What God Thinks of Old People

Now, there are two Psalms in the Bible, Psalm 37 and Psalm 71, which are the great Psalms on old people. I don't know if you, maybe you realized that, maybe you didn't. And these are old people speaking. Psalm 37, we read in Psalm 37, verse 25, and these words, I have been young and now I'm old. That's a pretty obvious statement. Now in South Africa, we have elephants. And in Botswana, we have elephants, and in Namibia, I don't think we have elephants, probably in the north. We've got elephants in Africa, and you got them at your zoos. We have very big ones, by the way. Most of the ones I see in America are either very old and shriveled up, or they are Indian elephants with small ears, because they're easier to look after in the climate of America. Now, one of the things that's interesting about elephants is they're very, very similar in some ways to human beings. Now, I'm not talking about how big they are. That would be different. Elephants are similar to humans, unlike many other animals. I mean, there are spiders that eat their husbands when they decide to have children, and we're generally not like that. There are animals that look like camels, that literally, as these mammals, as they have their child, they don't feel the childbirth. The animal falls out the back and basically stands up and starts eating grass. It can live without its mother. Now, an elephant is not like that. To illustrate this, in South Africa, we have elephant parks and game parks, the big five and so on, and they took a whole lot of elephants, little teenage elephants relative to us. You know what teenagers are like. How many of you are teenagers? Well, you and your parents and a few others will know what teenagers are like. At any rate, these elephants went. They took them. They shot them with those things that make them go to sleep, and they took them in these big trucks, and they dropped them off in a park that had no elephants, and so there was about 30 or 40 elephants there, and they woke up, and they didn't know where they were, and they went around. They started destroying everything. This is what teenagers do, by the way, and they went around. They were destroying bushes and food, and the other animals started to get affected because their food was being destroyed. It's one big party, and so they brought an expert in, whatever that means nowadays because they're always being experts and to say the most rubbish stuff, but this expert came in, and this expert told them, that new elephants, that these teenagers need adult supervision, and that's how elephants work. If there's no adults, they just go crazy, and so they brought in a mommy elephant and a daddy elephant for all these young elephants, and when those big elephants woke up, they were also put to sleep. When they woke up, and they saw what these young elephants were doing, they put them in order pretty fast, and they stopped destroying almost overnight all those bushes, and all those trees, and all those flowers, and all the things that the other animals were eating in the habitat. You know, that is a parallel with the human life. We desperately need older godly Christians to look up to in society, and one of the things, young people, they have a slight problem in that we are living in the computer generation, so my dad knows how to put on a computer. Isn't that amazing? I know many old people, they don't know how to put on a computer. In fact, they call you all the time. There's one lady, she said, I have to tell you, I got her a screen, I have to buy this screen, monitor, and she said, it's totally broken. I said, okay, that's great. I believe this, like nothing will work of it, and I came to her house, and then she'd take it back to the store, and I said, what is wrong with it? She said, it just doesn't turn on. I said, well, let me just check it out, and I put the button on, went on. She said, I didn't think you're doing that. That's a godly old lady who God used in an amazing way, but we didn't have this years back. The generational gap a few hundred years back was very slow compared to today. Nowadays, things change so fast that we look clever compared to our parents, which is very weird, actually, in history. It might feel right, but it's not right, and it makes us proud. I'm not saying you're all proud, but people out there are proud towards their parents. Time Magazine, years back, they brought out a survey, and it's interesting because they're secular, they're not Christian, they're not pro-Christian, and they decided to measure the morality of different Western nations. By morality, what they didn't mean is how many people are slaved or Christian or going up mountains to tell Jews about Jesus. What they meant is, by the age of 13, how many times has the average child in society slept around? How many times by the age of 13 has the average child taken drugs, and how many times have they taken it? So they found out that in the entire of Europe, which is a very, very heathen place, they have a lot of missionaries that go there nowadays. In Europe, the worst country of the entire of Europe is England. For the amount of times an average 13-year-old will have taken drugs, slept around, you name it. It also happens to be the worst in the West, of course, is New Zealand, where packs of girls walk around at night looking for boys that never met. They do stuff like that. In England, I've been into many coffee shops. I've been 20, 30 times to England, and I remember to preach and to witness in the streets, whatever, and you go into these coffee shops, and while you're sitting there in the coffee shops, they're talking about the graphic details of what they did with each other. Little children can be there, and they'll be talking openly of how they sleep with a certain person and the evil that they did. There's no shame. The nearest I got to that in America was Las Vegas. We're on the plane flying in to Las Vegas. Groups of people on the plane that didn't know each other would stand up and say, I'm going to sleep with this man, I'm going to sleep with that woman, giving graphic details. And when we land in Las Vegas, we walk into a casino. That's the nearest I got to England. But one of the interesting things that Time magazine, as a secular magazine said at that time, was of all the nations in Europe, England is by far the one that has the biggest disconnect between the older people and the younger people. The younger people generally don't want anything to do with older people. They don't trust them, they don't want their advice, and of course they earn this because the older people are pretty much drunks and doing stupid stuff in many cases. But here is the greatest disconnect, and this is the country that has the worst moral standards, even the world recognizes that. Where the younger people are not there, they do not understand the need for the older people, and the older people are not there for the younger people. We live in a time and age, I remember about 10 years back, there was a whole lot of street preachers that rose up, and they still are, and we praise the Lord for many of them. But in America, all the street preachers rose up, and because many of the young people were not on fire for God, and not going on mission trips, and not doing strange wonderful things that the Bible says you should do. People looked at these young people, many godly people looked at these young people, and they said, wow this is what we've been waiting for. They didn't realize that so many of these young people were proud. They didn't have an older person to look to, they were not under authority, they were not under any church. They were lone wolves, and they destroyed many lives. Satan knows this. Satan knows this great need, that mostly we don't even talk about. Because young people, we know how to do computers, we know how to do projects, we know how to go out. We don't need them. If we're going to be on fire for God, we're going to do it. Those old guys, they're weird. They don't even know what a computer is. Let me read you another verse. Let's go to Psalm 71. Psalm 71, this is the other great psalm for old people. We read in verse 9, these words. This is an old person speaking, obviously. Cast me not off, don't leave me God, in the time of old age. Cast me not off in the time of old age. Forsake me not when my strength faileth. You don't know why he's crying this out, because people are saying of him, you'll read earlier in the song, people are saying of him, God has forsaken you. You know how many old people feel that way? Because they're getting old, and their teeth are out, and they've got these pains throughout their bodies, and some of them have terrifying stuff that they go through. Forsake me not when my strength faileth. Let's read Psalm 71 verse 16. I will go in the strength of the Lord, this old man says, I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only. You know what's so precious about this? What's so wonderfully precious about this, is he has a man, and he's old, and he's looking back in his life. Now if you look back in your life, you can talk about all the mountains that you've been up, you can talk about all the valleys you've been to, you can talk about all the churches that you started, you can talk about all the missionaries that you supported, you can talk about all the prayer meetings that you went to, you can talk about all the tracts that you created, and print, and the books that changed people's lives. But he looked back on all his life as an old person, and he said, there's only one righteousness that I'm going to speak about, and that's God's righteousness. We can learn from the old people that are like that. They realize that not one church that I planted, not one tract that I handed out, not one thing that I ever did in life for God is my righteousness. Jesus is my righteousness. His righteousness. You know, before I go on, I'd just like to mention, there was a lady in South Africa years back, and this lady, she wanted to go to the mission field, and she felt that God had called her to the mission field. Now, if God has not called you to the mission field, sometimes we feel not called because we actually have a dream that we're not willing to give up. But sometimes we're not called to the mission field in some other nation because our mission is nearby. Sometimes we can go and we can come back. But she called, felt very strongly called to the mission field, and so she told her boyfriend that she was going to go to Bible college, and she was going to study, and then she was going to go to the mission field. Sometimes that's the best thing to do, sometimes not. And her boyfriend said to her, listen, I love you. I'm also called to the mission field. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get married to you, and then afterwards we're going to go to the mission field together. I'll go to Bible college with you, and then I'll go to the mission field. So she said, this is great. I've got a guy who I can live with, who will support me, who will be there for me, and we've got the same calling. Isn't God good? Hallelujah. Only one problem is he was lying. And so he got married to her, and straight afterwards not only was he lying about the mission field, but he was lying about his Christianity. And he said to her, listen, I'm not a Christian. And secondly, you are not going to be a Christian. I forbid you to read your Bible. I forbid you to practice your Christianity in any shape, form, or size. And she, being a very, very godly woman, shattered, did not leave him. But she would get up early in the morning, three o'clock while he was asleep, and she'd take out her Bible so she could read the Bible. All through her life she could not go to the mission field. She prayed through her life and said, God, you can't send me. Send off my kids or my grandchildren. Save them and send of them to the mission field. Now, her son became a drunkard. He married a woman, and she ran, she ran away with another man. He ran away with another woman. He was drunk. She had a little grandchild, three grandchildren on that side. But she prayed, God, I couldn't go. Can you do something? In my old age, even later on, you know what happened when she was old? There was this big fat minister who came to the house, knocking on the door. Now, fatness normally is not a good prerequisite for being a soul winner. It's very hard to go up mountains. But what his advantage was being big was that he could sit in front of the television, and they couldn't see anything. And they loved Dallas. Now, you've probably heard of Dallas. I don't have a television. I've never been to a movie theater, but I happen to know Dallas existence. Evil Soapy from the 1990s or something. And this was their favorite time. This was his escape from life and work and sorrow. And so he would sit in front of Dallas and enjoy it with his wife at that stage before she left him. And he sat there, his son, and he looked, and this guy knocked on the door. And that culture of this one language is very sociable. You can come in. And he sat in front of the television with his big body, big Baptist. And as he sat there with his big body, this guy was getting cross, and he came again and again, and always at the same time when Dallas was on. Good guy. And eventually, the son of her said, listen, I'm not going to let you to come back to my house anymore. You're not coming back. Simple. He said, okay, I will never come back. I'll make a deal with you. I'll never come back here on one condition. You come to a conference, just one conference in your life, a Christian conference, that I say which. He said, okay. Now, normally a person who says okay is lying, but in this case he actually did it. He went to the conference many years back. And he took his little, a six-year-old child, the older one. There was three little children. They came there, and my dad was preaching. And my dad preached, and for the first time in his life, the Lord's grandchild heard the gospel. And he came out of conviction. He went to little Sunday school, as well. But there he heard the gospel with my dad, too. And he came out of conviction. He got saved. And he walked up to my dad, and he took out some money, about the equivalent of $1.50, and he gave it to him and says, I want to support you. He says, one day I'm going to go, when I'm older, I'm going to go to the same Bible college that you went to, and I'm going to go the same mission that you went to, and one day I'm going to South America as a missionary, full-time. That grandmother had prayed for that, though the world would look on her and look at her as a forsaken person. You know, he went through 12 schools because his parents were so unstable. His father left his mother. I mentioned that. He became a drunkard. His older brother, his younger brother, went in the world and destroyed their lives with sin. But after many years in 12 schools, he arrived at Bible college. He became my best friend, and I named my son Glenn after him. And later on, he went to South America, and the tribe which he came to, the first thing they did is that he's got five children. They took him behind the huts, and they said to him, listen, you see that grave over there, through the interpreter? 30 years back, that's the last missionary who came here. We killed him. You can stay here, yes, but if you ever mention anything that we're doing is wrong, it's sin. That's where you're landing up, very fast. And he's very glad to go back. Sometimes it feels like all people are forsaken, and they're not. But they're glorious, they're little grandchildren. I don't know if you've noticed that. My parents are terrifying with my kids. They spoil them. Proverbs 16 verse 31. You should see the first time. My dad is not scared of stuff, but he literally, when my little baby came out, the first one that actually lived, Glenn, my dad said, I don't want to touch him. I don't want to touch him. Now he, I mean, he had done, I mean, he'd changed diapers and been a good dad in every single way, including spanking through the years with me. He knew how to hold a baby, but he was dead scared of this little thing. And so I just put it in his hands. It's amazing. Keith Daniel. Anyway, in Proverbs 16 verse 31, we read these words, The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness. Not every old person is godly. For instance, with Solomon, now some might argue that through the book of Ecclesiastes, in his old age when God spoke to him the third time that he actually did eventually in his old age turn away from God, in his old age he also turned back to God. I'm not going to go into that right now, but we read in 1 Kings 11 verse 4, For it came to pass when Solomon was old that his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God. I know old people, grannies in America that will steal from their children. I know grannies who will pay for their children to have drunken parties. I know older people who will tell their children that if they ask their advice, who should I marry, then they will say you should marry a drunkard, and they mean it. So not all old people necessarily are wonderful, and that is, God understands that. But at the same time, if the hoary head is found in the way of righteousness as a crown of glory, God doesn't look at old people and just forsake them because they're old. He loves righteous, in love with God, old people. Now Psalm 71 verse 11, the heathen, like I mentioned earlier, said, saying, God has forsaken him, persecute and take him, for there's none to deliver him in his old age. Psalm 71 verse 18, if you read, if you forget every other verse I mentioned in this sermon, remember this for old people, because this is the cry of some old people. Now also, when I'm old and gray-headed, oh God, forsake me not, until I've showed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to everyone that is to come. You know how precious, if people were to ask me, who's been the greatest influence in your life, I could name a few young people, some young people from history, when they were young, reading their stories, some young people in my life today. But I would say by far the ones that have influenced me the most is old people who were on fire for God in their 90s, on fire for God in their 80s, on fire for God in their 70s, and these people have seen the power of God. They prayed through the nights, sometimes three weeks at a time before they came to preach in a town, and when they came to preach in a town that had never seen revival, God swept through, and God worked, and the presence of God was felt behind the Word of God in such a way that many sinners were radically saved. And these people long to teach the younger generation in their weakness, with their arms that are getting weak, with their voice that's getting squeaky, with their teeth that's falling out, with the pains that are going through their body. I've met these people, and I know these people, some of them dead that were my friends, and their heart throbbed out in tears to this world, because they longed for the younger generation to know what they don't see so much today, the power of God. I pray that this time of year when they're old they will have that, that cry. There's a question, now I don't live in your shoes, I don't go where you go, I don't know what you ask old people, but there's a question I'd like to ask old people that often makes them cry, and it's a question I think that is rarely asked. I sat down with my granny once, a few grannies on my wife's side and my side, and individually I asked them this question when they were alive. I said, can you tell me about your granny? You know, you would think older people from the way they acted, all they think about is their grandchildren, the good ones anyway, but you know why that is in many cases? It's not because they don't long for their granny, it's not because they don't want to talk about their granny, it's because they don't think anybody would be interested. So I sat down with people who never, almost never, apart from their favorite song, told me about their granny, for instance my granny, and after a little while of talking of the places they used to go, the things they used to do, they say, I so miss my granny, and the tears start to roll down their faces. And I've seen this again and again and again, yes there's some of them that don't cry, but so many of them, when you ask them about their granny, they're longing for their granny, they wish they could be with their granny, or their grandfather. And I sometimes just wonder if we don't know the heart of old people, because we don't ask. We're so stuck in our own lives. Proverbs 17 verse 6 says these words, children's children are the crown of old men, and the glory of children are their fathers. I've seen that, little kids who really love their daddies. We're living in a time where there's so many, in 1914, before 1914, one in 25 people divorced. Now it's over 60 percent. So in essence in those days, literally right about four percent of the American population ended up in divorce. Most people had a daddy and mommy. Nowadays it's so hard to see the father heart of God, it's hard for you and for me to understand that God is a father, because many of us don't know what a father is. In Genesis 48 verse 9, and remember this talks about the glory of children on their fathers, also children's children are the crown of old men. Old men look down at little grandchildren and boy, this is my crown. That's what the Bible says. In Genesis 48 verse 9 we read, and Joseph said unto his father, these they are my sons, whom God hath given unto me in this place. Bring them, I pray thee, unto me, and I will bless them. This is Isaac speaking, and the eyes of Israel, not Isaac sorry, this is Jacob speaking, and Jacob, this is the eyes of Israel, were dim for age so that he could not see. Same words we read of Isaac, we read of Jacob that his eyes were dim. In Genesis 27 verse 1, he brought them near unto him and he kissed them and embraced them. He has an old guy looking at his grandchildren and bringing them together and he blesses them. You know, when my grandfather, when my grandfather was dying of cancer, I remember he was getting thin, he looked pale, he was weak, and he couldn't go out witnessing like he used to witness. He walked very slowly. I remember bringing my little, his great-grandchildren, and down the hill from where he stayed there was a little pond with some ducks, and he used to take bread in his hand and he used to take, very slowly walk down the hill with my little Glenn, my little Ruth, with this cancer that was riddled through his body and killing him. And in the last days of that cancer he would walk down while he still could, a few months before he died, down the hill. You should see his face. I'll never forget it. These little children were his crown. These little children were his glory. He loved my little children. He loved me too. I remember when I was a kid, I used to, at five years old, guard my grandfather. Boy, he could give goods bankings. But I remember going with her and he really had a false singing voice, but he believed God. He prayed and asked God to give him a singing voice and he believed that God gave him a singing voice. And this was a great detriment to many churches, but they loved him anyway. And he would sing very loudly because God gave him this singing voice. Now everywhere we went he would sing Amazing Grace, Amazing Grace, on his tractor up the hills, you name it. And I used to go with him early in the morning. I used to, on his farm, go down and we used to chase the monkeys away from the lands and it was wonderful. And I remember sitting with him. I used to sing with him, but we were the only two people who could sing false, sing two hymns at the same time and not care about each other. So I was going, when peace like and he was going, amazing grace, and we loved it. And God understood. And I remember this one guy, he, this one guy, we had to travel a far away and my my grandfather, I don't know what you call, we call it a bucky in South Africa, it's called, I don't know if it's a pickup or something in America where you've got the open space in the back. Anyway, so he he was driving in this and this person had to go with and he said, I don't want to be in the front. See, because the old man sings so much. Now I didn't want to tell him that I also sing with the old man. And you know how I long to hear that voice again? And he is, I'm going to hear him in heaven, but I long to hear that voice again. I had a wonderful grandfather. You know in the Bible it says in Genesis 24 verse 1, and Abram was old and stricken in age. We read this quite a long, a lot of times. Paul in the New Testament said, I'm even, I think it's Philemon 1 verse 9, if I'm right, that talks of Paul the ages. I'm Paul the aged. And in Joshua 13 verse 1, we read something very interesting because he has Joshua and it says, now Joshua was old and he was stricken in years. And the Lord said unto him, thou art old and stricken in years. God just says it, you old. Sorry dude. And Joshua said in 14, Joshua 14 verse 1, now behold the Lord hath kept me alive as he said these forty and five years. You know what's amazing about this? The next chapter we read of Caleb. And we read that Caleb said these words, and yet, as yet, I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me, as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, and to go out, and to come, to go in, and to come out, to go out, and to come in. What's amazing about this? He has two people. They were the two spies that survived. In fact, of millions of people under the age of 20 at a certain stage, over the age of 20, it says they were the only two people who survived into Canaan because they had faith in God. And there were 40 years in the wilderness together. And after these 40 years in the wilderness, they came into Canaan. After a while, the one was stricken in his old age. But he said, God's kept me like he said he would. The other one says, I'm just as strong as I used to be, to go out for war, to come in. Man, I can do it. Sounded like an American. A very, very, very humble American. Now, if you look around you, and you actually observe old people, which God would like us to do, you'll see that sometimes a husband and wife of the same age, the one is almost a cripple in an old age, and the other's still strong. Some of them are mind clear, the other doesn't. Sometimes two men that were the same age, and they grew up together, and they prayed together, and they fasted, and they went out witnessing, and they went up to the mountains together. At a certain age, the one is very weakly, and the other still got strength. That's what God allows. We find it in scripture. Some older people are older in spirit and in strength than their days, and some are younger, as we find with Caleb and Joshua. And God allowed this. It's exactly what God did. We find in the Bible, Sarah and Elizabeth were old people who... Our apologies, as the microphone was unfortunately muted at this point. To continue what Brother Roy was saying, Sarah and Elizabeth were old people who just happened to have babies when they were old. Now, God sometimes used old people to do the weirdest stuff. I want you to have a baby that'll become millions, and millions, and millions of people in a few years. That's not what God said, but it's exactly what happened. How many of you would like your wife to have a baby when you're a hundred years old? It wouldn't be that great. I love children, but grandchildren are way better when you're that age. And that's what God does. He often uses old people. God chooses to use old people, the ones that young people want to ignore. They don't want to have so much in their life because they want freedom, because that's what society says. What the world does to old people is very sad. And now, Brother Roy continues his message. In South Africa, I have a friend. He was, until the age of 40, he wasn't saved. He was a drunken. He killed a man. And he got saved, and he went to Bible college, and went on the mission field. And God used him to bring, I wouldn't say thousands, but hundreds of people radically to be saved across our country, including a prostitute that he walked up to and brought to the Lord. He became a missionary. And God used this old man, but after he'd been through whatever time where he was full-time in the ministry, and he decided to retire while still preaching in a lot of places, he took his savings from the years that he'd been able to save. And he went to a man, and this man said to him, listen, if you build, I'm going to give you a place on my property. If you build a house on it, you can have that land. So he was very grateful in his old age after God had used him for all those years in his service. And he built with his own hands in his old age this house. And that man who said, you can have this land, very soon said, when he'd made a nice house, get off. It's my property. In his old age, after all those years of serving God and hundreds of people getting saved and lives changed, he had nothing. I remember driving down a highway in South Africa, like an interstate in America, a big city, and there's nowhere to stop. Hundreds of cars going down a high accident lane, and there was this old lady, her arms were so thin, and you could see she had a hunchback, and she was walking literally like this, and then again like this, and then getting strength to go forward. And it was in an area of the street where there was nowhere to get off, and it would be literally maybe 50 miles to her house that night. It was pouring with rain in the cold, and she was drenched, and this old lady had no one to help her, no one who cared to pick her up, and she was walking forward. And then the traffic, we could not stop, else we'd cause an accident. It was shortly after this that two old people who'd served the Lord for 50 years in the mission field phoned me and said that the entire pension had been stolen. They had nothing in the old age. The God had used them through the years. I remember driving through the Transcar in South Africa, and I was thinking of this old lady that was walking in the rain, and I was thinking of the family that had lost the entire pension, and I started to weep, and I was there, my little children were in the back, and my wife next to me, and she doesn't know why I'm weeping. You know, Roy's strange sometimes. I don't know if you've noticed. And yeah, her husband is a nervous wreck. And little Ruth, she's funny sometimes. She sits in the back, and she sums up the situation. She says, Mommy, you stop pinching Daddy. Now you must imagine being Jerusalem sometimes. She's sitting here, her husband for no apparent reason is weeping his head off. The children are accusing her of pinching Daddy. It's not the easiest life. Anyway, I explained to her why I was crying. You know how many cruel people there are out there to old people? In the Bible, there's some cruelty that I caught. It's just phenomenal, but you see it around you. In Leviticus 19 verse 14, it says these words, Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shalt fear thy God. I am the Lord. God says, you're not going to put, and this is what people do, they literally as a joke will put a boulder in the road where they see an old man walking down the street, or a young person who's blind, whatever age, and they know that this blind person is going to fall when they reach that boulder, and then they're going to laugh their heads off. That's the cruelty of much of the world that we live in that God had to command against. In the Bible, we read in Deuteronomy 25, remember what Amulek did unto thee by the way when you come forth out of Egypt. God commanded the utter destruction of a nation, because what is important to God is often what is not important to us. He said, How he met thee by the way, this Amulek, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all who were feeble behind thee, when thou was faint and weary, and he feared not God. Therefore it shall be when the Lord thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amulek from under heaven, thou shalt not forget it. What God's saying, yeah there were old people, there were sickly people, maybe there was a few weak children or some woman that were pregnant, and they were at the back, and they got away from the main group, and this nation came, and they said, We're not going to attack the big guys, because that's scary, we might die. We're going to get these weak guys, these old people, and these sickly people. We're going to kill them. You know what God said? This is no joke to me. This is big. That nation is going to be blotted off the face of the earth, because of what they did. You see what's very big to God sometimes is very small to us. There's a reason why the the nursing homes across America and the western world, many of them are called, forget me not, because young people forget about old people. They want to go their own way, do their own thing, and don't care about old people, because they need a little bit of patience to think about old people. Like I said, God showed the Pharisees they were not followers of God by showing that they were not there for their old people. Mark chapter 7, you can read it yourself. You're not followers of God. You're hypocrites. In South Africa there was a 107 year old lady nearby where we stay. There was a man when she turned 107 who walked up the stairs and raped her. That was her birthday present. There are people in South Africa who gang rape old people and babies in their thousands, because they think it'll cure them of AIDS. Do you think God's not angry? Do you think God doesn't care about the babies? That God doesn't care about the old people? Just because we don't care about them so much? Because we want to take over as soon as possible, because these boring old people don't know what they're doing. We sang just before this, the song that was chosen was Shady Green Pastures, so rich and so sweet by the Phillips Cho's. Many of you know the story behind that song by G.A. Young. He was a preacher and for many years he preached. But you must realize in the 1800s, like I mentioned yesterday with the Irish famine of 1845, that 1.6 million people died in one country in Europe in just a few years. And so if you, this isn't America or wherever, but if you save up for a long time for something in those days, you can't just do something amazing on the stock exchange and maybe get it back. It's over. You've lost it, you've lost it for life. And this is what happened to this man, because he saved up so that in his old age he could have a house for his wife. And so there came the time when he had this plot of land, but he also had the means to put it all together, the wood and the nails and whatever else he needed, and he built the house, which he could have his little nest in his old age with his wife. But as he went around preaching, this poor preacher, there were hooligans who came because they hated his fiery hell-bent preaching against sin. Which is the reason, like I said yesterday, they crucified Jesus Christ, because he said what you're doing is wrong. They came to his house and they burned it down. He died, his wife landed up in a poor house. But after the house burnt down, he wrote the song we sang this morning. Shady green pastures so rich and so sweet, God leads his dear children along. With the cool waters, with the water's cool flow bathes the weary one's feet, God leads his dear children along. Some through the waters, some through the flood. Remember this is an old man speaking. Some through the fire, but all through the blood. You know what we can learn from old people who are on the way of righteousness? In South Africa there's a family, a man and wife, and I remember when I was at Bible College, this is a godly couple who knew my parents for years before I was born. In their old age they came to serve at the Bible College. I was there. I remember they would take me and they would give me tea and they'd give me cookies. They'd teach me guitar. At least the husband would. The sweetest family. They loved each other. They were there. They prayed us through. In their old age, I hadn't seen them for about five, six years. I came back there. That wife, that precious woman who served me tea and cookies. She had Alzheimer's and no matter how godly she was, no matter how many hours she prayed, no matter how many souls she'd witnessed through with this Alzheimer's, she was literally mad and she would look at her husband and she'd look at other people and she'd suddenly go, praise God in heaven, she's going to have another body. Remember one lady, she was, she literally, people would get saved through this lady. She never married, but people would get saved by her life. That's very rare. She would say just a few words of the gospel and they so could see Christ in her that they would get saved. People had never ever thought of Christianity. She used to pray for me. I used to go to her for cookies in her old age too, in her 90s. She took a thing of water in her old age, a kettle, and she fainted and it fell right through her clothes and she was burnt black and in the hospital for months she was there and the nurses came to the Lord. A few words that she said of, just like this, do you love my Jesus? I said no, but a few days later she asked the same question. They came in beaming faces, their life had changed because they wanted the Jesus that was in this burnt old lady. Now I remember the day I phoned her. She didn't remember my name. She didn't know my dad. I realized there's something going wrong with this godly old lady, no matter how much she's prayed. She had the whole world on a wall, a world map, and she had so many mission organizations, there was books full that she would pray through through the nights for missionaries all over in her old age. That old age caught up with her. There's a guy in South Africa, revival swept through a town many years back and drunkards were saved and traditional Christians were saved and God worked in a mighty way. And this man got saved. He became one of the greatest preachers in our nation and even into his old age. This man, when he preached, I remember sitting there with a whole public school. You know the guys who get drunk and laugh at the gospel. They were filling this hall. This old man wrinkled out there. He was used to revival. He was a prayer warrior. He'd pray through the nights. There's many people that you don't know in other languages and you'll never know them because they don't speak English. Like one guy in South Africa who knew the Bible of Baha'u'llah in three different versions and the Greek majority text, but he could preach that little children could understand. And so many got saved through him through the years before he died. And this particular old man was such a preacher and he would preach with his little heart bubbling up with Jesus with brokenness about the people in front of him. I remember I was called in one of his meetings. God called me to full-time service. I'm here today because of that old man that God used him. And I remember him preaching and there was just weeping as the young people appreciated and could not believe that there was a man like this still alive who loved Jesus so. His heart was for the younger generation to see the power of God before he died. Recently I received an email from him as he's getting nearer to a hundred. His wife had a stroke and this godly man would pray through the night's fathers and weep. He wept when he heard that I was called to full-time service. He had to drag his wife at his old age for half an hour to the river next door before he could call for help because old age had caught up with him. You have to realize someone when people get old they cannot face what they used to face both physically. I'm not talking about every old person. There's amazing hundred years old who can do whatever they do with their arms. I don't know. But I'll tell you this. There's a lot of old people who are great old people and do not blame them for not being able to face what they used to face emotionally and physically and they're still great. My great uncle, all three of them were national champions whether it's in running or wrestling or boxing in South Africa. And my one great uncle on my granny's side, my dad's mother's brother, he was not a poor person. He had plenty of money to do what he wanted with and he came into a shop in his old age and he walked out and he did not realize in his old age that that he had a little sweet or something that he hadn't paid for. So the security guard stopped him, accused him publicly, called the police and he had a heart attack there and died in front of him. So I never met my great uncle. When some people get old they feel like they're going to die if they lose a child. Genesis 42 verse 38, 44 verse 29 and 44 verse 31 if you want to look it up later. Joseph said my heart basically is bound up in the heart of the child. You look at David in the Bible and there's a few examples of this. I'm only going to give David now because we don't have time. But there's lots of examples of people you progressively see how they age in scripture, men of God who God used. And as they were young they could do mighty things, they could wrestle with God and later they couldn't even see. But John 1 Samuel 16 verse 18 we read these words, And it goes on to say that he's a mighty man of valor, a valiant man, a mighty valiant man, a man of war, and a comely person. I'm skipping a few words. Man this guy was strong, he was good looking and he was a man of war. That's David. He could take a stone, he could kill a bear, he could kill a lion, he could kill a giant with a sword afterwards. Amazingly strong. Then we read a little later he was getting older and he didn't go to war by choice in 2 Samuel. I can't remember the chapter. But he basically decided not to go to war and then he fell into adultery. But that was his choice. But later on in 2 Samuel 21 verse 15 and 21 verse 17 we read that David did go to war and he wasn't anymore the giant slayer. He wasn't as young as he used to be. And so he waxed faint, the Bible says. And then verse 17, Abishai the son of Zeria succored him and they saved him from being killed because he wasn't the man of war he used to be. He's not an old guy in his bed, but he's getting older. He can't fight like he used to fight. Then eventually many years later we read of David getting really old. And in 1 Kings 1 verse 1 we read, Now king David was old and stricken in years and they covered him with clothes but he got no heat. A man who was once strong, you could take a sling and throw it with one stone at a giant so that he fell over and you could take his sword and kill him. This man now was lying in a bed thin and he didn't have enough heat coming from his body so that he had to basically marry a Shulamite to give him heat. I've seen that, I've seen that. I remember when I was a teenager, I don't want to chastise myself too much, but I wasn't as strong as many other people. I was thinking, Brother Lee reminds me a bit of my grandfather as far as strength goes. Maybe his back is not there for us. But I was there in the garden and I wanted to pick up this big tree. I remember this. So I went down and I tried to pick it up. My grandfather's garden. I tried, I tried and I couldn't get it up. My grandfather there, he just came in his 70s down, you know. He always stuck his chest up because he said if you want to get a wife you've got to stick your chest up. My cousins used to believe this. They used to walk around like this and they all got wives so obviously he was right. Anyway, so he came down there and I'm struggling with this tree and he just goes down and he just says, where would you like it, son? I'm like, Grandpa, you are so strong. He was a wonderful guy and we used to go up in the mountains and he used to take me and he's pick up and we used to drive up and then go through the bush and find all these little churches that don't have pastors and used to preach to them with tears. I remember how many of the elders would be weeping because they had not heard a message from the Word of God for over a year from a preacher apart from the lay preachers in their church. I remember him preaching at conferences across the country and God using him in people's lives and so many people get and say he was amazing preacher my grandfather in his Dutch type language. Phenomenal. And then he had a quadruple bypass. I remember shortly after that I asked him, I tried to record him for the radio station and he sat there and he would, he would say, and David walked down the road and he was struggling. And I thought, well this guy still prays a lot and this guy still reads his Bible a lot and this guy still is a godly man but he doesn't sound as amazing and it's not because he's not spiritual. And then I saw something very sad that actually at a stage made me wonder about Christians. It made me cry because he stood up at a conference and they let him preach like they asked him at many large conferences in South Africa. I saw Christians with their nice clothes and their nice hymns. He struggled through that sermon in his old age. I looked around me and I saw a whole lot of people disrespecting him thinking he was a pathetic preacher. And I said, what do they know? Don't they realize that this is one of the people that God has used through the ages? So many souls have been saved, so many lives have changed. He loves them. He wants to stand up in his old age with his difficulty breathing to preach to them and they think he's a pathetic old man. I remember when he died, my grandfather was there on the bed the day before singing hymns to Jesus. When he could hobble around a few weeks before, he was still handing out tracts and talking to people about Jesus. It's how he always was. My grandfather with his weak body, remember that body that in his 70s could pick up a big tree on the bed he couldn't even lift up his hands. With his shrivelled out face he started to breathe longer and longer and greater gaps until the last breath came out and he was dead. A godly man. You know there's a poem in Dutch, I'm not going to read it to you, I'm not going to quote it to you, it's quite a long poem, it's got lots of stanzas. You know what we can thank John Wesley for is that he actually edited his brother's songs because they were actually about 30 verses sometimes. He just went, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, I don't want this, and so we have slightly less longer singing times in church because of John Wesley being practical. But there was this Dutch poem by an old person that I know personally before she died and she wrote many poems and it's called Verdramenet, which is not Dutch, it's Afrikaans, it's Dutch, and that means just, just, I don't know how to directly translate it, it's just accommodate me, that would be the closest I can come to. And if you go through it she talks about being young and when she's young she's a little kid or whatever and she grows up a bit older and her mother asked her to do the dishes and she marries and she has little babies and they have diapers, oops, and they have, I'm going to wash the dishes and she shows so many ways in which I can show my love, I can love and I can show it, I can change diapers, I can wash dishes, I can clean the windows, I can get on the floor and I can wash it, I can help you with your homework at night time. But then I got a bit older, my kids left the home and I can only help them from a distance. My husband, his teeth start falling out and so it went on and eventually it came to the point where my teeth start falling out and I need a diaper literally. I'm lying there in the old age home and I can't do what I used to do to show my love and then eventually there's less and less ways in which I can show my love and it comes to the point where the only thing I have is love. I can't show it anymore, I can just lie there and love. Just accommodate me, I cried through that poem the first time I read it. Now old people, Jesus didn't live to a hundred, he sure is one with the ancients of days, he's been through a lot. But when old people are stricken, we read in Isaiah 53 verse 4 and 8, we read that Jesus was stricken on the cross, that he was smitten of God and afflicted, he was taken from prison from judgment, who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living, for the transgression of my people was he stricken. I've come to the end of the sermon apart from one illustration and one verse and one little sentence of a song. Can you open up your Bible to Isaiah 46 verse 4? You know when that person in Psalm 71 said, in my old age forsake me not, we don't really get an answer from God in the Psalm directly, but we do in Isaiah 53 verse 8, no sorry, Isaiah 46 verse 4. And it says these words, and even to your old age I am he, and even to whore hairs will I carry you, I have made and I will bear, even I will carry and deliver you. God says even to your old age, when everybody else forgets about you, I haven't, you're still important to God, even when the young people think you're pathetic. Now my granny died of cancer last year, I love my granny, my grandfather was amazing when he had a stroke, and I've mentioned this before to many of you, when my grandfather had a stroke we had to get a taxi to take him to hospital and he was telling the taxi driver about Jesus. My granny when she had spinal cancer in her 70s, in a coma that she was in the only thing she could say over and over and over again was, doctor are you saved, doctor are you saved, doctor are you saved. When my grandfather lost his forms and the banks were phoning to say you're going to lose everything, there was a guy sitting in front of me, I was there, my grandfather looked at this guy and he told him about Jesus on the day he was losing everything, his electricity was cut off, his telephone was cut off, he had to beg for food from other farmers, he had no vehicle, and I remember my grandfather praising God anyway, and being sacrificial and wanting to help missionaries. There was something that my grandfather longed, he says when I'm gone who's going to take my place, going up in those hills, talking to those churches, my grandfather longed for the younger generation to see the power of God as he had seen it. And I end off with this little thought, how many of you, by the way in Titus, Paul quotes from a secular poet, a philosopher, said even one of yourselves, one of your own even, of yourselves, I say the Christians are always liars, evil be slow bellies. Talking of the famous poet from that time, this witness is true, he says in Titus. He also uses, Paul uses in Ephesians, the Roman armour to illustrate spiritual concepts from secular life, and Jesus uses the 12-hour day which came from Persia, not from Jewish tradition, which is interesting. But there's a little secular song, I just set that up so you don't blame me for quoting outside the Bible, that I sang when I was a little kid and I heard when I was a little kid, and I just love it. Because if you go to England this is lost. If you go to much of the conservative church where people are so don't realize how big the gap is between generations because of computers that it's affecting them and they don't, they way more trust their friends than they would ever trust an older person. And they don't know how to communicate with older people because they don't realize how they work and how weird they are, but how wonderful behind that weirdness these old people are and the wisdom that they have if you just give them a chance. And they don't realize those lone wolves out there who are going as street preachers and impressing many people, how they're destroying people's lives and their own lives and churches later and families because they don't have older people in their life. And again I say it with all my heart there are many bad old people out there, but we need the good ones. And good ones will make mistakes. They will speak to you and misunderstand you, but you still need to build up a relationship with them. You need Jesus. The Jesus that they have and can teach you about. So this little song when I was a kid it's on YouTube you can go and look it up. Beautiful little song. I'm just going to give you one verse then we pray. Grandad it says. Grandad. Grandad you're lovely. That's what we all think of you. Grandad. Grandad you're lovely. That's what we all think of you. Grandad. Grandad. Father I just want to thank you that there are even though there's many evil old people out there who mess up people's lives. Nobody's perfect even the good ones they make mistakes in communication and they can be misunderstood young and old. Thank you for every old person you ever allowed into my life that loved Jesus, might have made mistakes at times, but was an influence in my life for good. Thank you for Peter Schultz and Willie Murray and my dad, my grandparents. Thank you father for Donny Drodzki. Thank you for Donny Stein. Thank you for Don Cavell even though he's not old. Thank you for the heart they have for the power of God not just for our the problems we think we have to be answered but the greatest problems to be answered. Father thank you for every young person that you've kept them for what's happened in the entire of England almost. That they've got older people in their lives to influence them like Paul influenced Timothy, like Mark, Barnabas, so many in scripture. There was the older Elijah for 20 years was over Elisha. Moses for many years was over Joshua and our parents and grandparents are supposed to be there for us. Father help us if we don't have a parent because our parents are bad or of our parents are bad that we would seek out older people. Not to make them God, not to think that they'll never make mistakes but to see what wisdom we can garner from them to be better Christians. To hear from them of the power of God that they've seen in their lives and wish for us to see. God work in the older people to have this longing in their old age not just to be set aside even if people said God has forsaken you. Even people say it's time for you to move on. That they would love the people that say that and they would in spite of it love God so much that they even the people that they tend to be bitter against because those people don't have time for them or think it's time for them to move on. That they would still long to see the power of God and for the younger generation to see that power as they have seen it when they were younger. And I pray this in Jesus Christ's name my Lord and Savior. Take hold of our hearts to see your heart and not just what we feel is your heart because of society in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.