed out in the great country of India. When I was in India, I looked at those little children who used to go English schools. They’re now studying Hindu, studying the national religion of India. Almost every Indian woman that you see on the street, she’ll have that orange dot in the middle of her forehead. She’s been to the temple, the Hindu temple, and has worshipped. It is a part of the nationalism, the new day for India. They are already anti-British. They are becoming fast anti-American and, everywhere, anti-missionary and anti-Christ. India is fast being closed to the Christian appeal. I don’t know whether you noticed it or not, but a few days ago, there met in Mecca, the sacred place of the Muslim world-there met in Mecca three heads of governments: Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia. And those three heads of government pledged a new and tremendous Muslim and missionary march through the vast continent of Africa. When we were in Africa, for every one convert that Christianity won, the Muslim wins many more. It is a new day and the march of Mohammedanism is beyond compare. In the interview he gave on his return from Mecca, Kareem Fernaste of Egypt said: “I hope the western powers won’t take any untoward steps against us in this missionary campaign, because the establishment of Islam in Africa will be a shield against Communism.” Maybe so. Maybe so. But, who rejoices in seeing a great vast part of the world turn to the worship of Allah and Mohammed the prophet? I haven’t time to speak of the future that lies ahead in America. America is becoming urbanized. We are no longer a rural people, a country people. We’re city people. What happens in the cities of America? I was speaking two weeks ago with a friend of mine who is pastor, not of a Baptist church, but of a great Evangelical church, in one of the vast northeastern cities of the United States, in New England. That man has the only evangelical pulpit in that vast city that at all commands attention and respect. Our evangelical evangelistic witness has died in that great city. His pulpit alone remains. And to my amazement, as I talked to him, I found that he is preparing to resign and to leave. He is preparing to accept another work in another section of America. And when he goes-when he goes, there will not be left one great, tremendous, outstanding evangelistic New Testament evangelical witness in that vast city of the north and of the east. And what is happening there is gradually happening in most of the great cities of America. Well, what do you do? Where do you turn? How are you to feel? Against the day of Christ’s coming, and in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, the Lord Jesus said: “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the father placed in his own hands.” Against the day of the personal intervention of the Almighty God, there are two ways that we can do. One: We can live in an escapist world of defeat and despair, giving up, giving up-no heart to try, no strength or will to resist. If it goes Communist, it goes Communist. If it goes Romanist, it goes Romanist. If it goes Islam, it goes Islam. However it turns, let it turn. And as for us, we shall live in an escapist world and foretell it and let it go-can’t do anything about it, anyway-helpless, forget it. Or, we can rise from beneath the storm, by God’s grace, and try to measure up in this awful and awesome day and hour. Could I talk of it fatuously? To an oyster and an eagle-you know, that little oyster is an unusual little creation. God gave him a wonderful house in which to live. All he has to do is to open his house and take in his food and close his house and shut out his enemies. And there, he is so perfectly secure in his escapist world on the inside of the little shell-right there he is. And I don’t know of any fish more easily caught and crushed and cooked than an oyster. If I could facetiously remark about him: He always ends up in the soup. The eagle is an unusual creation of Almighty God. When the storm comes, like the tremendous hurricanes-isn’t that strange they name them for women, the hurricanes? I wonder why? That eagle is an unusual creation of Almighty God. When the hurricane comes, and the fierce storms blow, the eagle sets his talons against the blow and he rises with it and after that he is carried until finally he soars in God’s blue sky above the hurricane and the storm. We can live like an oyster in our little house-in an escapist world. Or, we can rise to meet the storm. And it is this last at which now for a moment I want to speak: rising to meet the storm. The ultimate issue of this matter that we so solemnly and terribly face-the ultimate issue will never be decided by its guns or by planes or by tanks. There was a day when whole civilizations and whole nations were taken captive by a force of arms. But, that day is gone forever. Men now are taken captive by ideals: by dreams, by visions, by devotions, by commitments, by persuasions. I can illustrate that endlessly. England conquered India by force of arms. Mahatma Gandhi preached the gospel of non-violence. Without the shooting of a shell, without the bursting of a bomb, Mahatma Gandhi wrested from England the liberty of India. How? By force of a great ideal and a vast commitment. A few days ago, England gave up the Suez Canal. What they say in the newspapers is unbelievable. The Suez Canal, the lifeline of the British Empire-they gave it up, gave it away. How? Against the powerful ideas, commitments, spirits of the people. She had no opportunity not to acquiesce. These people who fight on those fields in Korea, who rang that war to a successful conclusion in Indo-China, and who stand like birds of prey over Europe today and finally over us-they are people who are given to a vast ideal. Jesus said: “The field is the world. The field is the world.” No man liveth unto himself, no man buyeth unto himself. The field is the world. Across it moves Communism with its gospel, the rationalist and the materialist with his philosophy. Across it moves the marching millions of modern Mohammedanism. Across it moves the Roman church. Across it moves all of those words and messages and appeals and statements that are striving for the allegiance of mankind. Alexander the Great-he had no heirs, no child. His generals gathered around him and said: “Alexander, whose is the kingdom? Whose is the kingdom?” And Alexander the Great replied: “It is for him who can take it.” So, in this vast world in which we live today, who shall ultimately win it? Barring the intervention of Almighty God, barring the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, against the day of his personal appearing, who shall possess it? Who shall possess it? Who has the devotion and the commitment to take it? Will it be us? We, or our enemies? Whether it be our faith or someone else’s faith, it is for him who will dare to take it. Not by bombs, you can’t. Not by guns, you can’t. Not by striking with bullets, you can’t. He will take it, today-if he seizes it, he’ll take it by the appeal of a tremendous idea and a vast and illimitable commitment. What does that mean for us? What does that mean for us? It means two things. It means, first-it means first, a missionary program, a preaching program, a gospelizing program beyond anything the Christian church has ever undertaken in its history. It means missions, missions, missions. It means missions at home. It means missions in the city of Dallas. It means missions across the Southland. It means missions in continental America. It means missions across the sea. It means preaching the message and the hope and the blessing we have in this book and in Christ Jesus. The man who believes in its faith and who believes in its message and who is willing to die for it, to him, alone, the kingdom. It means missions. It means missions. It means one other thing. It means one other thing. It means a vast and illimitable and personal commitment to this task-serious, serious, in earnest, in dead earnestness, beyond any seriousness or any earnestness by which any people assumed a task since Jesus faced the cross on Calvary. It means that today. I do not know of a more emphatic transformation point to add to that word than this newspaper report of the suicide and death of the president of Brazil, President Bargas. There is something strange about that man’s death. And I suppose we’ll never know all of the background. But, this much I read in the paper. Suicide usually means that the man has lost his balance-like he got sick in his body, the man is sick in his mind and he’s not responsible and he takes his life. That’s suicide. Driven by a great fear, driven by an illimitable and unhealable illness, driven by some great disaster or sorrow that breaks the reason of his mind, he takes his life. That’s usually the suicide. When President Bargas died, somehow, he gave to his death a New Testament interpretation. He died for the sake of a great ideal. He wrote a letter. He closed that letter with these words: “I gave you, my people, my life. Now, I offer my death. Nothing remains.” That they might know of the vast commitment of his life in behalf of the people that he said he was trying to help-a poor and dictatorship ridden country, Bargus says: “I gave you the best of my life. I give you now my death. I have nothing else beside.” When I read that, I thought of an illustration again, of the awful spuriousness of these days and in these hours in which you and I, under God, have cast our lives, our destiny and our fortune. How do we do? How do we do? How does God want us to do? If he lives in heaven, if there’s a God above, I believe he’s on our side. Or, could I say better: if there is a God that lives, we are on his side. With this open Book, with this message of hope-and he’s a God that answers prayer, that blesses his people, that gives us final and certain and assured victory, that it could never fail in his hands. He looks to us, God’s grace And the Lord God whispers And said to me: These things shall be. These things shall be. No help shall come From the scarlet sky Until my people rise. Until my people rise, My arm is weak. I cannot speak Until my people speak. When men are down, My voice is down. I cannot come Until my people come. Some on the planet Earth and sea, The cry of my people Must come to me. Not till death occurs. But the curse, May I claim my own In the universe. But if my people rise, If my people rise, I will answer them From the swarming skies. Out of judgment, our salvation. Out of tribulation, our hope. This is the grace wherein we stand. All right, let’s sing our song. And while we sing it, while we sing it, somebody-you, somebody-you give his heart to the Lord. Give your life to the Lord. Come into the fellowship of this church, stand by our side in this witness and this testimony. While we sing the song, today, make it now, make it now and come. In that balcony, to the farthest row, in this vast group, in this press of people below, somebody-you, a family-you: “Here we are, Pastor, and here we come.” ======================================================================== CHAPTER 52: S. THE LIVING CHRIST ======================================================================== THE LIVING CHRIST Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 18:9 01-10-54 In Acts 27:23, you will find an incident in the life of Paul that parallels with this. From this, we have been preaching these last two Sundays. In Acts 27:1-44 the story of the terrible storm and shipwreck of Paul as he was sent a prisoner down to Jerusalem-to Rome from Caesarea. In Acts 27:23 : "For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul… ." Now, the text in which we have been speaking the last two Sundays, in Acts 18:9-10 : "Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision… ." Do you believe that? "There stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying" And, then, the text, in the eighteenth chapter: "Then spake the Lord to Paul by the night in a vision." Evidently, the Lord is somebody: a personality, an entity, a character. And, evidently, He speaks and He lives and He directs and He guides and He is interested and He is full of the intensest life. Do you believe that? To so many, the Lord Jesus is dead. He is an historical character. They are readily willing to admit His historicity. Like Washington lived, Lincoln lived, or Buddha lived, or Alexander the Great or Napoleon lived, there must have lived somewhere, sometime, a man whose name was Jesus. But, He is dead and He died 2,000 years ago. Then, there are those to whom the Lord Jesus is at the heart and center of the great religious faith of which we are normally a part. But, He’s far, far away. There is no conception, there is no sense, there is no feeling, there is no persuasion, there is no consciousness of His being present, of His being active and alive and vitally intermingled with our lives and our destiny. And, there are many who look upon the Lord as an influence. And, they identify Him and His life like they identify our immortality. We live in the influences that we set in motion in the earth. But, when we die, we die. Our influence will live, like the Lord’s may be alive. But, He is dead. And, the pertinency of all of those things, and a multitude of others, I could mention like them-the pertinency of all is to de-personalize the Lord Jesus. He is no longer active and vibrant. He is no longer somebody. He is no longer a personality. He no longer lives, as such, like you live now. But, He has become identified with historical processes, with influences and with memory and with history. But, He is not pertinent and He is not active and vibrant and living with any of the issues of today, with which we actually have anything to do. He is not something Who looks, cares and loves and watches and looks and helps and guides and keeps. He is just something out there indefinable; intangible, but He is not actual. I have a friend, who is still my friend-though he goes out of the theological world from me-I have a friend who is a pastor in Virginia. And, he’s very liberal. He is the Saturday modern. And, we were talking about George Buckley’s-the great book, a very fine book, pleasantly written-entitled Prayer. And, the great divine spirit of prayer is this. He says prayer was the same sort of thing for good in this world as though a man had something wrong with his foot, or he had something wrong somewhere else in his body. And, so, the physician gives him a shot in the arm. And, the circulation of the blood takes that shot in the arm and it goes all the way around and finally gets down to his foot. And, his foot is healed and made well because of the things the doctor did over here. And, he says prayer is that way. When a man prays, he sets forth good influences in the world and they circulate around and around and around. And, by and by, they will be answered in the amelioration in which the man prayed, maybe over there, maybe in China, maybe in Hong Kong and maybe in India and maybe some other place. But, his idea of prayer is that there is not any permanent God, to Whom he actually talked. There is not any actual God up there, Who listens to you and turns things in order that your prayer might be answered, but when we just set forth the influences in the earth. Now, my liberal friend in Virginia says that’s just great, that’s just right. That’s what prayer is. And, I said to him, "If that is prayer is, there is not any God. There is not anybody to listen to us. There is not anybody that answers. There is not anybody who directs it or has it in its hands. It is just an influence we set forth in this earth. And, that’s all. That’s all." I could not tell you the number of men, Christian men, pulpiteers, leaders of the denomination, all great drivers in so many areas. That is the way it is in so many other communions: to identify the whole Christian faith and the whole Christian message with social work. "We work for the Lord Jesus and serve Him by being good to those who need us. We feed the poor. We heal the sick. We minister to those who are in poor health and condition. And, the whole kingdom of Christ is identified with tremendous social movement. That’s the way we serve Him. That’s the way we know Him. That’s the way we love Him. We do it through the people and Christ is identified with the people." I remember reading a book by Dave Street called The Dragnet. And, everybody said, when it was published a few years ago-and, the whole of that book is that Christ is identified with humanity. And, when you serve humanity, you serve Christ. No, we could go on for hours with stuff like that. Now, this message tonight concerns the reality and the personality, the somebodiness, like you, of the Lord Jesus Christ. For, the Lord said to Paul in the night in a vision. In the nighttime, He appeared unto Paul and said to him. And, He could speak. And, He knew Paul and He knew what Paul was doing. And, He was driving Paul into a tremendous work. Do you believe that? He was somebody. Now, the thesis of this message is that Jesus is an entity in Himself. And, that He has spirit and He has bones. And, He is a personality, that is, somebody. The Spirit of God is also called the Spirit of Jesus. And, the Spirit of God is in my heart and He’s in your heart. And, the Spirit of God is in this world. And, the Spirit of God is in this church. But, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Jesus is not the Lord Jesus Himself. I cannot enter into the mystery of the Trinity and I don’t try. I cannot understand it. I don’t attempt to. Nobody does. But, I know that-that, according to the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures, the Lord Jesus is like you are. He has flesh and He has bones and He’s in a place and He looks down on us. And, He can appear to us and He can talk to us. And, someday, we shall see Him as a man, as an individual, as a character, as a somebody. And, another thing about the Lord Jesus: He always was. He always was the Lord Jesus. He always was that somebody. He always was the Lord God omnipotent. But, He was somebody. He was not ephemeral and intangible. He was like you are. He was a reality. He was a being. I think-and I’ll give you the Scripture for it-Jehovah, the “I am,” the Yahweh of the Old Testament, is the Lord Jesus incarnate of the New Testament. They are the same character. They are the same individual. In John 8:1-59, Jesus said to them, "Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am."-I heard that before, haven’t you?-“I am." And, then, Moses was shepherding the sheep of Jethro, his father-in-law. He was on the backside of the desert at Sinai. And, as he was shepherding the flock, there was a bush that burned without being consumed. And, Moses stopped and said, "I shall look at this sight." And, he stood there and watched the flames in the bush, unconsumed. And, out of the fire and out of the flame, the Lord God spoke to Moses. The Lord God spoke to Moses. And, He commanded Moses to go down into Egypt and deliver His people. And, when Moses said, "And what is the name of the God that speaks to me?" The voice came from heaven saying, "I am. You go down to Egypt and tell them the great God, whose name is Yahweh, I am that I am hath sent thee." And, Jesus said, "Verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.” “I am.” The voice that speaks unto Moses out of the burning bush was the voice Whom we know in the New Testament as the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the same person, the same God. I have another persuasion in that. In the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John, in the forty-first verse, after John quotes from Isaiah, he said this, "These things said Isaiah when he saw glory and spake of Him." Now, from the quotation, I turn to Isaiah. And, the quotation is from Isa 6:1-13. And, John says, "Isaiah said this when he saw the glory of Jesus." So, you turn to the sixth chapter of the Book of Isaiah, and what does it say? You listen to it: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw also the Lord, sitting upon the throne, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim; each one had six wings; with twain covering his face, with twain covered his feet, and with twain did fly. And one cried unto another, saying, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory. Who was that? Who was that? Isaiah saw Him on a throne, high and lifted up. John says, in the twelfth chapter of his Gospel, that Isaiah saw the Lord Jesus Christ. It was the Lord Jesus that he saw. The Jehovah of the Old Testament, the great "I am" of the Old Bible, in the New Testament is incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ of Nazareth by the virgin. They’re the one and the same. The Lord Jesus is somebody pre-existent, in the days before the world was made. And, the Lord Jesus is a man. He’s somebody. He’s a character. He’s an entity. He’s a personality. He’s like you. And, the Lord God said, "Let us make man in Our own image." You were made in the likeness of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, in time, He’s a man. He’s a person. Incarnate, the Lord Jesus is somebody like you. When you turn through the pages of church history, for hundreds of years the church was involved, and the whole empire was involved in, all theologies were involved, and sometimes the East went to war with the West over it. They were involved in Christological controversy. They were trying to define, to delineate, to describe, to set in a definition, Who Jesus was, in Christological controversy. They were made by men like Arius and Sabellius and Eutyches and Nestorius and Monophysites. And, for centuries, the conflict raged and raged Who Jesus was. Now, those Christological confronts and those Christological controversies were not only proof in the development of church history, but they go clear back and back and back to the very days of Christ Himself. In the days of the Christian religion, when it was first promoted, it had a tremendous arch-enemy in philosophy, a Greek philosophy called Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnōsis. The English word “gnostic” comes from the Greek word gnōsis. They were selfish. They were initiated into the mysteries of the theory of knowledge. They were Gnostics-they called themselves-and had a tremendous hold upon the people. And, Gnosticism was the greatest rival of Christianity. Now, Gnosticism was eclectic. It was not exclusive. It would accept anything. It would accept any philosophy. It would put its arms around anything. So, when Christianity, under Paul and Timothy and John and those men-when Christianity came to be a regnant and a dynamic thing in the history of the world, Gnosticism put its arms around it. It amalgamated it. It began, in its eclecticism, to take the great principles of Christianity and make them a part of the system of Gnosticism. Now, there were two great systems of that that the apostles met. One was Docetic, from a Greek word meaning "seeming." And the other one: Cerinthian Gnosticism, from the arch-enemy of the Apostle John in Ephesus: a man by the name of Cerinthus. Now the Docetic Gnostics said this: "Jesus just seemed to be a man. He was no actual man. He was no actual personality. He was no actual somebody. But, He just walked around here in the days of His life in the earth and He just looked like a man. He just seemed to be a man. But, He wasn’t a real man." Now, the First Epistle of John was written against those Docetic Gnostics. Look how John starts off: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled the Word of life; And, goodness, a real genuine man, where His (… life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was by the Father, and was manifested unto us.) That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you. That book, that epistle-1 John-was written against those Docetic Gnostics, these teachers and prophets who were going around all over the Roman Empire, saying, "Jesus is not a real person. He’s not a real man. He was not a real somebody. He just seemed to be." "No," said John, "He was as real as you are. And, our hands touched Him and we felt of Him and we held Him and our eyes looked upon Him and our ears heard Him: the Word of life, the Son of God." Now, Cerinthian Gnosticism. Cerinthian Gnosticism was the thing in Ephesus when John was pastor of the church in Ephesus. And, this was the doctrine of Cerinthus. Cerinthus said He was a man, all right. He was a man, all right-an actual man. He lived and walked, and talked and lived. He was a man, all right. But, He wasn’t God. He wasn’t God. The Spirit of God came upon Him. They called it sullogō. And, it’s the name. They call it, in Greek, the eon. The eon came upon the Lord Jesus in His baptism-That’s in the Book, in the visitation of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove-The eon came upon Jesus in His baptism. And, the eon left the Lord Jesus on the Cross, when Jesus said, "Lord, in your hands I commend My Spirit." And, Cerinthus said that Jesus was just a man, like any other man. But, He had a special endowment of an angelic power from above. But, He was nothing but a man. Now, against that, the Apostle John wrote the Gospel of John, the Fourth Gospel. And, he started off with an avowal of the deity of the Son of God. Do you remember it? "In the beginning-in the beginning was the Word. And the Word…”-using a Greek philosophical term the: logos- In the beginning was the logos-the Word-and the logos was with God; and the logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. God is saying there that this man, the Son of God, is deity Himself. In the beginning He was. And, He was God: the personality, the entity, the somebody of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, in heaven, resurrected, and in glory, He is still the same Lord Jesus. "Handle Me and see,” said the Lord, “that it is I Myself. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones such as ye see Me have." The Lord Jesus is in a place. I go to prepare a topos, place, for you. If I go to prepare a topos, a place-like this is a place-if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself… . The Lord Jesus is in a place. He is in the heavens. And, He lives there-a man. He has flesh and bone. Thomas said: I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. Except I put my finger in the scars in His hands and thrust my hand into His side, I wouldn’t believe it. And, the next Sunday night, when they were gathered together, the Lord Himself appeared in the midst. A man, just like He was in the days of His flesh, only immortalized, glorified, resurrected. And, He held out His hands and said, "Behold," and He gathered His fingers, and He opened His side and there was a scar in the side, from the spear thrust of the Roman soldiers-the same Lord Jesus. He lived. He’s somebody. Flesh and bone: He has a body, resurrected, glorified. But, He speaks. And, He speaks, and He works. And, He’s with us, and He helps us. And, He guides us, and He blesses. And, He teaches us, and He sees us through. The Lord Jesus. The Lord said to Paul in the night, saying-He knew it. He was with him. And He helped him. And he walked greatly in His name. And, now, we have a glorious promise from that same Lord Jesus: "Wherever you are, there am I in the midst of you." He is here. He looks upon. He sees us. He knows and He cares: "And lo, I am with you always even until the end of the age." He works with us. He helps us. He empowers us. He does marvelous things for us, this Lord Jesus. He’s somebody, just like you’re here. He can be here. Just like somebody can help you, He can help you. Just like somebody can walk by your side, He can walk by your side. This Lord Jesus: somebody, just like you-just like you. And, He works marvelously and gloriously. There is a very popular picture called “The Robe.” It is a cinemascope-wide screen-and, possibly, you’d have the greatest run of any picture thus far that’s ever been made. In the screen display, in the presentation of those who made that picture, you will find a man’s name William Frankto. Last summer, we had our big Cotton Bowl campaign, here in Dallas. There was a man here in the city that owned three nightclubs here-owned two in Las Vegas, Nevada. And, after and a moving magnate, he was here in Dallas. He had three children. It was Sunday. And, the children wanted to go swimming. And, all of the places were closed, except for Fair Park. So, he took his three children on a hot summer afternoon, and went out to the Fair Park. After he had delivered his children, where they could swim out there, somewhere-why, he walked up and down the midway. He said he got tired of the midway. Didn’t have anything to do and he heard something was going on in the Cotton Bowl. So, he went to the Cotton Bowl and sat down under the shade. It was 105 degrees. He sat down there and listened to that service. And, to my amazement, Billy Graham made an invitation. You remember it, if you were there. I didn’t think anybody would come-couldn’t imagine anybody responding. That was the most un-promising thing I ever saw in my life: that blazing sun. Gave the invitation, and the first man who responded to that invitation was this man, William Frankto. Came down out of the Cotton Bowl and, at the front, there he stands. He sold his three nightclubs here in Dallas. He got rid of his nightclub in Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s in Jerusalem now. The United Artists are preparing, within a period of about two years-they are preparing to place on the screen, for the first time in the history of the world, the last story of Jesus Christ. The first thing that had to be settled is the preparing of the film depicting the Lord Jesus. Who was going to be the Christ? Who is going to play the part of Jesus? And, it was finally decided that the man who did it would be anonymous. He would not be named in the picture, nor would he be named in the advertising, nor would he be named before the world. He was going to remain anonymous, as far as any public is concerned: no famous actor, no anybody. We are going to have an anonymous man. Who is the anonymous man? It is the actor, William Spree. He is doing it now. And, in about two years from now, United Artists will present, for the first time, the story of the Lord Jesus to the world. And, where did it come from? You stand to make-in the presence, the first man who walked out of that Cotton Bowl stand, and stood there in front of that little place where the man preached, was this man, William Spree, who Orson Wells gave the role. Why, it happens all of the time. It happens everywhere, everywhere. I talked to a man this morning, begging him to come back to the Lord and the church. He said, "So many difficulties lying in the way." I said, "Come over there at the congregation and look. If I could take time and had the opportunity to do it, I could have men stand up all over this house, all over this house, and tell you stories of the miracles of regeneration that would almost be unbelievable. What you once were and what you once were and what you once were and what you now are." One of the finest Christian men that belongs to this church, and one of the great consecrated men that I have ever known, came out of the gutter. Came out of the gutter. If you were to see him now, with a big, fine executive job and a lovely family, you would say, "Pastor, you mean he? You mean that man? You mean-you mean he was in the gutter?" I mean, that man was in the gutter. He was in the gutter. That’s what the Lord has done for him. He lives. He lives. He’s somebody. He can speak to us. He walks with us. He talks with us. He empowers us. He makes us able. He gives us wisdom and direction. And, the Lord Jesus came to Paul in the night and He talked to him. He can talk to you, and He did and He does, just like I could. Just like somebody next to you, the Lord can. He’s somebody. I cannot close without saying a word of the comfort of that-the indescribable blessedness and sweetness and preciousness of that. I cannot close without it. The Bible, in telling the story of the three Hebrew children who were thrown in the fiery furnace, when the king looked in there, suffered a number. The king turned to those who cast in those three Hebrew children said, "Didn’t we put three in the furnace? Were there not three in the furnace?" And, the keepers said, "Yes, we threw three men in the furnace." And, the king said, "But, I see four men, walking free in the fiery flames. And, the countenance of the fourth one and the form of the fourth one is like unto the Son of God." Who was He? Who was He? That was the Lord Jesus, pre-incarnate, the fourth one walking with the three Hebrew children. Who was it that closed the mouths of lions when Daniel was cast in the den of lions? Who closed the mouths of those lions? Whose story is it all the way through? It is the Lord Jesus. It is the Lord Jesus. He’s the one the psalmist was talking about as He said, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I won’t be afraid, for Thou art with me.” Thou art with me-the preciousness of the presence, the comfort of the nearness of Jesus. He is with us. Do you remember Ellis Fuller? Do you remember him? Ah, that man! Pastor of the First Church in Atlanta, Georgia; president of the Southern Seminary, and we had him here for two weeks in a revival meeting. Do you remember that? Ah, there are some things and messages and sermons that Ellis Fuller preached here in the pulpit that will stay with me as long as I live. He blessed my life, Ellis Fuller; president of the seminary in northern Kentucky. This is one of the little things that he said that has stayed with me through these years. He had a little boy, and the little boy was taken to the hospital for an operation. The pastor said to the church, "Nobody is to call me or to get in touch with me. Nobody is to know where I am." He went to the hospital and, being a trustee of the institution, he got a bed. And he put it in the room with that boy and stayed with that son, stayed with the boy; went into the operating room with the boy, and stood there as the antiseptic was administered, and as the operation was done, and then went back into the room with the boy. And he stayed with the boy all day long as the lad came to consciousness. And at nighttime, he pushed his bed right over there next to the boy’s bed, and laid down to go to sleep with his hand on the hand of his boy. And in the nighttime, while they were lying there close together, before the lad dropped off to sleep, he turned his head and said, "Daddy, this is the greatest day of my life." And Ellis Fuller said, "Son, the greatest day of your life? Why, son, this has been the most terrible thing I have ever lived through. I have been so anxious and full of care. Son, the greatest day of your life?" And the boy said, "Yes, sir, Daddy. This has been the greatest day of my life. Daddy, you have been with me all day long." I am persuaded that the sorrows, and the tears, and the heartbreak, and maybe the despairs, and discouragements, and disappointments, and finally the death that comes into our life are just somehow that we might know the nearness of the presence of Jesus. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." And it is a great day. It is our greatest day if He is there. And in the night, the Lord’s faith shall call somebody, like you, like you, like you. The Lord Jesus. Well, let’s sing. And while we sing the song, somebody you give your heart to the Lord; you come and stand by me. Put your life in the hands of God, you come and stand by me; somebody to put your life in this church, you come and stand by me. "Pastor, here I am, here I come, taking the Lord as my Savior." Or coming into the fellowship of the church-however the Lord shall say it, and open the door, and lead the way, while we make appeal, you come. You come. On the first note of the first stanza, anywhere. Somebody you. "I want to be baptized." "I want to come by letter, or promise of letter, or by faith, or by re-dedication of life." However God shall say and lead the way, would you do it? Anywhere, somebody you, while we stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 53: S. THE WORDS OF SALVATION ======================================================================== THE WORDS OF SALVATION Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 20:21 02-21-54 b In the twentieth chapter of the Book of Acts, and the title of the sermon tonight is THE WORDS OF SALVATION. There are two and you find them in Acts 20:21. Paul-in describing his ministries in the city of Ephesus, which was most effective of all of the ministries of the great missionary-Paul, in describing it said, "I have taught ye publicly, and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews, and also to the Greeks"-those two words-“metanoian toward God, and pistin toward our Lord Jesus Christ" [Acts 20:20-21]-translated, "testifying to the Jews and to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." You find those two same words used in the description of the ministry of the Lord Jesus-“and Jesus came preaching, saying, Repent ye, and believe the gospel”; “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel" [Mark 1:14-15]. Repentance and faith-the words of salvation. Now, in the providences of life, words lose their edge; they lose their meaning; they lose their connotation. By much repetition, by much saying, by much repeating, they become redundant and meaningless and worn out. For example, there is not a schoolboy here that has not read of the storming of the fields in the French Revolution. In those days, an aristocracy oppressed the people, and they had three great words-"Liberty, Equality and Fraternity." That was the cry of those three words you remember when they stormed the Bastille. They overthrew the aristocracy and the kingdom of France, and they set up a Republic. Those were fighting words in those days. And I would like to see some body today get enthusiastic about “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” They were much used; and they went to war over them; but today their much repetition through the years since has caused the words to lose their cutting edge, and they mean practically nothing to us today. And nobody is going out here to fight for those three words. There is another thing that happens to words. They become twisted and misinterpreted and they lose their original significance. For example, the word baptizo-anglicized "baptized." That was just a plain, ordinary Greek word that a housewife used. When she washed her dishes, she stuck them in the water and baptized them-just an ordinary Greek word. When you wash your feet, you put your feet in a bowl or a pan or a stone jar-that was a Jewish ceremonial-and you baptized your foot; you stuck it in the water. It was just an ordinary Greek word used every day. But, as time went on the Greek word baptizo, which meant to "submerge, to dip"; why it was pulled out and it was given a sacramental meaning-until now “baptize” is an entrance into the kingdom of God in most of the face of the world. It has a priestly connotation, and it means an entrance into glory-baptize. I can show you an instance of that today that to me is horrifying. For thousands of years, "democracy," "people’s government," and "peace," have meant a certain thing. Through the ages, ever since the Greeks used those words to refer to the democracy of the Athenians. And by day and by night, over radio in all of their publications, the Soviet government- both in the orbit of Russia and in Red China-use those words "peace" and "people’s government" and "democracy" in an abominable and unspeakable way blaring out over the radio; publishing it out in all of their releases. "Peace" was a terrible peace and all of the time preparing for war. What you can do for words. Words twisted about of their connotation and they may mean something different altogether. Now, I want to say the same thing about this thing of becoming a Christian and being saved. The words of salvation-"repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." When those words were used from the lips of Jesus, from the lips of the Apostle Paul, they are plain, simple words and any body could understand them. Any body could follow them. Any body could respond to them. They were plain, simple, ordinary words. How to become a Christian and how to become saved. And I want you to know today, brother, it is a devious theological process, this thing of explaining the entrance into the kingdom of God. Why, you have to go to the seminary and get a theological degree for a man to stand up and adequately explain to other fellow how to be saved. And we have invested it with all kinds of mysterious things. "Brother, don’t you go down that aisle. Don’t you give that preacher your hand. Man, there are some mysterious things about becoming a Christian. And you do not understand them and you had better see first what you are doing before you get into all of that holy ecclesiasticism." And my soul, and my life, we so clutter it up with our hold on theology and our speaking and our sermons and sermons and sermons until a man is lost beneath the redundancy of the very words we use when we call a man to simple repentance and to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ-the words of salvation. Now for a moment, I want you to look at those words as they are used in the Bible. First "repentance," the word "repentance"; what does that mean? -repentance? When a man repents, what does he do and what happens to him when he repents? What is a thing that a man does when he repents? All right. I said it is just an ordinary word, used in every day language, and it had one meaning. Now, you listen to it. It was taken out of the Bible. Jesus said, "The men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here" [Mat 12:41]. There is that word. "They repented at the preaching of Jonah." Well, you turn back here to the third chapter of Jonah, you will find out what those people did and that is repentance. Here is what they did. Jonah came into the city of Nineveh after a three day’s journey and he began to say, "Yet forty days and the Nineveh will be destroyed" [Jon 3:4]. Forty more days to live; forty more days to get right with God; forty more days and God shall destroy and overthrow Nineveh. Well, the king heard it. And the king’s horsemen heard it. And the man on the street heard it. And the wife in the house heard it. And every body heard it. It spread like wildfire. And the king, instead of saying, "Ha"; instead of passing it by, the king stopped and he heeded, and he took off his robes, and he stepped down out of his robes, and he put sackcloth on, and he sat in ashes and he caused the decree to be published throughout the city-that every man would turn from his ways and look to God and maybe God would be merciful and save the city. And the Lord repented. That is what the Lord says here. "And the Lord repented himself." Well, I thought repentance was "mourn for sin." Oh, oh, oh; there is nothing in it. There is nothing in it to be mourned. There is my word against you lugubriously. I do not know of a better word to describe it. I held a revival meeting one time and it was out there in Kentucky, and they had this inane, senseless, silly, crazy doctrine that before a man could be saved, he had to mourn over his sins for a certain period of time; and they call that "true repentance"-true repentance. Well, I am just talking to you out of the Book. It says here, "and God repented him"; and God repented Him, and He did not do it. He did not destroy Nineveh because Nineveh had repented-Nineveh repented. And whatever that was, that was repentance. All right, look at it once again, just once again. Now, you look at this. This is from the Word of the Lord Jesus-"What think ye?" said the Lord, "A certain man has two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work today at my business [vineyard]. And he answered and said, I will not” [Mat 21:28-29]. -Yeah, sit down there with the department. Sit down there. He said this morning, we are all going to sit down over there, all of us together. Well, he has got offspring sitting way up in the balcony; that is it- "What think ye?" That is what the Lord is talking about-“What think ye?” That is what He is talking about-What do you think about that? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first and said, Go work today in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. -There is that word again; “but afterward he repented, and went”- And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he said, Yes, sir, I will go: but did not go. Now, which one of them did the father’s will? They said, the first,-the one who repented-Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed Him not: but the publicans and the harlots believed him: and ye, when you had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe him [Mat 21:28-32]. Now, that is repentance. This boy said, "I will not do it," and then he came and said, "Yes, sir, I will." Now, that is repentance; that is repentance. All right, may I apply it to us? May I apply it to us? Here is a fellow-"I was a pacifist; I was a pacifist. I did not believe in arms for the defense of my country, but I have changed my mind. I am not a pacifist any longer, I believe in defending our country." That is repentance; that is repentance. "I used to be a pacifist, but I am not a pacifist any more. I have changed my mind. I have turned around." All right, take another one. Here is a fellow, and I am talking about people I know who said these things to me, "I used to be a wimp. I used to believe in legalizing liquor. I used to believe in doing it on every corner. But I have changed my mind. I am against it now. I have turned around." That is repentance; that is repentance. I can think of another man-"I used to be a gambler." And he said, "One day I saw a ragged boy, underfed and undernourished going to school with a little bitty lunch basket in his hand, and nothing in that basket for him to eat." He said, "The night before, I had gambled with that boy’s father and I had won every thing that the father had." And he says, "When I saw that boy, ragged and hungry, going to school with that little bitty lunch basket in his hand," he said, "I said I will never gamble again; never again. That is repentance; I have changed my mind. I have turned around. I am going to do something else." That is repentance. Coach, here is a boy going to Texas University. He comes to see you. He says, "Listen, coach, I am not going to Texas University. I am going to SMU, and play on that Baptist [*] team out there at SMU." That is repentance. Yes, sir. "I have changed my mind." Turn him around. I have turned him around. Now a man such as Paul would describe that here in the twentieth chapter of the Book of Acts. He pled with them “repentance toward God, and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, let us take it back to his day what would that mean when Paul uses there? Well, this is what it would mean. There would stand up in the congregation in the middle of the church at Ephesus and one man would say, "I used daily to go up to the great temple of Diana. And I used to bow down and worship at the shrine of Diana. But today, I am bowing a knee to the Lord Jesus Christ. I have changed." That is repentance. "I have changed. I have turned around to the Lord." All right, take another fellow. You know, all of those people were idol worshipers in the days of Paul. There were many, many learned intellectuals, and they were mostly atheists. They were Greek intellectuals. They were Greek scholars. They were learned people-very learned. And some of them were sophists. And they went around and talked about Greek learning-cultural developments, oratory and rhetoric. And they were called sophists and they were everywhere. I can see a sophist standing up in the middle of that congregation there in Ephesus and saying, "I used to be an atheist-used to be an atheist. I used to go all over the country teaching sophistry to the people, using those philosophical terms and passages that the Greeks so greatly loved. I am not a sophist any more and I am not a Greek philosopher any more. I do not believe it any more. I am a humble believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. I have changed that. I have turned around." Now, let us apply it to us. Let us apply it to us today. Here is a little boy. Here is Jesse, fooling around this church for a generation-just once in a while drop in; just once in a while he would drop in; just once in a while in his life here. Just once in a while he would drop in. I went down there to the plant to see him, and I cornered him where the machinery was-a great big wheel going round and round. I talked to him a little while. I got him to go into the little office and I sat down by his side and I talked to him about the Lord, and about putting his life in the church, and about being here, and about coming and about raising up those children-five of them now, in the love and nurture of the Lord. And there was a day, he came down the aisle and took me by the hand and said, "Preacher, here I am. I have decided for the Lord and the church and I want to be baptized." That is repentance: Here I am. I have been passing it by. I have been passing it by. I have been going down the way. I am allowing other things to come in and interfere, but preacher, from now on, count me in. I am with you. Here I am, and here I come. Heretofore, I have been saying no to my wife, and no to the preacher, and no to the appeal. I have been out there on the outside. I am not going to be out there any more. Preacher, here I am. Here I am and here is my hand." That is repentance and turning around. Turning around; turning around; turning around-a great change. And he comes up and gives a commitment. And in the things you love, and in the things which you give your energy for your faith. "I am turning around, Preacher; heretofore, I have passed it by, but here I am coming to you and walking by your side." That is the faith. All right, now we need to go to the second word-“repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." All right, we have that word faith now. Repentance is a turning to God-the world? No, sir; its cause? No, sir, not any more. Looking to God; facing toward God; I have been out there, but not any more. I have been enmeshed in it; not any more. I have been serving the devil; not any more. I have been walking his way, not any more. "I am facing up to God. Now I am walking toward Him. I have turned around. I am in His church. I am with His people." That is repentance-looking to God. And what is that thing “trust Me"? "Repentance toward, God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ." Faith, now what is that? We have a whole chapter illustrated. Here in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, "By faith Noah-by faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen of yet, moved with fear, and prepared an ark for the saving of his house" [Heb 11:7]. Why it was a hundred and twenty years before the flood came, when God said to Noah He was going to destroy the world by water. Do you know what Noah did? For one hundred and twenty years-for a hundred and twenty years, he was hammering and sawing. He and his three boys began to build an ark a thousand miles away from any water big enough to float it. Now, that is faith. The skies were clear. The day was fine. And the neighbors all laughed at Noah. But God said one hundred and twenty years and the world will be destroyed by flood-by water. And Noah believed God. That is faith. Noah believed God. The next verse, "By faith Abraham" [Heb 11:8]-and then you have a long discussion of the faith of the Abraham-what it is to trust in God. Look at Him. God came to Abraham and said to him, "Abraham, I am going to give you a country." And Abraham said, "Where is that country?" And God said, "I am not going to tell you. I am not going to tell you; you just go out and I will direct you, Abraham." And Abraham got up and left, and he did not know where he was going-he did not know where he was going. And when he got there, he never owned a piece of it. In his old age, he bought a cave in which to bury Sarah, his wife. That is the only thing that he had. But God said, "I will give it to you and your family for ever." And he left, not knowing whither he went-just trusting God. And then he gives a second instance there in the twelfth verse-eleventh and twelfth verses. God said to Abraham, "Out of thy loins, out of the womb of Sarah, you are going to have a boy. And in him will all of the families of the world be blessed." Old Abraham got to be a hundred years old, and Sarah his wife got to be ninety years old. Did you ever see a woman ninety years old have a baby? In-you never did, nor did any body else-nor did anybody else. And one day, Abraham complained to God and said, "You promised me to this child. I am a hundred years old. My wife is ninety years old and there’s no child born yet." And you know what God did? God took Abraham out under the stars of the sky and said, "You look at the firmament. Can you number the stars?" And Abraham said, "No, I cannot count them all." And God said, "So shall thy seed be.” You are going to have a child, born out of the womb of Sarah, your wife. And that child will be the father of a nation who can number like the stars of the sky. [Gen 15:1-5]. And Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness [Gen 15:6]. He trusted in the Lord-faith. All right, here is one other. When the boy, in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews. God came to Abraham and said, "You take this boy-about thirteen years old-and you offer him up as a sacrifice to Me." So Abraham took the boy, Isaac-"laugher," and the joy and the heart and home and family. He took the little boy Isaac. On Mount Moriah he bound the boy, laid him as a sacrifice-as an offering for God. And here is what the Book says: "Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead" [Heb 11:19]. God said, "In this boy-in this boy, shall thy seed and thy name and thy generations be called." And when Abraham lifted up that knife to plunge it into the boy at God’s command, the Bible says Abraham believed that God would raise the boy from the dead. If he did it, God would raise him from the dead. That is faith. That is faith-just trusting God for it; just trusting God for it. Look to God for it. Just believing in God-that is faith. That is faith. Now, in a feeble, poor way, may I apply that to my soul. I am going to take myself. There is no need for me to be up here talking to you about faith. If I haven’t exercised it myself, I ought not to speak of it. Trusting God for it; trusting God for it. As a young fellow, when I was out there where I was preaching out there; where I was preaching at the Pecan Grove Baptist Church. I was seventeen years old when I first went out there to preach-seventeen years old. And I stayed there-I was called soon after that-I stayed there until I went away to the Southern Seminary in Kentucky. And as I was out there, I got down there on my knees one day. I got down on my knees, and I said something to God. This is what I said, "Lord, when I stand up to preach, help me Lord to preach with just an open book in my hand. That is all. No manuscript and no notes; just stand up there and preach. Lord, you help me." It scared me to death-scared me to death. Well, what if you forget? What if you forget? What if it goes out of your mind? What do you do? I preach at these evangelistic conferences, any number-I could not tell you the number of preachers that come around and say to me-once in a while I quote poetry by the yard in those addresses, those special addresses, and go through any number of things-and they come around and say to me, "Where do you put all of that? We have looked and there is no manuscript any where? They sit in the balcony and there are no notes any where. How did you do that? How do you do that?" It scared me to death when I started out. You realize I have been preaching to you for ten solid years, almost-it is like but a few months. Now every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, and you have never seen me yet stand up here with a manuscript or any notes. You never are going to either. You are not going to. And I stand up here with this book in my hand-and I study hard as I prepare this message-and I stand up here and I preach and I try not to duplicate what I have said and what I have done. I try to have a new message every Sunday morning and every Sunday night. I have settled that back there on my knees. "Dear God, I am going to trust You for it. Let my mind think when I stand up; that it will be clear, and that I won’t stumble or stagger or forget. And I am depending on You, Lord, I am trusting You for it." That has been twenty-five years ago-something like that. And the Lord has never failed me one time. Not one time. I have never yet forgotten. Once in a while, I may stagger and stumble and hesitate, mostly because my mind works a lot faster than my mouth is able to talk. But the Lord has never let me down. He never has. He never has. All right, another thing-just trusting God for it. Every once in a while, I go out and hold a revival meeting. Now, I am a pastor and not an evangelist; and I cannot stay at a church but just about one Sunday. So I build toward one great appeal on that one Sunday. And our people, we pray and we work for that one great appeal on Sunday. Did you ever think what if nobody came? What if nobody responded? Why, you never saw such a colossal failure-such a washout in your life. You pray and work toward that hour on Sunday and what if nobody came? What if nobody came? ======================================================================== CHAPTER 54: S. WHEN WE COME TO ROME ======================================================================== WHEN WE COME TO ROME Dr. W. A. Criswell Acts 28:11-20 06-20-54 In our preaching through the word, we are in the twenty-eighth chapter, the last chapter of the Book of Acts. And last Sunday, we left off with the first part of it. The shipwreck that casts on the shores of the little island of Malta, Melita, Paul and Luke and Aristarchus and Julius, the captain of the Augustan band with the Roman soldiers, the sailors and the prisoners. They were kindly entreated by the barbarous people, the non-Greek speaking people on the island, so stayed there the winter. And we left off at the tenth verse. This morning we begin with the eleventh verse and continue through the twentieth- Acts 28:11-20. And after three months, we departed in a ship of Alexandria, which had wintered in the isle, whose sign was Castor and Pollux. And landing at Syracuse, we stayed there three days. And from thence we set the compass and came to Rhegium: and after one day, the south wind blew, and we came the next day to Puteoli: Where we found brethren, and were desired to tarry with them seven days: and so we went toward Rome. And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God and took courage. And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guards: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him. -To whom he was chained- And it came to pass, that after three days Paul called the chief of the Jews together: and when they were come together, he said unto them, Men and brethren, though I have committed nothing against the people or customs of our fathers, yet was I delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans. Who, when they had examined me, would have let me go, because there was no cause of death in me. But when the Jews spake against it, I was constrained to appeal unto Caesar; not that I had ought to accuse my nation of. For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain [Acts 28:11-20]. Now, let us go back and follow the apostle and his journey to Rome. The little island of Malta is in the Mediterranean south of Sicily. And after staying there three months, the winter months, when time came for navigation again, they entered a ship that had wintered in the island; an Alexandrian wheat ship, a grain ship. And so sailed from Malta, northward toward Rome. It is not very far to Syracuse. I have flown all over this route, stopped in many places of it. It is not very far to Syracuse. Syracuse was the most flourishing and illustrious and famous of all of the Greek colonies located in the western part of the Mediterranean. It was founded by Corinth. Cicero said it was the most beautiful city in the world. They tarried there for three days. And then trekked backwards and forwards throughout treacherous stream of Messina up to a town called Rhegium, which is on the point of the toe of Italy. To give you an idea of the barbaric, inhuman customs of that day, in that little town of Rhegium, in the days when Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, went to war in Macedonia with a Greek general. In the days when Pyrrhus was invading Italy, Rhegium formed an alliance with Rome. And Rhegium opened her gates to four thousand Roman troops in order to protect the city against Pyrrhus. This is what happened. When the city opened the gates to the Roman soldiers, four thousand of them, they slew every male inhabitant of the city and reduced all of the women to slavery. That is just a little typical incident of the inhumanity of that day. From Rhegium it is one hundred eighty miles straight to the other side of the Bay of Naples. And the seaport of imperial Rome was located in a city of about one hundred thousand people called Puteoli, which is on the left hand side of the Bay of Naples. There was no city of Naples at that time. Your big port city was Puteoli. It is one hundred forty miles south of Rome, and, except for thirty-three miles due north of Puteoli, it was connected with Rome by the famous Appian Way-the busiest and most famous highway in the world. When Paul came to Puteoli, he sailed across the Bay of Naples. It took him about a day to get there-about twenty-six hours with a soft south wind blowing. When he came into Puteoli and looked across the bay, there was a beautiful mountain named Vesuvius. And sleeping on the side of the mountain, on the side of the mountain were the two famous resort cities of Rome, Herculaneum and Pompeii. They were beautifully laid out cities and they were covered, surrounded with beautiful vine-clad vineyards and beautiful, laid out terrace farms, and they were laughing their last years away. When you go into the Bay of Naples now, the direction of everybody’s eye and attention is on the smoking cone of Vesuvius. It looks like a locomotive peacefully smoking in a railway station. When Paul went to Puteoli, there was no smoke at all. It was just an innocent looking mountain there, beautifully covered with green and vine and flower, and those beautiful cities there at the foot of it. There was no premonition whatsoever of the terrible eruption nineteen years later, on a hot August night when the mountain suddenly exploded and the cities were buried in hot lava and boiling mud. They remain there unknown, hidden, forgotten until the 18th and the 19th centuries, when they are now being dug up and the people who were encased in lava and in mud. They are presented in the museums today and the cities laid out in excavation just as it was when Vesuvius covered it [them] over and the life of the day, just as they lived, so suddenly wiped out is preserved for all time. As I said when Paul was there, everything was peaceful and quiet with no harbinger or premonition of that terrible August night in [A.D.] 79 when Vesuvius first erupted. Now, from Puteoli, word from sent to Rome that the great apostle had landed in Italy. This is the first time that he set foot on Italian soil, and they doubtless made the journey from Puteoli-the one hundred forty miles-the rest of the way by foot-walking along. And when they came to a place called Appii Forum, there they were met by brethren who came down to meet them and to greet them from the city of Rome. Appii Forum is located at the forty-three Roman milestone-about thirty-nine and half English miles; in that day, a day’s journey for a vigorous walker and traveler. Appii Forum was located at the head of a canal. From the forty-third Roman milestone through the Pontine Marshes to the sixty-second milestone, there was a canal that ran by the side of the Appian road. And travelers often made that part of the trip by night. They entered both barge and boats, and the boats were pulled along by mules on either side of the narrow canal. Horace, the Roman poet and satirist, described one of the trips he made on that journey. He speaks of the gnats and frogs and insects and mosquitoes that made repose impossible. He talked about the recalcitrant mules here whose provocative tactics drove them all crazy and whose procrastination made it seem impossible to ever arrive. And then he speaks of Appii Forum-of the intolerable water and the importunate innkeepers and of a motley throng gathered there at the head of the canal. So you can see Paul as he comes to Appii Forum, a town of low taverns and barge men and travelers from all over the world. And in that crowd is a little band of Christians as they eagerly scan the faces of all of those coming up from the south. And can you imagine the face of Paul as his eyes shined and his face brightened and his countenance lightened when there came toward him this little band of brethren, Christians from the city of Rome who had come down to Appii Forum at the head of the canal to meet the great preacher and apostle of Christ. Then on the Appian Way, they walked together to The Three Taverns. That is a little town about ten or twelve miles farther up the Appian Way [Via Appia] from Appii Forum, and doubtless these brethren who meet Paul at The Three Taverns were older men who could not quite make the journey down to the head of the canal. And there Paul is greeted again. And so, they go toward Rome, walking on the Appian Way [Via Appia]. I have walked on that way. Some of you have. That road was built by a counsel of Rome three hundred years before Paul walked on it. [Appius] Claudius Appius [312 B.C.] gave his name to it. And it is a highway today. After two thousand three hundred years, the automobiles and the carts and the wagon and it is people still use that highway. And once in a while I read in Texas, we have to spend more money. About ten years ago, they built a highway from here to there, and now it is all worn out. I think of how those Romans built two thousand three hundred years ago, Appius Claudius Appius built that highway and they still use it. And on either side of the highway, the great men and women of imperial Rome, placed their Sarcophagi. The tombs, the tombs, in order that they might be remembered by the travelers who turn north toward the golden city. Can’t you see that sight? In the crowded highway of Appius [Via Appia] there is Julius, a Roman centurion with his Roman legionaries and chained to one of the soldiers, is his prisoner, Paul of Tarsus. And gathered around Paul are the little band of Christians, making their way toward the imperial city. Can’t you see it? And the Paul-and the heart of Paul is light. It says here that when Paul saw those Christians, “he thanked God, and took courage” [Acts 28:15]. Paul, everywhere that he went, was beaten. He was treated with malice by enemies that ought to have been his friends. All that he knew was persecution and slander and malice. Somehow, I suppose, after the years had passed, his spirit grew heavy. Apparently he failed in so much of what he had done. In any event, it says here, that when Paul saw these Christians from Rome, he thanked God and took courage. I can just see that, can’t you? After the storm and after the shipwreck and after the toil and weary persecution and hardships of life, going toward Rome, not knowing what might lie ahead, there to greet him were these Christians, with a song on their lips and a welcome in their heart. I can see that. And the spirit of the apostle, lifted up. Have you ever thought about that with you and with your brethren and with your people? What it means, a Christian smile and a word of cheer, an encouraging sentence, the warm clasp of a hand. Have you ever thought of that? When you see some body, do you frown and are you like an old grouch? And everything is wrong and there is nothing right? Are you that way? And some body asks you how you are. Well, you are just about gone. You are just about down. You are washed up. Oh, isn’t it a lot better- isn’t it a lot better when somebody asked you how you are? You may be so blue you want to die; you may be so lost you cannot see the sun; you may be so discouraged you do not know how to say it, but when somebody asks you how you are, why don’t you smile? Well, friend, maybe it could be better with me, but it is not as bad as it could be-not as bad as it could be. There is a blessed member of this church, one of the finest, sweetest members of our church. She’s listening right now to me over this radio. [She] is in Baylor Hospital. She is paralyzed on the right side. She has been that way a long time. She is out there at Baylor all the time. I go see her every time I have opportunity. And you would think, well, this is going to be a sort of a sad thing, isn’t it? When you go visit her-you go visit her. How she loves this church. She and her husband put their lives in this church. And she has said to me several times, “Pastor, I am so happy that when this stroke came that my eyes were spared. I can still see with both of my eyes and I can read. And I am so happy that when the stroke came, it left my features, my mouth so that I can speak and talk. And I am so happy that it left half of my side normal and I can use one of my hands.” And you would think that after you talked with her, that the Lord had been especially good to her. I do not know whether I can take it like that or not. But I wish I knew that I might be turned in that way. To smile. To say a word of encouragement: “Paul, when he saw them, thanked God and took courage.” I do not know why it should have made such an impression upon me. In New Delhi, India, a friend took me to see a section, a cave of child labor. There in an old place were children-eight, nine, ten, and eleven years of age-they were gathered around an anvil and a forge, and they were making iron hinges. There was nobody there but those little boys. I suppose they had never bathed in their lives. I just suppose they sat there by the sad of the forge and by the side of the anvil. They were black, as black could be. And from early sunrise until late sundown, seven days out of every week, those little boys stand at those forges and at those hand drills and at those anvils and they make iron hinges, all of the days of their lives. As I walked around and looked at those boys, it was all I could do to keep from crying. It was just so heavy a sight to my heart. And I stood where two or three of those little boys were grinding by hand the holes in the iron hinges in which you take a screw to fasten it to a door. And as I stood and looked there, one of those dirty, dirty, dirty-faced boys looked up and me and he smiled. His teeth were so white when he smiled, it kind of got next to me. What does he have to smile about? What if that were you when you were a boy? Ah, fellow, we have room of our lives for more of that. Did you know it? More of that. And when Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage. Lord, more and more, take out of me the disgruntled and the cynic and the scornful and the contemptuous and the caustic and the critic and the bitter. Help me Lord, to have more of the smile and the sunshine of God in my heart. And when Paul saw them, he thanked God and took courage. And went on his way to Rome, chained to a Roman soldier, the custody of the Roman army. For the years of his life, he dreamed of going to Rome. When he was in Ephesus, he said, “I must also see Rome” [Acts 19:21]. And in the passage that we read of the letter that he wrote from Corinth, he says, “oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, (but was hindered hitherto,)” [Rom 1:13]. At long last he has come to the center of the government of the Roman Empire. It is a long way from Damascus, where he was converted, to Rome, where he preaches. I do not suppose he ever dreamed he would go there like that. Do you think?-chained to a Roman soldier; in custody of the legionaries. But his spirit is not bound. And in the second chapter of Second Timothy, in the ninth verse, he says, “and the word of God is not bound, though I am bound with this chain” [2Ti 2:9]. You do not bind a man by sticking him behind an iron grate or a stone wall. A man is only imprisoned by his own heart and his own soul and his own spirit. This man Paul, chained to a Roman soldier, is unfettered and free and he lives in the great firmament of God’s presence. This man Paul last came to Rome, bound, but the Word of God and his spirit are not bound. So they called the Jews together. And spake to them saying, “For this cause therefore have I called for you, . . . because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain” [Acts 28:19-20]. For the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain-for the hope of Israel. I can just see Paul as he takes God’s Book and as he reads out of the prophets, that is the Lord Jesus. And, as he reads out of the law, that is the Lord Jesus. And as he follows the story of the promise coming of Christ, all through the intervening centuries-the Lord Jesus-the hope of Israel. Every smoking sacrifice pointed to Him. Every line of every song pointed to Him. Every preaching of every prophet pointed to Him. Every-every ritual, every part of the temple worship, all revelations of God pointed to Him. And, to that hope clung all of the patriarchs and saints and preachers and prophets and men of God in all of the centuries past. All lead to the Lord Jesus. I can just see Paul as he preaches to the people of the hope of Israel in Christ Jesus-all of it pointing up to him. There is a scarlet thread. There is a scarlet line that runs through all of the Bible. It is the hope of Israel that leads finally to the Lord Jesus-“for the hope of Israel, I am bound with this chain.” Fellow, do you have a hope? What if I went away to the convention as I did this week and the telephone rings. “I have an emergency call for you.” “All right.” “It is from Dallas, Texas.” “All right.” “You are the pastor of the First Baptist Church?” “Yes.” “It is for you.” I know what it is about. It comes all the time-all the time. I went away to place some time ago to rest for just a while. When the bell boy put my bag in the room, the telephone rang. There is an emergency call from Dallas to you. And I came back. And I left the convention to come back. What if that call were from your wife or your husband or your son or your daughter? “Brother Criswell”-last night at one-thirty o’clock in the morning-“just wanted to know if you could get back in time for the service. We so would like for you to come. He loved you so. Could you do it?” What if that is for you? Do you have a hope? Stricken suddenly, is it all right? In the middle of the night before you awake, would it be all right? An accident, is it all right? Do you have a hope? Do you? As I look on this table, with its red fruit of the vine, it brought back to my heart one of the things a missionary said, far, far in the north part of India going down the road. So on the side of a road, a straggler, an Indian that had been abandoned by the cavern and left to die on the side of the road. The missionary said he stopped and bent over the prostrate form of the man. There was a little life in him. And he said to him, “Sir, do you have any hope?” And the man with his dying sentence said, “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son cleanseth us from all sin”-and expired. The missionary amazed, for the first time noticed that in his clenched fist was a leaf from a Book. He undid his fist and spread out the leaf and there was a page from the First Epistle of John, the first chapter and that verse, ”the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanseth us from all sin” [1Jn 1:7]. For the hope of Israel. Do you hope? Do you have a hope in him? While we sing our song this morning, some body you, to give your heart to the Lord; in the balcony; in the topmost balcony from side to side; while we make appeal, today, would you make it now? Pastor, here I am and here I come. To give your heart to the Lord in faith and in trust; [to] come into the fellowship of His church by baptism or letter or promise of letter. One some body, you; a family some body, you, Pastor, here we are and here is my family; a child or you, as God shall say the word and open the door. While we sing and make appeal, would you come?-While we all stand and while we sing. ======================================================================== CHAPTER 55: S. WHY GOD PERMITTED ADAM'S TRANSGRESSION ======================================================================== WHY GOD PERMITTED ADAM’S TRANSGRESSION Dr. W. A. Criswell 09-12-54 Rom 5:15 We are in the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans. And if you have your Bibles, follow it with me. Romans, the 5th chapter-read the eighth verse and, then, start at the twelfth and through the chapter. Rom 5:1-21, and verse 8: “But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Now, the twelfth verse: Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. (For until the Law, sin was in the world; sin is not imputed where there is no Law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of Him who was to come. But not as the offense is the free gift. For through the offense of one, many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift, for the judgment by one was to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. For if by one man’s offense, death reigned by one; much more, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all me, to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the Law entered, that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ, our Lord. As I began to study and to prepare for this hour, there came to my heart in this study a marvelous message. Oh, if God would just help me deliver it tonight! There are some things about this life, universe, creation, that I’ve thought about ever since I’ve been able to think. There are things that come and crowd into your heart and into your soul. So, we are going to see what God has to say of those things tonight. Maybe I could entitle this message: Why God Permitted Adam’s Transgressions. Why didn’t God stop it? Why did God allow it? God knew all of the evil consequences that would follow to Adam’s posterity through the generations down to us today. The woe and misery, the war and bloodshed, the pain and sorrow, the suffering and death written large on every page of human history since the day of Adam’s sin. Didn’t God know that? Didn’t God see that? Then, why did God permit it? There is an answer in this passage I have read out of the Book of Romans. So, let’s start at the beginning. There are two conflicting-evil and good-There are two conflicting, opposing spiritual powers-principalities, dominions, kingdoms-in this creation. There’s not one. There are two. We see it one time in the first verse of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” If God did it, how do you think it was done? Could God do an imperfect thing? Could God create something bad and ugly as the came from the great benign, magnificent, almighty, all-powerful Creator? Whatever that was that God created, that He called the heaven and earth, was beautiful and glorious beyond compare. In those premundane days, God’s angels, the seraphim and the cherubim, weren’t just in His holy presence. And above all of the angelic and terrific-and terrific orders, the Lord created “the son of the morning.” And he walked in the glory of God Himself. In those days, long before the foundation of this present world-in those days, sin entered the heart of that chief archangel, who guarded the ramparts of God’s heaven. His pride lifted him up. And looking upon Christ, God’s Son, co-equal with the Father-looking upon Him, envy and jealousy made him say, “And I-I will exalt myself above the very highest throne of God.” And that was the origin of evil. It started, it began, in the heart, in the soul, in the mind, in the will, in the pride of Lucifer, the son of the morning , the archangel who shepherded all God’s celestial creation. Now, you have an insoluble mystery: why God allowed that in the beginning? Nobody shall ever know, until we talk to God face to face in the world that is to come. But, the origin of evil was in the heart of Satan, Lucifer, the son of the morning, the crown prince of the seraphic orders of glory. So, when that happened, something happened to God’s creation. These stars that we see in the universe, brown and dull and burned-the full galaxy that’s been broken apart-There’s not an astronomer that lives who could tell you. All of these stars, and all of these galaxies somewhere, are the result of vast explosions, tremendous cataclysmic convulsions back there, somewhere in time. At the dawn of creation, sin entered the world, sin entered God’s heaven and the result was a vast, illimitable, indescribable cataclysmic devastation: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” So, you see it there. You see it there. You see it again. You see it once again, in the glorious story of the coming of Jesus into the world. There’s not a more beautiful story than Christmas. The angels say all heaven was aglow with celestial music. The very song of the sphere was in tune with the earth that beautiful, holy and sacred night. There was a ladder, a stairway, and up and down, over the angel base, they sang the chorus of heavenly joy and earthly goodness. There was goodness in God’s heaven. It was glory upon God’s earth. And you see it again: four miles away from Bethlehem is a little hill called Calvary. And on that hill, in this evil and darkened world, the man gave back to God, on the point of a Roman spear, what God had so wonderfully given at Christmas time in the little town called Bethlehem. And you see, once again-in this passage of the creation of man-he’s perfect. He’s in the Garden of Eden. All good things are about him. Then comes that same dark and sinister, evil being: Satan, Lucifer-he who challenges God, who had lifted himself above the throne of God Himself. Lucifer comes. And once again, the same story reiterated: The crown that once was made fruitful with the tree of life, with all manner of fruit, for the goodness and glory of man, the ground is cursed. And it raises thistles and thorns. And the animals, made beautiful and holy, lovely and tame-the animals developed fang and claw, are carnivorous and destroy one another on the earth, in the air and under the sea. And man himself becomes a prey and a victim of murder and hate and bloodshed and pillage and rapine. And the earth becomes a spirit of darkness and death and woe out of man’s first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste brought death into our world and all its woe. Didn’t God say that? Didn’t God know that? Acts 15:18 : “Known unto God, are all of His works from the beginning of the world.” Didn’t God see that? Didn’t God know that? Then, why did God permit it? Your answer is in the fifth chapter of the Book of Romans and the fifteenth verse. God saw the terrible woe of the world. God saw the death and devastation that followed the sin. But, God also saw something else. God also saw “Not in the offense is the free gift.” In the permissive will of God, the Lord allowed Satan to enter the Garden. In the permissive will of God, the Lord gave to Adam moral choice. In the permissive will of God, the Lord allowed Adam to choose to sin and to die. In the permissive will of God, all of Adam’s posterity have died in sin and in guilt ever since. But, God also saw that Not as the offense, so is the free gift. For where sin abounded and where death abounded and where the curse abounded, grace, grace, God’s grace did much more abound. What Paul is saying here is that, out of that sin and the suffering and its heartache and its curse and its death, God wrought some greater and more glorious thing for us, for us, for us. The Lord permitted Adam’s transgression, Adam’s offense, that out of the abundance of history, there might be wrought, in His love, under His hands, a more wonderful thing for us who have turned in faith toward Christ. All right. What are those things? What are those things? Paul says the good things, the greater things, the nobler and more blessed things that arose out of the Fall. If Adam had not fallen, if he had not transgressed, if he had not offended, these things would never have come. But, God’s grace overflowed and abounded, far beyond the offenses. God permitted the offense because, out of it were to be wrought these great blessings that ensued for Adam and his posterity. What are those things? I name four of them tonight-four of them. The first: Had Adam not fallen, had there been no mortal transgression, had there been no first offense-first, there would never have been the incarnation of God’s Son and our Savior. He came into this world and assumed our life and assumed our death and lived in this body of flesh because of Adam’s transgression and Adam’s sin. It is for the purpose of taking away the iniquity and the sin of this world that Jesus came and became a man like you, like me. The incarnation was made possible and necessary because of Adam’s transgression. Had Adam not fallen, there had been no Cross: that amazing display of the wonderful love of God. Had Adam not fallen, the hosts of heaven would never have been astonished at that glorious birth. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” Had it not been for Adam’s transgressions, there would have never been a gospel of redemption, a story of seeking love. In the twelfth verse of the first chapter of Simon Peter’s letter, speaking of the gospel, he said, “Which things the angels desire to look into.” Did you ever look upon that verse and think of it? This gospel: “which things the angel desire to look into.” What does that mean? It means that an angel never fell, an angel never sinned, an angel never transgressed, an angel could never know what it is to look to God for forgiveness, to be reborn, to be regenerated, to be renamed. An angel could never know what it is to have faith in the Son, to believe in Him, to become a child of God, to be adopted into the family of the Almighty. These things are strange to angels, God’s Book says-these experiences that we go through, these heart-to-heart touches that we have with God, these barings of our soul to Him, and the grace of heaven that comes into earth for us. All of those things are mysteries to the angels. They desire to look into them, but cannot understand. You and I can. As a child of Adam, in the posterity of Adam, as a child of the fallen human race, all of us understand. We know what it is to be saved, to be born again, to cry unto God, to look to Him in faith and tell the love of God, shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The first answer: Why did God permit Adam to fall? The first answer: Out of that transgression, and out of that offense, came Christ Jesus, incarnate God, dying on the Cross, bearing our sins on the tree. Had Adam not transgressed, Jesus would never have come: our brother, our God, a fellow heir with Him-the virtue and merit of our Lord in His sacrificial death on the cross. All right. The second reason: Why did God permit Adam’s transgression? The second reason: In the Fall, in the transgression, in the day of curse and of death, we see a revelation of the heart of God, the soul and love, the sympathy, the outpouring of God that otherwise we would never have known. Had Adam not fallen, had there been no transgression, we had known God as a great Creator. And we could have sung each early morning, “O Lord, how excellent is Thy name in all the earth. The world is filled with Thy glory.” And we could have admired God and wondered and marveled at His created power. Look at the star. He made that. Look at those beautiful galaxies. And He made those. And, look at these marvelous things. And He made those. And we could have marveled at God and we could have known God as the great Creator. And we could have known the pre-existent Christ as being the express image of the invisible God and the brightness of His glory. And we could have wondered at such great beauty and marvelous power. But, we would never have known God’s love, never have known His sympathy and His understanding, never have known His heart or His forgiveness, had it not been for Adam’s transgression. It was when the Lord incarnate suffered and bore our sins on the tree that we come to see what God means when He says He so loved the world. God, by fiat, made the world. By the word of His mouth, “Let it be,” and there it was. But, by fiat, God could not save a fallen race. That is a story of redeeming love: Seeking, searching, pleading, dying for the man that He made. That’s God. That’s the revelation of the heart of God. And it came through the Fall of our first father, Adam. Three. What comes with Adam’s transgression? “Not as the offense, so is the free gift. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” For what is this greater and more glorious thing that comes out of the Fall of Adam? Third: All of the Christian graces that we know. All of them, without exception-all of the virtues, all of the graces of the Christian life are born in Adam’s transgression. They are the fruit of Adam’s offense. They are the result of Adam’s Fall. “Not as the offense, so is the free gift.” I say again, all of the graces, the virtues, all of the things that make for a glorious and incomparable Christian character, these came out of the Fall. Out of the transgression, or out of pain and suffering and sorrow and death, come all of those things that are holy in God’s sight and sanctified before the Lord of glory. One: The sight of the man submitting to God’s will. However harsh, however tragic, however burdened, however sorrowful, that sight of a man submitting to God’s will. Job-Job crying and saying, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Or, when Satan laid his upon Job again, and from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, covered with boils and running sores, Job sat in an ash heap and lifted up his voice, and he cried, once again, “Though He slay me-Though He slay me, yet, yet will I trust Him.” That came out of the Fall: The sight of a man’s surrender to the will of God. I say, out of the tragedy and the Fall came all of the Christian virtues. And we know all of them: Humility, sympathy, understanding, charity, forgiveness. All come out of the suffering and the sorrows of human life. To be sick-Somebody who’s been sick. I’ve been sick. I understand: A great tragedy. I’ve been through that tragedy. I understand. A great disappointment, and I’ve been disappointed. All of the things that so sweetly and gloriously crown the head of the humble Christian, they come out of the pain and suffering and the sorrows, the crying of life. I lay at ease in my little boat Fast moored to the shore of the pond And gazed up through the trees That swayed in the breeze At God’s own sky beyond. And I thought of the want and the sin in the world And the pain and the grief they bring And I marvel at God For spreading abroad Such sorrow and suffering. Even came creeping over the earth And the sky grew dim and gray And faded from sight. And I grumbled at night For stealing my sky away. Then out of the dark just a speck of a face Peeked forth from his window bars And I laughed to see It smile at me: I had not thought of the stars. There are millions of loving thoughts And words all right for awakening, That never would start From the world’s cold heart But for sorrow and suffering. Yes, the blackening night is somber and cold And the day is warm and fine; And yet if the day Never faded away, The stars would never shine. Out of the sorrows, the cries, the tears of our lives come those Christian virtues of sympathy and understanding, goodness and charity: My hand to help, my heart to care, my eyes to weep, my soul to bow down with you under the burdens of our grief. That came out of the Fall. What are those things that came out of the Fall, out of the transgressions? The whole meaning of heaven itself. I don’t know whether you ever sat down, tried to think what would it be like in glory? What would it be like in that other world? What is it: this thing that God has prepared for those who love Him? I don’t know all. No one could. But, I know some things, as I read the Book. Heaven is a place where it says: God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for all of these former first things are passed away. That’s in the twenty-first chapter of the Revelation. And that’s what they say heaven is like. It says it is a place. And there is no more crying. What would that mean to a man who never cried, never bowed his head and wept until his soul cried aloud unto God? “No more crying. There shall be no more pain.” What would that mean to a man who had never suffered? It says there’s no more sorrow. What would that mean to a soul that had never bowed in an unutterable bereavement? And no more death? What would that mean to a man who never died? What would any of those mean to him? Heaven, our soul. The Holy City, New Jerusalem, come down from God. “And the Lord shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. Never more morrow nor crying. And no more pain and there’s no more death.” What would that mean to an angel? Nothing at all. Nothing at all. But, to us, the children of the Fall, the posterity of Adam-to us, it’s heaven. It’s God’s glory. We know and understand that came out of the Fall. Now, the fourth and the last: What came out of Adam’s transgression? “Not as the offense, so is the free gift.” “But where sin abounded, grace, God’s grace did much more abound.” What came out of the Fall? This came out of the Fall: The New Covenant of grace. The New Covenant: You have it translated in the King James’s Version: “the New Testament.” The testament of grace, that covenant of grace, the New Covenant of grace came out of the Fall. In Adam’s Fall, all of us were made sinners. In one man, all of us died. All of us died, for we are in the loins of our fathers. I was in the loins of my parents. They were in the loins of their parents. If you ever studied genetics, those chromosomes, they never-you don’t have a new one. It’s always the half, of the one that’s in your parents. And that goes back and back and back and back to Adam. All of us were in the loins of the federal head, the representative man, the first Adam. And when Adam sinned, all of us sinned. When he fell, all of us fell. By his offense, all of us were made guilty. As it says in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Romans, so God concluded all of the world guilty. All of us are under sin. In Adam, we all died. But not as the offense, so is the free gift… . If by one man’s offense death reigned by one; much more they which receiveth abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Or, as Paul again writes in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians: “For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” ======================================================================== Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/writings-of-w-a-criswell/ ========================================================================