Greater Works than These

[00:00:00] Read another passage in the book of acts. You needn't necessarily turn to it. I'll read it to you in acts, chapter nine. [00:00:11] And we will read from verse 32 of acts, chapter nine. [00:00:22] And it came to pass. As Peter went throughout all parts. He came down also to the saints that dwelt at Lydda. And there he found a certain man named Enir. Who had kept his bed eight years. [00:00:37] For he was palsied. And Peter said unto him, Jesus Christ healeth thee. Arise and make thy bed. And straightway he arose. And all that dwelt at Lydda. And in Charon saw him. And they turned to the Lord. [00:00:58] Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha. Which by interpretation is called Dorcas. This woman was full of good works and alms. Deeds which she did. It came to pass in those days that she fell sick and died. And when they had washed her. They laid her in an upper chamber. And as Lydda was nigh unto Joppa. The disciples, hearing that Peter was there. Sent two men unto him. Entreating him. Delay not to come on unto us. And Peter arose and went with them. And when he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber. And all the widows stood by him. Weeping. And showing the coats and garments. Which Dorcas made while she was with them. But Peter put them all forth and kneeled down and prayed. And turning to the body, he said, tabitha, arise. [00:01:54] And she opened her eyes. And when she saw Peter, she sat up. And he gave her his hand and raised her up. And calling the saints and widows. He presented her alive. And he became known throughout all Joppa. And many believed on the Lord. [00:02:12] And then, if you will just turn to one verse in John, chapter 14. [00:02:22] Two verses, verse eleven. [00:02:25] Leave me that I am in the father. [00:02:30] And the father in me. Or else believe me for the very works sake. [00:02:36] Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that believeth on me. The works that I do shall he do also. [00:02:47] And greater than these shall he do. Because I go unto the father. And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name. [00:02:58] That will I do. That the father may be glorified in the son. If you shall ask anything in my name, that will I do. [00:03:15] I want this evening just to point out to you. The very real connection that exists in the New Testament. Between the ministry of the Lord Jesus in the gospels. And then the ministry of his own in the book of acts. [00:03:41] It is perhaps something that we tend to overlook. [00:03:46] The Lord Jesus expressly stated that after he had ascended to the Father. [00:03:53] Far greater things would be done by his people than ever he did. [00:04:04] And really, this should be for all of us a cause for real inquiry and research. [00:04:13] For I don't think there's anyone in this room who could say that they feel that they are doing greater works than the Lord Jesus did when he was here on earth. [00:04:27] Yet the Lord Jesus didnt say, you might do greater works if youre good enough. [00:04:34] Or he didnt say, some of you will do greater works than these. But he said, greater works than these shall ye do. [00:04:50] It was evident that our Lord Jesus fully expected and provided that in every generation there should be something greater than his own work in him. [00:05:08] This really should be a cause for us all to get on our knees and really seek the Lord. [00:05:20] The Lord Jesus has never anywhere commanded us to do anything that he has not given us all the ability and the power to do. [00:05:36] It is silly for any child of God to say they can't do it, to shrug their shoulders and say, it's not possible, it's all right for him or it's all right for her. But for me, it is impossible. [00:05:51] There is no excuse whatsoever, for we shall find that the lowliest of God's children were those often that he used to do, comparatively speaking, greater works than he did. [00:06:09] This has been true of every generation. [00:06:13] It is really a question of the faith and trust and experience of God's people at any given point in history. [00:06:30] Today, really, Christianity is a sitting thing. [00:06:37] That is, most people really look upon Christianity as something that you sit down and listen to. It's something you go to meetings and you hear messages or you go to meetings and you study together the word. But, you know, true Christianity is not anything that is a kind of meeting at all. [00:07:05] True Christianity is a life, and it is a life which really is a tremendous dynamic force in its day and generation. [00:07:21] The testimony of Jesus is not just formulating some doctrines, defining a teaching, gathering people together, and, as it were, opening truth to them. That's not the testimony of Jesus. The testimony of Jesus is his life in the midst of a broken and a perverted world, and his life, as it were, drawing others to himself and saving others and drawing others into all that he is. [00:08:09] I think, therefore, we really need to seriously, each one of us, and together as a people, we ought to ask ourselves, are we in the good of what the Lord Jesus expressly said would happen? It's no good you hiding behind any so called modesty or behind your circumstances or your situation. No good me blaming it onto you or you blaming it onto me. Everyone has got to ask themselves now. Are we in the good, really of this? [00:08:46] The Lord Jesus said that. That each one of us should be such an integral part of himself. [00:08:53] That in every generation, at all times. [00:08:59] We should be those that really are bringing heaven to bear upon this earth. [00:09:11] When you look at the Lord Jesus. [00:09:13] You really look at the Lord Jesus. [00:09:17] You sit back from many of our preconceptions. And just reflect upon who the Lord Jesus was and how he lived. You must, in the end, say this about him. It was not so much what he said. [00:09:33] It wasn't really so much what he did. It was what he was. [00:09:40] The Lord Jesus. [00:09:43] If you read the four gospels. You will find that the Lord Jesus was all the time in the presence of the greatest need. [00:09:55] The Lord Jesus was not found amongst the religious of his deadly. [00:10:00] Indeed, as far as that was concerned. He was shut out from the truly religious of his day. The Pharisees. The Pharisees took a very superior attitude. As far as the Lord Jesus was concerned. [00:10:16] He was him all the time. In the midst of the world as we know it. He was found in the most remarkable of places. For instance, you remember once the Lord Jesus said to them, John the Baptist came. [00:10:33] He neither ate bread. Neither did he drink wine. Yet you said, you rejected him. Now, I come. [00:10:44] I eat bread and I drink wine. But you say, I am gluttonous and a wine bidder. [00:10:50] This is a rather remarkable testimony. [00:10:54] And a key to what the religious of the day thought about the Lord Jesus. [00:10:59] They felt he was so involved with the world. So in the midst of the world. That they felt somehow or other. There was something wrong about his testimony. [00:11:15] We have lost in the 20th century. The link that there must be between the church, the world. [00:11:27] Either the church has become the world. [00:11:32] Or the church is so far removed from the world. That it cannot understand what is going on in the world. [00:11:42] The Lord Jesus was in vital touch with the world. He never compromised himself. He never became involved. [00:11:52] And yet he was right in the very midst of the world. The immoral could touch the Lord Jesus. Now, you know as well as I do. That the pharisee or the good orthodox jew. Was not even allowed to touch an immoral person. They would draw away from any ceremonial defilement. From the touch of an immoral person. Or anything that was unclean. [00:12:19] Legally, scripturally. [00:12:24] Yet we find the Lord Jesus has his head anointed. His feet anointed. And wiped with the hair of a woman who was a moral. [00:12:36] We find others, publicans. And sinners. This word continually reoccurs in the gospels, finding their way into his very presence, sitting with him and eating with him. No good jew would sit and eat with a publican and a sinner because he would immediately become defiled. [00:12:56] Yet the Lord Jesus was able to move right into this world and amongst this world, not involving himself, not becoming compromised, not in any way becoming changed, be right, as it were, at the heart of it, to be able to feel its pulse. [00:13:23] Really, when you see clearly what the testimony of Jesus was, it shatters a thousand preconceptions. [00:13:37] Never be the same again. [00:13:39] What really was the testimony of Jesus? [00:13:42] It was a testimony to reality. [00:13:45] A testimony to what? To who God is, to what he liked, to his character, to his purpose, to all that he intended. [00:13:58] When the Lord Jesus, as it were, gate crashed this world for the first time by his own positive life, he showed up. What was a lie. Wherever he went, people were shattered. They only had to see him, and they were shattered. The unreality that they'd lived in for years and years was suddenly just mashed up and seen for what it was, just superficiality, artificiality. [00:14:27] Just by seeing him, just by coming in his presence, just by listening to his words, men and women who become broken people, perverted people bound in bondage to sin, suddenly became in touch with Christ. And somehow or other, they knew immediately the difference between him and the religious world. They knew the difference between Christ and the temple, between Christ and the priesthood, between Christ and religion. [00:15:05] That's why, it says, the common people heard him gladly. [00:15:10] They knew reality. [00:15:14] The testimony of Jesus was simply the bearing into this world, of the character of God. [00:15:26] This world had lost its touch with God. God was shut out of this world. God was afar off from this world. [00:15:35] And this world has settled down to a lie, to a life which is built on a delusion, a life which has, at its very core, unreality from birth to death, and everything to do with it is constituted in that unreality, that artificiality, even its religion. [00:16:00] The Lord Jesus, as it were, was planted into this world in the midst of it all, and lived a life that was altogether different, a life which was from above, a life which was heavenly. [00:16:13] He showed to this world who the father was. He showed to the world what the father was like. [00:16:21] He declared him. [00:16:24] It says, john says in his, the opening part of his gospel, no man hath seen the father at any time, the only begotten who is in the bosom of the Father. He hath declared him or brought him into view that was the testimony of Jesus. [00:16:44] I believe that the testimony of Jesus was not merely someone bearing witness to what God is like and who God is, but the testimony of Jesus was the fact that the Lord Jesus was God. [00:17:00] Was God not just bearing testimony to him, but he was in his very being, like Goddesse. He had the life of God. He had the love of God. He had the light of God. He was God himself in the flesh, God in man. [00:17:22] This was the testimony. This was a kind of life. [00:17:26] It wasn't. The Lord Jesus just got up and said, the father's like this and the father's like that, and this is what the father would have you do. [00:17:37] It was rather that the Lord Jesus was the father expressed. When men and women saw him, they just suddenly inwardly saw God. They understood. That's why you again and again get in the gospel. Men suddenly just collapsing onto their knees, bowing and worshiping him. [00:18:00] He could do nothing else. [00:18:02] That is why you get those wonderfully sudden acclamations. Start with Christ, the son of the living God. [00:18:12] Not once, but two or three times. [00:18:17] This was a testimony, the testimony of Jesus. [00:18:24] Lord Jesus came into this world. [00:18:26] It was, I might say, to destroy him who had the power of death. [00:18:33] It was to destroy the works of the devil. How did he destroy the works of the devil? He destroyed the works of the devil, not by preaching nor by doing, but by being. [00:18:48] The Lord Jesus destroyed the works of the devil by being. Just being. [00:18:54] His words and his works came about out of what he was, because of what he was. He spoke as he did and he worked as he did. [00:19:05] Everything that was outward was the expression of what was inward. [00:19:10] Wherever the Lord Jesus went, hell crumbled. [00:19:16] Satan bowed down everywhere. [00:19:21] Here you get. Just look at the scene. You get people twisted in bodies possessed by evil spirits, people who are blind, people who are dead, people who are lame, people who are dead everywhere. These are the works of the devil. Works of the devil. Blindness is a work of the devil. Deafness is a work of the devil. Lameness is a work of the devil. [00:19:45] Death is the final work of the devil. Everywhere, on every side. Symbolically, the Lord Jesus was surrounded by the works of the devil. [00:19:57] Wherever he went, he undid the works of the devil. He gave the blind their sight, the deaf, their hearing, the lame the use of their limbs, the dead, their life everywhere. [00:20:10] How did he do it? [00:20:12] By a life that was inside, by a being. [00:20:16] This was the testimony of Jesus. [00:20:20] This is the testimony. [00:20:23] A while ago, someone wrote a play or a story of what they thought would happen if the Lord Jesus again came into this world in the way that he came to it 2000 years ago and in the 20th century, conditions and life, he just put into everyday word exactly what would happen all over again. How he would grow up, how the churches would shut their doors against him, how he wouldn't be allowed to speak even in evangelical pulpit, how he would just be someone who was very much looked for scandals. [00:21:02] And how you would find him in public houses, in places where you would least expect to find God in finding, in touch with human need, not becoming involved, not becoming a compromise, not in any way becoming tainted, but positively pouring into those places. [00:21:31] The life of God. [00:21:37] The church has lost oh so much by holding itself in from the world. [00:21:46] Its fear of contamination, its fear of any compromise, its fear of involvement, its lust. [00:22:00] I say the Lord Jesus of the testimony to God when he was here on earth. [00:22:13] The cross, of course, was the final culmination in his life. [00:22:20] We call it failure. [00:22:22] Our Lord Jesus was here today again. [00:22:25] We would call it the biggest failure that we'd ever seen. [00:22:32] It healed others, saved others, it raised others from the dead. But now he was seemingly in weakness, nailed to a twig, and seemingly he couldn't get down from it. [00:22:46] Seemingly. Now he was bound to a cruel death. We would have called that sailor. [00:22:53] And when he cried out, oh my God, my God, why art thou forsaken me? When he was a wife. [00:23:03] But that was the culmination of his testimony. [00:23:10] He was only expressing the but the fullest point in his whole life. The love of God and the character of God and the life of God. God always wins by lying down. [00:23:29] So really, when we come to look at it, this question of the testimony of Jesus is a tremendous thing bound up with you and me. [00:23:42] You and I. We are those who've been called upon to hold the testimony of Jesus. [00:23:50] And if we haven't got a kind of life which is exactly the same for the life that we find in the New Testament, then we are in danger of living something that is in something which is a substitute or something which is a counterfeit. [00:24:09] Lord Jesus expressly said, ye shall do greater things. Why did he say that? Because he knew that once he died and been raised again and ascended to the Father, when the Holy Spirit had come, the same life, the same character and the same being would be reproduced in a people and that life and that character and that being is in the 20th century as capable as in the past of doing everything that it did. Then we have a life in us which is indestructible. Which is incorruptible. [00:24:53] When you look at acts, you will find that Luke did a remarkable thing. First, in his gospel of Luke, he traced a whole lot of things that the Lord Jesus did. Then if you go over to the book of acts, you find he traces a whole lot of things that are obviously meant to correspond to what the Lord Jesus did, in the same way that the Lord Jesus healed the lame, healed the blind, gave back life to the dead. So now we find the church doing exactly the same, giving back sight to the blind, healing the one who's lame, raising the dead, the very prerogative of God. [00:25:37] The church was able to raise the dead in the first century. [00:25:47] Symbolically, however we liked to think of it, it is absolutely true that a correspondence designed in Luke and act between what the Lord Jesus did and what the church does. [00:26:06] Why is there a correspondence? [00:26:12] There is a correspondence because the church and the book of acts, it's holding the testimony of Jesus. Here you've got a company of those that are absolutely integrated into one life. They are a body. At that time, there was no talk of a body, there was no talk of a house. As far as they were concerned, the temple still stood and that hadn't developed yet. Stephen was the first one to start to mention the possibility of seeking, as it were, to define the church later on. That's carried up by into Paul. Paul really starts defying by the Holy Spirit what the body is, what the church is. But get right back to the book of acts before there was any definition. And what do we find at the beginning of the Book of Acts? We find that the very same thing is happening all over again. The church is in touch with the world. [00:27:10] It's right at the heart of the world. [00:27:15] And it is so at the heart of the world that men and women are coming to them with their needs, with their problems, with their difficulties. [00:27:23] Everywhere you find somehow or other, the Lord Jesus is reaching out through his members and healing, restoring. [00:27:36] Say, then, we love to think that souls can only be saved in evangelistic medium. But God's real method is to make every single child of God a true, a truly fruitful person. [00:28:01] The way that is absolutely New Testament, not big evangelistic meetings, but everyone, someone who's bringing someone in. [00:28:18] You look at the testimony of Jesus and you see there that there's a light, there's a character, there's a being which, wherever it goes, is indestructible. Let all jury rise up to eliminate it. Let all the political forces come together and smash it on the cross on the third day, it's risen. [00:28:39] That's a life, that's a character, that's a being. [00:28:43] When the world has done its work and this kind of character, this kind of life, can give itself over into the hands of the world. It can become like a little lambda. It can become so meek that it can just be bullied, be pushed, be spat upon, be smitten, be kicked, be cursed. [00:29:03] It's so strong that it can be nailed to a cross and never curse those that do it damage. [00:29:14] And yet this life will overcome. [00:29:19] You don't have to fight for it. [00:29:21] You don't have to stick up for it. [00:29:25] You don't in one way even have to propagate it. [00:29:29] It's a life that is so wonderful that once it's there, nothing on earth can hold it back, could stop it. [00:29:38] That really is the testimony of Jesus, and that is what we find in the book of acts. [00:29:46] You cannot stop this kind of thing. [00:29:49] It's a life, it's a character, it's a being. Now it's reproduced in a people. Here you see Peter and John, those different men, now they've got something. [00:30:02] They always say the same thing in the name of Jesus Christ. [00:30:10] Always, it's in the name of Jesus Christ. They've got a secret. It's not a formula. Most people think it's just a formula. You just say over someone, in the name of Jesus Christ, be thou healed or be thou raised. [00:30:23] That's a formula. Nothing this in the name of Jesus Christ, be thou healed or be thou raised. As they said continually was not a formula. It was a testimony of an experience. [00:30:35] They were gathered in the name of Jesus. They had come to share the name of Jesus. They had become the very body of Jesus. [00:30:45] Somehow they had been incorporated into his name, and therefore they were able to bring his life and his character and his being to bear upon different situations. [00:31:00] That really is the testimony of Jesus. [00:31:06] It is something that one we find very hard to find, very hard to explain, but, oh, it's so important that we should see it. [00:31:19] When I think of our homes, our offices and this area, you wonder, well, what is happening. [00:31:33] You think the whole of Europe, you underbody test. [00:31:39] We are told we shall do great. [00:31:42] We are told we've got a life and a character or a being, which whenever Satan comes into touch with it by does he will to overcome it. [00:31:52] And even when the Lord permits him to seemingly have his way, can never destroy it. It always comes out alone. [00:32:03] You must seriously question what is really wrong. [00:32:11] Is the 20th century more difficult than the first? [00:32:17] Or has the life of God become tired between the first century and the 20th century? [00:32:26] Is the life of God beginning to lose out now in the 20th century? [00:32:31] Or is the Lord Jesus becoming lethargic? [00:32:38] What has happened between the first and the 20th century? [00:32:45] You've got there the secret of a tremendous amount when you really look into it. [00:32:55] We tend so quickly and so easily to wrongly lose our touch with this world, and so easily and so quickly to get a wrong link with this world. [00:33:08] On the one side, we seem to be ready to run into a compromise with this world, but on the other side, we seem to draw back from any real right link with this world. [00:33:25] That's the testimony of Jesus. And sometimes when I see and hear of these movements and these organizations and these companies and these fellowships that are all so good and so godly and are going on so much, and I've got all the teaching and all the light and so on, and then I say, and where is the link with this world? I believe the enemy's greatest work is to smash the link between the people of God and this world. [00:34:01] We are a vessel of goddess. [00:34:05] We have a light. [00:34:07] We have a light. [00:34:09] And this world is absolutely crying out for the need of it. [00:34:16] People have often tried to tell me how hard the world is to move, how apathetic they are, how very difficult it is to really move them. But I don't believe it for a minute. [00:34:33] The Billy Graham campaign proved the exact opposite, that underneath it all, in this hardened, gospel, hardened country, underneath it all, there is a tremendous hunger, really, for God. [00:34:55] But you've got to give the people the real thing. When they see reality, they'll be moved. [00:35:02] It has been a fact that in every move of the Holy Spirit, the common people have always heard glad in every move. It doesn't matter whether it was the Puritans or whether it was the Quakers, or whether it was the Methodists or whether it was the Brethren. In every single move of the Holy Spirit, it had always been a common people who gladly heard. And in every single day, there have been those that have said that they're also hardened. They're damned. [00:35:32] Although no good praying for them, they said, in Wesley's day, they called him a fool, for even seeking to reach the outsider. But once the world sees reality and once the world hears reality, that there's something that is moved and stirred within. [00:35:56] The tragedy is that this world is often, in many ways, though, it lives a life of unreality, more in need of reality than some of the people of God, religion can become the greatest, the greatest conscious hope possible. [00:36:17] And it can become so with many good christian people. [00:36:22] They go to their meetings, they read their bibles, they say their little prayers, and they have absolutely no effect whatsoever upon this world. No effect. [00:36:34] And yet they can go on drastically wrong. Drastically wrong. [00:36:45] Many will find that far too late to put anything right. When they stand in the presence of the Lord. We shall discover. What on earth were we doing? [00:36:54] What on earth were we doing now? [00:37:02] All our Bible reading and Bible knowledge and everything else. What was the good of it? I believe that the Lord Jesus heart is as broken as ever it was over this world. [00:37:16] I see the church without any concern for the world whatsoever. I just wonder, wonder what on earth has happened to us. [00:37:25] Lord Jesus, the heart that was all the time being moved. Being moved. [00:37:31] Moved. Him did this because he was moved. He did that because he was moved. He saw something that reacted and registered on it. [00:37:43] The terrible, terrible thing that many of us are just absolutely big wins when we should be living jointly supply. [00:37:56] We can only spend our time criticizing. [00:38:01] And as you well know, criticism is generally and nearly always a means of evading an issue, a personal issue, in the audience. Greatest critics are usually always those who are not doing anything. [00:38:19] They are spectators. [00:38:23] Get right into the battle. Commit yourself utterly to the law. Bring yourself at his feet. You'll find plenty of thought everywhere except him. [00:38:34] But there's a means of doing so. [00:38:39] Many people often come to us with criticisms, not only of the folk here and what happens here, but of other things. And I've always wished to be able to be rude, but I've never had the courage yet to do it. And to say, when did you love lead a person to the Lord? [00:39:07] I don't believe anyone has any right to criticize another child of God until they themselves are living joints of supply. Then they have a right to make suggestions. [00:39:22] All these quibbling, quarreling, critical backbiting galleries. People, the jew says, restless waves of the sea, clouds without water, trees plucked up. [00:39:43] They can't bear them. They're not even allowed. [00:39:50] We've been called to a tremendous task as the people of God, not just here, as the people of God everywhere. It is to bear and to hold the testimony of Jesus in a world that is more needy than ever. [00:40:05] It's heard the gospel, and there's a sense in which it's witnesses that that gospel has not touched. [00:40:14] It needs to see a light. [00:40:17] When the world sees a light and a character and a being, it will be stirred, and that life and that character and that being is found in a people and not in a person. [00:40:32] It is vested not now in the Lord Jesus personally, but in his body. [00:40:37] You get the body. Really get the body. Not just pain connected together, but get the body. Put the godly head, get the body really integrated, really built together, really harmonized. [00:40:52] And then you start seeing what the world is. It's not a question of people just coming to meetings and seeing something. They see it in the office. They see it in the home. They see something. Because as you be joined your brothers and sisters, you become a joint. And suddenly the life and character and being of the Lord Jesus. Starts to flow through you wherever you are. And you can take a person like that. And you can plant them in the most forsaken spot of this earth. And they will become a living church once you've got them living members of the body. [00:41:26] The japanese war. Brother Ni and brother Li took hold of chinese brethrene. And they bonded them together in twos. Young people in their twenties. And they sent them to outer Mongolia. And they said, you go to that town and you go to that town, and you go to that town, and you go to that town. And those poor, fearful and crushed young people. Went out alone. At the end of the japanese war, over the whole of outer and inner Mongolia. Were living churches. [00:41:59] In every place where those young people had been sent. They were given one word. You're to fall into the ground, die. [00:42:07] That's all. Not preach, not work. But you're to go there and fall into the ground and die. [00:42:14] And in every place where they died, a living church alone. [00:42:21] And in every place where they were, they remained too. [00:42:27] Brother James was not one of those. [00:42:31] He was too young. [00:42:33] But he remembers, and he told you here that when he went to that yenam. Where the communists first began 30 years ago. The most communist area and politically conscious area of China, he went there. He was given one devastating word before he left. You are to fall into the ground and die. [00:42:56] And he went. And for six months he fought. And after six months, he capitulated, and he spiritually died. And when he left, they had to pull down the old church building. And build a bigger one man who had the life of God inside. And knew the secret of the increase and flow of that night. [00:43:22] You must understand that between the gospels and acts. There was the devastating experience of the cross. [00:43:29] But when that devastating experience had taken place. What was in one person on this earth. And that in the jewish nation in Palestine. [00:43:41] What was only in one place, in one locality, in one place on this earth after the cross was carried in vessels to the ends of the earth to be planted everywhere and the same things that happened there. [00:44:03] We pray for brother Enty in Ghana and we pray for him because we believe that God doesn't have to have a mighty organization and a thousand prayer partners and dozens of workers. God needs to have only one man who is prepared to die in any given spot of this earth. And God will do the rest. [00:44:32] God will do the rest. And I wrote to brother et, I said that to me, brother empty. All you have to do is to fall into the ground and die where you are. And God will change God that all he has to do and that all you and I have to do, that is the hardest thing of all. [00:44:57] It is easier to preach and preach and preach till you drop at a heartbeat or work and work and work till you have a nervous breakdown. [00:45:06] But just to take the ground of the cross and die in front of your Bible solicitor, amongst your brothers, in front of the world, in your home, in your office. [00:45:24] Thing of all, God preserve us from work as work and preaching as preaching and campaigns as campaigns. [00:45:37] God just keeps simple as truth of all that is simplicity of class. [00:45:44] We've got to have a kind of life, a kind of character, a kind, kind of being inside which can be imparted to us. [00:45:58] Get that inner people, and you've got the secret of it all. [00:46:07] Let the critics criticize us, let the talkers talk. [00:46:12] Brothers and sisters, they can only do one thing, they can only work the cross in us. [00:46:19] That's all. [00:46:21] Bow down, submit to them. Put yourself into their hands. Don't fight, don't answer, don't hit back, don't do anything. Just, just put yourself into their hands all the time. Put yourself into their head when they write to you, when they speak to you and just listen. And if you can do what you can to put any matter away, go as far as you can. Give the second post, go the second last. [00:46:49] Always, but always die. Never run it, never take up anything. [00:46:59] We don't have to worry about difficult people. People often say, well, what can we do? I have many companies in the country and they said to me, we've got difficult people in that country, but it doesn't matter if there are 50 difficult people and three people who know the Lord in a deep way. Let the three people, let the 50 people do their work. [00:47:20] God will use the 50 to break the three, but God will take up the three in the end. [00:47:28] Now that's the sphere where we learn the way of the cross. But that is the most important sphere of all. [00:47:36] If we can only learn that you know what will happen, you will be amazed at what will happen in your offices, in your home, everywhere where we are, we should be amazed that suddenly something cracks, something crumbled, something just is split wide open. What has happened? What has happened? We just be all same people. We just seem to be the same people. But now something happens wherever we go. That something is a life, that something as a character, that something as a being, it is the Lord Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Wherever that life goes, it will die. [00:48:13] That is why God allows when he's got such a thing, he allows Satan to have the muslim mock control. [00:48:28] Do you know that as far as we know, of the twelve apostles, eleven of them were crucified or executed? They were martyred. [00:48:39] Indeed, tradition tells us that all twelve are martyred. [00:48:44] There seems to be some good ground for saying that at least eleven were. [00:48:49] They ended in a way that was akin to their lord. [00:48:57] Their work ended in seeming failure as far as world. [00:49:02] A patient weakness, a patient broken. [00:49:07] But it was there that they most gloriously tried. In the end it was the key and key to the rest of their lives. [00:49:20] So it's happening again in this world and it will happen probably in the end here. [00:49:26] Once we've got the secret, once we've got the secret, then God will allow us to go through many things we would not have gone through if we hadn't got the secret. [00:49:38] Then he allows us to be given up to this world, bandied about in this world, pushed around, trodden off martyr. [00:49:51] But once God has got that kind of life in that kind of people, even when you destroy their bodies, you can't destroy the life. The blood of the martyr is the seed of the church so that for every one die, many are there. [00:50:13] Let us then this evening see perhaps a little of the real nature of the testimony of Jesus. [00:50:23] Oh, here we should be people who are doing greater works than those in our places of work. Wherever we are there are people, spiritually blind, spiritually dead, spiritually paralyzed, spiritually broken and perverted. People who look at us, what do they see? [00:50:48] Do they see religion? [00:50:50] Do they see christians? [00:50:53] Do they just see people or do they see them? [00:50:59] We ought to be living epistles, read on all men. [00:51:04] That's what the Lord will make us to be. People who've got a life and a character that is not really on earth. [00:51:14] Our fear and comfort. [00:51:29] Lord, we do not know what to say, but we do ask simply together that thou wilt really write something upon every one of our hearts. Thou knowest our capacities, Lord, each one of us, to evade issues or to pitch them onto others. [00:51:47] We pray thee, dear Lord of tonight. We may every one really seek thee that we might be those so built together and so growing up into thee that we shall have that that life that this world so desperately needs, Lord, art putting us into all kinds of situations of impossibility. [00:52:10] But we believe that thy resurrection life is able, o beloved Lord, we ask thee together, have thy way in every one of us and in us as a people to this world may really be touched. O establish that right link, Lord, with this world that as thou didst walk amongst it, Lord. O cause thy church in the 20th century to truly walk amongst it. We ask it, dear Lord, I in his precious name, to whom be the glory forever and ever. [00:52:50] Amen.