Sermons of Vance Havner

1. Are We Playing by the Book?

When a group of small boys, out to play ball, arrived at the play ground, they discovered that no one had brought a ball. "Forget the ball," said one impatiently. "Let's get on with the game." We are trying to play without the ball when the Church tries to evangelize before she has repented. The Church can do many things after she has repented but nothing until first she repents...

The Pharisees had many good points. Our Lord said, in effect, "Do as they say." They read the Scriptures, prayed, went to God's house, tithed, and lived separated lives. They were anxious to preserve religion in Israel. Winning converts to the religion of Moses had been a good and right thing to do. But their religion had become institutionalized, and now they were propagating a dead faith, and every, new convert was a twofold child of hell, a lost heathen, and a lost proselyte. Generally, we are propagating today a degenerate brand of Christianity. Unless the church repents, and has a complete overhauling instead of a tune-up job, our evangelistic and missionary drives may add for the most part only a multitude of proselytes who are both unsaved pagans and unregenerated church members. Like produces like. Worldly churches produce more worldly church members. Churches weak or unsound in doctrine produce more of the same variety. Churches that operate in the energy of the flesh instead of by the Holy Spirit produce more of the same kind. We must improve the present quality of our churches, for converts tend to take on the qualities of the people who convert them...

If God ever visits us again in real revival, there will be many red faces as churchmen and religious leaders blush and hang their heads in shame for the silly and stupid ways in which we have tried to promote the work of God in the energy of the flesh by the help of the world. Drama will be unnecessary. We may not even need great preachers! Gospel jazz will slink away, and we shall be chagrined that we ever sank so low as to tolerate it. All this will vanish in the blinding light of the holiness of God, and no flesh will glory in His presence...

There is no greater hindrance to revival than a comfortable pastor settled and satisfied, coasting along until he reaches retirement, who does not want his flock disturbed or the status quo upset. He has long since lost his burden and concern for a mighty upheaval of God among the resters at ease in Zion. He resents any intrusion into the complacency of a sleeping church, and interprets the prophet's call to repentance as an indictment of his own preaching. He is determined not to get excited, assumes a philosophical tolerance of things as they are, and he may speak facetiously of the prophet's seriousness. Sometimes his own people may get under conviction, and put him to shame by a concern he does not seem to feel. This makes it exceedingly difficult for any revivalist calling Christians to repentance, but what a delight when pastor and prophet stand together! Most pastors understand that the traveling prophet can say things the pastor cannot say-that he fills a different role and follows an utterly different pattern. They complement each other. One plants, another waters, but God gives the increase. The teacher plants the seed, the pastor cultivates the crop, the evangelist gathers it, but the prophet must first break up the fallow ground. Breaking up the ground is never a pleasant, comfortable business, and churches sometimes resent the plow of plain preaching. Blessed is the pastor who knows this, and stands behind the lonely prophet who calls the church to repentance.

2. By Him All Things Consist

When Paul declared in Ephesians that "Christ filleth all in all" and in Colossians that "Christ is all and in all," he was not merely giving us pious phrases to roll under our tongues; he was stating the fixed and fundamental fact of the Allness of Jesus Christ. Christ was everything to Paul. To the Corinthians he had written, "I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified." To the Galatians he wrote: "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ." To the Ephesians he wrote of Him who "filleth all in all," and to the Philippians he declared, "To me to live is Christ."

Writing to the Colossians, he met an outbreak of heresy not so much by pointing out its errors, although he did that, as by presenting the Lord Jesus Christ as "the image of the invisible God," "Christ in you, the hope of glory," "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," "Christ, who is our life," "Christ, all and in all."

It has been a long time since Colossians was written, but there is the same tendency to belittle our Lord. Thousands of Christians localize Him in their thinking either to Palestine a long time ago or at the Father's right hand now. One thinks of the preacher, back from a trip to the Holy Land, who bored everybody by continually relating it. Finally, an old preacher observed, "I'd rather walk with Christ five minutes now than five years where He has been!" We need the sweep of Paul's vision to see Christ past, present, and future. No wonder so many Christians are pale, sickly, anemic: they do not know what a Christ they have. If Jesus is the Alpha and Omega, Beginning and Ending, Author and Finisher of our faith, if by Him all things consist, it follows that everything centers and converges in Him.

By Him creation consists. "For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created by him and for him" (Col. 1:16). How many Christians ever think of Christ as the One "by whom all things are created," as Colossians puts it; "by whom all things were made: as John puts it; "by whom God made the worlds," as Hebrews put it? Why did God make the universe, anyway? He made it that one day Christ might be all in all, that one day, from tiniest electron to mightiest planet, it might glorify Jesus. Scientists cannot give the reason for the universe: Christ is the reason. Creation is now enslaved in corruption, but one day it will display the glory of Christ, the bondage of sin will be broken, the Sons of God be manifested. And Christ not only created the universe and is its object but He sustains it now. The very existence of each of us, to say nothing of our salvation, depends on Him. Without Him the universe would fall apart.

By Him redemption consists. In order to conform men to the image of His Son, God gave His Son. There is no salvation in any other.

By Him the Gospel consists. The Gospel is simply the good news about Jesus, that He came, died, and rose again. It is not a program, plan, or philosophy that saves, but a Person. It takes a Person to reach persons, a Life to reach lives. The Gospel is a personal matter: "HE shall save His people from THEIR sins." "I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto ME."

By Him the Bible consists. True, we see Christ in the light of the Scriptures, for they are they which testify of Him. But we can see the Scriptures only in the light of Christ. He is the Key to the Scriptures. He expounded unto His disciples in all the Scriptures the things concerning HIMSELF. All roads lead to Him throughout the Book. Someone has said that the Pentateuch gives us the foreshadowings of Christ; the Prophets, the foretellings of Christ; the Psalms, the feelings of Christ; the Gospels the facts of Christ; the epistles, the fruits of Christ.

By Him the church consists. "God gave him to be head over all things to the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all" (Eph. 1:22,23). We are married to Him, members of His Body. Any group that feeds on itself and not on Christ is a monstrosity, for it is a headless body.

By Him doctrine consists. Some Christians become disciples of a phrase instead of a person, they harp on one string and ride one hobby. Some get off on a tangent on sanctification, for instance. But sanctification, strictly speaking, is not just a doctrine: Christ is our sanctification (1 Cor. 1:30). Spurgeon said, "Holiness is not the way to Christ; Christ is the way to holiness." Better still, Christ is our holiness.

Some make the Holy Spirit the figurehead of movements, but the Spirit testifies not of Himself but of Christ (John 15:26). In that classic passage on the Spirit, John 7:37-39, it is Jesus who is at the center of the stage: "If any man thirst, let him come unto ME and drink. He that believeth on ME, as the scripture hath said, from within him shall flow rivers of living water. This spake HE of the Spirit which they that believe on HIM should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that JESUS was not yet glorified." Any supposed experience of the Spirit that draws attention to itself and not to Christ is not to be trusted.

By Him the resurrection consists. Jesus said to Martha, "Your brother shall rise again." She said, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Martha was orthodox, but she needed to move from the doctrinal to the personal. So Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life." The resurrection is not something to believe but Someone to believe.

By Him faith consists. It is not the quantity or the quality but the object of our faith that matters. Saving faith is faith in Christ, not merely believing things about Christ. The man with the best nerves is the man least conscious of his nerves, and the man with the best faith is the man least conscious of his faith but most conscious of his Christ.

By Him all Christian experience consists. The Christian life is simply Christ, the indwelling and outliving Christ. "To me to live is Christ." The victorious life or the abundant or deeper life, whatever you choose to call it, is just Christ, more of Christ and less of self. He is our Life, not just a teacher of how to live.

By Him separation consists. He is the Great Divider, who came not to send peace but a sword, and He must separate us. Separation is not just quitting things, it is going unto HIM without the camp bearing HIS reproach. When He was on earth, there was often a division of the people on account of Him, and He still divides men today. But there are also those who cause division among us; they are to be watched and avoided.

The main thing about the Lord's return is the Lord. Some are looking merely for something to happen, not for Someone to come. We are not looking for a program of events but for a Person.

By Him Christian fellowship consists. "Our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:3). I have heard of a church with a "JESUS ONLY" sign in front. One night a storm blew out the first three letters and left "US ONLY." That has happened in more ways than one these days. The basis of fellowship is Jesus Christ. You cannot get the saints together at any other point. We are already one in Him. We have so many cliques now that an appropriate greeting would be, "How are you clique-ing?" Some saints have no testimony, only an argument. The mark of true fellowship is "love to all the saints," which springs from "faith in Christ Jesus" (Col. 1:4).

Indeed by Him testimony consists. We are His witnesses, not His lawyers. "We preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord." There is too much sermonizing and too little witnessing. People do not come to Christ at the end of an argument. Simon Peter comes to Jesus because Andrew goes after him with a testimony.

By Him our fruitfulness consists. "He that abideth in me and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:5). It is not what is done for Him but by Him that counts. I wonder how much of our church activity really proceeds from Him. We think it depends on us, our effort, our organization, our enthusiasm. We need to get our eyes off our efficiency and on His sufficiency.

By Him the answer to every need consists. God has promised to supply all our need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. If we need victory we can reign in life through Christ Jesus. If we need peace, the peace of God will garrison our hearts through Christ Jesus. If we need wisdom, He is our wisdom. If we need strength, we can do all things through Christ. Like the hungry multitude of old, we need not depart from Him for anything.

By Him the future consists. For the believer, the prospect is not merely going to heaven but departing to be WITH CHRIST. It is His presence that makes heaven so glorious. And it is separation from Him that is hell's worst feature. It is all the difference between "Come, ye blessed of my Father" and "Depart, I never knew you." To be cut off from Him who is life cannot but be unending death; to be cut off from the Light can be but eternal darkness. The most glorious thing about heaven is that we shall be like HIM.

By Him the future of the universe created by Him and consisting by Him will be consummated in Him. In the dispensation of the fulness of times God will gather together in one all things in Christ, in heaven, and on earth, even in Him.

The little girl who, failing to reassemble a torn up map of the United States, discovered that on the reverse side was a picture of George Washington and that by putting his picture together she also assembled the map, illustrates a profounder truth. Nothing can be assembled, either one's life or the universe, apart from Christ. But when we know Him all things else find their place, for by Him all things consist, and we are complete in Him.

3. Doing Something About It

"They hear thy words but they will not do them." — EZEKIEL 33:31.

"But be doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves." — JAMES 1:22.

The prophet Ezekiel ministered in an evil time. It was his lot to prophesy to a generation that listened after a fashion, likened him unto one having a pleasant voice, told others about his preaching, but did nothing about his message. They heard his words but did them not.

Ezekiel was not the only man of God whose sermons fell on unresponsive ears. Earlier, God had advised Isaiah well in advance that his message would blink eyes and shut ears and harden hearts lest the hearers convert and be healed. And those words show up later in each of the four Gospels and still later in Acts and Romans to explain the poor response of Israel to the ministry of our Lord and of Paul. Israel heard but did nothing.

James warns against the same evil. Invariably we do not quote the entire verse. We say, "But be doers of the word and not hearers only," and there we stop. But there is a most solemn further word, "deceiving yourselves." That is the worst thing about it: hearing and not doing, we delude ourselves.

Our Lord constantly warned against doing nothing about it. "Everyone that hears these sayings of mine and does not do them, shall be likened to a foolish man who built his house upon the sand." "If you know these things, happy are you if you do them." "You are my friends if you do what I command you." "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and don't do the things I say?" In the Great Commission, we are told to go "teaching them TO OBSERVE" the things commanded.

Chief among the besetting sins of the saints is hearing without doing. And it is a grievous sin, for "to him that knows the good he ought to do and fails to do it, it is sin." In Ezekiel's day they heard the preacher, complimented him, told others about him, but did nothing about the message. The centuries have passed, and today we listen to preachers, invite others to hear them, congratulate them with that very doubtful compliment, "I enjoyed your sermon." But we do nothing about it.

Let it never be forgotten that, although we may do nothing about the Word we hear, the Word will do something to us. The same sun melts ice and hardens clay, and the Word of God humbles or hardens the human heart. Truth heard and not acted upon is a dangerous thing. Spiritual impulses which are not translated into action have a disastrous reaction.

It is well known that many movie-goers who are continually being excited and stirred in the world of make-believe become emotional drunkards. But there are also religious drunkards and Bible-conference drunkards and church drunkards, who go from meeting to meeting, constantly being stirred but doing nothing about it, until their souls become fed-up, their moral muscles deteriorate and they lose their capacity for being aroused. Presently they suffer from a moral let-down, a religious hangover. They delude themselves. They have heard the best preachers, they have read the best books, they have had their ears tickled and their emotions thrilled, but as with a stimulant the doses have to be increased and after awhile there is no effect, no matter what they read or hear. An alarm clock that fairly blasts us out of bed on the first morning may eventually fail to arouse us. Something like that happens to those who hear and take no action upon it.

It is a serious thing to trifle with any emotion and not carry it through to its proper and legitimate conclusion. And it is most dangerous to play with the holy stirrings of God's Spirit through His Word. I had rather take chances with forked lightning any time. For the Word of God is dynamite, it is a hammer, a fire, a sword; messengers of the Word are a savour of life unto life and of death unto death. The man who habitually hears the Word of God and does nothing about it is the greatest of fools, for he fools himself.

Americans are a generation of spectators. They sit, thousands strong, in a football stadium and watch twenty-two men strive for the mastery down below. Then they go to the movies and thrill to the sham of Hollywood. On Sunday some of them go to church, and once again they are spectators before whom the minister is expected to perform. Many of them have no more intention of doing anything about the sermon than they intend to act out what they experienced at the movies. They are spectators, not participants.

Modern Christians find it easy to hear the Word and do nothing about it. Preaching may be had on every hand, at church, at the turn of a radio dial. Sermons have become so commonplace that we take the truth for granted. But where much has been given, much shall be required. God forbid that we should go out of our churches merely comparing one minister with another; like the listeners of Ezekiel's day, complimenting the messenger without conforming to the message, passing it up as just another sermon, "enjoying" it when God meant that our consciences would be pricked by it. The task of the preacher is "to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" and we are comfortable enough. God help us if we let the fowls of the air snatch up the seed which should produce thirty-, sixty-, an hundredfold; if we behold ourselves in the mirror of the Word and straightway forget what manner of persons we are!

The great and holy themes of Scripture are always joined with a call to do something about it. The first part of Ephesians shows us our exalted position in Christ, but right out of those heavenly glories we move from doctrine to duty, to the believer's vocation, which too often is regarded as a vacation. There are those who enjoy a dissertation on "The Lord knows those who are his" but who resent an application of the rest of the verse, "And let every one who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity." It is possible to revel in prophetic lectures, "seeing that all these things shall be dissolved," without going on to do something about what manner of persons we ought to be. The coming of our Lord is a certainty, a coming certainty, a comforting certainty, and a challenging certainty, and if we hold properly this hope we shall do something about it, we shall purify ourselves even as He is pure. Alas, it is too often the case that the same brother who shouts "amen" — and well he may! — through the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the resurrection chapter, shuts his mouth as tightly as his pocketbook on the sixteenth chapter, the collection chapter!

From start to finish, the Word of God joins creed with deed, and if "cursed be he that handles the word of God deceitfully," let us remember that one way we can do that is by hearing it and not doing it. "Sin will keep us from the Book and the Book will keep us from sin," and it is not the Word hidden in the head but in the heart that keeps us from sin. You can have a head full of Scripture and heart full of sin! You can backslide with a Bible under your arm!

It is possible to mistake a familiarity with Bible terms for a knowledge of Bible truth. We are not suffering from a lack of sermons. Maybe we have too many sermons. There is enough of the Word of God stored in the heads of Christians, if it were obeyed, to set America on fire and set off enough Divine power to put atomic bombs to shame in comparison.

But something has to be done about the Word. It is true, gloriously true, that God's Word will not return unto Him void. Ezekiel was assured that although the people would not heed his message, they would know that a prophet had been among them. Many a preacher, in an unresponsive day, has encouraged himself with that blessed truth. But that God's Word will not return void is no lollipop to roll under our tongues while we evade personal responsibility. The preacher has a responsibility to preach the Word, but his hearers have a responsibility to heed it. There is another verse about the Word not profiting Israel long ago, "not being mixed with faith in them that heard it." There must be a volitional response, "faith taking hold of the word."

We may have faith, but is it OBEDIENT faith? "By faith Abraham OBEYED." Are you obedient to the truth you know? Let me confine myself to the book of James and ask you a few pointed questions from that brief letter whence came our text about being doers of the Word and not hearers only, deceiving ourselves. And don't put these verses in a dispensational cubbyhole, they are for us all!

"Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded." This is to Christians. Have you done anything about that lately?

"When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." Have your prayers been unanswered because of sin?

"Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger." Have you done anything about your tongue and temper lately?

"Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up." Have you been proud? We want to have a revival and still save our faces, but the first thing we lose in a revival is our face!

"Speak not evil one of another, brethren . . . Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed." Are you critical? Is there someone to whom you owe an apology?

These are only a few verses, chosen almost at random. Think what would happen if the Church did something about one little book, the book of James!

God help us to do something about it, lest we hear God's words and do them not, deceiving ourselves. "Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them" (John 13:17).

4. Down From Above

"And he said unto them, You are from beneath; I am from above: you are of this world; I am not of this world." — JOHN 8:23.

From beginning to end, the Bible teaches that God works down from above, not up from below. This, of course, is contrary to human reasoning. Man teaches that we are on our way from the bottom to the top, that we started as sentient jelly on the shoreland of some prehistoric age and that through millions of years of evolution we have been working our way up from below. But God says that in His dealings with us from start to finish He works down from above.

To begin with, God says that man was made in God's image but he fell. And when he fell, he did not fall upward. Adam started better than he finished. He was not a cave-man swinging a club but a Godlike being who fell. "In Adam all die." "By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin." "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

For quite a while we have been taught that man started with no knowledge of God but that he has worked his way up through animism, fetishism, totemism, polytheism; that in the Jewish nation he reached monotheism and in Jesus Christ he carried that idea to its highest ideals. But the truth is, man started with a knowledge of God, but when he knew God he glorified Him not as God neither was thankful, but became vain in his imagination, so that his foolish heart was darkened and professing himself to be wise he became a fool. The first chapter of Romans presents us with a picture of degradation and depravity that forever debunks the idea that man has been continually seeking God's fellowship through the ages. Even the Israelites, when they did know God, were continually turning from God to idols. Such has been the course of church history. Such has been individual experience. The human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and its natural bent is away from God. "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." Men hate God. They do not want God, they resent Him, they are rebels against Him, they make gods of their own.

Whoever assumes that man is kindly disposed toward God, and that if God's love be presented and the winsomeness of Christ be preached, men will fall over each other rushing down church aisles to be saved, is in for a big surprise. The facts simply do not bear that out. God's Word does not teach it. It is not true to history or experience. Jesus Christ lived among us in all His winsomeness and we spat upon Him, crowned Him with thorns, crucified Him on a tree. And we would do it again. He said the world hated Him and that it would hate us. And the reason it does not hate us Christians more is not because the world today is more like Christ but because we Christians are so unlike Him.

Man is not on his way up but on his way down. It is ridiculous to ask man to follow Christ so long as he is unsaved. He is a guilty sinner and must be made to face the fact; he must see himself as God sees him. Then will he pray like David, "Against thee only, have I sinned." We must stop dusting off sin with a powder puff and spreading cold cream over the cancers of iniquity. Sin is not mere imperfection, the left-overs of a brute ancestry. Man is not evolving Godward. Left to himself, he is foul, reprobate, degenerate, disgusting, not on his way up to heaven but on his way down to hell.

Certainly the Word of God paints no rosy picture of man in his natural state. Instead, we are told, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it: but wounds and bruises and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." If it be objected that this is an Old Testament picture of a corrupt nation we turn to the New Testament and find the human race given over by God to "a reprobate mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. Again, if it be objected that we have made progress since Paul wrote Romans we turn to his description of men in the last days and find that men are no better, that these same characteristics persist and some more are thrown in for good measure. Lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God — these, mind you, are marks of the human race at the end of its course. Man still is no better. For it is not a progressive race "evoluting" upward but a perishing race "deviluting" downward. Of course, that is not what we are reading in popular magazines; it is not what starry-eyed idealists are telling us — but it is what God says.

Man's teaching makes him think well of himself. God's Word makes him think meanly of himself but well of Jesus Christ. A lady who objected to proofs of her picture on the grounds that they didn't do her justice was told by the photographer, "Lady, what you need is not justice but mercy." That is what man needs and God shows him his just deserts that He may offer him mercy.

So there are two schools of thought with us: that man in his present state is on his way up from the beast or that he is on his way down from the best. If the first is correct he needs only culture; if the second be true he needs Calvary. If the first is correct, he needs only education; if the second, he needs regeneration. If we believe God, man needs Calvary — and that brings us to the next consideration.

In His dealings with us God works down from above, not up from below. Consider that OUR SAVIOUR CAME DOWN FROM ABOVE. "The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven" (I Cor. 15:47). "I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John 6:38). "I am from above" (John 8:23).

Right here is a problem that stumps the evolutionist. If we are evolving upward all the while, why did the perfect Man appear almost two thousand years ago? Why can't we produce a greater character than Jesus Christ? We've had almost twenty centuries since He appeared and we haven't had a man who can say, "Which of you convicts me of sin?"

Jesus Christ was not a step in the upward evolution of man from below. He was an intervention of God from above! Man was ruined and on his way down and couldn't save himself, but God so loved the world that He broke into the course of things and introduced another order of life, a supernatural Christ, His only begotten Son, to rescue man from going down and to lift him up. Jesus Christ was not merely the best man who over lived, on his way up from below. He was the Son of God come down from heaven to die for our sins and rise again.

In this day when people are asking, "What must I do to succeed?" instead of "What must I do to be saved?" they ask, "Why do we need a Saviour? Aren't we on our way up by science and invention?" Well, we are going places with our heads and hands but we have outrun our hearts. Indeed, we have come from tallow candles to television, but what does man do with his inventions? He goes wild and cuts his own throat with them! Have we not just seen two highly intelligent nations go crazy and wreck the world?

Man's heart is not right. He is on his way down, spiritually, and unless his course is changed he will end down and not up. Only God can change that course. That is why He sent His son from above that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, for perish is exactly what he will do otherwise. Jesus Christ could never save us if He were only a man, even if He were the best man. He had to be another kind of man, the God-man. So God broke in from above. He had to start a new race with a new Adam, for the first race had failed. That new Adam is the Lord from heaven, and to as many as receive Him power is given to become the sons of God, members of a new race on its way up instead of down.

How is this change accomplished? Here again God works from above. "Except a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). THE NEW BIRTH IS FROM ABOVE. What man needs is not a boost from below but a birth from above! He doesn't like to be told that he needs a new birth. He tries to cover his sins and excuse his iniquities, but, for all his culture and progress, he is still only a savage with a thin veneer of civilization. He is on his way down and must be born from above. Even religious people find that hard to accept. Our Lord said to Nicodemus, "You are a teacher in Israel and you don't understand these things?" There have been church members, deacons, elders, even preachers and missionaries, who were very slow to learn it. We argue from the natural, that as the twig is bent so is the tree inclined. We bring in a lot of psychiatric jargon to explain our conduct, but all that is true in our newest findings along that line has been in the Bible all the while. There is a "wisdom that is FROM ABOVE" that brings in a higher law. By the law of gravitation my knife, when I drop it, falls to the floor. But by another law I throw it upward and it sticks to the ceiling. "Ah, but you interfered and did something to it," do I hear you say? Well, we were all headed downward by one law, but when we believe in Christ, God starts us upward by another law! God steps in and does something for us and to us and in us.

That is grace, and the natural man does not like to hear it. He wants to save himself; he does not like to be God's charity patient, coming just as he is without one plea but the shed blood of Christ. He does not like to be told that eternal life is a gift which he can neither earn nor learn. He thinks he is on his way up and needs a boost, but God says he is on the way down and needs a birth!

Finally, THE HEAVENLY CITY COMES DOWN FROM ABOVE. Man has been trying to build heaven on earth for a long time. From the Tower of Babel onward, he has created his paradises and Utopias, all kinds of experiments and projects, but his Babels have all come down in ruins. He is still at it. Years ago, Henry Drummond advanced the idea that the New Jerusalem could be any city, my city, your city, if we but make it so. And so by education, sanitation, ventilation, we strive to create here the perfect city. But God's Word says the New Jerusalem will not be built up from below. In fact, man's final civic masterpiece is described in Revelation. It is Babylon the Great, and it comes to a horrible finish. The terrible eighteenth chapter of the Apocalypse pictures the final chapter in the civic genius of unregenerate humanity. Babylon falls and becomes the habitation of devils, a plagued city full of death and mourning and fire, where the voice of music and industry shall be stilled and where light and joy shall disappear. In this day of atomic bombs, and with the ruins of Berlin and Tokyo fresh among us, it should not be difficult to visualize these fearful scenes. Some who ridiculed the lurid pictures from John on Patmos ought not find them to be so far-fetched now!

But soon after this awful portrayal of Babylon's doom John writes: And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, COMING DOWN FROM GOD OUT OF HEAVEN, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." Once again God breaks in from above. We do not build up the Ideal City from below. Of course, we don't like to be told that. Of course, all social reformers and planners and dreamers and experts who have never seen God's blueprints will dismiss them as a lot of apocalyptic wildfire as out of date as the notion that the earth is flat and four-cornered. Now, to be sure, this does not mean that Christians are not to work to make our present cities as decent as possible. We do not expect perfect law and order in this age, but we should co-operate with whatever agencies we do have for maintaining the peace. Nevertheless, we know that unregenerate man cannot build the New Jerusalem. If he could, what would he do with it? They told us a few years ago that the machine age would set us all at leisure to cultivate the finer things. But what does the average man do with leisure when he gets it? He gets drunk or plays bridge or goes to a silly show or sits up half the night reading trash. What would such people do in the New Jerusalem? If the human race in its present state moved into the New Jerusalem today it would be hell by tomorrow!

Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people, built by God for the people of God, and it comes down from above for a people born from above by faith in Him who came down from above.

Peter tells us about "the world that was," a world destroyed by water. He tells us that the heavens and earth which exist now are literally stored with fire which will destroy them. Then he tells us, "Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells." True to his prophecy, scoffers are now among us reminding us that things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. But we have had one world destroyed by water, we are in a world to be destroyed by fire, and we look for a new world, a heavenly city come down from above. Anything else is willful ignorance, as Peter plainly declares.

Thanks be unto God, who works from above. See to it that you have been born from above. Then, "if you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God."

5. Gathering With Christ

"Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over me" (MATTHEW 11:6).

We are familiar with the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. We are also acquainted with other beatitudes of our Lord, such as "Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find so doing"; "Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it."

But here is a little beatitude, short and sandwiched between longer verses, so that we are in danger of passing it up altogether: "Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over me."

John the Baptist was in prison. That rugged, ascetic Elijah of the New Testament, prophet of the outdoors, was certainly out of place in a damp, dark dungeon. No wonder he had the blues. One day his feelings hit a record low and he sent a delegation to Jesus to ask, "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" Now, that was a serious doubt for John the Baptist. The very thing he had preached like a living exclamation point had become a question mark to the preacher himself. It was not the first or last time that a preacher's affirmation has become, in a dungeon, a preacher's interrogation. It reminds us of another prophet of the dungeon, Jeremiah, who cried to God from the depths, "Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?"

But our Lord did not reprimand John the Baptist. It is noteworthy that two of the strongest characters in the Bible had something akin to a nervous breakdown. Elijah, in the Old Testament, collapsed under the juniper, and God had to feed and rest him. More than one Christian, exhausted, with nerves on edge, has imagined that he is the last survivor of the saints. And usually he needs not reproof but rest. Then here is John the Baptist of the camel's hair vestments and victuals of locusts and wild honey, who could reprove kings and call religious people sons of snakes; here is John the Baptist down in the dumps even as you and I! It is one thing to stand on Jordan and give it, another thing to stay in jail and take it!

But what did Jesus do? Did he bitterly reprove the troubled prophet? Did He say, "I'm ashamed of you, disappointed in you. What will people think?" He did nothing of the sort. He did not even send John a tract on "How To Be Happy In Jail!" On the contrary, on the day that John the Baptist made his poorest remark about Jesus, Jesus said the best thing about John the Baptist: "Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!" For Jesus knew his frame and remembered that he was dust.

John had preached a victorious Messiah with fan in hand, purging His floor, gathering His wheat into the garner but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. And here was Jesus, not carrying on that way at all but meek and lowly, going about doing good. And John couldn't figure it out. The devil got in his doubts as in Eden. John began wondering and then worrying, for one begets the other.

Our Lord's answer to John's question is simple. The blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing, the lame are walking, the lepers are being cleansed and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. In other words, "I am running on schedule and carrying out my program as planned. It may not be as you expected but do not be upset by it."

This is a day of dungeons, and many saints are in the clutches of Giant Despair. There is comfort here for us. If a husky Lion Heart like John the Baptist could faint, "brethren, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." Your temptation is common unto man and there is a way of escape.

John's trouble, like most trouble, did not come singly, it was twofold. There was depression and there was doubt. Dungeons bring depression and depression brings doubt. Are you in a dungeon? Not behind visible lock and key perhaps, but while "stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage," it is also true that other things than prison walls do a prison make and other than iron bars may form a cage. Is your trouble financial? Maybe your blood pressure is up and your bank account down. Maybe you are physically ill but you keep going and everyone thinks because you are walking you are well! Maybe you have lost a loved one and a shroud of melancholy hangs heavy on your soul. Perhaps you dread to see night fall and search for rest as men seek for hidden treasure. Dungeons bring depression and from depression it is easy to move into doubt, even doubt about Jesus. Then we are upset and offended and we need to learn the Forgotten Beatitude.

It is nothing new to be offended in Jesus. More people have been offended in Him than in any character in history. Away with this milk-and-water preaching about Jesus! He has caused more offense than any other person who ever lived. He is either a sanctuary or a stumbling stone (Isaiah 8:14). He was an offense to His own nation and still is (Romans 9:33). He offended the Pharisees (Matthew 15:12). He offended the people of His own home town (Matthew 13:54-58). He offended superficial disciples (John 6). His cross is an offense (1 Cor. 1:23). And even true disciples may be offended in Him (Matthew 26:31-35). Sound believers sometimes get into a dungeon and pout with the Lord and say, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinances and walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts."

Don't you look pious, for we all have done it! We have murmured that we pray and do not receive. We gave our tithe and now we are in adversity. We were faithful to the Lord's house and landed in a hospital. We prayed for our children and they became worldlings. We craved joy and peace but we are despondent. Across the street is an ungodly family that has suffered no loss, while our dearest was taken. "There is no use in praying. It reads very lovely in the devotional books but I seem unable to make it work." We were in distress, and the Lord "abode where he was" and when He did appear we grumbled like Martha when she said, "If you had been here my brother would not have died."

All such grumbling means that we have not learned the Forgotten Beatitude. Anybody can believe during fair weather. There is a deeper experience and a higher state which not many reach, a state in which, no matter what happens, we are never offended in the Lord, a state in which, whether it makes sense to us or not, we still believe Romans 8:28. Habakkuk started his book pouting and ended it praising. And blessed is the man who can say: "Though I don't get what I want: though I may sow much and reap little; though others get the plums and I get the sack, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in the God of my salvation."

When Thomas asked for visible evidence of the risen Lord, he was asking for a smaller blessing than he already had, the privilege of believing without seeing, for "blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." God wants us to trust Him, no matter what He does. There is a heavenly carelessness that leaves it all with Jesus and doesn't become upset when He does things contrary to what we expected. And there will be plenty of things that just don't make sense. John the Baptist must have wondered, "If Jesus can raise the dead, why can't He get me out of jail?" The little boy who couldn't understand why God put so many vitamins in spinach and didn't put them all in ice cream was already beginning to see that things just don't work out as we'd like for them to. There is much that is baffling, but if we can't understand it, by grace we can stand under it, we can see to it that we are not offended, and that is better than understanding it! Some things we are to know (Matthew 13:11) and some things we are not to know (Acts 1:7), and we would be happier if we spent the time we waste on trying to fathom the unknowable in learning the knowable.

God did not explain suffering to Job. He gave him revelation, which was better than explanation. Better than having all our questions answered is to say, "The Lord knows what He is doing and I will not be offended."

In this dark hour of world distress not a few believers are in the dumps. Jesus seems not to be carrying on as expected. The world is not being converted. Has Christ failed? He isn't transforming the social order. Is He the One or shall we look for another? Many have been mistaught and have misunderstood His mission, His motive, His message, His method. It is true that He is not converting the world. He didn't say He would. But He has not failed, He is running on schedule. Blind eyes are opening to the Light of the world. Deaf ears are hearing His voice. Lame souls are taking up their beds and walking. Lepers, like Naaman of old, are dipping in Jordan and coming up with flesh like that of a little child. The dead in trespasses and sins are awaking to Christ, their Life and Light, and to the poor the Gospel is still begin preached. Christ is carrying on as intended. He has never missed an appointment. He may seem slow but He is never late. We need not be offended because He is not converting the world. He didn't promise to, but He did promise to return in clouds of glory and reign until all enemies are put under His feet. Let us therefore take our stand on His Word and hide it in our hearts, for "great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them."

6. Jesus Only

I would like to begin with a personal testimony. My own spiritual experience has gone through three stages. I was converted at the age of ten. The next year I became a preacher and for some years thereafter preached a simple Gospel message.

Later I moved into a more liberal position. It was during these halcyon days just after the first World War. Dreams of world peace and human brotherhood were challenging youthful enthusiasm. Certain modernist preachers were becoming popular and their new approach seemed to set forth the old wine in new bottles. It was evident to me later that the old wine was thrown out with the old bottles but I had not discovered that as yet. I felt that the time had come to strike out on new trails for higher altitudes and so I began to preach about the "new position" and "outmoded categories."

But the trail of the modern mind, left to itself, runs out in the wilderness, and blessed is the man who wakes up in time to how he is being deceived by these peddlers of new light. From this muddle the Lord delivered me. My first reaction was to plunge into a very stern fundamentalism. I fear that I was rather like the Scotsman who said he was open to conviction but would like to see the man who could convict him! There was a tendency to call down fire on the Samaritans and an inclination to forget what manner of spirit I was of.

For years now I have moved around among many grades and shades and varieties of conservative Christians, preaching in churches and conferences. Such a ministry ranges from staid old churches to popular Gospel tabernacles. In some places I have almost frozen, spiritually, and in others I have almost fried. I have listened to many voices, some well-known and many unknown, analyzing the situation and prescribing the remedy. I have tried to move among all groups belonging to as few as possible in order that I might be the servant of all. It has been and still is a rich and rewarding experience, for in this day of apostasy there are many precious souls all over the land who fear the Lord and speak often one to another. They have many faults and failings but I had rather take Bible Christians at their worst than this world at its best. I bless God for the tie that binds our hearts in Christian love.

Out of all this I have come to a fixed conclusion: the issue is simply Jesus Christ. Spurgeon said: "In the days of Paul the sum and substance of theology was Jesus Christ. I am not ashamed to vow myself a Calvinist. I do not hesitate to take the name of Baptist. But if you ask what is my creed, I must answer it is Jesus Christ." One thinks of A.B. Simpson's early years of seeking this experience and that, culminating in the conclusion so well stated in his poem, beginning,

"Once it was the blessing,
Now it is the Lord."

How we like to make a Santa Claus of the Lord, seeking only His gifts! Happy are we when we seek the Giver rather than the gift and can both sing and pray:

"Now Thee alone I seek,
Give what is best."

My message therefore is simply Jesus Christ. He is enough. Of course we are familiar with the fact that Christ is the Christian's life and message, but we need to familiarize ourselves with the familiar. We assume what we ought to assert. He is the hub, but too many of us are out on our favorite spokes like owls on different limbs. When we stand at the hub all the spokes are ours. And the closer we are to the hub the closer we are to all the spokes!

Of course, I do not mean the Christ of Partyism. Some say, "I belong to Christ," just in order to dodge issues. There was a Christ-party in Corinth along with the Paul-party, the Cephas-party and the Apollos-party. And they were as bad as the others and maybe a little worse! Christ does not exclude Paul and Cephas and Apollos, He includes them. All the Gospel preachers are ours because we are Christ's. The only thing that is not ours is us, we are not our own, we are bought with a price.

Certainly I do not mean the Christ of modernism. That is a false Christ. My Christ is the virgin-born Son of God who lived a sinless life, died a substitutionary, atoning death, rose bodily from the grave and is coming again to reign.

Some years ago, while preaching in a small Southern town, I was walking around one afternoon meditating on the evening message. I became impressed that I needed to preach "Jesus Only" more than I had been doing. I remember that I asked the Lord to confirm that impression by giving me one soul that night. Evening came and I preached. I gave the invitation but no one responded. As I pronounced the benediction, I thought, "Lord, where is the soul I asked for?" Before the "amen" was reached a downpour of rain set in, so that the people could not get home. A man came to me and asked that we might pray together. We went to a small room and there he received Christ as his Saviour. I have thought of that incident many times since and have tried to be true to the impression it confirmed.

There is only one safe and sure center of Christian experience, doctrine and testimony and that is Jesus Christ. Stand at any other point, no matter how good, and you will become lopsided. Stand with Him and you keep your balance, for by Him all things consist.

7. Many Still Lack the Fire!

It is true that Pentecost, historically, took place once for all. So did Calvary. But each individual must personally appropriate the blood by faith and so must each believer receive by faith the Spirit for power. The promise of the Spirit is received by faith (Gal. 3: 14). It is an experience of spiritual thirst, then coming to Christ, drinking of the Spirit by faith, believing and overflowing (John 7: 37-39). So the blood and bread must be accompanied by fire. We have fundamentalism and facts; we have activity and earnestness and sincerity; we even have blood-washed and blood-nourished Christians, well-taught in the Word, WHO STILL LACK FIRE. Some are prejudiced against it, identifying any definite experience of the Spirit with fanaticism. Some see nothing but a gradual growth in grace. Some mistake the indwelling of the Spirit for the infilling. Some have "received" with a cheap and easy "believism" who somehow did not receive after all. For many reasons the church is largely behind closed doors as before Pentecost, and believers try to stir up a fire from their own sparks instead of being set on fire of God.

We are not here advocating some wild and weird emotional experience, but we do hold that he who seeks to burn out for God will have to go deeper than sentence prayers and occasional wishful thinking. There must be a holy burning and a consuming longing for the fullness of the Spirit. Tears and fastings and all night prayers have no value of themselves, but God will reward the man who forgets all else seeking the double portion of "power with God and men." It is not that God is stingy and must be coaxed, for He "giveth liberally and upbraideth not." It is that we ourselves are so shallow and sinful that we need to tarry before Him until our restless natures can be stilled and the clamor of outside voices be deadened so that we can hear His voice. Such a state is not easily reached, and the men God uses have paid a price in wrestlings and prevailing prayer. But it is such men who rise from their knees confident of His power and go forth to speak with authority and not as the scribes.

I saw a human life ablaze with God; I felt a power divine As through an empty vessel of frail clay I saw God's glory shine. Then woke I from a dream, and cried aloud: "My Father, give to me The blessing of a life consumed by God, That I may live for Thee!"

8. Missing Notes In the Modern Church

It is very fashionable nowadays to ask, "What is wrong with the Church?" It is no new subject. There has always been something or other wrong with the professing church, and there have always been speakers aplenty to discuss it. Unfortunately, their speaking usually relieves only the speaker and not the situation. One is reminded of the soap-box orator in London some years ago. He was lambasting the government with a vengeance. Somebody asked a policeman: "Why don't you do something with him?" "Oh, leave 'im alone," the bobby replied, "It relieves 'im and it don't 'urt us."

I venture to suggest three characteristics of the New Testament Church that are out of style today. There are other marks of the Early Church that are also out of style, but one cannot cover everything in one message. I think that if we seriously considered these lost characteristics and recovered them we would be a long way toward answering the question, "What is wrong with the Church?"

The New Testament Church was an intolerant church. At once we throw ourselves open to a broadside of protest. "Intolerant" is a scandalous word to use these days, for if there is anything that is in style among our "progressive" churches it is that word "tolerance." You would think that intolerance was the unpardonable sin. We are majoring as never in all church history on being broad-minded. That we have become so broad we have become also pitifully shallow never seems to disturb us. We must "broaden or bust." Of course, some experts in tolerance can be amazingly intolerant of those who do not share their broad-mindedness, but that does not disturb them either.

There is, of course, a false, pharasaic intolerance that has no place in a true church. And one encounters it again and again among conservative Christians. It has brought about the remark that the modernists are arid and the fundamentalists are acrid, that the former lack clarity and the latter charity. It has nicknamed the fundamentalists "feudamentalists" and gotten them a reputation for spending so much time sniping at each other that they have little time left to go after the devil.

But there is a proper intolerance, and the New Testament Church had it. They were intolerant of any way of salvation except Jesus Christ. "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). That makes it straight and narrow, and it isn't what you are hearing in some localities these days. You are hearing that Jesus is the best way but that other ways are good and will lead to God just the same. Union meetings of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews create the impression that a general faith in God is enough without specific faith in Christ. Now, that cannot be true if no man comes to the Father but by Christ. The devils believe that there is one God and tremble: men believe it and do not even tremble, but expect to reach heaven by theism instead of by Calvary.

The New Testament Church was also intolerant of anything that threatened to compromise this Gospel of No Other Name. In Galatia men tried to mix in a little legalism, and in Colosse they were slipping in a bit of false mysticism -- and Paul would have none of it. He could have said nothing about it. I am sure that some of the false teachers must have accused him of seeing bugaboos and hobgoblins. He could have told Timothy to play ball with the apostates of his day, but, instead, he wrote, "From such turn away." He advised Titus to reject a heretic after the first and second admonition, which sounds uncomfortably intolerant. And even the gentle John forbad hospitality to those who abode not in the doctrine of Christ, asserting that "he that bids him God speed is partaker of his evil deeds." To be sure, we are not advised to bawl him out and throw stones after him until he is out of sight: but neither is there any encouragement for that fashionable modern fellowship with unbelievers.

The New Testament Church was intolerant of sin in its midst. When serious trouble first showed up in Ananias and Sapphira it was dealt with in sudden and certain terms. When immorality cropped out in Corinth Paul delivered the offender to the devil for the destruction of his flesh. It was in line with our Lord's teaching on discipline in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew. To be sure, it was to be done in love and tenderness, and the brother overtaken in a fault was to be restored by the spiritual ones, and Paul was quick to recommend the restoration of the Corinthian brother. But, still, sin was not to be glossed over and excused as we condone it today in our churches until liars, gamblers, drunkards, and divorcees fill prominent places in Sunday schools and on boards and have never as much as heard that we must be clean who bear the vessels of the Lord. We have let the camel get his foot in the door and then his head, until now the whole camel is inside and along with him other animals far more unsavory. Peter added even hogs and dogs to our spiritual zoology, and the lambs today are so mixed with every other species that what was once a sheepfold has become a zoo. Our Lord warned us that the shepherd who did not stand his ground when the wolves appeared was only a hireling. We are bidden to feed His sheep but not to feed wolves. I grant you that it is often a complicated problem and can be handled only on one's knees. But we are paying an awful price today for our sweet tolerance of sin within the Church. If the church of the Acts had overlooked iniquity and by-passed evil and smilingly looked the other way while the devil sneaked into every phase of her life as we have done today, Christianity would have died in infancy.

The New Testament Church had a healthy, holy intolerance. It got somewhere because it started out on a narrow road and stuck to it. It might easily have taken up a dozen wide boulevards and ended in destruction. We face the peril of the wide gate and the broad way today, and it tantalizes us all the more because "many enter through it." We were told a long time ago that "few there be" who take the S. and N., the Straight and Narrow. We Americans especially are gregarious; we like to run with the crowd. We had rather be called almost anything on earth than narrow; yet our Lord chose the adjective, and faithfulness to Him will prove that it still fits today.

I am sure that there were those who called the Early Church "exclusive," and predicted that it would never get anywhere until it became inclusive. "Exclusive" is another word that is anathema today and has been shoved into the limbo of the outmoded, along with "intolerant" and "narrow." But the New Testament Church was the most exclusive fellowship on earth. It was not just a society of people with good intentions. It was not a club for improving the old Adam. It was a fellowship of people who believed in Jesus Christ as the one and only Saviour. It seemed not to have a chance in the face of the great Roman world. It could easily have let down the bars and taken in all sorts of religiously minded folk, but it stuck to "Jesus Only." A river may look very lovely spread out all over a marsh, but to generate power it must narrow itself. We have endeavored to spread out the river today. We have sacrificed depth for width and instead of a power dam we have a stagnant swamp.

In the second place, the New Testament Church was not only intolerant, narrow, exclusive. IT WAS A REPELLENT CHURCH. Instead of attracting everybody, it repelled. In the fourth chapter of Acts the church was really going places for God. It was a great hour but dangerous. Could the church stand success? There is a turn in the story with the fifth chapter. It begins "But . . . " Ananias and Sapphira appear, trouble has arisen in the midst. There were plenty of liars in Jerusalem but these were in the church! But by the grace of God the church rose to the occasion and cleaned house. Ananias and Sapphira were carried out dead and the church rolled on. We read, "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; and they were all with one accord on Solomon's porch." Here is the church in the full bloom of her power: a Spirit-filled church, a wonder-working (not a wondering!) church; a church that stirred up the devil.

Then we read that there were three reactions:

Even though people admired them a lot, outsiders were wary about joining them. On the other hand, those who put their trust in the Master were added right and left, men and women both.

People didn't join this church carelessly. They were afraid to. There was a holy awe that kept Tom, Dick, and Harry at a distance. People didn't rush into this fellowship just because it was the nice thing to do. It meant something to unite with this crowd. There was a holy repulsion, and I know of nothing that the church needs more today. It is the last thing we think we need. We are always trying to attract. Our programs, prizes, picnics, and pulpit pyrotechnics are aimed at drawing the people in. Here was a church that made people stand back! We have catered to the world, we have let the world slap the church on the back in coarse familiarity. Here was a church that prospered by repelling!

You will observe that all this followed on the heels of the death of Ananias and Sapphira. If the church took a stand today on sins within; if we thundered out, as Peter did here, against lying to the Holy Spirit, it would make the world stand at a respectful distance, and the fear of God would fall on a generation that laughs at the church. What was the sin of Ananias and Sapphira? They pretended to make a full consecration which was not real. And are not our churches filled with men and women who sing, "I surrender all," when they have not surrendered anything? The church is cluttered with people who should never have joined. She already has too many of the kind she has. We need a holy repulsion. You don't have to be different to be a church-member now. There is little about the average church to make men stand back in reverence. In other days we at least had church discipline. I can recall the old Saturday church meetings, when Ananias and Sapphira were dealt with. Some mistakes were made but there was a healthy regard for the sanctity of the church. When the church takes a stand, it repels careless "joiners."

But someone asks, "What would people think if we took such a stand?" Let us see what happened here: "But the people magnified them." The church had favor with all the people (Acts 2:47). The church that stands in the power of the Spirit wins the respect of the people. We have driven them away in trying to attract them. We have lost favor in trying to win favor. The world is sick and disgusted with the church making a clown of itself, trying to talk the slang of this age, running third-rate amusement parlors, playing bingo and putting on rummage sales. The church, it has been said, is not running a show-boat but a life-boat, and we make ourselves ridiculous in trying to compete with the world. The preacher and church that stand for God and righteousness will be magnified.

When judgment fell on Ananias and Sapphira the world sat up and took notice. Today we coddle and excuse our sins, call weakness what God calls wickedness. We shelter sin in the Church, and when a preacher would cry out against it he is advised, "Don't be too hard, nobody is perfect," and is given a dressing-down from the text, "Judge not that you be not judged." We have let down the bars until anybody can get into a church and nobody ever gets out. If we raised the New Testament standard it would stop the rush of superficial disciples and win respect where now there is ridicule.

"But nobody would ever join!" do we hear? Let us see what happened here: "And believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women." While outsiders dared not join, the Lord added more and more to Himself. The church that repels as this church repelled will attract as this church attracted. It will be the attraction of the Holy Spirit, and He will draw out those who really believe. All that is necessary is just to be New Testament Christians and a New Testament Church, and we will both repel and attract. It is a law of nature. The rose has its thorns, it both repels and attracts. Everywhere you look in the world of nature, you observe this double law at work. It is a law of the spiritual world too.

What is this repulsion? There is a false repulsion. Often we drive people away by our indifference, criticism, lack of love and zeal. We ought to be ashamed of it, confess that we are ugly and unattractive Christians, repent of our bigotry, coldness and hardness, and let the Lord make us winsome with the loveliness of Christ.

But there is a repulsion that goes with being a Christian. Here is a fine Christian girl, beautiful and charming in face, in mind, in spirit. When she comes into a gathering she is attractive. But there is something about her which makes it out of the question to use profanity in her presence, something which makes the rudely familiar keep at a distance. She doesn't have to say, "I will allow no foul language, no improper advances." People just don't curse and otherwise misbehave in the presence of such people. She repels while she attracts.

There ought to be that about every Christian when he walks into a gathering, that makes the unholy and profane subdued and respectful. There ought to be that about a church that would make the world never dream of rudely rushing into its fellowship. And Jesus Himself both attracts and repels. He is the Great Divider. He has attracted more people and driven more people away than any other character in all time. Once, when He had preached a crowd away, He asked the disciples: "Will you also go away?" All through His ministry men were being drawn and repelled. The young ruler was first drawn; then when the terms of discipleship were made known, he was repelled.

God help us, as Christians and churches, to recover the power of God among us until a holy awe shall rest upon us. God help us to deal with sin until men shall be afraid to lie to the Holy Spirit. When we do, outsiders will not dare to join us; the people will magnify us; believers will be added to the Lord.

There is a third characteristic of the New Testament that is quite out of style: IT WAS A SENSATIONAL CHURCH. There was something happening every minute. On the day of Pentecost the multitude gathered "amazed, confounded and perplexed." And from that day on, Jerusalem was kept in a turmoil on account of this new power let loose in the world which jails could not lock up nor swords kill nor death destroy. And wherever they went, these Christians stirred up the elements. Paul exceedingly troubled Philippi and created no small stir in Ephesus and won the name of a world upsetter. That a mere handful of plain witnesses, talking about One who was supposed to be dead and buried, should tackle the great Roman world in a head-on collision and come off winners is the most sensational thing in history.

Today we Christians are living, for the most part, on the momentum with which the New Testament Church started and on fresh waves of momentum started since through others who were sensational in their day. Savonarola and Luther and Knox and Wesley and Whitefield and Moody let nobody go to sleep in their vicinity. But of late anything out of the ordinary, anything likely to disturb the saints at ease in Zion, is frowned upon by a stiff and starched formalism "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null" (Tennyson). In reaction to that there has sprung up in the churches today an extreme sensationalism as bad as the thing it tries to correct. Wild free-lances, weird prophetic firebrands, erratic evangelists would try to remedy freezing in formalism by frying in emotionalism. So the battle rages, and the saints are so busy calling each other names that Satan gets scant attention.

But the counterfeit proves the genuine and the fact of a spurious sensationalism should not blind us to the truth. Someone has said that sensational preaching is the kind some preachers don't like because they can't do it. Be that as it may, we have dried up being "resolutionary," we need to become revolutionary. There is no reason why any band of Spirit-filled Christians should not arouse and excite and stir any community. If they didn't, something would be wrong. It is argued that the world is so much more Christian than it was in the New Testament days that we cannot expect such reactions today. The argument is beside the point. The days are darker instead of brighter and the contrast should be all the more pronounced. As for being Christian, our civilization has become infected with a mild rash of Christianity that has almost immunized it against the real thing. A real revival would be such a contrast with this weak Sunday-morning Laodiceanism that it would be a sensation indeed.

We glory these days in our churches being precise. Every "i" is dotted, every "t" is crossed. We are Disciples of the Great Happy Medium. Now, because there are extremes, our Lord would not have us be middle-of-the-roaders. He said He would spew us out of His mouth, not for being too hot, but for being lukewarm. He would rather have us on the wrong side of the fence than on the fence. Yet today the churches are on the fence. We do not commit ourselves boldly to anything. We are so cautious that half of what we say cancels the other half and we end up by having said nothing. We are salt without savor, there is no tang, no flavor, no relish about us, nothing to smack the lips over. Our services are dry and flat and tasteless, and when we try to pep them up with a little glorified "spizzerenctum" the result is embarrassing. We need a New Testament sensationalism -- not an emotional spree but the earth-shaking stir of a movement of the Holy Spirit. To have that, we need only to be New Testament Christians, then things will begin to happen. The most sensational thing I can imagine would be an outbreak of New Testament Christianity. It would create a sensation among the churches, for it would be a revival, an awaking out of sleep. Some churches have slept so long that the awakening would be as remarkable as Rip Van Winkle's. It would certainly create a sensation in this world, for the world has become so accustomed to our being comfortably hidden away in brick buildings on street corners that if a revival drove us out as at Pentecost to declare in the marketplaces the wonderful works of God, the general public would gather amazed, confounded, perplexed.

I am not advocating mere noise and uproar, but the Acts of the Apostles is an exciting book. And most of the denominations that now repose in such quiet dignity had a rather stirring start. The Baptists have subsided until one would hardly think that they were once considered heretical nuisances, so greatly did they disturb the peace. Surely the Methodists have a name for setting the woods on fire in days gone by. And even the Presbyterians, long synonymous with dignity, were once agitators second to none. Some of our denominationalists who fear that a holy stir in the house of God would be out of keeping with their tradition need to learn that it would be entirely in keeping -- they would merely be returning to what they started with! If any of our modern denominations had started with no more zeal than they now have, they wouldn't be living today to tell the tale!

Intolerant, unpopular, sensational, such was the New Testament Church. And so will we be if we dare to follow in that train. What kind of people were these New Testament Christians? They believed in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. They did not live on a memory; they believed in One who had died, had risen and was coming again. They were filled with the Spirit. They were living a supernatural life in this present world. They were all witnesses. To them a missionary was not somebody to visit the church now and then to talk about Africa or China. Every Christian was a missionary.

Let us try that today, and something will happen. Personal faith in a risen, coming Christ. The infilling of the Spirit, our duty and privilege, as we yield all, receive, trust, and obey. The daily practice of Galatians 2:20, living by the faith of the Son of God. Every Christian a missionary. Let a few in any church start living that, and the impact will shake the community. For that is the way it started.

9. Our Threefold Commission

I revel in the story of our Lord's appearances during those forty wonderful days after His resurrection. How I would have enjoyed being there! Think of it! You might meet Jesus risen from the dead around any bend of the road!

Then I remember that He appeared only to believers. Why didn't He go to Herod or Pilate and say, "Look! You thought you had done away with me, but I'm back!" That wouldn't have been like Jesus. He made Himself known only to His own, and if others are to hear about Him today you and I must tell them.

Talk about a news story! Here is the greatest piece of news on earth! Jesus died and rose again! It is true, He really did it! They buried Him dead and He came back alive! It is the greatest news flash in history, but we Christians have gotten used to it. We've heard it until we've lost the thrill of it. We've mixed it up with Easter corsages, bunny rabbits, spring bonnets, and colored eggs.

We hear much of the Great Commission, but we have three commissions. To the women at the sepulcher the angel said, "Go tell his disciples" (Mark 16:7). WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR A BEWILDERED CHURCH. These disciples were bewildered. Jesus had died; their dreams had faded; their hopes had vanished. They didn't know what to think. They couldn't put it together. Some had gone back to their old pursuits, shaking their heads. They were trying to live on the memory of a dead Christ and when that is all you have, you are bewildered indeed.

But they were no more bewildered than the church today. Everywhere, Christians are confused, mystified, befuddled. Some are so taken up with their own problems that they cannot help others. Others are so busy trying to solve everybody else's problems that they have no time for their own. Some are chasing fads and isms, isms that soon become "wasms," out of date. Some churches are merely swapping members, moving corpses from one mausoleum to another. Some have made the Gospel a funeral and others have made it a frolic, and both have forgotten that it is a feast! Some freeze and some fry!

But we have a message for a bewildered church: "Go tell His disciples that He is going on before you!" The message is simply Christ. We need a new experience of the living Christ. He is not behind us in a tomb, He is ahead of us.

Consider the appearance of Jesus to Mary in the garden. First, there was MISERY: "Woman, why do you weep?" How many miserable Christians there are today! There was a MYSTERY: Mary didn't know where to find her Lord. So many today are out of touch with Jesus, not living in vital communion. Then, when Mary recognized Him, she called Him MASTER. The cure for the MISERY is to see the Master and acknowledge Him. But there was also a MISSION: "Go to thy brethren and say . . ." When we meet the Master, He commissions us.

The church needs to see Jesus. "Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord," not when they looked at each other. He is not real in our churches. If He were, we would not sit so lifelessly on Sunday, content with our formal uprisings and down-sittings, and go out as though we had met to honor a corpse instead of to hail a conqueror.

When we see Him we shall quit looking at ourselves -- and that ought to be a great relief. Some time ago, sitting in church, I gazed for a moment at a bright light overhead, and then when I looked around at the people I could see only the reflection of that light in their faces. And I wondered whether of we looked more at Him we should not see more of Him in our fellow Christians.

The bewildered church needs to see Him going on before. He is our Joshua, our Leader. The church has never had so many would-be leaders as today. Some small boys were asked, "What are you playing?" "War," they answered, "we are all generals." The church is overstaffed with generals. We need more and better privates. Everybody wants to pioneer, to start something. We have so many new movements that we can't move! We need to see our File-Leader going before us.

We have a second commission: "Go tell his disciples AND PETER." WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR BACK-SLIDDEN CHRISTIANS. Peter was a backslider, and the Lord singled him out as though he were marked "Special." He was not out to get even with Peter but to restore him. We put such characters in the doghouse. We fire them out, but Jesus fired them up with new love and zeal.

What a field day for the gossips that must have been when Peter denied Jesus! Can't you imagine them whispering to each other, "Have you heard the latest? Rev. Simon Peter swore that he never knew Jesus. I never had much confidence in him and now I'm through with him forever." But our Lord didn't feel that way about His wayward disciple. We need an Anti-vivisection Society in our churches, considering the way we dissect our brethren who sin not unto death instead of praying for them.

If you are a backslider the Lord is looking for you. When Jesus met Peter He asked him, "Do you love me?" He made Himself the issue. The message for backsliders is just this: they need to see Jesus. We lambaste the erring or we ignore them. Jesus did neither. He did not begin by asking Peter, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" He asked, "Do you love me?" To begin with, on the night Peter denied Jesus it was a look and not a lecture that sent Peter out to weep bitterly. We skin the saints alive on card-playing, dancing, theatre-going, and we don't get very far. After all, you don't have to discuss such questions with people who really love the Lord. It is the wilderness crowd, seeking garlic instead of glory, melons instead of miracles, that asks, "What is wrong with this? Why is it wrong to do that?" People who are over in the Land, keeping step with our Joshua, never ask such questions. A man who is really living on figs and pomegranates, milk and honey, is not likely to start sighing for the fleshpots of Egypt. The real issue in separation is not quitting this or that, but "let us go forth unto him." The issue is Christ. "Do you love ME?" Backslider, you have an appointment with Jesus and the sooner you get together, the better.

We have a third commission, the Great Commission to go into all the world and make disciples. WE HAVE A MESSAGE FOR A BENIGHTED WORLD. And that message is Christ. He is the Center: "All power is given unto me; Lo, I am with you always." The world is the Circumference. In His interview with Peter He was the Center: "Do you love ME?" But there was also the Circumference: "Feed my sheep." In geometry we use a compass. One prong is stationary, fixed. With the other we describe our circle. Christ is the fixed Center, the same yesterday, today, forever. From that Center we make the sweep of the whole world as our circumference. "What the world needs is Jesus," "We've a story to tell to the nations," and we are out to win them not to a way of life or even to Christianity, but to Christ.

We have SOMETHING BACK OF US: "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." There are our resources. Our Lord always makes His propositions against the background of His resources. "All things are delivered unto me of my Father . . . Come unto me" (Matt. 11:27, 28). Again, "The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. He that believes on the Son has everlasting life" (John 3:35, 36). And here is the Great Commission: "All power is given unto me . . . Go." Put them together and we have, "All things are mine: Come, Believe, Go." And that is the full Christian experience.

There is not only something back of us, there is SOMETHING BEFORE US: "all the world." And we also have SOMEONE WITH US: "Lo, I am with you." And let us not forget that our message is Christ Himself. We try to match the world's wit and cleverness. We try to meet it on its own ground and amuse it and entertain it. We give it a glorified hash, a religious mulligan stew of ethics and psychology and philosophy. We forget that what we have that the world doesn't have is Jesus. There is no point in trying to meet it with something it already has. We are ministers, not mimics; apostles, not apes. We are to let our light shine, and that light is Christ. It is a glow, not a glare, and we do not shine it, we let it shine.

"Go tell the disciples; go tell Peter; go tell the world." And tell them about Jesus, dead, risen, and alive forevermore!

10. Sunrise Tomorrow

There has always been a peculiar charm about sunrise. It has been the theme of many popular songs like "The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise" and that wedding favorite, "At Dawning." Poems aplenty have been written about sunsets, but there is a different beauty that belongs to sunrise. Probably not many of us see enough sunrises to enter into their secrets. I am not parading myself as an early riser. I miss more sunrises than I see. But some that I have seen will abide in my heart forever. There is something about darkness giving way to light, the mystery of a new day being born, the eastern sky aflush and then aflame, that lingers in the soul.

Sick people can tell us much about sunrise, for they have passed many a restless night longing for the break of day. They know what the Psalmist meant when he said, "My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning: I say, more than watchmen wait for the morning." They understand Job when he said: "When I lie down I think, 'How long before I get up?' The night drags on, and I toss till dawn."

I remember such a night years ago when I was suffering from nervous exhaustion and was unable to sleep. I spent the night in a cottage beside a lovely lake. I was to preach the next day in a city church near by, and I needed a good night's rest but could not obtain it. Of course, the harder one tries to sleep, the less likely he is to succeed. Toward morning, I gave up and resigned myself to watching for the day. I remember the first faint intimation of coming light. I could not put my finger on the clock at any one minute and say, "Here began the day." But there was the gentle, gradual fading of the darkness; a few birds chirped in the trees; there was soon a glint on the water; by and by, the first rosy tint flushed the east; and through it all grew the mystery of the world waiting for the sunrise.

One who has passed sleepless morning hours may learn to "meditate in the night watches," to pray if he cannot sleep. He begins to understand why the saintly fathers rose early for a session with God. He knows why the New England Pilgrims prayed at sunrise. Bradford tells of an Indian attack at daybreak while they were so engaged. He recalls William Law and that he rose at five because he was a Christian and, when tempted to stay in bed, reminded himself, "I am an old man and am far behind with my sanctification." So he flung himself out of bed before the servants had made their fires or the farmers had yoked their horses, for he thought it a shame to lie folded up in bed when life was so short and there was so much to do.

Again, one thinks of Jacob wrestling with the angel and crossing Peniel at sunrise, limping but having power with God and men. Especially does one think of the Saviour, who, rising up a great while before day, went out and departed into a solitary place and there prayed." Evidently He found it good to wait on God while the world was waiting for the sunrise.

We are told that during Paul's experience in the storm at sea "they cast out four anchors and wished for the day." We are passing through one of the worst moral and spiritual hurricanes in history; multitudes are at sea, and many are wishing for the day. Whether on beds of pain or bowed down with sorrow or burdened with the uncertainty of today and dread of tomorrow, millions were never so weary of the night and so anxious for the day. And never have so many been homesick for heaven. They have cast their anchor safe and sure and are waiting till the day dawns and the shadows flee away. "Weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning."

But so many dear souls are not sure about the sunrise. There is small comfort in a vague hope that "everything will turn out all right." There is little solace in a mere Pollyanna optimism and a Micawberish philosophy (a fictional Charles Dickens character) that "something will turn up." Nor will Utopian dreams of a better world, a brotherhood of man welded together by politicians and diplomats, satisfy the soul.

In the account of one of the appearances of our risen Lord it is stated: "In the morning, Jesus stood on the shore." The Christian is looking for morning. For him "the morning comes." But to him sunrise means Son-rise, it is the Son that brings the morning. "To depart and be with Christ" is daybreak for the saint. Then he says good night here and good morning up there.

But I am thinking of another sunrise that is due some tomorrow. It is the sunrise the Saviour promised when He said, "I will come again." It is the sunrise promised at His ascension: "This same Jesus shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go away." It is the sunrise Paul promised when he wrote, "The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God." It is the sunrise Peter promised when he said, "The chief shepherd shall appear." It is the sunrise promised by John when he wrote: "When he shall appear we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is." Christ is both Son and Sun, both Son of God and Sun of Righteousness, of whom it was said that He should arise with healing in His wings. He was called the Dayspring from on high and Peter tells us to take heed unto prophecy until the day dawn and the Morning Star arise in our hearts. For the Son-rise, for the return of Christ the world is waiting. Ruined by sin, it has never been happy and never will be until He shall reign whose right it is.

THE PHYSICAL WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE. "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" (Romans 8:19-22). This world of tooth and claw, of thorn and thistle, of sweat and blood, is a world that crashed because of sin. The animals that cringe in fear, the birds that furtively look around with every step they take, all proclaim a reign of terror that started with Adam and shall end when the Saviour shall redeem the earth, when the lion and lamb shall lie down together. The Scriptures describe such a blessed state: The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:6-9). Here is a picture of a world which we have never seen but which we shall see after sunrise, when the night is past and the day has dawned.

THE POLITICAL WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE. The politicians do not know it, of course. They would try to make the day dawn by their efforts around conference tables. But the hope of a better day rests with only One, the Lord of Glory. Only in Christ can you bring men together. Capital and labor have no trouble when they meet in the Lord. When Boaz saluted his laborers by saying, "The Lord be with you," and they answered, "The Lord bless thee," they gave us then and there the only solution of the labor problem. The white man and the black have no trouble when they both love the Lord. They have most trouble when starry-eyed idealists try to solve their problems. The rich man and the poor meet in Christ: there a Joseph of Arimathea stands on equal footing with fishermen disciples. The learned and unlearned meet in Christ, and an uneducated D.L. Moody can work with renowned scholars and theologians bound by a common love. National lines melt in Him with whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free.

The scattered pieces of this bleeding world can never be put together by any conference of experts. Only the return of our Lord holds the answer. There may be armistices and breathing spells while fresh confederacies form, but Christ alone will bring an end to dictators, just as He will bring an end to death and disease and depravity and the devil.

THE CHRISTIAN WORLD IS WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE. "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). The people of God are looking for the Lord. Certainly that was the New Testament attitude, not only readiness but also expectancy, anticipation. They were not merely looking for something to happen, they were looking for Someone to come. "To wait for his Son from heaven"' "Unto them that look for him shall he appear" -- that is the note of early Christianity. The Christian who understands his Bible is looking for the sunrise because he is looking for the Sun! Men may call him a pessimist, but he is looking for morning, not night. He has the brightest outlook of all, for he is looking for a day when there shall be no night. He has the happiest hope in all the world, for he anticipates a day when all tears shall be wiped from our eyes. He has the surest hope, for back of it is the authority of God's Word.

We are looking for Sunrise Tomorrow. And it might be today! For indeed "the night is far spent, the day is at hand!"

11. The Forgotten Beatitude

"Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over me" (MATTHEW 11:6).

We are familiar with the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. We are also acquainted with other beatitudes of our Lord, such as "Blessed is that servant whom his Lord when he comes shall find so doing"; "Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it."

But here is a little beatitude, short and sandwiched between longer verses, so that we are in danger of passing it up altogether: "Blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over me."

John the Baptist was in prison. That rugged, ascetic Elijah of the New Testament, prophet of the outdoors, was certainly out of place in a damp, dark dungeon. No wonder he had the blues. One day his feelings hit a record low and he sent a delegation to Jesus to ask, "Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?" Now, that was a serious doubt for John the Baptist. The very thing he had preached like a living exclamation point had become a question mark to the preacher himself. It was not the first or last time that a preacher's affirmation has become, in a dungeon, a preacher's interrogation. It reminds us of another prophet of the dungeon, Jeremiah, who cried to God from the depths, "Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar and as waters that fail?"

But our Lord did not reprimand John the Baptist. It is noteworthy that two of the strongest characters in the Bible had something akin to a nervous breakdown. Elijah, in the Old Testament, collapsed under the juniper, and God had to feed and rest him. More than one Christian, exhausted, with nerves on edge, has imagined that he is the last survivor of the saints. And usually he needs not reproof but rest. Then here is John the Baptist of the camel's hair vestments and victuals of locusts and wild honey, who could reprove kings and call religious people sons of snakes; here is John the Baptist down in the dumps even as you and I! It is one thing to stand on Jordan and give it, another thing to stay in jail and take it!

But what did Jesus do? Did he bitterly reprove the troubled prophet? Did He say, "I'm ashamed of you, disappointed in you. What will people think?" He did nothing of the sort. He did not even send John a tract on "How To Be Happy In Jail!" On the contrary, on the day that John the Baptist made his poorest remark about Jesus, Jesus said the best thing about John the Baptist: "Among those born of women there has not arisen anyone greater than John the Baptist!" For Jesus knew his frame and remembered that he was dust.

John had preached a victorious Messiah with fan in hand, purging His floor, gathering His wheat into the garner but burning the chaff with unquenchable fire. And here was Jesus, not carrying on that way at all but meek and lowly, going about doing good. And John couldn't figure it out. The devil got in his doubts as in Eden. John began wondering and then worrying, for one begets the other.

Our Lord's answer to John's question is simple. The blind are seeing, the deaf are hearing, the lame are walking, the lepers are being cleansed and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. In other words, "I am running on schedule and carrying out my program as planned. It may not be as you expected but do not be upset by it."

This is a day of dungeons, and many saints are in the clutches of Giant Despair. There is comfort here for us. If a husky Lion Heart like John the Baptist could faint, "brethren, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you." Your temptation is common unto man and there is a way of escape.

John's trouble, like most trouble, did not come singly, it was twofold. There was depression and there was doubt. Dungeons bring depression and depression brings doubt. Are you in a dungeon? Not behind visible lock and key perhaps, but while "stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage," it is also true that other things than prison walls do a prison make and other than iron bars may form a cage. Is your trouble financial? Maybe your blood pressure is up and your bank account down. Maybe you are physically ill but you keep going and everyone thinks because you are walking you are well! Maybe you have lost a loved one and a shroud of melancholy hangs heavy on your soul. Perhaps you dread to see night fall and search for rest as men seek for hidden treasure. Dungeons bring depression and from depression it is easy to move into doubt, even doubt about Jesus. Then we are upset and offended and we need to learn the Forgotten Beatitude.

It is nothing new to be offended in Jesus. More people have been offended in Him than in any character in history. Away with this milk-and-water preaching about Jesus! He has caused more offense than any other person who ever lived. He is either a sanctuary or a stumbling stone (Isaiah 8:14). He was an offense to His own nation and still is (Romans 9:33). He offended the Pharisees (Matthew 15:12). He offended the people of His own home town (Matthew 13:54-58). He offended superficial disciples (John 6). His cross is an offense (1 Cor. 1:23). And even true disciples may be offended in Him (Matthew 26:31-35). Sound believers sometimes get into a dungeon and pout with the Lord and say, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is it that we have kept His ordinances and walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts."

Don't you look pious, for we all have done it! We have murmured that we pray and do not receive. We gave our tithe and now we are in adversity. We were faithful to the Lord's house and landed in a hospital. We prayed for our children and they became worldlings. We craved joy and peace but we are despondent. Across the street is an ungodly family that has suffered no loss, while our dearest was taken. "There is no use in praying. It reads very lovely in the devotional books but I seem unable to make it work." We were in distress, and the Lord "abode where he was" and when He did appear we grumbled like Martha when she said, "If you had been here my brother would not have died."

All such grumbling means that we have not learned the Forgotten Beatitude. Anybody can believe during fair weather. There is a deeper experience and a higher state which not many reach, a state in which, no matter what happens, we are never offended in the Lord, a state in which, whether it makes sense to us or not, we still believe Romans 8:28. Habakkuk started his book pouting and ended it praising. And blessed is the man who can say: "Though I don't get what I want: though I may sow much and reap little; though others get the plums and I get the sack, I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in the God of my salvation."

When Thomas asked for visible evidence of the risen Lord, he was asking for a smaller blessing than he already had, the privilege of believing without seeing, for "blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." God wants us to trust Him, no matter what He does. There is a heavenly carelessness that leaves it all with Jesus and doesn't become upset when He does things contrary to what we expected. And there will be plenty of things that just don't make sense. John the Baptist must have wondered, "If Jesus can raise the dead, why can't He get me out of jail?" The little boy who couldn't understand why God put so many vitamins in spinach and didn't put them all in ice cream was already beginning to see that things just don't work out as we'd like for them to. There is much that is baffling, but if we can't understand it, by grace we can stand under it, we can see to it that we are not offended, and that is better than understanding it! Some things we are to know (Matthew 13:11) and some things we are not to know (Acts 1:7), and we would be happier if we spent the time we waste on trying to fathom the unknowable in learning the knowable.

God did not explain suffering to Job. He gave him revelation, which was better than explanation. Better than having all our questions answered is to say, "The Lord knows what He is doing and I will not be offended."

In this dark hour of world distress not a few believers are in the dumps. Jesus seems not to be carrying on as expected. The world is not being converted. Has Christ failed? He isn't transforming the social order. Is He the One or shall we look for another? Many have been mistaught and have misunderstood His mission, His motive, His message, His method. It is true that He is not converting the world. He didn't say He would. But He has not failed, He is running on schedule. Blind eyes are opening to the Light of the world. Deaf ears are hearing His voice. Lame souls are taking up their beds and walking. Lepers, like Naaman of old, are dipping in Jordan and coming up with flesh like that of a little child. The dead in trespasses and sins are awaking to Christ, their Life and Light, and to the poor the Gospel is still begin preached. Christ is carrying on as intended. He has never missed an appointment. He may seem slow but He is never late. We need not be offended because He is not converting the world. He didn't promise to, but He did promise to return in clouds of glory and reign until all enemies are put under His feet. Let us therefore take our stand on His Word and hide it in our hearts, for "great peace have they who love your law: and nothing can make them stumble (Psalm 119:165).

12. This Is That

"What does this mean?" — ACTS 2:12

"This is that..." — ACTS 2:16

"What shall we do?" — ACTS 2:37

It was Sunday morning in the little village where I was vacationing. I attended the local church, the usual morning service typical of most village church services over the land. I sat, a stranger in the congregation, and looked over the gathering. I could pick out the deacons. The people were respectful and listened fairly well to the earnest young preacher. They were not particularly stirred but they did not go to sleep. Presently everybody left the church with a comfortable sense of having done their duty.

I could not help reflecting, as I sat in that meeting: "If we really believed the glorious things this preacher is talking about, these stupendous truths we have gathered here to perpetuate, would we sit so listlessly and go out so lifelessly? After all, if two thousand years ago there lived on this earth a Man who was also God, if He was all He claimed to be and if He did all the record says He did, we ought to be excited about it!"

What shall we do to recover the lost radiance of the Christian faith? Strange thing about us Christians: we would not leave our faith for anything, but neither will we live it! We would not give it up, but neither do we give it out. "Man has never been willing to give up the next world for this or this world for the next." We are afraid not to give something to the cause of Christ: we are equally afraid to give it everything. And yet, if it is worth anything it is worth everything. Who will arise in all the babel of our confusion, the rattle of our empty worship, the whir of our religious wheels-within-wheels, and recapture the fervor of the first apostleship? We shall have a dull time of it until we either live our faith or take down our sign.

The study of the Acts of the Apostles is always a delightful experience, for something was happening every minute in those days. It can be a disturbing experience, for it shows us up in all our complacency and coldness. And it can be a depressing experience, for when one compares the flaming fervor of the first church with the pitiful imitation we behold today it is evident that a lot of water has run under the bridge since those days.

Human nature has not changed; the human heart is the same. The Early Church met about the same kinds of problems we face today, the same combinations of opportunity and opposition, "open doors and many adversaries." They wore different clothes and were called by different names, but essentially the same issues were involved. But then the church was in conflict with the forces without; now she is at a compromise with them. Then it was antagonism: now it is often alliance.

The Early Church met Sadduceeism. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, they were rationalists. We call them modernists, a misnomer, for modernism is not modern; it is one of the mustiest things in existence. We have had it ever since men first doubted God's Word and denied the supernatural. But the Church today is not meeting Sadduceeism as the Early Church met it. Then it was outside the Church; now it is inside, even in pulpits, where we are told that the Bible merely contains God's Word. Bob Ingersoll was an agnostic, but he was honest enough to stay out of the pulpit. Not all of his successors have shown that much consistency.

The Early Church met pharisaism. That was ritualism, form without force. Once again, what was outside the Church then is inside now. And do not think that "having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof" applies only to liberal churches. There are fundamental fellowships, right in their dispensations and wrong in their dispositions, resting at ease in Zion, snug and smug in their orthodoxy, but just as powerless in their holier-than-thou Pharisaism as the groups they censure.

The Early Church encountered Ananias and Sapphira. Their sin did not lie in giving part or in keeping part but in pretending that the part was the whole. The Church was at such a fever heat of consecration that liars could not stand it. If we had spiritual purity like that in our sanctuaries there would be corpses all over the place. But today men, with fingers crossed, one hand behind their backs, sing, "I surrender all." Although we have had courses galore in stewardship and have been told countless times that we are not our own but are bought with a price, we still withhold from God our time and talents and money and, above all, ourselves. We are not in contrast with Ananias and Sapphira but in collusion with them!

The Early Church met persecution. Peter and John were forbidden to preach in the Name of Jesus. But instead of praying for diplomacy the church prayed for more boldness, the thing that got them into trouble in the first place. From then on, the path of the church was a path of blood and fire, but "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church." The church always has prospered in persecution but suffered in prosperity. She is "secure in danger but endangered by security." She has always been rich when poor, and poor when rich. She has had least treasure in heaven when she has had most money in the bank. You cannot stop the church by persecution: cut off one head and two more will appear. But if you want to smother the church, patronize and popularize her. Fill her rolls with the worthless names of unregenerate members. Fill her offices with unconsecrated worldlings, her choirs with unsaved singers, her societies with social climbers, and you will discover that what Satan could never accomplish as a roaring lion of persecution he can achieve as a patronizing angel of light.

The Early Church met idolatry. I am thinking of Paul in Athens. He did not come to Athens as a tourist but as an evangelist, and as he walked in that center of art and culture he saw only their need of Christ. It has been said that "the ugly little Jew had no eye for beauty," but he did have. He had seen Jesus, and it had utterly spoiled him for everything else.

"He had seen the face of Jesus, tell him not of aught beside;

He had seen the face of Jesus and his soul was satisfied."

In Athens Paul saw only a city given to idolatry. He did not sit around discussing the favorite subjects of those Athenians forever chasing some new thing. He had only one subject and he lost no time getting around to it. They listened until he came to the resurrection and repentance, and then, like many in the twentieth century, they smiled him away. Today they tell us preachers that when we go to Athens we should read up on their favorite subjects, and we have done so. Instead of meeting the intellectualism of the age with the resurrection and a call to repentance, we have gone in for book reviewing. We have joined the clubs of Athens; we have attended her pink teas and laughed at her jokes. We have modeled our sermons to tickle her ears. (For further information read the sermon subjects in Saturday newspapers!)

Paul left Athens, never to return. He went back to places where he was persecuted, but he had no time to waste on the mild, intellectual curiosity which we court so fervently today.

The Early Church met demonism, in Philippi and Ephesus, for instance. Paul, as usual, had a head-on collision. If you think our cities are any better today you don't know our cities. Never was demonism more rampant. Walk up and down the streets, listen to the hellish jungle music floating from every haunt of sin. Listen to the foul blasphemy that fills the polluted air. Read the hideous crimes in our newspapers. If you are honest you will conclude that demonism is no outmoded superstition of an ignorant past. But the church today is not meeting it as Paul met it; she is trying to handle it with psychiatry instead of preaching. She has forgotten that only when the Stronger Man has bound the strong man can we say: "Greater is he that is in me than he that is in the world."

The Early Church met Apollos. A learned man, a disciple of John the Baptist, he was living up to the light he had. He did not know the full truth of the Gospel or the power of the Spirit until he sat at the feet of Aquila and Priscilla. Sometimes there are preachers who need to sit at the feet of some of their own congregation, as Apollos sat here and as Moody sat centuries later, to learn the deeper lesson of the enduement from on high. And there are many churches no farther along than Apollos. There are congregations of whom it might truly be said, so far as experience is concerned, "We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Spirit."

No matter what the Early Church met, she met it triumphantly. What is the matter with us that we do not follow her example? What shall we do to recapture the lost radiance? We are up to our ears in problems, and we generally end up our discussions by saying, "And there's nothing you can do about it." Is there nothing we can do about it? Are we to accept conditions as they are, fold our hands, and say, "Let well enough alone; things could be worse"?

There was a reason for the radiance of the Early Church, and that reason was Pentecost. Two questions were asked by the people who looked on that day: "What does this mean?" and "What shall we do?" Today we are trying to reverse the order. We are trying to make men ask, "What must I do to be saved?" before they have seen enough in our churches to make them inquire: "What does this mean?" We are emphasizing evangelism without revival, which is not God's order. When men first have been amazed by a church filled with the Spirit we may expect them to inquire further as to the way of salvation.

"What does this mean?" they asked. Peter said, "This is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." Now, there is more in the prophecy of Joel than this quotation that may be applied to our profit today. Joel lived in a day of trouble, of calamity and judgment. We live in a day of judgment which has begun at the house of God, corrective judgment for the saint and condemnatory judgment for the sinner.

Joel was a revivalist. He called first for A SWEEPING REVIVAL. It was a call to all ages: "Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth from his chamber and the bride out of her closet." A revival may be spearheaded by youth, for example, but to be a real revival it must reach all ages. Middle-aged people are too inclined to sit back and let the young people go forward. We are told in Acts that the man who was healed was over forty years of age. When anything phenomenal happens to the forty-year-olds these days it is worthy of special mention. Preachers were included in Joel's call: "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep . . ." What is needed today is a stirring of God's Spirit among all ages, all groups, in pulpit and pew.

Joel called also for A WEEPING REVIVAL: "Gird yourselves and lament, you priests: howl, you ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my God . . . Sanctify a fast, call a solemn meeting, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord." It reminds us of James: "Be afflicted and mourn and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness." Mr. Finney used to say there could be no revival until Mr. Amen and Mr. Wet-Eyes could be found in the congregation.

David tells us that what God wants is a broken and contrite heart. Nehemiah wept. Paul warned men night and day with tears. Jesus wept. The Spirit prays for us with unutterable groanings. We had better groan a little for ourselves!

Joel gives us the proper motive for revival. The ministers were to pray: "Spare your people, O Lord, and give not your heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule [or use a by-word against] them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?" Men are by-passing the Church today and saying in derision, "Where is your power? Where is the Holy Spirit you talk about? You have nothing from heaven." Why do we want revivals? Preachers sometimes want them in order to increase their membership. Sometimes we want our loved ones saved so that they will be easier to live with. All this is selfish. We are not to want revival primarily for the world's sake or America's sake or even the churches' sake but for God's sake, for the honor of His Name, that the world may no longer pass by and jeer. "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us but unto your name give glory for your mercy and for your truth's sake. Why should the heathen say, Where is their God?"

Then Joel pleads for A REAPING REVIVAL, and there will always be a harvest, both material and spiritual. "Then will the Lord be jealous for his land and pity his people." Has God not told us that if His people repent He will forgive and heal the land? Joel says He will send corn and wine and oil. Under grace, as well as back then, there are physical by-products in a genuine revival. God will restore the years which the locust has eaten, says Joel, and He has done just that again and again. And there will be the pouring out of His Spirit as there was at Pentecost and as there may be in gracious infillings when the Church turns to the Lord. Notice that just as all ages were invited by Joel to repent, so all ages share in the blessing. The Spirit is to be poured out on all flesh: sons and daughters shall prophesy, old men shall dream dreams, and young men see visions: servants and handmaidens shall receive the Spirit. And there will be the reaping of souls for whoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved. After the Church has her lost joy restored and is upheld afresh by the Spirit, transgressors will be taught God's ways and sinners be converted.

The Church will not get on its feet until it first gets on its knees. Ezekiel said, "The Spirit entered into me and set me upon my feet." After we have repented and are Spirit-filled, we shall stand on our feet in testimony and men shall first ask, "What does this mean?" and then, "What shall we do?"

13. Time for Judgement

"For the time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first begin with us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" 1Peter 4:17,18

Peter wrote his letters to Christians in a day of testing and suffering to build them up for greater trials yet to come. In these troubled days, when Christians think it strange I concerning the fiery trial which testing so many of the saints, we do well to fortify ourselves with these words from the great apostle.

When I read this text, my mind goes back to the days of Ezekiel. He was another great preacher Having in captivity in a sad and bewildering day. In thee eighth and ninth chapters of his book, we read that God gave him a vision, turning time backward in its flight and carrying Ezekiel to how him the reason why Israel was now captive in Babylon. In his retrospective revelation, God showed him through a hole in the wall the elders engaging in idolatry, women giving themselves to phallic cults, and men worshipping the sun. It was as though God said to the prophet, 'Ezekiel, when the young generation now growing up in exile wants to know why I allowed my chosen people to go into captivity, these chapters from the past will explain it. It is righteous judgment for their sin." Then, In the ninth chapter, six men come forth, and a man with a writer's inkhorn by his side is sent out to mark all who are burdened for the sins of the people. Then the men with weapons are sent after him to kill all that are not marked, and they me told, "BEGIN AT MY SANCTUARY." So here judgment begins at the house of God. judgment begins. Surely we live today in an age that bears all the marks of the days of Ezekiel. Idolatry, phallic cults and sun worship have nothing on America. We can match the filthiest corruptions which Ezekiel saw any day and we don't have to look through a hole in the wall to see them.

The man with the writer's inkhorn was to mark all who were burdened over the sins of the people and all others were to be slain. If that procedure were followed in America, no massacre in history could compare with it, for few there be who care that we have forsaken God. Amos lamented in his day that no one was grieved for the affliction of Joseph. Jeremiah asked, "Is noting to you, all ye that pass by?" In the days of Malachi the people met his condemnation of sin with a cynical "Wherein?" Isaiah lamented that he dwelt among a people of unclean lips. Paul could wish himself accursed for the sake of his brethren. Moses asked to be blotted out of God's book for the sake of Israel. Our Lord was grieved over Jerusalem. We need today the spirit of a Knox crying, "God, give me Scotland or I die!" We need the heart of a Brainerd wrestling in prayer for the Indians. Not only do we not care for the souls of sinners, alas, we care not for our own. The man with the writer's inkhorn would not be overworked today marking all Americans who are concerned on account of sin. He wouldn't need much ink to brand the burdened among us.

God has a striking figure in he Old Testament to describe human hearts that have grown indifferent to God. In Zephaniah we read: "And it shall come to pass at that time that I will search Jerusalem with candles and punish the men that are SETTLED ON THEIR LEES, that, the Lord will do on good, neither will he do evil" (1:12). Jeremiah says of the Moabites: "Moab have been at ease form his youth and he hath SETTLED ON HIS LEES and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel; nether hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remained in him and his scent is not changed"(48:l1).

The figure "settled on their lees" is that of vinegar, for instance, that has been allowed to set until a scum has formed over it; or of milk that has turned to curds. It describes the same spiritual state as "resting at ease in Zion"; It is the lukewarm state of the Laodiceans. And it is the condition, not only of sinners, but of thousands of Christians today. Our churches have settled on their lees. They have been let alone so long, they have been undisturbed by real conviction and repentance, until a scum has gathered over the saints It is disastrous to be let alone too long. God has a way of shaking up His saints. He pours them from vessel to vessel to prevent their turning to curds. Sometimes sickness will stir them up. Financial reverses, even a death in the family, may be necessary. If we judged ourselves, we should not be judged, but we settle on our lees and God as to jolt and jar us loose. That is why we need revivals.

A good old revival is always a blessing because it pours the saints into a new vessel. "It is high time to awake out of sleep," and, however much they may resent it, better disturb the Sunday- morning sanctuary sleepers and empty them from vessel to vessel than let them come to judgment settled on their lees. Too many sermons are bedtime stories to lull the saints to sleep instead of morning reveilles to wake them up!

The men who carried weapons were to follow the man with the writer's inkhorn and kill everyone whom he had not marked and THEY WERE TO BEGIN AT THE SANCTUARY. Peter says, "For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God." God begins with His own people: judgment, like charity, begins at home. Much of the blame for world conditions lies at the door of the church. Our indifference, our neglect, our failure to cry out against iniquity have encouraged the devil. Unfaithful preachers, modernism, formality, worldliness, unholy living have disgraced the house of God until He must like the Savior of old, first cleanse the temple. God's house has become a den of thieves and it is time for the whip of judgment.

Two kinds of judgment appear in our text: CORRECTIVE JUDGMENT FOR THE SAINTS, CONDEMNATORY JUDGMENT FOR THE SINNERS. "If it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And it the righteous scarcely be saved where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? "Behold, the righteous shall be recompensed in the earth: much more the wicked and the sinner. (Prov. 11:31).

We are entering upon the last days and God is sifting His people. There is beginning right now a separation between the great crowd of Sunday-morning church goers and those who really mean business with God. On one hand, we have the mass of nominal Christians who belong to church because the family does or because it is the nice thing to do, who draw nigh to God with their mouths and honor Him with their lips, while their hearts are far from Him. These will soon be shown up in their true colors: they will trim their sail to catch the breeze and end up in one great apostate aggregation in league with the powers that be, the world, the flesh and the devil On the other hand, is the faithful remnant who hear he Lord and speak often one to another, saints from all the church bodies, drawn together by a common love for Christ. These will be melted together in fires of testing with a comradeship like that at the early Christians in the catacombs of Rome.

This drawing together is a work of the Spirit, but when we try to do it we fail. This union of Bible Christians does not lend itself to our systems and plans, and when some man tries to head it up or put a tag on it, he fails, but the movement goes right on. We would do better to exalt Christ and preach the Word and not try to engineer the work d the Spirit too closely.

Truly, the time has come that judgment has begun at the house of God, and the best advice I can give is in the first part of this same chapter from First Peter. There is an Old Testament exhortation, "Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow." It is a timely word now. If you are a lukewarm Christian, out of fellowship and out of tune with God, I beseech you, set your house in order, for the storm is upon us and even the righteous will scarcely be saved. Return to God, confess your sin, claim the cleansing blood. Get back to the Book and watch unto prayer. Straighten Out your affairs with your fellow men. See that you have a conscience void of offense toward God and man. Commit your soul to God, rest in the Rock of Ages, where neither bombs nor blackouts can disturb. Learn the joy of abiding in the cleft of the Rock and learn how to sing:

When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea-billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well with my soul.

14. We Still Have Jesus

"And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no one, except Jesus." — MATTHEW 17:8.

Peter wanted to build three tabernacles to house his mountain-top experience. That didn't work, but when the glorious experience had passed he still had Jesus.

I remember how, years ago, I felt that I needed a deeper experience. I was growing dull and stale. I left my church for a few days and took a train for a little town deep in the Blue Ridge mountains. There I nearly exhausted myself climbing a high peak, and spent an afternoon praying in a deserted schoolhouse. But I didn't find my "experience," and came back rather crestfallen.

Sometime later I had the same impulse again. Away I went in the springtime to my old home in the hills. I set out one sunny morning for my hide-out in the woods. The stage was set, as it were, and I felt that if I could get into the right mood I would get the fresh touch from heaven that I needed. But, try as I would, nothing came of it. I sat half-asleep, smitten with spring fever, and listened to the birds in the treetops. I finally stole out of the woods in low spirits, feeling more stupid than ever.

Again, down in Florida one winter, vacationing among the orange groves, I felt the same urge again. I took long walks beside the lake and sought to stir up the dormant fires within me. Nature and the weather certainly cooperated. But I was tired from months of preaching, and the exalted frame of mind just wouldn't come. One afternoon, as I strolled along the water's edge, I found myself repeating a poem I had learned years before:

"We cannot kindle when we will

The fire which in the heart resides;

The Spirit blows and is still,

In mystery our soul abides.

But tasks in hours of insight willed

Can be in hours of gloom fulfilled."

I thought of Jesus' word about the wind blowing "where it wills" and how we cannot trace the movements of God's Spirit nor regulate and produce them as we will. I thought of Peter and how he wanted to keep the experience when he had something better — he had Jesus. And then and there I rejoiced that although experiences come and go, I always have Jesus, the same yesterday and today and forever. "When darkness veils His lovely face, I rest on His unchanging grace." Everything else may come and go, all else may fail, all else may change, but we still have Jesus.

I rejoice that God has not seen fit to give me a dazzling experience. If He had, I might have talked about it and then people might have tried to have the same experience and, failing, they might have grown discouraged. But I have Jesus and I can always leave them with Him and know that "heaven and earth may pass away but Jesus never fails."

It is easy to be a Thomas and demand some rare experience, forgetting that Jesus said, "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed." Most people live by "dry faith," anyway, and one can be a greater blessing if he lives by simple trust in Him whom having not seen he loves than if he were forever relating mountain-top thrills and mystic visions.

I am not discrediting your colorful experience if you really had one. It is so easy to dramatize and glamorize such things. I have attended ministers' meetings where a brother could report receiving two new members into his church in such a way that you would think a new Jonah had risen and converted his Nineveh. But you cannot overmagnify Jesus, and when you are occupied with Him you are always on safe ground. You never lie awake nights regretting what you said when you brag on Jesus. I used to become almost vexed trying to make the saints over. Some of them can be notoriously stubborn, and then we preachers want to skin them alive. Oh, we call it righteous indignation, of course, but that isn't what it is. Eventually we learn — or we should learn — that He is the Center, and when we preach Him we never get off center.

One can understand the Dutchman who grew weary of so much doctrinal controversy and said he "sure would like to get into a good old Jesus meeting." When Moody went to Scotland the church was in a poor way. There had been the Disruption thirty years earlier, and now the Free Church had sunk into formalism. Liberal teaching from Germany had crept in. It was a crisis, and Moody, knowing nothing of all this, came along, not as an expert to settle their troubles, for then he would have settled nothing. He came preaching Christ and Him crucified, and it was said, "It seemed as though someone set to music the tune which had been haunting thousands of ears."

That is the note we need to hear. We need a revival, but we shall never have it by listening to lectures on revival. A revival is the church falling in love with Jesus Christ all over again. We are in love with ourselves, in love with our particular crowd, in love with our fundamentalism, maybe, but not in love with Him.

We need to get back to Him. Whatever else fails, we always have Jesus. Sometimes health fails, but we can take it to Him and say, "He whom Thou lovest is sick." Some turn to the Great Physician and are healed. Some are not. But in either case, "whether we live, we live unto the Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord." We still have Jesus!

Sometimes our feelings fail us. John the Baptist, rugged preacher of the wilderness, folded up in prison, even as you and I. He became uneasy about Jesus, but Jesus hadn't failed, He was running on schedule. The disciples on the stormy sea saw the Lord and thought He was an apparition. They saw a ghost when they should have seen Him. We have our ghosts, our bugaboos, our hobgoblins. A man found himself wandering through a graveyard. He got out of there in record time, falling over several tombstones, scratching himself while racing through the bushes. The next morning someone asked him, "Don't you know a ghost can't hurt you?" "Yes sir, I know that," he replied, "but they can make you hurt yourself." Our imaginary fears can indeed do that and fear has been called "the dark room where human negatives are made." The cure for fear is Jesus: "Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid."

Sometimes friends fail us. The Psalmist lamented that his own familiar friend, in whom he trusted, who did eat of his bread, had lifted up his heel against him. Paul declared that no man stood with him in his hour of trial, but he went on to add, "...but the Lord stood with me." He still had Jesus!

When loved ones are taken, Christ remains. There is a precious word in the account of the death and burial of John the Baptist: "And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, AND WENT AND TOLD JESUS." After you have buried your John, you still have Jesus!

Sometimes the church fails. The true church shall not fail, for the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. But the professing church fails so often to rise to its opportunity. When the disciples failed to cast the demons out of the boy at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus had not failed. He said, "Bring him to me." The church faces a demonized world today and, alas, it must often be said of us, "And they could not." Silver and gold we have but we are not saying, "Rise and walk." Peter, who once had asked, "What shall we have?" could say to the cripple at the Beautiful Gate, "Such as I have I give." The church today reverses the process, and instead of considering what we can give, we ask, "What do I get?" We are riddled with divisions, and much of our activity defeats itself. We are powerless before a needy world, but Christ has not failed. Let us bring men to Him. His touch still has its ancient power. We still have Jesus!

When we look out upon the world we see certainly it has failed. We see not yet all things put under Him but we see Jesus. There is so much that "we see not yet." "Change and decay in all around we see," but Christ changes not — He abides. And He is still accessible. It was a devout Christian doctor who once said in quiet conversation with a great preacher, "What the world needs is an Emperor and His name is Jesus Christ." Well, the world does need a King and one day Jesus shall reign. Men cannot master the world's problems. After the First World War it was the Big Four. This time it is the Big Three. But our troubles will not be over until there is only One, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

If you are unsaved, whatever else you may have tried, there is still Jesus. He stands at your heart's door and, if you will open the door, he will come in and abide. Then you can say, "Whatever comes, whatever goes, I still have Jesus!"

"I've tried in vain a thousand ways

My fears to quell, my hopes to raise;

But what I need, the Bible says,

Is ever only Jesus."

15. What Christ Means To Me

It is a privilege to speak to my friends in the name of Him who has called us His friends if we do the things which He commands us. Someone asked Charles Kingsley, "What is the secret of your beautiful life?" He answered, "I had a friend." And I have often thought that if this life of mine ever approaches the beautiful and true it will be because

I've found a Friend, O such a Friend!
He loved me ere I knew Him;
He drew me with the cords of love,
And thus He bound me to Him."

There are many things about which I am too ignorant to speak wisely -- and, I hope, too wise to speak ignorantly -- but I can speak of Christ with freedom, for then I am boasting of Another and not of myself. Josh Billings used to say, "I'd rather know a few things for certain than be sure of a lot of things that ain't so!" In a day when men are chasing a thousand and one things that "ain't so" I rejoice in "Jesus Christ the same."

I have found in Christ a life that is beautifully simple and simply beautiful. In Him I find, first of all, PARDON. "God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." I have read of a Russian soldier who, years ago, sat in his tent one night before a list of debts he could not pay. He had written at the bottom of the list, "Who is to pay for all this?" As the hours went by, he finally fell asleep. The Emperor came by, looked in the tent, saw the soldier, came up closer, saw the list of debts and the pitiful question. It is said that the Emperor affixed his own royal signature to the bottom of the list, so that when the soldier awoke, he found his debts paid. I know that once I faced moral and spiritual debts which I could not pay. But Jesus, with the blood of Calvary, wrote, "Son, thy sins be forgiven thee." Is it any wonder that rainy days become radiant days when the heart can sing? --

"Jesus paid it all;

All to Him I owe.

Sin had left a crimson stain;

He washed it white as snow."

Because Christ means Pardon, He also means PEACE to me. Through Him I have peace with God, and as I make my requests known to God with thanksgiving, the peace of God which passes all understanding -- and as someone once said, all misunderstanding too! -- garrisons my heart and mind through Christ Jesus. This world has no peace: "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." We are all so crazy these days that it has been reported that monkeys have been known to go insane watching people on the outside of their cages! Someone has spelled modern life in three words, "Hurry, Worry, Bury." The world has insomnia of the soul. It has tried all the opiates and sedatives, but there is only one prophylactic against fear and worry. You don't keep it, it keeps you: "My peace I give unto you, not as the world gives."

Then Christ gives me a purpose: "To live is Christ." A woman met her husband when he got off a merry-go-round and she said, "Now, look at you: you spent your money, you got off right where you got on, and you ain't been nowhere!" It is a perfect picture of modern living. A philosopher once said, "One reason why some folks never get anywhere is because they weren't going anywhere in the first place." But Christ gives us a purpose, and that purpose is just Himself. As the Mississippi flows through the middle of America and the tributaries feed into it on both sides, so when one seeks first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all else flows into that central purpose, to know Christ and to make Him known.

Christ also means POWER, the power to see the purpose through. "All power is given unto me," He said, and Paul declares, "I can do all things through Christ." Jesus is not only our Saviour, He is our sustenance, He is "the power of God." His power is made real to us by the Holy Spirit, not that we may brag about it but that we may be His witnesses.

And then He means PLENTY, spiritual abundance. "All things are yours," says Paul to the Christian. Again he speaks of "having nothing, yet possessing all things." It is the Christian's paradox. He doesn't have to get rich, he is rich, for "the Lord is rich unto all that call upon Him" (Romans 10:12). Most of us appreciate but do not appropriate what we have in Christ. We carry checks on the bank of heaven and never cash them at the window of prayer. We are Bible window-shoppers: we stroll up and down through the show-windows of God's Word and never possess what we perceive. God, who spared not His Son, shall with Him also freely give us all things.

Finally, Christ gives me an eternal PROSPECT. "Where I am, there ye may be also." Someone has said, with reference to the life to come, that in the Old Testament they were willing to go but wanting to stay, while in the New they were wanting to go but willing to stay. Jesus had made the difference. And what a difference it makes to be with Christ! A mother whose little son had died, told her little daughter, "Your brother has gone to be with Jesus." Later, in conversation with a friend, she spoke of having lost her little boy. The daughter spoke up and said, "But, mother, you said he was with Jesus. How can he be lost if you know where he is!" Truly, the Christian can say of his departed loved ones in Christ:

"Death can hide but not divide;

Thou art but on Christ's other side.

Thou art with Christ and Christ with me;

In Christ united still are we."

These are some things Christ means to me. All I need is found in Him. He is Alpha and Omega and all the letters between He is the same yesterday, the historic Christ; the same today, the indwelling Christ; the same tomorrow, the coming Christ.

People ask me sometimes, What is your persuasion? I tell them that I am of Paul's persuasion: persuaded that nothing can separate me from God's love in Christ; persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed against that day; and, knowing the terror of the Lord, constrained by the love of Christ, I would persuade men.

Christ is my message. Some years ago, two boats were passing each other on the Mississippi, when one passenger said to another passenger, "Look, yonder's the captain!" When asked for an explanation, he said, "Years ago, we were going along like this and I fell overboard. That captain rescued me. And since then, I just love to point him out!"

Some years ago, this writer was overboard, in water too deep for his wit and will to navigate. But the Captain of our salvation leaped overboard from glory to rescue him. And I just love to point Him out!

16. What Doest Thou Here?"

Elijah had come out of a big day on Carmel. He had prayed down fire and water and had become the outstanding man of his generation. It was a red-letter day for the prophet. But the next day after a big day may be a very bad day. From His baptism our Lord moved into His temptation. In the same chapter that tells us of Paul's third heaven experience we read of his thorn in the flesh. So we move rapidly from height to depth and must needs watch the next day after our Carmels.

Jezebel had threatened Elijah, his nerves had gone into a tailspin, and under the juniper he imagined himself to be the surviving saint, the last good man. There are three great chapters in the life of this prophet and they might well be titled, Cherith, Carmel, and the Cave. In the cave the Lord asks him, "What doest thou here?"

Not a few of the saints are in a cave today and we would inquire of them, "What doest thou here?" For one thing, ELIJAH WAS TIRED, and so are many of God's people. God did not reprove Elijah. He fed him, rested him, and said, "The journey is too great for thee." It is too much for most of us these days. Never have I preached to so many tired people as now. The human race lives in a nervous breakdown. It is a day of stress, strain and tension, and our very speech is the speech of weariness, the language of languor. We are weary and faint in our minds. Fatigue is filling hospitals, asylums, graves. Men cannot drink it away with whiskey nor play it away at card tables nor laugh it off in a theatre nor sleep it away with sedatives. Our remedies treat only the symptoms and not the disease.

A lady who was asked why she didn't sue for damages after being hurt in an auto wreck replied, "I have enough damages, what I need is repairs." She was stating our case today. What we need is repairs. The journey is too great even for us Christians. Sometimes I have thought I would like to start a Bible conference for Bible conference speakers. The theme verse would be, "First here, then there — you flit from one ally to another asking for help." (Jeremiah 2:36).

The prophet speaks to edification, exhortation, and comfort. He strengthens, stirs, soothes, and the saints need all three. We are to grow in grace, and growth involves food, rest, and exercise. Some feed all the time and need to exercise and work off some of the sermons with which they have stuffed themselves. But others exercise too much and need rest. The Christian life is not a glorified St. Vitus's dance. We are to be willing disciples, not whirling dervishes. Elijah ate and slept. When we cannot do that we are not worth much to God or man.

The Bible has as much to say about resting as about working. We need to come apart and rest awhile, and if we don't come apart, we will come apart, we'll go to pieces! It is true that the devil never takes a vacation, but we are not to follow the devil but the Lord. Jesus was never in a hurry, and we need to learn the gait of the Man of Galilee. John Wesley said, "I do not have time to be in a hurry." Some of the saints tear around until you would think the world would go to pieces if they stopped. But soon they end in a hospital, they blow out a fuse. They go up like rockets and down like rocks. They would do more if they did less. Quantity production is an American standard, not a Bible standard.

Our Lord asked, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" There is always time enough to do what God wants done. What takes so much time is doing what we want to do. "He that believes shall not make haste." The slow hand on the watch is the most important hand. Too many, like Ahimaaz, want to run before they have any tidings ready, and when they arrive they can report only a tumult. About all the average go-getter ever gets is high blood pressure and a heart attack. Idleness is the devil's workshop, but so is busy-ness if one tries too much.

Elijah was tired and so are we and we shall honor God by resting. We are not to say there are four months until harvest for now is God's time, but there are twelve hours in the day, there is time enough in God's time to do His will. And part of His will is to rest. "He who waits on God loses no time."

Elijah was also DISCOURAGED and PESSIMISTIC. He thought he was the last good man, and needed to learn that God had seven thousand who had not bowed to Baal. When we are too tired we easily grow despondent and imagine that everybody is out of step except ourselves. It is true that few there be who find the way of life, but they are not so few as we sometimes think. We sometimes undertake to sift out the saints ourselves and consign to perdition all who do not cross their "t's" and dot their "i's" as we do. These seven thousand were probably silent believers, who shouldn't have been so hidden that nobody knew they were in existence. They should have stood with Elijah in such an evil day. But, still, they were known to God, if not to Elijah, and we need to remember that the Lord knows those who are His. He will deal with them for being cowards and not letting their light shine, but we do not need to get down in the dumps and put a bushel over our own testimony on their account.

There are more good people than we sometimes think. It was two rather indefinite disciples, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who buried Jesus after some more positive believers had forsaken Him and fled. After all, it is not for us to number the Lord's people.

Furthermore, ELIJAH WAS SUFFERING A REACTION FROM A BIG AND NOISY DAY ON CARMEL. Here we run into a very important issue these days. The prophet's nerves had let down, and the threat of Jezebel finished the blow. From Carmel to a cave was quite a change, but he needed to hear the still, small voice. We Americans need to hear it. We are sold on noise and size, even in our churches, and this voice turns the tables on both standards, for it is STILL and SMALL.

We are sold on NOISE but this is a STILL voice. "He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street." His Spirit is compared with a dove. The greatest things make the least noise. The sun draws millions of gallons of water with less noise than we make getting a bucketful out of a well. Did you ever hear the planets go round or the sun rise or the dew fall? We do not hear God's whisper because we are listening for wind, fire, and earthquake. We should "study to be quiet." We cannot endure solitude because we are in such poor company when we are alone! We cannot contemplate. Watch the average tourist galloping through an art gallery! It is the quiet pool and not the rushing stream that reflects the stars. "He leads me beside the STILL waters."

Said Newton D. Baker:

"The effect of modern inventions has been to immeasurably increase the difficulty of deliberation and contemplation on large and important issues. I doubt whether there could have been a Constitution of the United States of America if the deliberations of the Constitutional Conventions had been currently reported by radio, telegraph and newspapers over the whole extent of the thirteen colonies."

This noise standard shows up in our churches. Some of us think we are not having a good meeting unless there is a lot of hullabaloo. Oh, I know that what some call worship is just the device by which some resters at ease in Zion catch up with their sleep. And what some call reverence and dignity is just spiritual rigor mortis, the Sunday coma of religious dopesters getting their eleven o'clock dose of pulpit cocaine. But the counterfeit implies the true, and most of us are so feverish and nervous that we cannot hear God's whisper. "Be still and know that I am God." The Lord commanded the multitude to sit down before He fed them.

Then we are sold on size, and this voice of God is SMALL. Some think we must have a thousand people to have a revival. We worship the great god Ballyhoo and borrow our methods from the business and amusement and social worlds, trying to put over God's work by might and power instead of by His Spirit.

We need to study afresh David's unhappy experience in bringing the ark back to Jerusalem. He proposed the move to his captains and leaders, and "the thing was right in the eyes of the people," but we do not read that God was consulted. They put on a show, they had a crowd and a brass band and quite a demonstration, but it was a Philistine expedient and not God's way, and He brought it to nought. Today we make shows of some of our church conventions. We hire the biggest hall and get the governor to speak and try to impress the world by borrowing its tactics, but we only cheapen our cause and make ourselves ridiculous. God is not fooled by barnstorming claptrap. David would have got the Ark to Jerusalem sooner if he hadn't been in such a hurry that he couldn't use God's method. We delay God's purposes by our expedients.

The Spirit blows where He will, and God is not bound to grand ideas. The great Welsh revival was accomplished without preaching, without choirs, without hymn books, without organs, without publicity, and without offerings. These things are not evil, but God can do wonders without what we think He must have.

God does indeed speak in wind and fire and earthquake, through great movements and famed leaders. But they are more or less occasional, and He probably does His greatest work in quiet places and through humble lives. Many an Elijah who has learned the lesson of Cherith and Carmel still needs to learn the lesson of the Cave. God does appear in the extraordinary. He does feed by ravens and send down fire from heaven. But sometimes He must shut up His servants in a cave to make them hear the still small voice.

We think of revival today in terms of great crowds and famous preachers. We would like to see the fire fall in a thundering demonstration of the power of God to vindicate His cause and put the hosts of sin to flight. But let us not be blind to the quiet movement of the Spirit in thousands whose work of faith and labor of love God will not forget. Blessed is the man who does not measure by noise and size. "In returning and rest shall you be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength."

Not only was Elijah tired and pessimistic and over-affected by noise and size. He was derelict in his duty. He had no business under the juniper. He needed to get back on the job. In God's permissive will He took mercy on the prophet and taught him a lesson, but Elijah should not have run from the threat of Jezebel. A man is first a runaway before he is a castaway.

"What doest thou here?" Are you under a juniper? Is the journey too great for you, and are you exhausted, tired on the way, though not tired of the way? Have you grown pessimistic until you imagine yourself the surviving saint? Have you been living on excitement, big days, and big demonstrations, fire and wind and earthquake, until you cannot hear God whisper? Has the threat of Jezebel driven you to the wilderness? Wait on the Lord and renew your strength! As important as it is to be saved and sure and sound and strong, don't forget how much it means to be still!

17. You'll Get Over It!

"I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love." — Revelation 2:4.

Both in the world of nature and in the world of human nature we have a habit of getting over things. Whether for good or ill, the law of recovery is always at work.

Here is a landscape devastated by flood or hurricane. Crops are ruined, trees are uprooted, everything is wrecked by a mad upheaval, as though Mother Nature had run wild in a fit of temper. It looks as though the view could never be lovely again. But the months pass, and after awhile grass grows again and flowers bloom again and fresh crops are grown, and soon you would never know that there had been a disaster. For Nature tenderly heals her wounds, she gets over it.

Walking over battlefields of other days, one sees the healing of the scars of conflict. We have to look carefully to see the marks of former wars, and, although it will take longer this time, we trust that time will obliterate the wounds of this latest carnage. In England bomb explosions brought to light the seeds of plants that had not grown for years, and many varieties of flowers and shrubs sprang up in bomb craters as Nature wrought again her miracle of getting over it.

The human race has gotten over a lot of things. Wars and pestilences and famines have threatened to wipe us out and alarmists have cried, "We'll never be the same again!" but somehow we have survived. The human race has an astonishing power of recovery.

We individuals get over things. Some of us once were given up to die, riddled with disease, but we are still going, with some of our parts missing, maybe, but still "among those present." The hospitals have records of getting over it that fairly take one's breath away. For Nature is the great restorer, and the moment you hurt your finger she rushes her repair force to the scene of trouble and will do wonders if given a chance.

We are always getting over things. Babies are very precious, but it is a good thing we get over our baby traits — if we do. It is natural for the baby to put things into its mouth indiscriminately — and some of us never grow up in this regard, but we should. We can excuse the baby for putting a carpet tack in its mouth but what shall we say of grown-ups who put "coffin tacks" in theirs! It is natural for the baby to cry for what it wants, but if I should go down the street wailing for an ice-cream cone I should be investigated, for "when I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child," but having become a man I am supposed to have put away childish things. I have read of a man who boasted that at fifty years of age he still prayed the same prayer he used at five, "Now I lay me down to sleep . . ." Any man who has not found a better prayer than that in forty-five years ought to be ashamed of himself. He would be insulted if you told him that he had the mental development of a child of five; he would be a monstrosity if he had the body of a child of five, yet he prides himself on the spiritual development of a five-year-old!

Someone has said, "When a man grows up and doesn't grow up, he is a fool." A lot of trouble is caused by people who don't grow up. They look normal and would resent being called cases of arrested development, but they make others miserable by childish traits and tantrums which they should have outgrown long ago. If some middle-agers dressed according to their dispositions they would still be wearing rompers and pigtails!

But the law of recovery works both ways. While we get over things we should get over, we also get over things we should not get over. Many a man starts out in his chosen profession with noble ideals and high dreams, but the years take their toll, the perversity of humanity discourages him, the monotony of life depresses him, until what started as a golden consecration ends in a grouchy cynicism.

Sometimes old ministers grow bitter and sour. They started out brightly enough, but they saw so much of the evil of men's hearts, that they were disappointed in men they once trusted; they had the Spirit quenched within them, until they became human wet blankets, saying to every young enthusiast, "Yes, I used to feel that way; you'll get over it!"

But not all preachers get over it. Some carry their springtime zeal through summer and autumn into the snows of winter, mellowed and refined, but still aflame. "The devil has no happy old men," but real Christians become more childlike -- not childish -- as the years go by.

Indeed, our Lord said, "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven," and I am sure that one thing He meant for us to see in that is that children have not become used to living, they are still fresh and full of expectancy. Life is crammed with surprises. They have not gotten used to it. Of course, we have a crop of youngsters today who get over it far too soon and become blase and fed-up before they are out of their teens; but I am speaking of normal children. And a Christian ought to live with a sense of wonder, always expecting God to do some marvelous thing (Hosea 12:6). We really do not expect much from God these days. We pray for rain and leave our umbrellas at home. We pray for revival but don't really expect one to start today. We have been told that whatsoever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive, but we ask, doubting, or, at the most, we ask, merely hoping, and our expectation is not unto Him.

Right here was the trouble at Ephesus. She had got over her first love. Married couples do that today: bliss turns to boredom and ends in a divorce court. The same thing happens in the Church. Ephesus had started out on fire for God. She was still orthodox and busy but something was lacking. She needed a revival. Many a church has started out with a few saints aflame for God, but later they became rich and increased with goods with need of nothing. They may still be doctrinally sound and religiously active but they have got over their first love and they need to remember and repent and repeat the first works.

Mind you, modernism and worldliness are not the only evils in the Church today. There is a dreadful state among orthodox Christians whose doctrine is as sound as a dollar and who could not be called worldly by any stretch of the imagination, but who have become fed-up and heavy until they are harder to arouse than the grossest sinners. They have read so much and heard so much that nothing surprises them. They have lost their capacity for being stirred. Their reaction to any sermon is, "We have heard all the preachers and read all the books. Nothing that you could say would be new. We are veterans and we don't propose to get excited. We've heard all this and got over it and so will you." That sort of thing is hard on a young Timothy, and if he doesn't let God use him to get them out of their state the devil will use them to get him out of his!

The history of the Church is a story of getting over it. Senator Borah said there were two stages in every movement, the apostolic and the mechanistic. The Church has her periods of great awakening, when the fires of apostolic zeal burn high. Then, the fires die, she becomes settled and complacent and mechanical. She gets over it. And the Lord has to send an awakener to rouse her again.

We individual Christians get over it. We leave our first love, we lose the joy of salvation, we get to where grace does not appear as precious as the hour we first believed. We get used to it, and while we recite the phrases and sing the songs, the color and freshness are gone. We take it all as a matter of course; we become like those iron fountains of A.J. Gordon's illustration, in which the water gushes out of iron lips that never taste it! If we were honest, we would sing:

"Where is the blessedness I knew

When first I saw the Lord?

Where is the soul-refreshing view

Of Jesus and His Word?"

It is not necessary for us to fall into heresy or gross worldliness to get over it. We may believe the truth, stand for the truth, and yet in the very activities of the truth grow so accustomed to the truth that we "traffic in unfelt truth."

Christmas Evans, the great Welsh preacher, riding horseback one Saturday afternoon on his way to preach, was "convicted of a cold heart." He tethered his horse and spent hours in the woods in prayer until his heart was thawed out "like the breaking up of a hard winter." He had "got over it," but, unlike some of us, he found it out. A preacher had better stop in his tracks if he finds himself moving from the apostolic to the mechanistic stage; he had better do something radical then and there. He had better drop everything and get into the woods with his Bible and read until he has a new Bible and pray until he has a new prayer, and come back a new man with a new message. A lot of churches think they need a new preacher when they simply need the same preacher renewed. Many a preacher thinks he needs a new pastorate when he needs to be renewed in the same pastorate. Robertson of Brighton wanted to resign from the ministry, but God impressed him that what he needed was to have his commission re-signed.

Not every preacher loses out because he went into false doctrine or had a moral breakdown. Some leave their first love in a round of church duties. Perhaps more leave it that way than in any other, for it is so deceptive: they are not aware of getting over it. They work at it harder than ever, but the harder they work, the farther they get from the thing they started out to do. The church at Ephesus was not having bingo instead of prayer-meetings. They were a fundamental, hard-working crowd, getting farther away all the time from the thing that mattered most, their love for Christ. We seem to think that the very momentum of Christian activity will keep us in spiritual trim, but it carries us away from what we started out to do and be. We Christian workers sometimes assume that just because we are in the midst of spiritual labours all the time, that will keep us warm for Christ. But nothing is more dangerous, for familiarity with the things of God, if it does not breed contempt, may breed complacency. We get over it.

Whether church or preacher or layman, we had better watch lest our hands outrun our hearts, lest we let the abounding iniquity of this age make our love wax cold. Some think it a mark of maturity to be unresponsive to revival: it is a mark of that Laodecean lukewarmness that nauseates the Lord.

We had better get back to it, for all our activity is useless if we leave our first love. All our meetings, our rallies, our reunions are sounding brass and clanging cymbal until we recover that. We try to make up for it by adding more committees, drives and picnics, but adding more wheels is a poor way to make up for having less steam!

It amounts to this: what we need is a revival. If you can't have one in your church get alone with God and have one yourself. Tell Him you're slipping, getting over it, getting used to being a Christian, and that you don't like it. Get back past all the world confusion and church quarrels and differences among the saints and the weaknesses of the brethren, back to Christ, to One you can trust. Come to Him afresh and fall in love with Him again and get such an eye-full and heart-full of Him that you feel like you did when you were converted. If it brings tears to the eyes and a tremor to the voice and an "amen" to the lips, well and good. If someone thinks you're having softening of the brain, tell them it is softening of the heart, and that you're getting over "hardening of the hearteries." Maybe you will strike fire in other hearts and start a revival. Certainly you will come nearer doing so than by criticizing the preacher, watching the faults of the deacons and the frailties of the missionary society.

Whatever it costs, no price is too great to kindle aflame the fires of our first love. If you are getting over it, heed the call of our Christ: Remember and Repent and Repeat, "or else . . ." There is another R: He will "Remove" you from your place of usefulness. Many churches, many preachers, many Christians are on the shelf, disapproved, because they would not learn their three R's.

The only way to keep from getting over it is to get back to it!

18. The Kind of Preaching We Need

In these wild and weird and wicked times, the work of the preacher is being rethought and revamped and reexamined. Some think the preacher is just to be an equipper of the laymen for their ministry. He's been pushed from the center of the platform to the wings in favor of celebrated experts and entertainers. But the Book still says, "How shall they hear without a preacher?" (Rom. 10:14).

What kind of preaching do we need today? We need the same kind we've always needed. Nothing important has changed. Just because we've split the atom and sent a man to the moon doesn't mean we need a new kind of Christianity. We have a new kind of preacher in some quarters, but we don't need him.

1. The preaching that we do need is apostolic.

Of course, there are no apostles today in the original sense, but an apostle is one sent, and a preacher is also a man sent from God. The apostles studied at the feet of Jesus Christ. Our Lord said, "Learn of me," and that means studying in the school of Christ Himself. It's possible to have a magna cum laude from a college and be a first-grader in the school of Jesus Christ. The apostolic preacher was anointed by the Holy Spirit....

2. The preaching that we need today must be authoritative.

My Lord taught us having authority and not as the scribes.

Too much today sounds like the scribes. There's no king in Israel; every man does what is right in his own eyes. Authority goes out, and anarchy comes in. Jesus met the devil not in His own name, not in His own power, but with the Scriptures: "It is written.... It is written.... It is written." If He could defeat the devil with three verses out of Deuteronomy, we ought to be able to do it with the whole Bible.

3. Then it must be absolute.

This is a day of relativism. Right used to be right, and wrong used to be wrong. Now black and white have been smudged into indefinite gray. We've had two wars that we've neither won nor lost. We're afraid to win them and ashamed to lose them. But General Douglas MacArthur summed it up when he said, "There's no substitute for victory."

Joseph Parker said of Spurgeon, "The only colors Mr. Spurgeon knew were black and white. In all things he was definite. You were either in or out, up or down, alive or dead.

4. It ought to be affectionate.

"Speaking the truth in love" (Eph. 4:15). Some preach the truth and don't have love. Some preach love and don't have the truth. Get the mixture right. You have to mix it. A man puts one foot in hot water and the other foot in ice water and feels very uncomfortable. But when he mixes the waters, he's quite all right.

The truth will keep you from dissolving into sentimentality; love will keep you from hardening into severity.

5. Finally, it ought to be apocalyptic preaching.

Beloved, we're living in a terrible time, in a day of beasts and seals and trumpets and four horsemen and the harlot on the beast and scorpions and dragons and a sea of glass mingled with fire and earthquakes and falling stars and

Babylon and the bottomless pit and the lake of fire and Gog and Magog and six-six-six and the downfall of the devil and the great white city coming down.

It's no time to tiptoe through the tulips in the administrative end. In such an hour, good news is bad news and bad news is good news. "When they shall say peace and safety" sounds like good news, but no: "Destruction cometh."

Good news is bad news. "But when you see all these things come to pass, famines, wars and rumors of wars, men's hearts failing them for fear," that is bad news. But "lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."

It's a great day for preaching-apostolic, authoritative, absolute, affectionate, and apocalyptic.

"Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

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