FOR BOYS AND GIRLS
THE UNUSUAL MESSENGER
[Harry Foster]
THE circus had only recently arrived at its new pitch outside a Danish village. The great tent was pitched, the ring was ready and all the troupe was dressed up ready for their publicity march to invite the villagers to the first performance, which would be that night. Suddenly somebody began to shout: "Fire! Fire!" It was true. Already the fire was beginning to spread among the caravans and so threatening to destroy the whole circus. If this happened the flames might pass down through the nearby corn fields and spread to the village itself.
It was a nasty moment, and the Ringmaster quickly realized that he would need the help of all the villagers if the fire was to be put out in time. They needed men, women, yes, and children, too, to fetch buckets of water, and they needed those who were strong and could beat out the flames. So he called for someone to hurry down to the village and ask for everybody to come quickly and help. But who could go'? Not the strong man, for he was helping to look after the elephants. Not the lion tamer, for he had his own wild animals to care for. All the attendants were rushing to get the horses to safety so none of them could go. The only one who seemed to be available was the clown, who was all dressed up for the show.
"Run down quickly to the village," he shouted to the funny man, "and tell them we need their help at once if we are to save the circus, yes, and their own homes, too." So off he ran, with his funny hat, his big red nose and his clumsy great boots, and he burst into the village street crying: "Fire! Fire!"
Of course, everybody came out at the sound of his loud voice, but when they saw him he looked so funny that they all burst out laughing. He tried to tell them that he was not being funny this time but [129/130] was very much in earnest, but the more he tried the more they laughed. To them it was just a publicity stunt; he was trying to get them to go up and see the circus. They admired his cleverness but nobody made any attempt to move.
He pleaded with them and begged them to hurry before their own homes were destroyed by the cruel fire, but his face and his clothes were so queer that the more he pleaded the more they giggled and laughed. He was in deadly earnest, and the tears ran down his painted face as he appealed to first one man and then to another, asking them to take action at once and help to put out the fire. "Come with me!" he pleaded, "Come quickly! or else it will be too late." Alas! they only thought that it was a very good joke and they did nothing but laugh. All this had taken time, too much time in fact and by now the Ringmaster was watching helplessly while the flames took possession of everything. The fire came raging down the hillside, caught the first wooden houses on the outskirts of the village, and then passed on from house to house until the whole place was a mass of flames.
Too late! The villagers now realized that the clown had been in earnest and had really meant what he said, but it was too late. They had to run for their lives, leaving their houses and all their possessions to be destroyed by the flaming fire. If only they had taken the warning seriously! But then the messenger seemed so funny that they had not been able to believe that there was any real danger until now it was too late.
Of course, they blamed the circus for the calamity. "Why did not the Ringmaster come himself?" they reasoned. "We would have believed it if he had come himself. Or if he had sent some more suitable messenger, the lion-tamer, or one of the trapeze artistes. Anyone but the clown." The truth was, of course, that the clown was the only one available and that he had done his utmost to convince them. If they had only taken the trouble to enquire if his warning were true, then they might have been in time to put out the fires while they were still small.
Sometimes when God sends His messengers to us we do not take them seriously. Perhaps they are not the best messengers, but they may be the only ones whom He can send. The sad thing will be if we think that the matter is all a joke instead of realizing that the matter is really serious. Great and lasting loss can come to us if we do not pay attention to the call of the Gospel "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" (Hebrews 2:3). - H. F.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2016
Monday, January 25, 2016
The Eccentricity of Religion
The Ideal Life: 4 - The Eccentricity of Religion
By Henry Drummond
"They said, He is beside Himself,"--MARK iii. 21.
THE most pathetic life in the history of the world is the life of the Lord Jesus. Those who study it find out, every day, a fresh sorrow. Before He came it was already foretold that He would be acquainted with grief, but no imagination has ever conceived the darkness of the reality.
It began with one of the bitterest kinds of sorrow--the sorrow of an enforced silence. For thirty years He saw, but dared not act. The wrongs He came to redress were there. The hollowest religion ever known--a mere piece of acting--was being palmed off around Him on every side as the religion of the living God. He saw the poor trodden upon, the sick untended, the widow unavenged, His Father's people scattered, His truth misrepresented, and the whole earth filled with hypocrisy and violence. He saw this, grew up amongst it, knew how to cure it. Yet He was dumb, He opened not His mouth. How He held in His breaking spirit, till the slow years dragged themselves done, it is impossible to comprehend.
Then came the public life, the necessity to breathe its atmosphere: the temptation, the contradiction of sinners, the insults of the Pharisees, the attempts on his life, the dulness of His disciples, the Jews' rejection of Him, the apparent failure of His cause, Gethsemane, Calvary. Yet these were but the more marked shades in the darkness which blackened the whole path of the Man of Sorrows.
But we are confronted here with an episode in His life which is not included in any of these--an episode which had a bitterness all its own, and such as has fallen to the lot of few to know. It was not the way the world treated Him; it was not the Pharisees; it was not something which came from His enemies; it was something His friends did. When He left the carpenter's shop and went out into the wider life, His friends were watching Him. For some time back they had remarked a certain strangeness in His manner. He had always been strange among His brothers, but now this was growing upon Him. He had said much stranger things of late, made many strange plans, gone away on curious errands to strange places. What did it mean? Where was it to end? Were the family to be responsible for all this eccentricity? One sad day it culminated. It was quite clear to them now. He was not responsible for what He was doing. It was His mind, alas! that had become affected. He was beside Himself. In plain English, He was mad!
An awful thing to say when it is true, a more awful thing when it is not; a more awful thing still when the accusation comes from those we love, from those who know us best. It was the voice of no enemy, it came from His own home. It was His own mother, perhaps, and His brethren, who pointed this terrible finger at Him; apologising for Him, entreating the people never to mind Him, He was beside Himself--He was mad.
There should have been one spot surely upon God's earth for the Son of Man to lay His head--one roof, at least, in Nazareth, with mother's ministering hand and sister's love for the weary Worker. But His very home is closed to Him. He has to endure the furtive glances of eyes which once loved Him, the household watching Him and whispering one to another, the cruel suspicion, the laying hands upon Him, hands which were once kind to Him, and finally, the overwhelming announcement of the verdict of His family, "He is beside Himself." Truly He came to His own, and His own received Him not.
What makes it seemly to dig up this harrowing memory today, and emphasize a thought which we cannot but feel lies on the borderland of blasphemy? Because the significance of that scene is still intense. It has a peculiar lesson for us who are to profess ourselves followers of Christ--a lesson in the counting of the cost. Christ's life, from first to last, was a dramatized parable--too short and too significant to allow even a scene which well might rest in solemn shadow to pass by unimproved.
I. Observe, from the world's standpoint, the charge is true. It is useless to denounce this as a libel, a bitter, blasphemous calumny. It is not so--it is true. There was no alternative. Either He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, or He was beside Himself. A holy life is always a phenomenon. The world knoweth it not. It is either supernatural or morbid.
For what is being beside oneself? What is madness? It is eccentricity--ec-centr-icity--having a different centre from other people. Here is a man, for instance, who devotes his life to collecting objects of antiquarian interest, old coins perhaps, or old editions of books. His centre is odd, his life revolves in an orbit of his own. Therefore, his friends say, he is eccentric. Or here is an engine with many moving wheels, large and small, cogged and plain, but each revolving upon a central axis, and describing a perfect circle. But at one side there is one small wheel which does not turn in a circle. Its motion is different from all the rest, and the changing curve it describes is unlike any ordinary line of the mathematician. The engineer tells you that this is the eccentric, because it has a peculiar centre.
Now when Jesus Christ came among men He found them nearly all revolving in one circle. There was but one centre to human life--self. Man's chief end was to glorify himself and enjoy himself for ever. Then, as now, by the all but unanimous concensus of the people, this present world was sanctioned as the legitimate object of all human interest and enterprise. By the whole gravitation of society, Jesus--as a man--must have been drawn to the very verge of this vast vortex of self-indulgence, personal ease and pleasure, which had sucked in the populations of the world since time began. But He stepped back. He refused absolutely to be attracted. He put everything out of His life that had even a temptation in it to the world's centre. He humbled Himself--there is no place in the world's vortex for humbleness; He became of no reputation--nor for namelessness. He emptied Himself--gravitation cannot act on emptiness. So the prince of this world came, but found nothing in Him. He found nothing, because the true centre of that life was not to be seen. It was with God. The unseen and the eternal moved Him. He did not seek His own happiness, but that of others. He went about doing good. His object in going about was not gain, but to do good.
Now all this was very eccentric. It was living on new lines altogether. He did God's will. He pleased not Himself. His centre was to one side of self. He was beside Himself. From the world's view-point it was simply madness.
Think of this idea of His, for instance, of starting out into life with so quixotic an idea as that of doing good; the simplicity of the expectation that the world ever would become good; this irrational talk about meat to eat that they knew not of, about living water; these extraordinary beatitudes predicating sources of happiness which had never been heard of; these paradoxical utterances of which He was so fond, such as that the way to find life was to lose it, and to lose life in this world was to keep it to life eternal. What could these be but mere hallucination and dreaming! It was inevitable that men should laugh and sneer at Him. He was unusual. He would not go with the multitude. And men were expected to go with the multitude. What the multitude thought, said, and did, were the right things to have thought, said, and done. And if any One thought, said, or did differently, his folly be on his own head, he was beside himself, he was mad.
II. Every man who lives like Christ produces the same reaction upon the world. This is an inevitable consequence. What men said of Him, if we are true to Him, they will say of you and me. The servant is not above his master. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. A Christian must be different from other people. Time has not changed the essential difference between the spirit of the world and the spirit of Christ. They are radically and eternally different. And from the world's standpoint still Christianity is eccentricity. For what, again, is Christianity? It is the projection into the world of these lines along which Christ lived. It is a duplicating in modern life of the spirit, the method, and the aims of Jesus, a following through the world the very footprints He left behind. And if these footprints were at right angles to the broad beaten track the world went along in His day, they will be so still. It is useless to say the distinction has broken down. These two roads are still at right angles. The day may be, when the path of righteousness shall be the glorious highway for all the earth. But it is not now. Christ did not expect it would be so. He made provision for the very opposite. He prepared His Church beforehand for the reception it would get in the world. He gave no hope that it would be an agreeable one. Light must conflict with darkness, truth with error. There is no sanctioned place in the world as yet for a life with God as its goal, and self-denial as its principle. Meekness must be victimized; spirituality must be misunderstood; true religion must be burlesqued. Holiness must make a strong ferment and reaction in family or community, office or workshop, wherever it is introduced. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man's foes (He might well say it) shall be they of his own household."
True religion is no milk-and-water experience. It is a fire. It is a sword. It is a burning, consuming heat, which must radiate upon everything around. The change to the Christlike Life is so remarkable that when one really undergoes it, he cannot find words in common use by which he can describe its revolutionary character. He has to recall the very striking phrases of the New Testament, which once seemed such exaggerations:--"A new man, a new creature; a new heart; a new birth." His very life has been taken down and re-crystallised round the new centre. He has been born again.
Visions from Heaven
Living In The Will of God, Part 5: Visions from Heaven
By Charles Price
Acts 26:19-20
Now let me ask you, if you have got your Bible, to turn to the book of Acts in the New Testament, Acts Chapter 26; I am going to read there in just a moment. If you have been with us in recent days you will know we are talking about living in the will of God.
And for several weeks I have been talking about the big picture issues related to that. The fact that God has a general will and plan for this world and for people and that the personal will of God for our lives is always found in the context of the general will of God, which we need to live in obedience to. 95%, I would say, 95% of the will of God is in this book and that is where we need to live and that is where we need to discern and find out and receive God's general will for His world.
And we talked about other issues, the fact that the whole world is in the hands of the evil one, as Scripture says, and yet in the midst of that, as Job says, "No purpose of Yours can be thwarted," he says to God. That God is working out purpose in a fallen, broken, sinful environment.
But I want to talk this morning and for several weeks now, about the issue of personal guidance. How do I discern and follow the will of God that He has for me personally?
And I want to read to you from Acts 26. The context of what I am going to read is that Paul is in prison in Caesarea. He is on there on the basis of some false charges. The Roman governor Felix recognizes the falsehood of those charges and he says to Paul that "if you pay a bribe, you can walk free." But Paul didn't pay bribes and so he was kept in jail for two years, which is the length of the remaining years of Felix' term as Roman governor of Judea.
And then he was recalled to Rome, replaced by a man called Festus. When Festus came he wanted to clear up the backlog of cases and he brought Paul out and listened to his case.
And then King Agrippa - now you all know about King Herod; King Agrippa was in the line of the Herodian kings. He came to Caesarea to pay tribute to the new Roman governor because the Herodian kings were of course under the authority of Rome.
And when he came, Festus said, "I have an interesting man in my prison. His name is Paul. Maybe you would like to meet him and listen to him." And Paul was brought out to explain his case to Festus and also to King Agrippa.
And we are going to read when Paul comes to a point in this explanation where he has described how that he met with Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, how that his life was revolutionized, how that he was told he would preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, how he was told he would suffer, that he would enter into persecution. And this was many years earlier this had happened.
And having described that, in Verse 19 he says,
"So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
"That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. But I have had God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen - that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles."
That is as far as I am going to read. And I want to talk this morning about the phrase that Paul uses there in Verse 19 when he says,
"I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven."
I want to talk about a vision from heaven. Now I am going to address myself mainly to younger people here this morning. You can decide whether you are younger or not. But older people, don't go to sleep; I am going to speak to you at the end because I have something important to say in the light of what I am going to say in the first part of this message.
But I want to talk about what is a vision from heaven. The fact that God does guide us is very clear to us in Scripture. There are many Scriptures that address this. David wrote in Psalm 37,
"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord."
He said in Psalm 48,
"God will be our guide even to the end."
Asaph, who was the song leader in Solomon's temple, wrote in Psalm 73,
"You guide me with your counsel."
Solomon wrote,
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."
Isaiah wrote,
"The Lord will guide you always."
Paul wrote to the Colossians,
"We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will."
And there are many other verses that talk about the fact that God guides us, God leads us, God has a will for us and we are to be aware of that and living in that.
Now when you ask the question how does God guide us? There are a multiplicity of ways in which God guides people in the Scripture and there is no simple formula that you can simply take the formula and say, "If you meet this, this, this and this, then God will guide you and you will know what it is to be in the centre of His will.
And I think there is good reason why there is no simple formula. If there was, we would probably want to just superimpose the formula on every situation we face and not have to do business with God Himself.
You see everything in the Christian life grows out of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Now most Christians will say they have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
I find myself quite often in conversation with people about issues they come to talk to me about and it's evident they don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. They are Christians, yes. But they don't spend time with God. They don't spend time in the Word of God. They don't read it and meditate upon it. They don't spend time in prayer. They are not able to discern the still small voice of the Holy Spirit because they do not live in an active, daily relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see what we would like and prefer is some kind of spiritual GPS that just kind of leads us and guides us but which is detached from a relationship with Him. And you cannot have that.
Proverbs 3:6 says,
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."
Now directing our paths is God's responsibility but the context in which He directs our paths is "in all your ways acknowledge Him."
Now involved in acknowledging Him is our love for Him, our obedience to Him, our dependence on Him, our intimacy with Him. And you cannot shelve that because life is too busy to spend time with God, too busy to spend time in His Word, too busy to spend time in prayer. You cannot shelve that and then just somehow assume "God please guide me" and hope that He will.
The key to being in the will of God is not becoming skilled in discerning guidance; the key is in walking humbly with God, and we cannot bypass that.
However, having said that, and that is important to say, there are things that we discover in Scripture that are ways in which God directs and guides His people. And I want to talk over several weeks about some of those things. We will take each one, as I will this morning, and detach it from any wider context, but then at the end we will have to put all these things back into relationship with each other.
And I want to talk this morning about this statement that Paul makes to King Agrippa, when looking back over his life he can say, "I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven."
Paul had a vision from heaven that right at the start of his Christian life he was told that now that he had surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord, that he would preach the Gospel amongst his own people, amongst the Gentiles, that he would suffer for it, that he would be persecuted for it. And he says, "I was not disobedient to the vision that was given to me from heaven."
It didn't begin straightaway. It is hard to reconstruct the chronology of Paul's life but it was at least 12 years between his meeting Christ on the Damascus Road and the beginning of his first missionary journey when he did go out into the Gentile world and became the great apostle to the Gentiles - at least 12 years; more likely closer to 15. But as I say, it is hard to reconstruct it well.
Now this is not unique to Paul. There are many instances in Scripture.
Abraham, when he was 75 years of age, God took him outside one night, pointed him up to the sky and said, "How many stars can you see? I will give you as many descendants as the stars in the sky. You wife will give birth to a son and from that son will come a nation and from that nation will come a Seed and from that Seed, the whole world will be blessed."
Now he was already 75 years of age; his wife was already 65 years of age. And God gave him that vision, that vision from heaven, but nothing happened for 25 years. It was 25 years later that Isaac was born. It was the beginning of the fulfillment of that vision, but God gave him vision.
We will talk about the fact in a moment there is often a big gap between when God gives vision and the implementing of it.
When Joseph was a young man of 17, just a teenager, he had dreams, a couple of dreams in succession, both of which involved his brothers bowing down in front of him. He told his brothers about the dream. They didn't like it. They decided to get rid of him.
We talked about Joseph a few weeks ago. He was sold off as a slave to Egypt, eventually worked his way up through the prison system to become into Pharaoh's palace and eventually became second in command over the whole nation, as during 7 years of plenty, they prepared for 7 years of famine.
And two years into the famine when Joseph was 39 years of age, his brothers came to buy food. They were sent to Joseph. They came in and they bowed down in front of him, 22 years after his dream. And he probably thought to himself, "Deja vu, I saw this 22 years ago. Something is going on here. God is behind this." And so He was.
Moses, at the age of 40, did not understand why his fellow Israelites did not recognize that God was using him to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt because clearly, by that stage in his life, Moses had this sense from God, "You are the man who is going to lead the Israelites out of their bondage." But it didn't happen for another 40 years. But he had vision.
He went into the desert. His vision died during the next 40 years looking after sheep. At the age of 80 God began to implement it.
And there are many others in Scripture, which we are not going to talk about.
Now don't think, by the way, this is something which applies to those who are going to be missionaries or they are in Christian service. We sometimes subconsciously, if not consciously, have the idea that there is a kind of certain things about guidance that happen if you are going to be a missionary - you need a call for that. But if you are going to be a carpenter or you are going to go into business or industry or into politics and governments or you are going to go into the professions, you kind of don't need that.
This is not about something special for certain people in Christian ministry, because as I have pointed out to you before, that most of the leading characters in the Bible were not preachers. They were in all kinds of business and leadership and governance.
Abraham was not a preacher. Moses did some preaching; that wasn't his main function in life. David was not a preacher; he was a singer; he wrote some beautiful psalms, but he was a king.
So please don't think, well this doesn't apply to me because I am not in some kind of "Christian ministry".
This is not guidance for missionaries; this is regular Joe and regular Jane guidance. And I want to ask two questions this morning: number one: what is vision?
Well it is not something we make up; it is something which has to be received. Paul talks about his vision from heaven. Now it may seem to be very subjective and to some extent it is. But it must have its origin in God.
Jeremiah criticized prophets in his day in Jeremiah 23:16 when he said,
"They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD."
In other words, they had visions, but their visions came from their own minds. They sat around and said to one another, "What is our preferred future? What would we like to see over the next few years?" And they thought things up and they sounded reasonable.
But Jeremiah says these visions were intrinsically corrupted because they did not come from God; they came from their own minds.
Now if vision sounds too strong a word for some of us, and even a word we might be very nervous about. ("What do you mean visions? I am not sure about this at all.")
The same thing is said in Psalm 37:4 but much more perhaps accessibly to many of us than the word vision because in Psalm 37:4 David says,
"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart."
Delight yourself in God and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Now there are two ways to read that verse - there is a wrong way and there is a right way. The wrong way to read that verse is to say, "Delight yourself in God and He will give you whatever you want." So delight yourself in God and you would like a million bucks; well, God will give it to you.
Now there are those who do interpret this verse that way; I have heard it misinterpreted like that.
The right way to interpret this verse is this: you delight yourself in God and the desires of your heart will be God-given desires. Notice the condition: you delight yourself in God. That goes back to the verse I just quoted: "In all your ways acknowledge Him." It goes back to your dependence on Him, your obedience to Him, your love for Him, your intimacy with Him.
You delight yourself in God and the desires of your heart are God-given desires.
In the New Testament Paul wrote to the Philippians - Philippians 2:12:
"Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," (and then he tells you why) "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."
So he says God works in you to will, to put the right motivation, the right desires into your heart and then the enabling to fulfill them. But God works in you to will, that your desires are God-given.
I have often had a conversation about maybe a decision somebody has to make or something they want to do and they ask the question, "Is this my will or is this God's will? Because I am concerned it's my will, not God's will"
I have learned to answer that question by saying, "Have you ever thought about the fact that it could be both? It is your will and it is God's will. And the reason why it is your will is because it is God's will and if you delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart, so it is your will because it is God's will and He has put that into your heart.
Let me just share how I learned this a little bit in my own experience. I studied for three years in Glasgow in Scotland at the Bible Training Institute there. At the end of those three years I didn't know what I should be doing. I knew generally that I felt God had called me to preach. I didn't know where or in what capacity.
When I came to the end of the course, the summer that lay ahead was full with invitations I had to do some camps and some youth missions and that kind of thing. And so I thought, well, I will see the summer through and see what happens after that. So I went through the summer. By the end of the summer, my fall calendar had filled up and the winter was filling up with invitations to churches and youth events and so on.
And I thought, well, maybe I would just continue doing this, I don't know. But by December of that year I had six invitations to work full-time in six different settings. Three of them were invitations from churches who had invited me to join their staff, or in some cases they had no staff so, "come and be our pastor" or whatever category they put that into - one of them was "come and be our full-time worker", which means do as much as you can that nobody else is doing.
Two of them were invitations to work with evangelistic organizations as an evangelist. One of them was to work with an organization that would involve part administration and part preaching.
So I had these six invitations and all of them had something about them that was attractive to me, but I didn't know which one was the right one that I should go with.
So I went to see a very wise man who I knew and I said to him, you know, "I've got these six invitations to these six possibilities; which one of these do you think is right?"
So I told him what they were and he said to me, "Probably none of them."
I said, "Why not?"
He said, "If on the one hand you are saying, 'Should I work with a local church in a pastoral capacity, should I be an evangelist, should I be involved in administration?'" He said, "Clearly, if you are asking those equally, you don't have a clear sense of vision as to what your life should consist of."
I said, "What do you mean?"
And I remember he explained to me about the need to get a vision from God for your life. Well, nobody had ever talked to me about that before. He said, "What I would do if I were you, is leave aside those six things and ask God for a vision."
Well I didn't know how to ask God for a vision, but I went away for two days on my own and I took with me my Bible and an empty notebook. And I spent those two days reading my Bible, praying. I walked many miles along some of the English country lanes where I was staying, where I was on my own. And I didn't know how to go about this so I thought, well, let me, let me begin to write down the things that I would really, really like to do and that I feel maybe I should do.
And I wrote a lot of things; I crossed out a lot of things; I thought with my pen and allowed the process - sometimes writing things down helps to clarify them. And at the end of those two days, I had a list of six things that I thought I really wanted to do; it was the only criteria by which I could measure them.
I went home and I looked at the six invitations that I had and none of them fitted the six things on my list. So I remember writing a letter to all six saying, "Well thank you very much for inviting me to be part of your church or organization but I don't feel that it's the right thing for me."
And I remember going down to the mailbox to mail those six letters - it was actually Christmas Day that I did this - that I at least went to mail them. And I remember standing outside the mailbox down the road from where I lived and I put three in straightaway; that was easy. And I thought, well, I'll hang on to these other three, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, I should keep these for a while just in case nothing else comes up. And then I put another one in and then I had two left.
By Charles Price
Acts 26:19-20
Now let me ask you, if you have got your Bible, to turn to the book of Acts in the New Testament, Acts Chapter 26; I am going to read there in just a moment. If you have been with us in recent days you will know we are talking about living in the will of God.
And for several weeks I have been talking about the big picture issues related to that. The fact that God has a general will and plan for this world and for people and that the personal will of God for our lives is always found in the context of the general will of God, which we need to live in obedience to. 95%, I would say, 95% of the will of God is in this book and that is where we need to live and that is where we need to discern and find out and receive God's general will for His world.
And we talked about other issues, the fact that the whole world is in the hands of the evil one, as Scripture says, and yet in the midst of that, as Job says, "No purpose of Yours can be thwarted," he says to God. That God is working out purpose in a fallen, broken, sinful environment.
But I want to talk this morning and for several weeks now, about the issue of personal guidance. How do I discern and follow the will of God that He has for me personally?
And I want to read to you from Acts 26. The context of what I am going to read is that Paul is in prison in Caesarea. He is on there on the basis of some false charges. The Roman governor Felix recognizes the falsehood of those charges and he says to Paul that "if you pay a bribe, you can walk free." But Paul didn't pay bribes and so he was kept in jail for two years, which is the length of the remaining years of Felix' term as Roman governor of Judea.
And then he was recalled to Rome, replaced by a man called Festus. When Festus came he wanted to clear up the backlog of cases and he brought Paul out and listened to his case.
And then King Agrippa - now you all know about King Herod; King Agrippa was in the line of the Herodian kings. He came to Caesarea to pay tribute to the new Roman governor because the Herodian kings were of course under the authority of Rome.
And when he came, Festus said, "I have an interesting man in my prison. His name is Paul. Maybe you would like to meet him and listen to him." And Paul was brought out to explain his case to Festus and also to King Agrippa.
And we are going to read when Paul comes to a point in this explanation where he has described how that he met with Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, how that his life was revolutionized, how that he was told he would preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, how he was told he would suffer, that he would enter into persecution. And this was many years earlier this had happened.
And having described that, in Verse 19 he says,
"So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.
"That is why the Jews seized me in the temple courts and tried to kill me. But I have had God's help to this very day, and so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen - that the Christ would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would proclaim light to his own people and to the Gentiles."
That is as far as I am going to read. And I want to talk this morning about the phrase that Paul uses there in Verse 19 when he says,
"I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven."
I want to talk about a vision from heaven. Now I am going to address myself mainly to younger people here this morning. You can decide whether you are younger or not. But older people, don't go to sleep; I am going to speak to you at the end because I have something important to say in the light of what I am going to say in the first part of this message.
But I want to talk about what is a vision from heaven. The fact that God does guide us is very clear to us in Scripture. There are many Scriptures that address this. David wrote in Psalm 37,
"The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord."
He said in Psalm 48,
"God will be our guide even to the end."
Asaph, who was the song leader in Solomon's temple, wrote in Psalm 73,
"You guide me with your counsel."
Solomon wrote,
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."
Isaiah wrote,
"The Lord will guide you always."
Paul wrote to the Colossians,
"We have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will."
And there are many other verses that talk about the fact that God guides us, God leads us, God has a will for us and we are to be aware of that and living in that.
Now when you ask the question how does God guide us? There are a multiplicity of ways in which God guides people in the Scripture and there is no simple formula that you can simply take the formula and say, "If you meet this, this, this and this, then God will guide you and you will know what it is to be in the centre of His will.
And I think there is good reason why there is no simple formula. If there was, we would probably want to just superimpose the formula on every situation we face and not have to do business with God Himself.
You see everything in the Christian life grows out of our relationship with Jesus Christ. Now most Christians will say they have a relationship with Jesus Christ.
I find myself quite often in conversation with people about issues they come to talk to me about and it's evident they don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ. They are Christians, yes. But they don't spend time with God. They don't spend time in the Word of God. They don't read it and meditate upon it. They don't spend time in prayer. They are not able to discern the still small voice of the Holy Spirit because they do not live in an active, daily relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
You see what we would like and prefer is some kind of spiritual GPS that just kind of leads us and guides us but which is detached from a relationship with Him. And you cannot have that.
Proverbs 3:6 says,
"In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths."
Now directing our paths is God's responsibility but the context in which He directs our paths is "in all your ways acknowledge Him."
Now involved in acknowledging Him is our love for Him, our obedience to Him, our dependence on Him, our intimacy with Him. And you cannot shelve that because life is too busy to spend time with God, too busy to spend time in His Word, too busy to spend time in prayer. You cannot shelve that and then just somehow assume "God please guide me" and hope that He will.
The key to being in the will of God is not becoming skilled in discerning guidance; the key is in walking humbly with God, and we cannot bypass that.
However, having said that, and that is important to say, there are things that we discover in Scripture that are ways in which God directs and guides His people. And I want to talk over several weeks about some of those things. We will take each one, as I will this morning, and detach it from any wider context, but then at the end we will have to put all these things back into relationship with each other.
And I want to talk this morning about this statement that Paul makes to King Agrippa, when looking back over his life he can say, "I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven."
Paul had a vision from heaven that right at the start of his Christian life he was told that now that he had surrendered to Jesus Christ as Lord, that he would preach the Gospel amongst his own people, amongst the Gentiles, that he would suffer for it, that he would be persecuted for it. And he says, "I was not disobedient to the vision that was given to me from heaven."
It didn't begin straightaway. It is hard to reconstruct the chronology of Paul's life but it was at least 12 years between his meeting Christ on the Damascus Road and the beginning of his first missionary journey when he did go out into the Gentile world and became the great apostle to the Gentiles - at least 12 years; more likely closer to 15. But as I say, it is hard to reconstruct it well.
Now this is not unique to Paul. There are many instances in Scripture.
Abraham, when he was 75 years of age, God took him outside one night, pointed him up to the sky and said, "How many stars can you see? I will give you as many descendants as the stars in the sky. You wife will give birth to a son and from that son will come a nation and from that nation will come a Seed and from that Seed, the whole world will be blessed."
Now he was already 75 years of age; his wife was already 65 years of age. And God gave him that vision, that vision from heaven, but nothing happened for 25 years. It was 25 years later that Isaac was born. It was the beginning of the fulfillment of that vision, but God gave him vision.
We will talk about the fact in a moment there is often a big gap between when God gives vision and the implementing of it.
When Joseph was a young man of 17, just a teenager, he had dreams, a couple of dreams in succession, both of which involved his brothers bowing down in front of him. He told his brothers about the dream. They didn't like it. They decided to get rid of him.
We talked about Joseph a few weeks ago. He was sold off as a slave to Egypt, eventually worked his way up through the prison system to become into Pharaoh's palace and eventually became second in command over the whole nation, as during 7 years of plenty, they prepared for 7 years of famine.
And two years into the famine when Joseph was 39 years of age, his brothers came to buy food. They were sent to Joseph. They came in and they bowed down in front of him, 22 years after his dream. And he probably thought to himself, "Deja vu, I saw this 22 years ago. Something is going on here. God is behind this." And so He was.
Moses, at the age of 40, did not understand why his fellow Israelites did not recognize that God was using him to deliver them from their bondage in Egypt because clearly, by that stage in his life, Moses had this sense from God, "You are the man who is going to lead the Israelites out of their bondage." But it didn't happen for another 40 years. But he had vision.
He went into the desert. His vision died during the next 40 years looking after sheep. At the age of 80 God began to implement it.
And there are many others in Scripture, which we are not going to talk about.
Now don't think, by the way, this is something which applies to those who are going to be missionaries or they are in Christian service. We sometimes subconsciously, if not consciously, have the idea that there is a kind of certain things about guidance that happen if you are going to be a missionary - you need a call for that. But if you are going to be a carpenter or you are going to go into business or industry or into politics and governments or you are going to go into the professions, you kind of don't need that.
This is not about something special for certain people in Christian ministry, because as I have pointed out to you before, that most of the leading characters in the Bible were not preachers. They were in all kinds of business and leadership and governance.
Abraham was not a preacher. Moses did some preaching; that wasn't his main function in life. David was not a preacher; he was a singer; he wrote some beautiful psalms, but he was a king.
So please don't think, well this doesn't apply to me because I am not in some kind of "Christian ministry".
This is not guidance for missionaries; this is regular Joe and regular Jane guidance. And I want to ask two questions this morning: number one: what is vision?
Well it is not something we make up; it is something which has to be received. Paul talks about his vision from heaven. Now it may seem to be very subjective and to some extent it is. But it must have its origin in God.
Jeremiah criticized prophets in his day in Jeremiah 23:16 when he said,
"They speak visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD."
In other words, they had visions, but their visions came from their own minds. They sat around and said to one another, "What is our preferred future? What would we like to see over the next few years?" And they thought things up and they sounded reasonable.
But Jeremiah says these visions were intrinsically corrupted because they did not come from God; they came from their own minds.
Now if vision sounds too strong a word for some of us, and even a word we might be very nervous about. ("What do you mean visions? I am not sure about this at all.")
The same thing is said in Psalm 37:4 but much more perhaps accessibly to many of us than the word vision because in Psalm 37:4 David says,
"Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart."
Delight yourself in God and He will give you the desires of your heart.
Now there are two ways to read that verse - there is a wrong way and there is a right way. The wrong way to read that verse is to say, "Delight yourself in God and He will give you whatever you want." So delight yourself in God and you would like a million bucks; well, God will give it to you.
Now there are those who do interpret this verse that way; I have heard it misinterpreted like that.
The right way to interpret this verse is this: you delight yourself in God and the desires of your heart will be God-given desires. Notice the condition: you delight yourself in God. That goes back to the verse I just quoted: "In all your ways acknowledge Him." It goes back to your dependence on Him, your obedience to Him, your love for Him, your intimacy with Him.
You delight yourself in God and the desires of your heart are God-given desires.
In the New Testament Paul wrote to the Philippians - Philippians 2:12:
"Work out your salvation with fear and trembling," (and then he tells you why) "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."
So he says God works in you to will, to put the right motivation, the right desires into your heart and then the enabling to fulfill them. But God works in you to will, that your desires are God-given.
I have often had a conversation about maybe a decision somebody has to make or something they want to do and they ask the question, "Is this my will or is this God's will? Because I am concerned it's my will, not God's will"
I have learned to answer that question by saying, "Have you ever thought about the fact that it could be both? It is your will and it is God's will. And the reason why it is your will is because it is God's will and if you delight yourself in the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart, so it is your will because it is God's will and He has put that into your heart.
Let me just share how I learned this a little bit in my own experience. I studied for three years in Glasgow in Scotland at the Bible Training Institute there. At the end of those three years I didn't know what I should be doing. I knew generally that I felt God had called me to preach. I didn't know where or in what capacity.
When I came to the end of the course, the summer that lay ahead was full with invitations I had to do some camps and some youth missions and that kind of thing. And so I thought, well, I will see the summer through and see what happens after that. So I went through the summer. By the end of the summer, my fall calendar had filled up and the winter was filling up with invitations to churches and youth events and so on.
And I thought, well, maybe I would just continue doing this, I don't know. But by December of that year I had six invitations to work full-time in six different settings. Three of them were invitations from churches who had invited me to join their staff, or in some cases they had no staff so, "come and be our pastor" or whatever category they put that into - one of them was "come and be our full-time worker", which means do as much as you can that nobody else is doing.
Two of them were invitations to work with evangelistic organizations as an evangelist. One of them was to work with an organization that would involve part administration and part preaching.
So I had these six invitations and all of them had something about them that was attractive to me, but I didn't know which one was the right one that I should go with.
So I went to see a very wise man who I knew and I said to him, you know, "I've got these six invitations to these six possibilities; which one of these do you think is right?"
So I told him what they were and he said to me, "Probably none of them."
I said, "Why not?"
He said, "If on the one hand you are saying, 'Should I work with a local church in a pastoral capacity, should I be an evangelist, should I be involved in administration?'" He said, "Clearly, if you are asking those equally, you don't have a clear sense of vision as to what your life should consist of."
I said, "What do you mean?"
And I remember he explained to me about the need to get a vision from God for your life. Well, nobody had ever talked to me about that before. He said, "What I would do if I were you, is leave aside those six things and ask God for a vision."
Well I didn't know how to ask God for a vision, but I went away for two days on my own and I took with me my Bible and an empty notebook. And I spent those two days reading my Bible, praying. I walked many miles along some of the English country lanes where I was staying, where I was on my own. And I didn't know how to go about this so I thought, well, let me, let me begin to write down the things that I would really, really like to do and that I feel maybe I should do.
And I wrote a lot of things; I crossed out a lot of things; I thought with my pen and allowed the process - sometimes writing things down helps to clarify them. And at the end of those two days, I had a list of six things that I thought I really wanted to do; it was the only criteria by which I could measure them.
I went home and I looked at the six invitations that I had and none of them fitted the six things on my list. So I remember writing a letter to all six saying, "Well thank you very much for inviting me to be part of your church or organization but I don't feel that it's the right thing for me."
And I remember going down to the mailbox to mail those six letters - it was actually Christmas Day that I did this - that I at least went to mail them. And I remember standing outside the mailbox down the road from where I lived and I put three in straightaway; that was easy. And I thought, well, I'll hang on to these other three, you know, maybe, maybe, you know, I should keep these for a while just in case nothing else comes up. And then I put another one in and then I had two left.
The Struggle With Unforgiveness
By Charles Stanley
Matthew 6:9-15
If you constantly struggle to forgive people who have wronged you, you may consider yourself incapable of that kind of forgiveness. Many people are convinced that forgiveness is simply a feeling that can be experienced in the face of conflict. What a poor understanding! True forgiveness is not a feeling, but an action. If you find it hard to forgive others, take an active role in the process by following these four guidelines:
1. Acknowledge and confess an unforgiving spirit. No, it is not always easy to forgive someone. We are sometimes the targets of tremendously hurtful offenses. However, we are not responsible for other people's behavior; we are responsible only for our own. God commanded us to be loving, forgiving people. If we are unforgiving, that is our problem and no one else's - we must repent of this sin and ask God to help our unforgiveness.
2. Release the other person. Make a conscious decision to release the offender in your mind. When you find yourself reliving the details of the upsetting behavior, force yourself to stop.
3. Forgive the offender forgetfully. When you keep the details fresh in your mind, you trap yourself in a cycle of pain. Choose instead to separate the individual from the painful memory.
4. Forgive with finality. True forgiveness is complete. This means that you cannot "forgive" someone and then continually bring the subject up. Forgive them and move on.
If you have been nursing a grudge against a specific person, ask God for the strength to forgive. Then, do it!
Christians are like snow covered dung!
Christians are like snow covered dung!
(Martin Luther)
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson, they shall be as white as wool!" Isaiah 1:18
Christians are like snow covered dung; it is the purity of the covering which the Father sees!
(Martin Luther)
"Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson, they shall be as white as wool!" Isaiah 1:18
Christians are like snow covered dung; it is the purity of the covering which the Father sees!
"On that day a fountain will be opened — to cleanse them from all their sins and defilement!" Zechariah 13:1
"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin!" 1 John 1:7
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!" 2 Corinthians 5:21
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!" 2 Corinthians 5:21
"You are absolutely beautiful, My beloved! There is no spot in you!" Song of Solomon 4:7
"They are without fault before the throne of God!" Revelation 14:5
"Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him — and pardon me!"
Charitie L. Bancroft, 1863
"Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him — and pardon me!"
Charitie L. Bancroft, 1863
There never was a fountain like this!
There never was a fountain like this!
(Alexander Smellie, "The Hour of Silence" 1899)
"On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity!" Zechariah 13:1
"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin!" 1 John 1:7
There is another river, the streams of which make glad the City of God. It is a river whose waters are crimson red, rather than crystal clear. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin--His life-blood, shed for our redemption on the shameful tree!
So many have proved the potency of this blessed fountain--a great multitude which no man can number! From the East and the West, the North and the South; from the early dawn of Christ, and the modern home--they have pressed to its brink, and they are pressing still. Whoever is willing, may stoop down and drink and live!
Such continuous and permanent efficacy resides in this wondrous fountain. It is not like the Pool of Bethesda, endowed with a strange and vitalizing virtue only at intervals. The dear dying Lamb never loses His power to save. The Cross is at every moment, the instrument of pardon. The blood cleanses--and retains its capacity of cleansing perennially, age after age.
And so universally and omnipotently successful these blood-red waters are. From all my sin they will purge me:
my secret sins--and my presumptuous sins,
my sins of youth--and my sins of old age,
my sins against others--and my sins against myself,
my sins when I was a stranger to God--and my darker and more hateful sins since I came home to Him.
There never was a fountain like this! Exploration has not discovered its like, nor has imagination ever conceived it! It is peerless, matchless, unique. Surely I have washed and am daily washing in it, that I may be clean!
(Alexander Smellie, "The Hour of Silence" 1899)
"On that day a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity!" Zechariah 13:1
"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin!" 1 John 1:7
There is another river, the streams of which make glad the City of God. It is a river whose waters are crimson red, rather than crystal clear. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin--His life-blood, shed for our redemption on the shameful tree!
So many have proved the potency of this blessed fountain--a great multitude which no man can number! From the East and the West, the North and the South; from the early dawn of Christ, and the modern home--they have pressed to its brink, and they are pressing still. Whoever is willing, may stoop down and drink and live!
Such continuous and permanent efficacy resides in this wondrous fountain. It is not like the Pool of Bethesda, endowed with a strange and vitalizing virtue only at intervals. The dear dying Lamb never loses His power to save. The Cross is at every moment, the instrument of pardon. The blood cleanses--and retains its capacity of cleansing perennially, age after age.
And so universally and omnipotently successful these blood-red waters are. From all my sin they will purge me:
my secret sins--and my presumptuous sins,
my sins of youth--and my sins of old age,
my sins against others--and my sins against myself,
my sins when I was a stranger to God--and my darker and more hateful sins since I came home to Him.
There never was a fountain like this! Exploration has not discovered its like, nor has imagination ever conceived it! It is peerless, matchless, unique. Surely I have washed and am daily washing in it, that I may be clean!
There is a fountain filled with blood
drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains!
The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day;
and there may I, though vile as he
wash all my sins away!
Dear dying Lamb, Your precious blood
shall never lose its power
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more!
E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Your flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die!
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing Your power to save!
(William Cowper, 1731-1800)
drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
and sinners plunged beneath that flood
lose all their guilty stains!
The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day;
and there may I, though vile as he
wash all my sins away!
Dear dying Lamb, Your precious blood
shall never lose its power
till all the ransomed church of God
be saved, to sin no more!
E'er since, by faith, I saw the stream
Your flowing wounds supply,
redeeming love has been my theme,
and shall be till I die!
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I'll sing Your power to save!
(William Cowper, 1731-1800)
Milk-white!
Milk-white!
(Thomas Watson, "The Lord's Supper")
"The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin!"
1 John 1:7
Christ's blood is a CLEANSING blood.
As the merit of Christ's blood pacifies God—so the
virtue of it purifies us. Christ's blood is heaven's bath.
It is a laver to wash in. It washes a crimson sinner—
milk-white!
The Word of God is a looking-glass to show us our
spots—and the blood of Christ is a fountain to wash
them away! "On that day a fountain will be opened
—to cleanse them from all their sins and defilement!"
Zechariah 13:1
But this blood will not wash—if it is mingled with
anything. If we mingle our good works with Christ's
blood—it will not wash. Let Christ's blood be pure and
unmixed—and there is no spot which it cannot wash
away! It purged out Noah's drunkenness—and Lot's
incest!
(Thomas Watson, "The Lord's Supper")
"The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin!"
1 John 1:7
Christ's blood is a CLEANSING blood.
As the merit of Christ's blood pacifies God—so the
virtue of it purifies us. Christ's blood is heaven's bath.
It is a laver to wash in. It washes a crimson sinner—
milk-white!
The Word of God is a looking-glass to show us our
spots—and the blood of Christ is a fountain to wash
them away! "On that day a fountain will be opened
—to cleanse them from all their sins and defilement!"
Zechariah 13:1
But this blood will not wash—if it is mingled with
anything. If we mingle our good works with Christ's
blood—it will not wash. Let Christ's blood be pure and
unmixed—and there is no spot which it cannot wash
away! It purged out Noah's drunkenness—and Lot's
incest!
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