Audio Sermon: The Beauty of Holiness

I'm very glad for this privilege of fellowshiping here again. I don't know when I was here last, sometime last year, I mean, I think May. Somewhere about that time.

And believe it or not, I've only preached one week since then. So I found it a bit rusty, you know. I mean, I'm not like these milliner evangelists that scoop up these big love affairs every weekend.

But apart from that, the thing is that you have to flex your muscles and kind of get back into stride again. I like that expression of other gymmers there, that we spend so much time defending something that doesn't work. Most of our preaching is defending a man who died 2,000 years ago.

And they're very phenomenal in doing that. I had a very moving story just about two weeks ago. You may have forgotten that the fact is that America still has 50 or 52,000 boys, not really in Korea, not really in Vietnam, but 52,000 men just south of the 38th parallel in Korea.

Another 50,000 men still guarding the line in Germany. But I'm told that there was a Christian man just south of the 38th parallel in Korea. And every day he walked up and down the street with his hands raised up and he said, It's only I have it now.

It's only I have it now. Because before the war, before he was pushed out of North Korea, south of the 38th parallel, he was a multimillionaire. And he used to give a tithe, a little bit of his money, a little bit of his time to the Lord.

It was expected of him. But he wasn't too generous. His pockets never burst at the seam.

He didn't want to go too far giving what he had. But there came a day when the invasion took place and he was given out of North Korea. And now he's penniless.

And every day he says, It's only I have it. It's only I have it now. Or he'd do so much with it.

But when he had it, he did nothing with it. Maybe some of us will be sitting in concentration camps for far too long and could tell them the way it's heading up it will, thinking outside of revival. And some of us will be saying, I wish I was back in that home with the wall-to-wall carpeting.

I really would crawl out, but I'm too sore and stiff and I've been beaten up today and I can't do it. So we've got some very serious things to think about and I think preach about this week. But my mother used to tell me it was always good to say grace before you had a meal.

And so I thought tonight we'd just say grace before we have the meats in the days that lie ahead. I have emphasized for many years, and by Julie this year I will again say my 50th year as a preacher. Isn't that an awful long while? Now you'll be trying to guess my age, but I won't tell you.

And I have emphasized and I've written some books about prayer. And I think that one of the most embarrassing things at the judgment seat will be to discover how little we have really, little time we've really spent in prayer. I heard a lady say the other day, God hears prayer, but he answers faith.

Now how does that upset your theology? But anyhow, stick it in your mind and think over it. He hears prayer, he answers faith. But if we shortchange ourselves in the line of prayer, I'm convinced that we shortchange God on the level of praise and on the level of worship.

So here's a very simple message tonight from the 96th Psalm and the 9th verse. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Feel before him all the earth.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The capital city of Scotland is Edinburgh and it lies 400 miles north of the capital city of England, which is London. Now you could do that stretch of 400 miles in less than an hour in a jet.

But if you tried to do it 400 years ago, it would have taken you maybe anything from 10 to 20 days. It was always a hazard. It was almost impossible to do it in winter because obviously they had no bulldozers.

The roads were very undeveloped and they were very heavily infested with highwaymen and the stagecoaches that did the trip, remember they had no heating in them. But a Christian man took the journey. He was going on business, but while he was on business he combined it with real spiritual pleasure.

When he returned to London he said to a friend, well I did good business but I had a great time spiritually. He mentioned a certain city and he said, I went there and I saw a tall, dark, rather stout man by the name of Blair. He showed me the majesty of God.

After another week of business I went to another city and I saw a different type of personality with a very different accent, with a very different delivery. He didn't show me the majesty of God, but he showed me the clarity of my own nature. And then he said the third week, I managed to get to Amroth.

And at Amroth I heard that not very tall, but very stout man by the name of Samuel Rutherford. And he showed me the loveliness of Christ. It was from those amazing letters that you can still get, it was from the letters of Samuel Rutherford that Mrs. Cousins extracted those very, very wonderful words out of which he formed a poem and out of which there came that wonderful hymn, The Sands of Time are Thinking.

You remember perhaps the phrase that Alexander White said, he loved so much with mercy and with judgment by web of time he wove. And I, the dew of sorrow, was lusted by his love. I blessed the hand that guided, I blessed the heart that planned.

When throned where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land, they set this man up in a thing very much like a coffee pot, a building out on a craggy rock. It was lashed every day with the wind and the storm and the tide. And somebody went in one day to see Rutherford and they expected to find him all twisted and deformed with rheumatism and, as the world would say, wondering why God didn't intervene.

When they got there he said, Then he goes on to say, Concerning his relationship with God and his anticipation of heaven, it were a well-spent journey, though seven deaths lay between. I don't think the political or moral or spiritual situation is any better than it was last time I was here. In fact, I think it's deteriorated very severely.

But I'm quite sure that my generation needs to get each of the concepts that that famous, that wonderful traveler had. We need a new revelation of the God that we serve, a new unfolding of the majesty of God. We need a new revelation of the abyss of the human nature, so graphically given to us in the first three chapters of Romans, particularly if you read Mr. Phillips' translation.

And I'm sure we need to see afresh the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This psalm is a delightful psalm. And I want to lean on two words in the text tonight, or worship the Lord in the duty of holiness.

Let me ask you a straightforward question, answer it to God, not me. When did you last worship God? I see a notified sign of a church, divine worship, Sunday morning, 11 o'clock to 12. That's tying the Holy Ghost up pretty much, isn't it? But you could go to church all your life and never worship God.

You could sit in the choir and go to all that you want to sing, and sing the anthems, and stand up maybe and sing a wonderful hymn, and yet never worship God. You can take communion every time you go to the house of God, yet never worship Him. You can give your tithes and your generous offering on top of that, and yet never worship Him in spirit and in truth.

You know, a good background to this text would be to read the first chapter there in the Gospel, like he quoted by John. And you remember that Jesus met a woman there. One of the wonderful things about Jesus, He had so much time for individuals.

In fact, His only sermons were given not to the 5,000, but to individuals. The woman of the world, Zacchaeus Nicodemus. And Jesus, I hardly begun talking to this woman before she gets into a controversy, as our brother reminded us tonight.

Oh, she was going to put Jesus straight. You say we should worship Him. Look, over there is Mount Gerizim.

Oh, they love that place. Part of the war had been unfolded there. There's still a small tribe of people on Mount Gerizim away there in Israel.

And they value and they treasure a dusty, dusty copy of the Pentateuch. And they say, we have Abraham to our father. And you say, Jerusalem is a place to worship.

And the other man says, no, you go to Mecca. And the other man says, no, I think you go to Rome. And Jesus says, my dear lady, I want to tell you something.

The time has come, and the time now is when neither Jerusalem nor in this place nor any other place has a special place where we worship God. For we worship God not by turning to the East. You see, as soon as the glory departs out of the church, we try and fill the vacuum.

We put in a new stained glass window or we change the robe to the choir. There's nothing any better in them. But anyhow, we change the robe to the choir.

And then we decide that a preacher must be preceded by someone bearing a golden cross. Or we must put great stately candles up there. So as it used to say, we used to have fire and now we only have a pair of winking candles.

And that's about all we have. But you see when the glory departs. Oh, not very long ago, one of these men with a kind of a computer mind estimated the value of the temple that was built by Solomon.

What a disregard he had for value. Why? He paved the house of God with gold. And he put solid gold on the walls and even the desk had to have gold.

This man worked out the dimensions, worked out the value of gold, and said that that temple cost at least $170 billion. And yet even when he had done this he had encrusted the walls with such a stone. While everybody was breathless, they stood in awe and amazement.

There never was a place like that surely, there never was a place like that. And yet that man had the spiritual, as it means in the long word I want there, spiritual sense to realize that except the glory of God filled the temple, you could use it as a stable, God is not interested in temples made with hanging and always trying to put all this strange architecture up. This sting fellow calls it bastard architecture.

Well you know, but let me tell you again, you know very well there's no substitute for the Holy Ghost. We've got a Christianity that doesn't work. I'm going to talk about that tomorrow night, God willing.

The whole glory of God fills the temple. This exhortation here, worship God, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Strangely enough this word worship is repeated 15 times in the book of Psalms, and it is repeated 15 times in the book of Revelation.

For what do they do in heaven but worship him? After all you can't make God rich if you give him a million dollars a day. You can't make God wise if you let no one count on you. He didn't know everything, but anyhow.

We can't make God wise. We can't make God rich. We can't make God strong.

Now, we're exhorted here to worship God. I'll never forget amongst the many experiences that I did have with Dr. Tozer, and they were about the highest peaks in fellowship that I ever had. I went into his office one day, and he turned around, his sleeves were rolled up, he had a visor over his eyes, and there was something, an old typewriter.

I used to tell him it was, he should have sold it, it was the first that was ever made. If he said it came out of the ark, I could have believed it. It was old and rusty and antique, but there he produced some marvelous books on it.

He just turned around on his swivel chair and raised his back. Oh, he said, Len, come in and lock the door. Let your hair down.

Let's talk. And in the course of talking, he pointed to a piece of dog-eared rug. You've seen these beautiful rugs that come from the audience, and it's handmade, and the colors are dyed by hand, and the designs are so marvelous.

They take your breath away when you look at them. Well, that wasn't the kind of rug he had. He had one that cost 69 cents from Woolworths.

When they broke up his estate, I did manage to get one of his books, but I would have loved that piece of rug for sentimental reasons, I guess. And he pointed to that dog-eared rug, and he said, you know, Len, I come in here some mornings, he never owned an automobile in his life. He used to go to his little office in Chicago on the streetcar and carry what I call postage stamp sandwiches.

He used to finish about 12 o'clock and go down the street and sit on the little stool there in a little coffee bar and nibble at his sandwiches, drink his coffee, get up and go. Nobody ever recognized his genius. He said, Len, I come in this office some mornings so full of admiration that I just call my secretary in the other room and say, look, Mary this morning, no dictation.

Today, no interviews. I can't see anyone at all. You can go home if you like and be back at eight in the morning.

And then he said, using an old English word, Len, he said, I would get down on that rug on my belly at eight o'clock. I'd still be there at eleven or twelve or one o'clock. And I hadn't breathed a prayer and I hadn't uttered a word of praise but I spent four or five hours just worshipping him.

Just saying, as he used to say this so often, oh, how beautiful, how beautiful the sight of thee must be, thine endless wisdom, boundless power, thine awful purity. Father of Jesus, love's reward, what rapture will it be? Prostrate before thy throne to lie. I am gaze, I am gaze on thee.

Prince, why do you have to do that? You see, if you learn to worship, you'll never be depressed, you'll never be distressed, and I dare to suggest you'll never be defeated. You'll get a rapturous view of the majesty of God. You say, as a young man came in my office, I'm living in the Bahamas just now trying to write a book, Sunrise Four as a matter of fact, and this young man came in and he sat down and put his elbow down and he said, why should I worship God anyhow? Well, I said, I can give you four reasons why you should worship God.

First of all, because he's God. Secondly, because angels worship him. Thirdly, because one day God is going to have to worship him.

So only me shall die. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is God to the glory of the Father. Now this text says that we should worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

Theology is the queen of the sciences. Holiness is the crown on the head of that queen. A personal experience of holiness or the indwelling spirit is the jewel in the middle of that crown on the head of that queen.

Now I'm glad that the psalmist and the divine inspiration put this word beauty there, otherwise the text would read worship the Lord in holiness. Now I know some holiness that has people that are as cranky and oh boy, they're as hard to live with as anybody I ever knew. Again, to quote Talbot, he said, we preachers often twist and torture texts to make them fit our theology.

I was raised with a holiness people and I'm not a bit sorry about that. I think some of them are very extreme. They talked about death.

They were always digging the grave. They didn't get out of the grave. They didn't get any resurrection life.

They didn't mount up with wings of eagles. The word of God said if we're children of God by faith in Jesus that we're a kingdom of priests, that they became God's policemen instead of being priests. They were always chasing my sister to measure the length of her dress.

I'd like to have chased some of those women and measured the length of their pills but they wouldn't let me. And I think that maybe Dr. Harry Jessop is right when he says that the Pharisees were the holiness people but backfled. You see once they lost their sweetness they began to measure their external.

The style, the length of your hair, the length of your dress or something else. Usually the women get beaten up on that level. But you see, here the word of God says worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and there is nothing under God's heaven more beautiful than holiness.

We back off from the word but if you change the word which you could do from the Greek anyhow. For holiness actually means soul health, healthiness. Worship the Lord in the beauty of your soul's health.

Now, one of the hymn writers amongst others wrote a hymn that said oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Bow down before him and his sin is proclaimed. With God of obedience and in the sense of loneliness kneel and adore him.

The Lord is his name. I think that worship is rather difficult to define because it's made up of so many different things. Worship, adoration, gratitude, thanksgiving.

You know, I don't think we really get as our brother said, the brother that was reading the thing, we don't get the exquisite of our Christianity. We don't get the elevation that God wants us to have out of it. My, before we had these wretched song books that we have in most churches, we used to have hymn books.

I think some of the songs are silly. I don't go for mansions over the hilltop. It, to me it sounds as though you're trying to make Jesus jazzy and I don't go for jazz and Jesus, they don't mix too well.

I think we're trying to get our faith down to folk songs and it's not much good. But also all those wonderful old hymns, they, somehow they, they, they ignite my spirit. They make me want to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

I want to stand speechless before Him and see the King in His glory. I want to recognize that not five minutes after I die, not everyone at Shakespeare said, I shuffle off this mortal coil, but even now, rather than the flesh, even now, I'm an heir of God and an adjoined heir with Jesus Christ. I'm not a beggar, I'm a prince.

And we need to rediscover, I think, the riches of His grace, the riches of His power, the riches of His love. We're not possessing our possessions. The kids don't want our religion because they're so shabby.

I've always said this, if my boys didn't want my Christianity, I'd pack up right away and I'd never preach again. Thank God I've got two boys missionaries, another one, I have a third one, I think, going to Africa this year. If my boys didn't want my Christianity, I'd never open my mouth in the pulpit.

Now you can disagree if you like, that's up to you. But if there isn't something attractive about what I have in Christ, then I'd more like to try and strip it down the throat of your boy if my boy doesn't want it. But oh, when there's so hell, it's when the cleanest beauty is residing in the palace of my personality.

God forbid, well, if that intention is made with hands, if God Almighty only draws in Westminster Abbey, this room wouldn't have much chance with it. We're to worship the Lord. I used to have a teacher when I was at college, at Cliff College in England, who used to say, there are just two things you need when you go to have your devotions in the morning.

One is the Bible and the other is the Methodist hymn book. Now, I don't know where you'd find it, do you, Dave? But really, I think that one of the finest hymn books ever put together was the very old Baptist hymn book about a hundred years ago. But oh brother, when you read some of the expressions, perhaps all those hymns were not the products of an intellect, they were the products of an emotion, if you like.

They were the products of a vital experience that somebody had with God, and they put it down in beautiful language. That's right, if you go to the Methodist, all Charles Wesley did was take John Wesley's music and John Wesley's theology and put it into music. Or if you want to predate John Wesley, you go to Isaac Roth, who gave us a cross amongst other hymns when I surveyed the wondrous cross.

And sometimes you might find an old volume, I have one, of all the hymns of Isaac Roth. Brother, you try switching channel 12 off some night and stick your feet up whether you have a coconut and just go through some of those hymns. Read them slowly and digest them and feel your spirit rising, you feel somehow that you've got wings and you're in another world.

And oh, my nurses, oh my God, my rising souls today, transporting you the view I'm lost in wonder, love and praise. Or you take the hymn written, I've forgotten his name for the moment, or anything, who wrote, Lord of all beings from the far thy glory flames from sun and star, center of soul and soul of every sphere, yet to each loving heart our near. Lord of all life below earth, whose life is truth, whose warmth is love, before thine ever blazing throne we have no laughter of our own.

Come on preacher, when did you last bury a note in the dust? And gaze upon the king and his beauty as before thine ever blazing throne Why not allow even cherubim have two wings and they cover their faces because they can't gaze on the king and his beauty and the king of Isaiah chapter 6 is the person of Jesus Christ in the twelve chapters of the gospel of God.

This said Isaiah when he saw him and when you see Christ in his beauty and in his glory you say in your face you can't bear the dazzling brightness of his presence and then you put two wings over yourself because you can't bear his scrutiny of your own life and as Joseph says there's only one way to worship God and that's faith downwards it's arrogance even to stand it's arrogance even to kneel you see when you get that rapturous vision and you see the king in his beauty and you realize again that even the cherubim and the seraphim those holy beings will never sin Gaze upon the king in all his beauty and all his majesty and you go right back to the book of the revelation and it tells you there that one thing that the servants of God they serve him day and night and they worship him I like

that is it the fifth chapter there that says that there's a there's a crowd of ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands and if my figuring's right that's over a hundred million with a few thousand others thrown in it'll be something to hear the crowd like that sing won't it but every woman can sing better than Gali Gertie and every bass singer can sing better than Robinson used to sing not Robertson Robinson and every tenor can sing better than that what Caruso you know when I was younger oh well when you're young there are a lot of things you pray about that don't make sense when you're older when I was young I used to pray Lord bless me Lord bless me I found that was a prayer to bankruptcy so I quit you get to the place where you say Lord bless me and you pray Lord

make me a blessing and when you pray Lord make me a blessing you get blessed blown in thrown in but all these hymns are matchless that's why I go to churches sometimes I don't often get back a second time but at least the fifth time I'm there I usually say to them why don't you sell your song books and get a hymn book we have forgotten how to worship I mentioned I think when I was here before about dear brother Buck who's been in America this last year and I hope some of you heard him I talked with him for about three hours and in the course of talking he said the Americans are very wonderful people very generous people very clever people and he said I discovered that while the Americans can make planes and automobiles and do so much I was never in a church in America where they knew how

to worship well then I said supposing I came to your church in England for the Lord's day now how would the service proceed oh well he said by the way the first three hours of the service sounds more like a ball game doesn't it I've often said if you want to make money all you have to do is invent a church fuel that's as soft as the bleachers you've got it made because nobody gets pains when they sit on the bleachers in the boiling sun they had a game not long ago I think this past year that lasted the very maximum about twenty after one in the morning I don't think it quit I don't think it was finished but legally they had to finish went to about twenty one innings nobody complained why do you preach five minutes and somebody goes preach five minutes all the time preach ten minutes they

go preach fifteen minutes they go preach half an hour they go well well bit of a thing what happened he just said oh he said the first three hours of the service we give to preach we praise worship adoration oh it's intoxicating sure it is to line up heaven well then what well he said the second three hours yes oh the second three hours we send in prayer supplication intercession yes the third three hours yes we bake bread yes one has a song one has a hymn one has a word of exhortation this brother has just finished twenty one days of fasting this lady had a revelation this man over here has a a word of inspiration and he said we we but I said now bit of a thing you don't mean that every lord's day you spend nine hours in service in worship in this well no not every lord's day ah well now

now they give me the normal well he said that's a normal well what do you mean you don't spend nine hours every lord's day oh well he said some days the glory comes down where they're twelve hours thirteen hours fourteen hours do you wonder he said he never went to church in America oh oh he thinks spirit of faith come down but not until the twenties of twelve not so much for the christ then and the offering good night the kingdom will fall apart if we don't get those miserable dollars come on let's get it now you can come in holy ghost and I'm the preacher now now listen you've got to go through because the chicken will burn if you don't you see we're not liberals we're the fundamentals and if we're the best God has well God help us sure the the the teacher was right when he said take

your hymn book into into the prayer closet take your bible into the prayer closet you've got scripture when he left and he went in.

You'd be very generous if you gave us five dollars for every scrap of furniture in the room.

And I noticed over here there was a rusty, an old bed, anyhow. And a little frail lady whose wrists were just about as thick as my two fingers. She was as wrinkled as a prune, almost as deaf as the doorpost, as we say, totally blind, no teeth.

The teeth just sank. And she was lying back on the bed with her mouth open so I could see her. Now she's got no teeth, and she's got no eyes, and she's got no hearing or hearing.

And I got on the side of the bed and I yelled in her ear. I called her by her name. Mrs. Jack! Ach, ach, she said with a Scottish dialect.

Ach, ach, and who are you? I said, we're the evangelists, and I shouted, ach, she says, give me your hand, give me your hand. She got ahold of my hand with these scrawny hands of hers that were like claws, and she pulled my hand down at one side and my friend's hand down at the other. And she said, ach, she says, can you sing crooning? Well I thought for a moment, crooning, crooning.

Can you sing crooning? Ach, she says, that with yonder sacred throng we at his feet may fall, join in the everlasting song and croon him loud enough. Sing crooning! Sing crooning! Sing crooning! And before he could start singing crooning, she was about four months off key, but brother, I don't think I've never heard anything more. I looked at the tears coming out of those blind eyes.

I looked at that hollow mouth. I looked at that wrinkled skin. And I looked at that woman a hundred years of age, without any creature comforts, a little enamel wash bowl, and the daughter brought water in to wash those beautiful little hands.

That woman lived in the city of Port in Scotland. She had a marvellous experience of the grace of God, and she says, I was reading my Bible, and it says in the Bible to begin at Jerusalem. It's always easy to begin at the othermost parts of the earth, but nobody knows you there.

And so she decided she'd begin at home. She made a vow to the Lord. She said, I'll witness for Christ in every street in this city, and she took a Bible, and she preached in the streets.

While she was preaching one day, the devil, she said, the devil said to her, and so you're preaching, huh? And your own boys are prodigal. Do you think the folk will take notice of you? Your boys are prodigal. You've no right to preach that God can save others.

Your boys are prodigal. And up there she took a Bible, and she stamped her foot, and she said, God Almighty, I'll never preach again as long as I live till my boy gets saved, and as soon as he's saved, I'll start preaching again. You've got to live pretty near to God to threaten him.

Concerning the work of my hands, command you be. She stood with her Bible folded, and her finger up, and she says, God Almighty, I'll never preach again, as she said in Scotland, I'll never preach again till my own laddie is converted. Not many months after, he was converted.

Not only converted, he became one of the great preachers of Scotland. And she went everywhere telling of the wonder of God's grace that he heard and answered her prayers. And then after that, for a whole stretch of years, more than half a century, she went preaching and singing and testifying of the grace of God.

And it was no new experience for her to lie there, because they said that when her daughter was out working, you could hear that croaking old voice, something like a bullfrog, that, oh boy, when he got to heaven it sounded like an archangel singing, call him, call him Lord of all. You see, we get so many kicks out of other things, we don't need the glory of God anymore. That's like we're so excited by what we're doing that we don't get the thrills that we should get out of our meditation of God.

You see, this is part of this great business of worship, you've got to meditate. I often think when they're waiting at a stoplight, none alive, if you happen to look sideways at your wife and say, honey, what time is it, suddenly blast, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang They get into all kinds of twisted, distorted shapes to show their humility, and I didn't want to see God so much. He was taking it with his tongue, and I was wicked enough to hope it would burn his nose, to be quite honest, because he was wiggling with it, but he didn't want to get lined up before his God to give up his tobacco.

I'm not digging a new boy who got the smoke, because I'm praying he'll get the fire before the week's out. But this fellow, you see, he was wanting to worship, but he was wanting to worship without really rendering his sacrifice. And the psalmist says, well, shall I render unto God that which costs me nothing? You see, part of the cost of worship is a sacrifice, and we don't know too much about that, do we? If anyone lives an easy street, I'm convinced that we do.

Ah, but not like sacrifice. No, no, no, no. Well, I know fellows can't give up their bowling on a Wednesday night to go to church.

Not that that would make it necessary, but a saint. Maybe there's much more than that that is required, but involved in worship, that is sacrifice. The sacrifice of God, that a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart of God, that will not despise.

And day after day I move for tears when I think of a place in the world I've been in, and I've seen a woman with a broken heart screaming before the God of wood and stone, her heart is broken and she's crying to a God that has no heart, and yet my God is a living God and He spends so little time in prayer. She brings a gift that she can't afford to give. In most countries these days, there are still countries where they have human sacrifice, I've been in some of them.

But for many years it has been illegal to sacrifice your God to your God as a child. And then a missionary said that going down the road in India one day she saw a woman, and some of those women are very beautiful and they have very beautiful children. There was a little boy dancing at the side of his mother, he had curly hair and sparkling eyes and lovely teeth, and the other babe in her arm was a retarded child.

He was drooling at the mouth, had a paralysed arm that was swinging as the mother carried it. The missionary stopped and gave some text to the lady, spoke to her for a little while, and then went on her way. The missionary would be returning at the end of the day, she'd been to the village, she'd done her duty, she'd given out her text and she'd spoken to some about Christ, and as she came home up the road she saw the mother coming back with one child, the retarded child.

She accosted the woman and asked what his child was, and embarrassed, and pleading with tears that no, no, this will never be spread any further, she said I had, I had, I wanted a request of my God, and I could only give him the best I had, and so I threw my child into the Ganges. Not a crippled child, but a healthy, sparkling, delicious little thing. I'm convinced that most of our people these days give God the leftovers.

Money, time, anything you like. I want God's best for the least price, and God says no. We should worship God, thank God if for nothing else, and amongst many other things we should worship and praise him and give him the adoration due to his name that we even have the light of the gospel.

We could give him praise and adoration and thanksgiving too that we are not tied up in a false coat tonight. And we could do a little balancing of power and realize that though we live in a world with all this hostility to the true gospel is grace of God. A day or an evening of fundamentalism as we will think later in the week, we've limited the Holy One of Israel.

I believe that a besetting sin of modern fundamentalism is that we have limited the Holy One of Israel. Holy Ghost, we welcome thee so long as you don't break any boundaries and any rules. But again we're defending so much that doesn't work.

I keep wondering when the world's going to blow up, do you? I would have thought these Jews that have had so much mercy thrown to them and so many benefits in so many nations would be the last people to start roasting people. After all they went to Buchenwald and Dachau and the concentration camps, but they've forgotten it. It's another generation and now they're arrogant and they're blasting everywhere they can go.

For some reason mysterious to me. But it seems to me the world could blow up. We could be in World War III before we know it almost.

It's a very dangerous situation. And again there's not much time left. But you know there's one thing I'm thrilled about as I think of it.

I know there's hostility. I know it's getting harder to present the truth that is in Christ until that pouring of the Spirit of God which I'm absolutely convinced is going to come. God may wreck our economy.

I'm forced to think day by day by day these days of that marvellous story in what the 26th of 7th chapter of Acts. And Paul is on board that ship. It was quite a boat you know.

There were 267 passengers. That's quite a boat. And there was a man who could handle this thing.

Now Paul if you were on a boat in the Atlantic and you didn't see the sun or the stars for 14 days and 14 nights you'd be justified to be a bit panicked I think unless you'd really cast your anchor within the waves. And they'd been going 14 days and 14 nights. No sun, no moon, no stars.

They'd been fasting. They'd been hoping somehow deliverance would come and it didn't come. And the thing that gets to me out of that story is this.

That the apostle Paul never told us about the ship or the cargo. Only the people on board. And he said there's nobody going to be lost on this boat.

In other words we're going to have a revival. And I'm not concerned about the ship. Whether it costs a million or fifty million dollars I'm not concerned about the cargo.

That's all I'm concerned about are these living souls. And believe me I don't think that God Almighty is very particularly concerned about the Democrats or the Republicans or saving the ship of faith. Neither the whole thing is going to get wrecked.

But he's concerned about every living soul in America tonight. And I'm not concerned if I have to stand in bread lines at four o'clock in the morning maybe it's going to let us get revival. You see Hannah had no child.

And year by year by year by year an adversary prevailed to her. But God couldn't get her attention. Once God Almighty got the attention of Hannah it was then he began to deal with her and it was then that she bore the child Samuel.

You know we're too busy in America or if you like western civilization we're too busy. God can't get our attention. Can he get our attention in church? We have our problems, we have this, we have that, we have the other.

It's all going like fury. Maybe I have to wreck the whole system before he can get our attention. And then when he gets our attention it begins to work.

The odds are heavily against us tonight. Billions of dollars invested in the movie industry, drugs, crime. If that old boy that lives in Rome is as powerful as he thinks he is why doesn't he excommunicate the mafia? They're all his kids anyhow.

I don't think there's a Pentecostal amongst them. But apart from that no sorry. The church is facing more adversaries tonight than she's ever faced in the history, I'm convinced of that.

Sure international crime, international drug problems the movie industry, the horse racing industry all these other things, nightclubs, pornographic literature sure we're all over our heads in iniquity and sin. And some are ready to wring their hands and say well it's too late, it's too late we're not going to see this tomorrow things are going to get worse and worse. Well let's finish and add up a few things here what happened when the program in heaven went wrong?

Satan started another program and with that program he got a third of the heavenly host so you have Satan, a third of the heavenly host the world, the flesh, and the devil alright, you've got four lots of things the devil, the world, the flesh, and a third of the heavenly host alright, the children of the devil, alright, they make five now those are against us now what are our assets? what do we have for us? we have the father, the son, the holy ghost this imperishable world of God two thirds of the heavenly host and all the sons of God on earth so we still have them but they're adversarial anyhow and I think that's something to praise God for I want to praise God that he cannot die I want to praise God he cannot lie the only reason we have no revival is not God's fault it's our fault I

praise God too, he cannot cry he cannot ask anyone else for help because he's self-sufficient God has no obligations to anyone we can't patronize God all he's waiting for us is to come into the full possession of our inheritance in Jesus Christ a while ago there was an American too who wrote what he called the seven deadly sins of modern society he said they're these politics without principles wealth without work pleasure without conscience industry without morality science without humanity and worship without sacrifice that's a bunch of bed tellers for you but a tremendous summary of the day in which we're living if we worship God and worship him in spirit and in truth then this is what we're exalted to do I'm convinced that you cannot have this type of worship in any church without

that church not only being a worshiping church but a widening church because this is a sign of health this is a sign of vigor this is a sign of a love relationship this is a sign of covenants and obedience covenants to the revealment of God and God desires that we worship him and we worship him in spirit and we worship him in truth if you were to ask an Englishman what the year 1666 meant in history no doubt if he knew his history at all he'd say well of course that was a great fire in London the great plague had been sweeping over the nation and then there came the great fire that destroyed all the girls and after 1666 nobody died but you ask a man, a colour-bled Scotsman about 1666 he doesn't think about the black plague that swept over England he's thinking about the time when the

covenants were still there the Archbishop of Canterbury had declared that he would change the system of religion and the rebellion against the establishment you want to read a book that will stir your blood a friend of mine wrote two on that tremendous subject, one is called Fair Sunshine I forgot the name of the other but anyhow we'll jump to the short version because he is a colour-bled Scotsman he's a very brilliant man he lived on the roof of a road into bed for a number of years and now lives up in Glasgow one of the characters that is revealed there was a young man by the name of Hugh McHale if I remember right, Hugh McHale was only about 24 years of age some of them said he was the strongest and they were spiritual of all those covenanters they were cut down like grass they went to

communion at night when the moon was down they cracked up the hill sometimes on their volleys and met in a cove just on a piece of bread and a glass of water and they're not dead and they coated the farms because still in Scotland amongst the very devout, they won't even sing hymns never mind songs they just sing the beautiful songs the metrical version and they're very very beautiful I've shared them with them many many times Hugh McHale was going to go to the judges in Edinburgh and he went they asked him to recant and he said he couldn't he had done what many of the Scotsmen would do they'd taken the hide of a sheep and they still have it I think in St Giles Cathedral there if you go to the main street Princes Street Edinburgh they call it the most precious thing that Scotland ever had

and men even cut a vein or cut their fingers and they dipped the old goose cool in it and they signed their names on that sheepskin to say they would never deny the Lord of glory there were many years of a system that was demanding that they should change their form of worship Hugh McHale was bidding to go before the judges and they refused to change his position theologically in worship and so forth and so the judge said to him very angrily you have three more days to live the young man just put his shoulders back and bowed and said thank you sir when he got outside of the courtroom the streets were lined on either side were thousands of people and somebody said the rumour they said when he came out of the courtroom he looked as though he should see the king he put his head back the

people began to sob one of the finest ministers as they say one of the finest ministers we could ever have when he got to D in three days they were sobbing and young McHale came round and he saw one of the old friends a man still in his twenties and the young man said in his eye and looked at McHale ah he said and people began to sob again and sobbed very loudly and McHale stood for a moment with a sage at his side early martyrs the fellows who gave us our bibles those who died didn't make them martyrs they just revealed that they were martyrs they died a year two years I used to send my Tuesdays and he would come down Hugh Black from Edinburgh another good friend Dr Martin Laird-Jones these men would come every Tuesday we would sing a hymn they would give whatever message they had on

their hearts and something like four to five hundred men would gather most of the ministers in England wear their colours backwards and one day on Tuesday we were going to have a special visit from Dr C.S.

Lewis a lovely colleague well I'd read some of his books I can't believe you were wondering about C.S. Lewis a very wonderful writer and I went down very early that Tuesday I thought I want to see this very brilliant because you see he used I thought I'd see a little poet or say an old story I guess but the preacher didn't turn up so somebody's going to stand in and preach for him well they sat and then the preacher said and so I heard it's Dr C.S. Lewis Lewis just got up and he rolled to the desk and said I believe the way he said it was then he went on to a theological and philosophical he said I have a friend my friend has a little girl that he idolises and she gets everything she wanted and she wanted a pony and he bought her the pony he said to the little girl now the groomsman is going to teach you how to ride and you're going to learn how to just dress this horse so day by day the groomsman took it out then she got tired of having her stuff her own on her a friend to guide her around and she said Debbie would it be alright if I rode my pony by myself tomorrow I've been going out for weeks now with this man and he doesn't always want to stop and pull the flowers like I do I'd so like to go by myself alright darling he said you can do that but you've got to obey my instructions and she said I do not follow the instructions well you can go down to the end of the avenue you can go through the gates they have a big estate and you can go down the avenue outside of the estate and she enjoyed riding one day she came back up the avenue and he was walking through the library window this big old castle where they live little girl was walking he looked down and he said now darling what's wrong did you fall off your horse your pony no what's wrong the old tree and I went camping past the old tree and just as I got there I couldn't get he said what's that thing you're riding well it's my pony a pony well you've got a darned horse a beautiful horse it's a blub it's nearly as big as your pony you aren't a horse woman you can't even ride not when you've been on a horse like me she said daddy I don't ride that pony anymore you've always brought me would you buy me that horse he said yes darling I said oh I don't know what but wait a minute he said when you've corrected your bad horsemanship you don't sit there in the saddle you don't hold the riding cross I'll buy you that horse and he said well my friend told me that he said you know that little girl would go down the road and she'd look over her head there and say to that horse you're going to be mine soon I'm really going to correct my bad horsemanship I love you oh I want to get on your back and see what it's like to really get along and you know what the big genius scholar C.S.

Lewis said you know gentlemen that reminds me of myself I'm the little girl that doesn't know how to ride the horse and sometimes I look over the boundary line of eternity and I say oh and he said the Lord looks and this and this and this when you get them all straightened out I'll throw them to heaven right away and I'll give you a body like unto his glorious body and I'll give you an unlimited intelligence and I'll give you a surrogate capacity where you'll be able to stand where all angels and angels shouldn't stand is the very thing not only that we may be extremely foolish now but we may move out into those areas eternity that God made us for while in the song that we sing so often we'll join in the everlasting song and crown him Lord of all tell me this have you been self changing God in the realm of worship don't you think it would be good to drop your prayer list and your requests and everything that seems so urgent and say Lord I've been so busy now for a second I want to give you something I want to give you my other race I want to give you praise I want to give you worship I want to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and the more we join this praises the more his likeness will come back on us because after all when the woman poured out her alabaster box of ointment at his feet it was very precious it was very pungent and when she poured that ointment on his feet and took the hair out of the head and wiped his feet then obviously she got back the fragrance she put on him and the only way to get back that fragrance is to worship him in spirit and in truth and in the beauty of holiness I pray God will teach us this even these days while we're here thank you