Romans IV

Authorities and Authority

Romans 13:07

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

This is the last Sunday, loved ones, that we will discuss the relationship of God’s children to the
civil government and that’s because we’re coming to the end of this portion in Romans 13 where God
talks to us about the Christian in politics. Many of you have agreed with some of the things I’ve
shared and have found them in your own experience, and many of you, I know, think differently. And
it seems to me very important that in this last conversation that we have that I give an
introduction and then give you an opportunity to ask questions that you think express maybe another
important side to the issue.

So loved ones, we’re coming to the last of this portion of Romans 13, and we’ve come to the verse
where Paul summarizes what God has said through him about our relationship to the civil authorities.
You’ll see how Paul puts it in Romans 13:7, “Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are
due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.”
In other words, God is saying through Paul, “You ought to give the civil and political authorities
what is due to them because of their position — what is due to them in money and what is due to
them in respect. You ought to pay the Federal and the State income taxes. You ought to pay the
import duties and the tariffs. You ought to show respect to teachers, to policemen, to judges, to
all Federal and State authorities and you ought to give honor to people in those positions. You
ought to give honor to the President of the United States and to all other people who are in
positions of official authority, both political and civil.”

Why? Well actually the biggest reason, loved ones, is Romans 13:1. That’s the biggest reason of
all. “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” Because God says so, that’s why.
That’s the first reason you should do it. If you say, “Why not kind of circumvent their regulations
if you possibly can? Why not treat the President or the judges or the policemen as figures of fun?
Why not treat them according to their ordinary human weaknesses and frailties or according to their
own abilities and virtues? Why not make fun of teachers? Why not make fun of people in authority?
Why not try to get around the regulations and find loopholes in their system if you possibly can?”

Well, the biggest reason is because God says you shouldn’t. That’s the biggest reason of all. He
says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” And loved ones, just about a
second after you die, there’ll come a moment when you’re alone; absolutely alone. And it will
require your blind and immediate obedience to the God of the universe at that moment, to go down the
right pathway in that twilight zone between life and death. And that blind and immediate obedience
does not come after a life of disobedience. It will only come at that crucial moment, a second
after you die, because you have practiced a habit of obedience to your God. And then, at that
moment when you’ll be coming out of whatever it is — the pains of cancer or unconsciousness — at
that moment, you’ll immediately obey your Lord at the crucial time. So that’s why we should do this
— because God says it.

Now if you say, “Does he tell us why he says that — why he tells us to give such respect and such
submission to these civil and political authorities?” He does loved ones, and you’ll find it in
Romans 13:4a: “For he is God’s servant for your good.” For he is God’s servant, that’s why. You’re
paying them and their salaries because they are God’s servants. “God’s servants — you mean people

like Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover were God’s
servants?” Yes, that’s what God says; God says they are his servants.

Now you may say, “That’s stupid. There are thousands of men like that in political and civil places
of authority throughout the world that don’t care a bit about God. They don’t even believe in God;
or if they do believe him they just blaspheme his name. How can you say they’re God’s servants when
they have no interest in God and no interest in doing his will?”

Loved ones, in the same way as God called another such person his servant. There was another mighty
king that opposed God’s will for his people in every way possible and yet God used him as his
servant.

You’ll find that in Romans 9:17: “For the scripture says to Pharaoh” (Pharaoh was the enemy) “I
have raised you up.” Or God, in other words says, “I have raised you up for the very purpose of
showing my power in you so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”

God didn’t make Pharaoh bad; Pharaoh chose to be bad himself. But then God used him — so, in that
sense, God’s servants. In other words, to make it clear, you can look at the rest of Romans 13:4a to
see in what sense God’s servant: “For he is God’s servant for your good.” That’s it. God used
Cyrus who was not a Jew. He used Pharaoh who was not a Jew. He used the Babylonians who were utterly
opposed to Israel. He used many of the nations, who didn’t believe in God, as his servants to
provide for the survival of Israel.

In that same sense God uses the civil and political authorities to provide for our survival. It’s in
that sense, loved ones, that they are God’s servants. You remember how all that civil and political
authority business started. It was back in the early days of the world’s creation when a certain
chaotic situation occurred. You’ll find it in Genesis 6:5, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually.” Then in Genesis 6:11, “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and the earth was
filled with violence. And God saw the earth, and behold it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted
their way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh; for
the earth is filled with violence through them; behold I will destroy them with the earth.'” The
place was so chaotic because of us all doing what we wanted that God had to destroy the whole place,
except for Noah and his family, with the universal flood that lasted for a year.

Then the flood disappeared and God made a strange kind of promise. You’ll find it in Genesis 8:21.
“And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, ‘I will never again curse
the ground because of man, for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I
ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.'” God promised, “I’ll never destroy the
earth again, but in order to corral the selfishness of man and their determination to destroy each
other, I am going to initiate the rule of law.”

That occurred in Genesis 9:6 when God established the basic law of all civil laws:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”
That was the beginning of civil government and political authority. God did it to keep us from
destroying each other, so that all of us who will eventually receive Jesus would have the chance of
doing so without being wiped out by the chaos and anarchy and violence around us.

So that’s why political government exists, loved ones. And that’s why God has made these political

and civil authorities his servants for our good in order to keep us alive. In other words, God uses
the policemen and the judges and the Presidents and the legal authorities to prevent the cruel hands
from choking us to death before we have a chance to get to know Jesus. That’s using the power of the
sword to restrain the cruel hands from creating chaos and violence in our society and destroying us
before we have a chance to get to know Jesus.

The power of the Spirit in the body of Christ exists to change the cruel hearts that direct the
cruel hands. It’s an entirely different function we have as the body of Jesus. Our job is not to
restrain the cruel hands — that’s the job of the civil and the political authorities. Our job, as
the body of Jesus, is to change the cruel hearts that direct those cruel hands and that’s why God
initiated civil authority and why we are to respect it.

Every time we see the civil authorities in that light, we release certain powers. Every time we see
the President — not as a silly cartoon figure that we regard as just an ordinary man, or, at the
same time, as a kind of royal President that we elevate beyond any criticism — but instead see him
as a man that God has allowed to come into that position. And when we see that he is God’s servant
in order to preserve us from violence and chaos, we see him by faith. By faith we see him in the
position as God’s servant, rather than seeing him by sight as somebody we’ve elected, or as some
ordinary person who is trying to do a job that’s too big for them.

And every time we do that – every time we know these figures of authority, not according to the
flesh; not as the other non-Christians regard them — as people who happened to get elected — but
every time we know them after the Spirit — as people who are God’s servants to us, we release two
mighty powers to influence their hearts.

The first is found in Proverbs 21:1. And every time we look at them in faith it is unto us according
to our faith in regard to this mighty truth. “The king’s heart” — or the President’s heart or the
boss’s heart or the manager’s heart or the foreman’s heart or the teacher’s heart or the professor’s
heart or my father’s heart– “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he
turns it wherever he will.” It’s a stream of water coming down from the faucet. God overrules
according to the faith of his people that these men are his servants. God is able to overrule even
their wrong decisions so that it does not turn out for our harm; but it turns out for our good.

The other mighty power it releases is in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them
that love God.” God works all things for our good even through the drunken cop on the end of the
street, or the cop that takes bribes from prostitutes. He is able to use the good judge and the fair
judge as well as the alcoholic judge. God is able to turn them in his hands as long as his children
will see them by faith as God’s servants whose purpose is to preserve the world from chaos while
they, as God’s children, allow his Spirit to change people’s heart’s through their lives.

Now you may say, “What about when they use your taxes to fund abortion or to build nuclear
submarines? What if they use your taxes to do things that you don’t believe are right?” Well loved
ones, in a democracy like ours, where the majority rule has to count whether we like it or not, you
first of all vote. You exercise your right to vote to get the right person in. You write to your
representatives in Washington, deluging them with mail if you want to. But you write to them. You
run for office yourself, if God calls you to that vocation.

But you do not further God’s will by disobeying his direct command to pay them their taxes and to
give them respect. Do you see that? Such civil disobedience as refusing to pay taxes or refusing to

give them the respect that God tells you to give them, simply furthers the cause of chaos and
anarchy and it cannot be used by God to change their hearts. It cannot be used by God to change
them, themselves.

In other words, we are in the same position as Jesus: “Put away your sword. If my kingdom were of
this world, my servants would fight. But my kingdom is not of this world — my kingdom is not this
external kingdom of America or Russia. My kingdom is within men’s hearts. That’s the kingdom that
will remain after death occurs. That’s the kingdom I am fighting for.” And loved ones, for those
of us who are God’s children, civil disobedience is a civilian pursuit. It’s something that
soldiers of the Cross do not get involved in because they have one task — and that is to bring
hearts into the kingdom of Jesus. And they will do anything to do that.

What if the authorities tell you to do something that would force you to disobey God — what do you
do? If the civil authorities tell you to do something that would force you to disobey God, what do
you do? Well loved ones, it’s clear and is found in Acts 5:27. This situation occurred several
times in the New Testament and this is one of them. “And when they had brought them, they set them
before the counsel. And the high priest questioned them, saying, ‘We strictly charged you not to
teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring
this man’s blood upon us.’ But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than
men’.” That’s it.

Actually, our present government here in the States allows you a great deal of latitude: you can
educate your children at home if you want, you can start your own schools if you want, and you can
refuse military service if you want. In most ways, we are able to submit to God and to submit to the
government also. But if there should ever come a time when you have to choose, you obviously are
told, by God himself, that you must choose God.

What if you live in a fascist society, or one of the military dictatorships of South America, or a
godless oligarchy like Russia? The same truth applies, and it’s the basic truth; the king’s heart
is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. That’s the basic truth for every ordinary Christian.
Even in a Siberian prison you can still love God and have heaven in your heart. Even when you’re
about to be executed the next day, it is still true that God can control the worst dictator in the
world for your good. Maybe not for your present happiness in this life, but he still can control it
so that you will enter heaven, whatever occurs in this present life. That’s the general, basic,
guide that God gives to us, and thank God that he gives us that.

How many of us here are not facing Siberian prisons, but we’re facing difficult circumstances and
hard things and we live or work in awkward situations? Loved ones, the truth is that there is no
external circumstance that can prevent you being a full, complete child of God and going to heaven
when you leave this world. God has assured us of that.

Now, I’ll keep quiet so that you can ask questions.

Q:(cid:9)

A:(cid:9)The question is roughly this: Doug is pushing me on capital punishment. He’s pleading all kinds
of the best examples possible so that I would agree with him! I understand Chuck Colson’s
encouragement that you give as much time to prisoners to repent as possible. But it’s interesting,
Doug, even in Chuck Colson’s last newsletter, there was a detailed account of a man, who has a

friend here in the body who knows him and prayed for him in those important days, and even that dear
man pleaded that they would execute him and that he would receive what was due to him. He had
repented and had become a Christian and died a Christian.

As someone wrote me in a little note: “What about people like David, or some of the kings like Saul
who obviously weren’t executed even though they caused another man’s death? Well, maybe because
they caused it indirectly, but I still think they were due death. In each case, you remember,
death reigned throughout the family: David’s son was killed, and there were others that continued
to be killed as a result of his action. So it seems that in those special cases, because they were
the kings and were still being used by God, they were not executed but the execution was virtually
carried out in their families.

It seems Doug, difficult to find in this book (the Bible), reason for opposing capital punishment
unless you hopelessly and illogically mix up the realm of the civil authority and the religious
authority. Then you start applying the Sermon on the Mount to the political authorities – “turn the
other cheek” and all that. But then that prevents war. If you’re going to apply that to political
authorities, nobody can fight. And the truth is that the Sermon on the Mount and the whole spirit
of those commands is given to the heart within; the kingdom that reigns within our hearts. But
still, there are mosaic laws that apply to the external civil authorities.

In other words, loved ones, you’d be in a hedonistic situation if you started to try to apply the
law of continual forgiveness in the case of every robbery that took place: there would be chaos.
You’d be opposing the whole purpose of God’s laws, which is to create order and prevent chaos and
anarchy. But think what would happen if every time somebody did a million dollar Brinks job, we
simply said, “We forgive you!” They’d be doing it again tomorrow and it would become the rule of
the society.

So I think Doug, still, you have to keep on this side of the issue the political authorities that
govern by the mosaic law and on this side the kingdom: the authority of the kingdom and the
spiritual authority governed by Christ and his commandments.

Q:(cid:9)

A: I think I can respond, Tom, in a way that will put you at peace. Loved ones, when Jesus calls
you to stand up for something like abortion or to oppose abortion, I think you are governed by your
conscience to do it. But Tom, what I am desperately afraid of is that the church, as a whole,
begins to turn its eyes from saving souls to issues like that that are secondary to the saving of a
soul. So that’s what I’m concerned with. Brother, I’m with you. And I don’t think you should apply
what I’m saying to the individual. I think all of us are called by Jesus to stand up for different
things as Christians. But I was very concerned that with the whole impetus and drive in the
country, it would be like Jesus’ disciples suddenly turning from saving people’s souls and turning
around to abolish slavery. That would have been disastrous for us. We’d never have found the
kingdom. So that’s it.

No brother, I am for what you’re saying and I am for the individual’s right to do it. But I think,
loved ones, it’s very important that we, as a body of Jesus, do not get directed down a side road.
Do you know one of the concerns that are on some of our hearts about what we regard as a religious
movement that has taken place in America? How many missionaries has it sent abroad? You know that
the answer to that is pretty pathetic if you compare it with all the religious books that have been

published and all the churches that are filled with people.

It’s amazing how few missionaries have been sent out by it and the mark of revival is that there’s
always a great explosion of missionary endeavor: people are concerned first of all for others —
for those who do not know Jesus. That’s, I think, what God put on my heart: that we needed to keep
our searchlight on the main issue. It was a bit like the anti-Semitism attacks were for us, it was
vital to keep on preaching our way through Romans, looking for God’s word. We were not to get
deviated and start defending ourselves against anti-Semitism.

So loved ones, you’ll find that in your own life as well. There are a thousand side alleys you can
go down. But we have been introduced to Jesus for one reason — to introduce as many others to him
as possible before we die. That’s the purpose of our lives.

Q:(cid:9)

A: Loved ones, here’s what I would love to share with you — this time as a European. It’s very
important that we Irish, when we’re in Ireland, do not tell you in America what you should do in
your situation. But as a European could I say to you that it’s very important, too, that you don’t
try to tell us (in Ireland) what to do in our situation because it is so very, very different from
yours. And brother, that’s one great caution I would bring to each of us in this room. About as
much as we can manage is to get God’s mind on what we are to do in our own situation.

When we begin to talk about loved ones in Russia or in other countries, it seems to me we need to
talk with great caution and with great respect to their situations. So I would be very reluctant to
say, “Yes, that’s the answer”, but I do think that loved ones in Russia have already shown that
those who have grown in Jesus are those who have kept their eyes on Jesus. Those who have got
entangled either in trying to compromise with the authorities or trying simply to oppose the
authorities have found that they have got preoccupied with civilian pursuits.

So I would certainly agree that the whole attitude in Russia would be very possible for you to say
that God will not let anyone, even powerful leaders, do anything that will prevent me knowing Jesus
in my heart. And even if God allows me to be sent to a Siberian prison, he will so arrange things
that I will still be able, whatever brainwashing or torture I have to endure — to stay with Jesus.
I believe that that’s what has enabled many loved ones to die in peace in Russia. It seems to be
that that would certainly be a reasonable position to take and, loved ones, a position that many of
us in Europe have had to take. We’ve often been in situations where we haven’t been able to change
the circumstances. One of the beauties of America is you can often change the circumstances —
except that sometimes, now we’re beginning to find even we can’t change the circumstances.

As the power of evil intensifies in the world, we find it increasingly difficult to make things the
way we think they should be. And many of us in Europe and in Asia have suffered all kinds of
impossible external circumstances and yet lived in freedom in our hearts. I would submit to you
that probably the final circumstance of all that we each meet in this life is such a circumstance:
that circumstance when you stop breathing. At that moment, to all intents and purposes, our life
has ceased. And at that moment it’s so important to have our reality inside.

Q:(cid:9)

A: I am very skeptical, Jim, of the idea that there are legal revolutions. That’s the distinction

that some theologians make: that there are godly revolutions and ungodly revolutions. It seems to me
it does not stand up to logical analysis. The only thing I suppose one can say is that that majority
in a certain nation come to a certain point where God allows them to do certain things that are not
his ideal, just as he allowed Israel to have a king even though he didn’t think it was the ideal.

I am sure many of us who face the violence of our present society and some of the anarchy in our
present society have wondered if we’re not reaping some of the benefits of our attitude earlier on.
But it seems to me very difficult. I can’t answer that question (about God’s thoughts concerning
revolution). At least I am honest.

Q:(cid:9)

A: The question is regarding the issue of bearing arms. And it seems to me even our government
make provision for us to refuse and to do alternate service and that’s why I think it’s part of
the bewilderment that we have in trying to explain the origin of our nation. There is so much
evidence that God has blessed America and blessed us with an enlightened government and with a
liberal government and blessed those dear men, people like Jefferson and many who weren’t Christians
at all. He seems to have given them wisdom beyond their understanding for us. And I think all of
us who are Americans stand in the middle of a great miracle for which, loved ones, there’s no one
more grateful than the naturalized immigrant. He knows more than anybody else what a blessed country
we have. What a dear nation we have and what a great government we have.

Q:(cid:9)

A: It seems to me Jesus has called us to be responsible citizens in every way, loved ones. And it
seems to me what he is saying is do it with love in your heart and respect for your authorities and
not with a rebellion in your heart. But be responsible citizens and speak out on issues and use
your vote and exercise your right to vote and write to congressmen and run for offices as God guides
you. But do it with a heart that trusts God and not trusting your ability to change things. That’s
the heart of it, loved ones.

Trusting God that even if you are not able to get your way on abortion or even if we’re not able to
get our way on capital punishment, that God himself will so overrule that nothing will happen that
will prevent us doing what he wants us to do for Jesus and that, finally, the heart of the king is a
stream of water in the hand of the Lord. And loved ones, as we encourage our children to exercise
that faith, there’ll be a peace that they will come up in — not that fearfulness of the people
running to the mountains and storing in the food and the guns — but there’ll be a faith and a
confidence that our children will come up in knowing that we have someone who is governing the
governor. And that’s what’s so important: that we rest in that peace.

So you should know that, in regard to your bosses or those who are in authority over you, the heart
of each one of them is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. God will not allow anything to
happen to you that he cannot use for his glory in your life. That’s probably the final deliverance
from slavery, isn’t it?

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank you for the way you deal with everything in your world. And we thank you for
the book of Romans that has been such a blessing to us over these years. We thank you Father for

the encouraging direction you give us to trust that you are in charge even of the world leaders.

You are in control even of those military dictators and you are certainly in control of our
President and those in authority over us in this nation. Then we thank you, our Father, that with
that strong faith in our hearts, you are in a position to direct us to take certain actions.
Actions that stem from faith and not from fear. Actions that stem from your intuition in our hearts
and not from some label, phrase, or emotional issue that is raised by others.

Father we thank you that we can act from a position of quiet faith that God will work all things for
good to them that love him and that the heart of the king is a stream of water in the hand of the
Lord. And then we can act in peace and in blessing.

Lord, we thank you for that. We thank you Father that it applies to us in regard to our taxes and
in regard to those who are in authority over us in our businesses and in our jobs and in our
schools. Lord, we don’t need to be anxious about them or worry. You will allow them to do what is
good for us and nothing more. We thank you for that.

Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Putting Our Faith in God

Romans 13:8a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Have you ever thought that there are two ways to do your job day-by-day? There are two ways to carry
on your work. One way is to see your job as the only means you have of making the money that you
need to keep yourself alive and to keep your family alive. That’s the first way to see your work
and your job, as the only means that you have of getting the necessary money that is needed to keep
yourself alive and to keep your wife and your children alive. And of course, if you have that
attitude to your work, then you know that if you’re late for work or if you do something wrong at
work, fear goes through your heart that you won’t be able to pay your bills and to keep body and
soul together.

On the other hand, if you get a promotion or you do something well, your heart is kind of
exhilarated. You feel, “Boy, I’ve managed to win a little bit more security for myself.” And you
feel just that little bit more stable. That’s one way to regard your job and your daily work.

The second way is to really believe that you didn’t occur here by chance, but that a God has made
you. And that he really is the kind of Father that Jesus said he was. He feeds all the birds of the
air and he clothes all the grass of the fields. He loves you personally and he has put you here
knowing full well that he is your Father. He is responsible for you and he is a good Father. He
will not let you go without food and without clothing. He will take care of you. The job that you
have is just the work that he has fitted you to do to bring his world into order under his will.
That’s the other way to regard your job and your work.

In other words, it’s really a matter of whether you do your work by faith in God or by fear of man.
It’s really a question of whether you have your faith in your job and your work for getting what you
need in this life to keep you alive and to meet your material necessities — or whether you actually
have your faith in God to do those things. You see your work as something that God has given you
talent or ability to do to bring His world more into order under his will.

It really is a matter of whether you regard work as a commission from God or as a penalty for sin. I
don’t know if you know it, but a lot of people regard work as a penalty for sin. I’ll show you how
they get that, if you look at Genesis 3, loved ones, you’ll see it there in that record of the
distrust that man showed towards God in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:19, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out
of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And people read that verse and
they say, “There it is. In the sweat of your face. That’s work because I get sweaty when I work.
‘In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground.’ There! That’s what
God condemned man to after man had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and had
failed to trust God as his Father. That’s why work is the penalty of sin, and you can’t make work
enjoyable. It is a sweaty, miserable, worrisome task, and there’s no other way to do it. It’s a
condemnation from God. It isn’t God’s best for us.” Of course, that’s wrong.

God gave us the commission to work long before the Garden of Eden — long before the fall. I’ll
show you where He gave it, right in Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be

fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.'” God gave us
the commission to work and bring the earth into order long before we rebelled against Him.

What makes work a delight and a joy and what makes it miserable? Just the two things we talked about
at the beginning. If you put your faith in your work to meet your material needs, you’ll do it by
the sweat of your brow. You’ll be filled with anxiety and worry when it seems to be going wrong —
or when you seem to be losing your job because you’ll feel, “If I lose this job, I lose my very
survival and my ability to survive in this world. I won’t have these needs met that I have.”

So if you look at your work and put your faith in your work instead of in God for your survival,
your work will be a constant worry and anxiety. Every time the boss looks at you strangely, every
time the economy wavers, you’ll go down. Or you can look at your work as something that God has
given you to do to help Him complete His creation, and that He will provide your needs for you by
all kinds of visible and invisible ways. Sometimes it’s by the paycheck, sometimes beyond the
paychecks, sometimes by manipulating the way the bills come, sometimes by working the cash flow,
sometimes by gifts where you didn’t expect gifts, sometimes by cutting down your own needs without
you knowing that you’ve cut them down — all kinds of ways.

Miraculously, God has a thousand million permutations that He can work. If you put your faith in
Him for your material needs instead of in your job, your job and your work can be a delight and a
joy. Of course the tragedy is that most of us work under the curse, don’t we? I mean, we do! Most of
us work under the curse. You know as you sit there listening to me, your heart goes into your boots
if the company is beginning to tremble or hesitate.

Your heart goes. Oh you almost tremble. You almost get paralyzed when you think, “I could lose my
job, especially as the years go on.” Isn’t that so? The steadier you get in a position, the more
dependent you get into it, and the more dependent you are on it. The more panicky you get when you
think, “I am going to lose that job”, or, “I am going to have to change my career.”

So, a great number of us here live under that curse that is given there. It’s interesting. It’s not
that we don’t believe in God, sure it isn’t! We believe in God. We believe in God but we don’t count
on him for anything. Isn’t that a fact? It’s amazing. We believe in God. We believe he is nice,
and we believe he is kind, and he made us, and all that. And actually, in certain desperate
situations that we get into, where the thing gets out of our control, we turn to him. We’ve been
amazed at how well things have worked out. But then, you know what we do? We get back on our own
two feet. We begin to depend again on our own competence at our job, on the level progress of the
economy of the nation, on the money that is coming in week by week. And before you know it, we’re
up
on our hind legs again. And we’re independent of God.

We actually don’t count on him for anything. We count entirely on our job and on our own ability to
so manipulate things there that will keep the money coming in and will keep ourselves and our
families alive. In other words, we really have our faith in our job — not in our God.

I was brought up in Northern Ireland. We’re as work-ethic as you are. It was, “Stand up yourself.”
I remember my parents saying,” Get a good education. Get a good job because nobody else will look
after you if you don’t look after yourself.” So, most of us were brought up the same way. The
tragedy is that even though it’s good to work hard and it is good to stand up and be counted, and it

is good to be responsible — yet, it is a lie that the job supplies your needs.

It is God, who in His magnificent wisdom, has created all these jobs and has created all these
economies. He has created all the coal and the oil that we have on the earth, and has then said to
us, “Now, look. Don’t be dumb. I am the one that’s giving the gifts. Now, don’t start looking to
the gifts and having your faith in the gifts, because they come and they go. I have all kinds of
gifts that I haven’t shown you yet. So keep your trust in me. Don’t be silly, now. Don’t get your
trust onto the gifts. Don’t get it onto the job that you have. Don’t get it on to the money that
you’ve got. That all can go like that in a moment.” And of course, how well we all know that? It
can go in a moment. “You have your faith in me and I will supply every need of yours from my riches
in glory in Christ Jesus”.

Now loved ones, actually, we do the same with government. We were talking about that, you remember,
for weeks there in the summertime. We do the same with government as we do with our jobs. We look to
our jobs to provide us with our material needs instead of looking to God. We do the same with the
government, don’t we?

We really put our faith in the government. We kind of respect God, but we put our faith in the
government to maintain peace and order in our world and in our nation. We end up of course,
expecting too much from the government because the government can’t actually do that. It is only
God, himself, who can maintain sufficient order and peace in our world. That’s why he said, “Pray
that you may be peacefully governed.”

It’s only Him that can do that. But, we do the same with the government that we do with our jobs.
We look to our jobs for peace of mind instead of putting our faith in God. We look to the
government for peace and order in our society instead of putting our faith in God. So, we do the
same as we do with our jobs. We expect too much from our jobs. We expect too much from the
government.

That’s what we do. That’s why you can never feel utterly safe when you have your faith in your job.
Your job can’t create that kind of deep peace that God the Father can create. God the Father holds
the Pacific Ocean in its present spot. He could snap his fingers and the protons and neutrons would
all disintegrate, and the Pacific Ocean would spread over the whole continent.

He holds that whole ocean in place. Only someone like him can give you the stability that you were
made for. That’s why you don’t feel that stability when you put it in silly things like companies
that come and go or employers that will die in 70 years — just as we will. Now, how can you tell
which faith you live by: whether you live by faith in God day-by-day or whether you’re living by
faith in the job or the government?

Well, we’re studying some verses in Romans loved ones, that I think will help you to see your own
situation more clearly and we’ve got in our studies to Romans 13:8a, “Owe no one anything.” Of
course, that’s applied first to the government. Paul had been talking about the government
officials and all the people who govern the country.

You see it first in Romans 13:7 “Pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to
whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.” That’s first of
all, what he means. Give respect to the government officials. Of course, you can’t do it if you have
faith in them to preserve the peace and order of the nation. You can’t, because as soon as you see

Reagan making a wrong move, you’ll want to dissect him and put him together again the way you want
him.

So actually, you can’t respect the poor guy. You’re always engaged in telling him the way he should
run the country. It’s the same with all the other government officials. You can’t actually do what
God has commanded you to do, “Owe no one anything.” Owe respect to them. Pay respect to them. He
says, don’t owe it to them. Don’t leave it as something unpaid.

You can’t actually do that if you have your faith in them for the peace and order of the nation
because every time you see something going a little haywire, you want to get on their backs and make
them do it the way you want them to do it. But if you have faith in God who has appointed them with
all their faults and all their weaknesses, if you have faith in God that he will so overrule affairs
and so govern things that peace and order will continue as long as he wants it to be in this nation
of ours — then suddenly, you’re free to give respect to Reagan and give respect to the others
without pulling them apart.

So that’s one way you can tell if you have faith in God for our country. What’s your attitude to the
government officials? Is it one of respect and love? Prayer for them? Writing to them? Telling
them what you think in a calm way? Or, is it a panicky thing? “We have to get them out! We have to
get rid of them! We have to change them!” Well it shows where your faith is — and you know that
fine well.

If you have faith in God, you’re not rocked when something ridiculous happens in the government.
You’re concerned but you’re not in panic. You take the steps to make your views known but you put
your trust in the Father. You pray that he will overrule the situation.

Now the reason for that is that he is the only one who can do anything about it. Do you realize that
the troubles we have in our society are due to all kinds of subtle, psychic powers and supernatural
currents of misunderstanding, deception, real rebellion and real hatred that run underneath our
society? Do you realize that?

The things that happen politically, or that happen in government, are not just things that happen on
the surface. They are the result of all kinds of subtle, spiritual powers that work in our society;
all kinds of misunderstanding where men expect too much from each other on one side and then they
condemn each other on the other; all kinds of lies and deceptions that create the unrest and the
chaos in our society.

Now there is only one who has done anything about that. I’ll show you, loved ones, where that is.
It’s in Colossians 2:15. God, here, is talking through Paul about Jesus’ death which, of course,
took place in 29 A.D. here, but took place in eternity before that again.

Colossians 2:15, He [that is, Jesus] disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public
example of them, triumphing over them in him.” Jesus disarmed those principalities and powers.
Therefore God is the only one who can do anything about them in our society. He has disarmed them.

You know the way people go on strike and they hardly know why they’re on strike? England was
brought, you remember, to virtually a standstill by people who wanted to go to work, but a strike
had been called. Haven’t we found ourselves increasingly in situations in the nation where
something happens that we can’t understand? We don’t want it, but it’s happening. It’s as if some

power of some kind is taking the thing and running with it, and we can’t get hold of it again.
Loved ones, that’s the “principalities and powers”. It’s a wild deception of all kinds of
supernatural, elemental spirits of the universe that God alone can hold in check.

The dear ones in the government are even part of the victims of it. They hardly understand what’s
happening. So that’s one way. If you have faith in God for the peace and order of our nation, then
your heart is at peace. It isn’t filled with panic when things seem to be going wrong.

Now there’s another way you can tell. Look at that verse, Romans 13:8, because there is another
clear interpretation of it. Paul is just connecting it up with the previous discussion of the
government but now he is going on to something else. He is saying that you can tell if you have
faith in God or faith in the world by the way you relate to the government powers. Then, you can
tell by the way you relate to other people in the secular world. That’s what he is going on to.

He says, “Owe no one anything.” It doesn’t mean don’t have credit cards. It doesn’t mean don’t
take out consumer loans because those have payment schedules, and the money is not due until that
necessary date, and if you meet that date, then you’re still not owing anyone anything.

Moreover, if he had meant don’t have any consumer loans, then he would have been contradicting
someone very important in Matthew 5:42. It is Jesus, of course, who is speaking. “Give to him who
begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.” So, if Jesus is saying, “You should
be willing to lend,” he is certainly not saying that getting loans is wrong. But when that due date
comes and you don’t meet it, then you need to look at your situation and see where your faith is.
The Greek word for “owe no man anything” is “ofeilete”. It’s the present tense and it means, “do
not be owing”.

So, if you come to the due date and you can’t pay it, and then see, “Now this is a situation that
should not continue.” You can’t just up today and change it all. That’ll create more chaos. But,
you think, “I ought not to be owing like this.” Why? Because you are reaching for something that
God is not giving you the money to supply. He is saying to you that you’re looking to that
something for what he alone can give you.

You’re reaching for something, a car, or the stereo, or the house, or something else. You’re
reaching for something that God is obviously not giving you the money to supply. So he is saying
gently to you, “You don’t need that. You don’t need that. In fact, you’re so desperate for what you
think that thing can give you that it’s a kind of idol to you. Look! It’s something that I alone
can give you so you don’t need it.”

So get out of the situation. Don’t go on owing because that’s plain evidence that you’re actually
looking to that thing. You’re so desperate to have it that you’re prepared to disobey God’s word.
And that means you’re looking to that thing for something that God only can give you.

So loved ones, that helps you to know whether you’re putting your faith in the world or whether
you’re putting your faith in God. Another important truth of course is, if you continue to reach for
that thing that God is not supplying you the money to get, then you actually begin very quickly to
come into the elemental spirits of the universe that will enslave you and that run the whole
financial system of the world. You’ll very quickly come into a situation where your life is utterly
dominated and overwhelmed by your debts and your indebtedness, rather than by your ease and love of
God. So that’s what happens.

I don’t know if you’re like that, but it’s incredible. How many of us give up our freedom in order
to try to get things that God doesn’t actually want us to have? He doesn’t want us to have them
because we’re trying to get something from those things that faith in him alone can give us. He is
trying to stop us putting faith in something that is not Him. He is not supplying the money to meet
the debts. Before you know it, you live from the 10th to the 10th, or the 15th to the 15th, or the
21st to the 21st. You find your life is motivated and dominated by the crude sense of fear that
you’re not going to meet your debts.

It’s just the elemental spirits of the universe that begin to govern your life, and begin to destroy
your family life, and your home life, and your relationships with others. It is vital that you put
your faith in your dear God. I don’t know about the guys here, but I thought my life would be
transformed into something like the “seventh heaven” when I was at university in Ireland and was
able to buy a BSA250. I thought, “Ah, to have a BSA motorcycle and to be able to lean her into the
curves like that — that would be tremendous!”

Irish roads are exciting for motorcyclists. I thought that would be heaven itself! Isn’t that what
we get? It’s madness! They’re all lies, lies, lies. But we can see it with the little guy with his
kite, or the little older guy with his motorbike. “Well, a house is different, you know.” It’s the
same game.

We’re putting our faith in the world and in things to give us the security, or the happiness, or the
peace that only our dear Father can give us. Loved ones, there’s nothing like being able to cuddle
up in the arms of the one, supreme Creator of the whole universe and call him Father. And to know
that He knows you, and that he knows your name, and that He won’t drop you. That’s worth everything.
Maybe that’s a good place to stop. Will you think about it?

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we are so brainwashed. We just know we are. We are so brainwashed, we can hardly hear
what you’re saying. But we do recognize Lord, that our jobs certainly have often let us down, and
our governments have often let us down. And yet Father, it seems as if we don’t know where else to
put our faith and yet we see how foolish that is because you have said to us, “Look at the lilies of
the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is
alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?
[Mt 6:28-30]
Father, we would say, “Yes”. It’s just that we’re so used to getting through the paychecks. Or
we’re so used to getting it by what we think is the strength of our own right arm. Father, we ask
your forgiveness, Lord. We ask your forgiveness for the way we’ve built up our whole lives putting
our faith in this world — in its jobs and in its money. It has never ever given us real peace of
mind.

Father we want to turn around to you this morning. We want to change that this very moment.
Father, we want to put our faith in you and begin to trust you as our dear God. Father, we bring
before you the things that are in our lives at this present time — all kinds of things — some of
them are right and some of them are wrong — our jobs, our loans, our purchases and our plans for
our lives.

Father, we want to bring the whole thing before you now and say, “Lord, what do you think of all
this? Where have I made mistakes and errors here? Where have I my faith in the world instead of in
you? Lord, I’ll confess it now and I’ll turn from that, and I now put my faith in you, God. I call
you my dear Father. I ask you now to begin to take over my life and to provide for it.”

“Father I am willing to work. I am willing to do the job, what you’ve planned for me to do here on
earth. But Father, I am not going to think any longer that that lie is true: that it’s the boss
that pays me. Father, I put my life in your hands. Father, will you take it over and will you
provide for it? I’ll do what you tell me, not because I earn my money, but because I obey you and
you give me the money I need. Father, thank you.”

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for making it all possible. Thank you that you’ve changed me this very
moment and you are now in me. You are able to trust your Father through me and teach me how to do it
myself. Thank you, Lord.” Amen.

Debt of Love

Romans 13:8b

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Would you say you have faith in God – you, yourself? Would you say you personally have faith in
God? In other words, if I had said to you, “Have you faith in God?” — how would you answer? Now,
would you say, “Yes, I certainly believe in God.” Would you say that? But I mean, have you faith
in God for the practical things in your everyday life? Do you have faith in him for those things?

Have you faith in God for your finances, for instance? Would you tend to answer, “Well, I certainly
try to. I do try to have faith in him for my finances.” Can I show you that faith isn’t a thing you
can try to have? It’s a thing you either have or you haven’t. I think it’ll help you to see that.
You may say, “Oh wait a minute! You’re trying to prove that I am not right!” I am not trying to
prove that you’re not right. I am trying to show you that you either do or you don’t. It helps you
to see where you are by facing up to that.

So, I say to you, “Look at this chair. We made it here so it’s good and strong. It really is. It’s
a strong chair and you really can trust it. Look, look, I have faith in it. I am sitting in it.”
And you look at it and you’re on your chair over here and you say, “Well, yeah, boy, I certainly
believe that that chair would hold me. I certainly do.” And I said, “Have you faith in it?” And you
say, “Well I certainly have. I can see the way it holds you and you certainly have faith in it, and
I certainly have faith in it, too. I certainly do.” And I say to you, “Well then, sit in it.” And
you say, “Well, I am certainly trying to have faith in it. I am trying to have faith in it.”

Well, I just answer you, “Don’t be silly. As long as you keep sitting on your own chair and won’t
move on to my chair, you don’t have faith in it.” And so when you say, “I am trying to have faith”,
that’s bluff. It’s just a nice way of saying, “No, I don’t have faith.” We need to see that,
brothers and sisters, because we’re allowing all kinds of spirits of deception to bluff us out of a
lot of peace of mind, and a lot of rest in our hearts that we could have, if we’d see that too
often, what we mean is we really have faith in other things. But we like to think that if we got
into real trouble, and we’re in desperate straits, maybe we could jump on this chair fast, and we
could depend on it. But actually, we’re kind of glad that we’re not at that state yet and we don’t
have to have faith in it.

You may say, “Well, no. I mean I have faith. I have faith for my finances. I do! I have faith in God
for my finances.” Well, if I told you, “Just now, I’ve just heard, you’ve been fired”, or, “Your
bank account is badly overdrawn”, or, “You owe the IRS $20,000 back taxes.” Now, would your heart
leap into your mouth? Would you just kind of cold sweat for a moment?

Well, if you would, it’s because you don’t have faith in God for your finances, but you actually
have faith in your job or in your ability to manage your bank account, or you have faith in your
knowledge of the way your income taxes are going. But you don’t really have faith in God. If you
say to me, “Oh no Pastor, that’s not fair!” No, it is loved ones, because if you had a millionaire
uncle, who said to you, “You get into trouble with your bank account? I’ll supply the money. Lose
your job? I’ll give you a job. You have to pay back taxes? I’ll pay them.”

If you had a millionaire uncle who said that to you, you know that if I told you this morning,

“You’ve been fired” — or I told you this morning your bank account was overdrawn — or I told you
this morning, “You owe $20,000 back taxes” — you know you would say, “No problem. No problem. I can
face that. My uncle, he’ll cover that.” You know fine well there’d be all the difference in the
world in our little tummies and our hearts and everything else. There would be no writhing and
wrestling and worried nights in anxiety. We would just take it smooth like that. We wouldn’t turn a
hair.

You see the fact is that God has promised he will supply every need of yours from his riches in
glory in Christ Jesus. He has reinforced that by reminding you that your body may have come out of
your mom’s womb, but she has less idea of how it was made than probably even you have, and that he
has already made you and given you everything you have. He is far greater than a millionaire uncle,
and He will take care of all your needs — if you have faith in him. And that’s the heart of it —
if you have faith in him.

I think there’s a great tendency for us to say, “Well, I mean I think I have faith, but I really
think it’s reasonable, isn’t it, and it’s natural to kind of be momentarily worried when somebody
tells you, you lost your job?” Well, no. You know it isn’t. If you have faith in somebody who will
meet all your needs, that wouldn’t cause you a moment’s concern.

The fact is that even a twinge of worry reveals to you that your faith is in your job and in your
money and not in God. You shouldn’t get all worried and say, “Oh, you’re right. I am not a
Christian.” Forget that stuff. It doesn’t matter about that. What is important is that you’re
living in faith in yourself who are very unreliable and are a very weak puny little creature. Or
you’re living on faith in your company which can go bankrupt tomorrow. Or you’re living in faith in
your employer, or in faith in somebody else, or in faith in the economy which can turn around in a
moment. Really, you’re not meant to live by those faiths.

God means you to live by absolute faith in him and not to turn a hair when those things go wrong
because you know him so well. That’s, you remember, what we were talking about last Sunday. We were
saying that there are different things that reveal to you who you have faith in or what your faith
is in. One of those things are the things that we’ve been talking about and another is the thing
that’s mentioned in Romans 13:8. That would get us back to that verse today to see what God has to
show us through it.

Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything except to love one another.” You remember, we were saying that it
doesn’t mean that car loans or mortgages on our homes or consumer loans are wrong. In a sense, all
you contract yourself to do is to meet the payment dates. If you meet those payment dates, as far
as the law is concerned, you don’t owe anybody anything until that payment date comes around for the
car payment, or for the mortgage to be paid, or the consumer loan to be paid. You remember, we
reinforced that by saying that there are indications in scripture that God does tell us to lend to
people.

So, in a sense though, it’s better to watch how deeply you get into that. Yet lending or borrowing
itself is not necessarily condemned in scripture. But what God is saying here is when the payment
date comes around, and you can’t meet it, then you’re owing somebody. Even though this owing is
talking primarily about respect and love, yet it applies to us, “Owe nobody anything.”

Don’t keep on owing anybody anything, that’s what the present tense “ofeilete” means — don’t keep
on owing. So say the next month comes around, you’re not only going to be in trouble with the people

that want your money, but God is saying, if you end up in that position, see that you’re reaching
for a bridge too far.

You’re reaching for a bridge too far. You’re reaching for a car or a house or a stereo that he isn’t
supplying you with the money to buy even on the payment system. It means you’re putting your faith
in something there that you’re hoping to get some security from — the old house or some happiness
from the old stereo — that he wants you to be getting from himself. So he is gently saying to you
when you end up in that position, “Look, rectify this. You can’t maybe do it just this month. Some
things you have to keep on for a while, but get your life into order again. Get your faith back
into me. You don’t need these things. Have faith in me and get your financial life into order.”
That’s what we shared last day, you remember, that one of the things that can indicate to you that
you are not having faith in God for all that you needed in your life is if your payment debts get
out of balance. That’s one expression.

Now, another expression of that lack of faith is in this phrase that follows, “Owe no one anything
except to love one another.” You can tell by your loving whether you have faith in God or not.
Interesting. Love is the only debt that God says we all have and it’s the only debt that we ought
to have. He says that we ought to keep on paying again and again. And yet, we never eliminate it
because you’ve always more to pay. And yet he says it’s the paying of that debt that gives you
fulfilment in your life and gives you freedom and liberty in your life.

So he is saying, “Owe nothing to anybody except to love one another.” Now, what is love? You
remember John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave…” Start at that level. Love is
giving. It’s giving to each other. That’s at least what love is. And God says, “We were made to
give.” We were made to give. We were made to give things to each other and give time to each other.

We were made to give to each other, but you know the classic statement that all the theatrical
people know — and all of us who have dealt with the famous plays know — where the woman comes into
the room — (Why we blame you ladies for it? Well, I don’t know. We men do it, too.) — but the
woman comes into the room and says, “Things, things, things! All you give me are things! That’s
not love.” We know that actually. Love is giving. But if it’s only giving things, it’s not really
love, and we kind of all know that.

I don’t know how many of us here were sons of rich parents, but I think there are probably some of
us who were sons and daughters of wealthy parents. They thought by giving us things they were kind
of showing their love to us. And of course, you ladies who are wives know how we men make that
error. We kind of work all hours, don’t come home til late, and then we bring a present. Or we’re
off on a trip somewhere and we bring you a present, and we hope that the present will kind of
express our love. In a way it does, but so often, the lady is saying, “Well, yeah, but really, it’s
not a thing that I want.” So, love is giving. But do you see, loved ones, that it’s not just
giving things?

You remember John 3:16 goes on, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”
Love is giving something more than things. It’s giving the most precious thing that you have. For
God, it was Jesus. It’s giving a part of yourself to another person. It’s giving yourself.

Love is giving yourself. Too many of us think, “Yeah, I’d like to do that. I am such a wonderful
person! I’d like to just give myself to you. Here I am!” And we think, “Oh yeah, well, I just like
to give myself and spread myself all over the world.” But giving yourself is not that kind of bluff

philosophical stuff. Giving yourself is giving your time. Giving your time, giving your brain, your
mind, your thoughts, your insights, your abilities, your talents, your aptitudes — the things that
make up you — all your advantages.

Giving everything that is useful in you — giving that to the other person and laying it at their
feet and giving it to them to use. That’s what it is. And that’s why so many husbands and wives,
so many parents, so many children — but even go beyond the relations thing — that’s why so many
people at work know we don’t love them. It’s all talk. It’s all talk because we don’t give them our
time. We don’t give them our interest. We don’t think, “How are they feeling? What are they
thinking? How are they feeling today? Boy, he looks a bit down today. I should ask him, ‘Would you
like to go out for coffee? ‘Would you like…'” We don’t.

We don’t give our interest to other people. We give our interest to ourselves. We don’t give our
time to other people. We don’t think, “I can see how he could fix that car easily.” And then, give
ourselves to helping him repair the car. We don’t do that. See, that’s what love is.

Love is very practical, down-to-earth, giving of all that you are to other people for their benefit.
It’s giving them time, attitude, interest, aptitudes, abilities, talents — all the things that you
have — laying them at their feet for their benefit.

Now the amazing thing is that there’s one other thing that makes love, love. Would you believe it
that you could do those two things that I’ve mentioned and people would still feel that they weren’t
loved? I am going to tell you the thing that is absent that actually makes so many of us feel we’re
not loved.

In a way, I think it’s unhealthy first to be saying, “Oh, I am not loved. Why doesn’t somebody love
me?” I say, “Get up and love somebody else.” But still, in fairness to all of us, I do think there
are many of us in our society — maybe all of us — who don’t really feel loved because there isn’t
much real love going around our society.

So, in a way, if you’re sitting there and thinking, “Well brother, I would like to get up and love,
but I do still feel that nobody really does love me.” I would join with you and I would say, “Yeah,
brother/sister. I know why that is.” I’d like to show you why it is, loved ones, because the one
vital factor that makes love love is missing in most of the love that we share. It’s in John 15:13.

John 15:13, “Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” You
can be theological and call it the vicarious element, or you can just be down to earth and say, “You
see, you can’t give your life — lay down your life for your friends and hold on to your life at the
same time. You can’t.” If love is laying down your life for your friends, it means you give up
your life so that they can have their lives.

In other words, if I could add to the second part of the definition, “Love is giving yourself, your
time and your abilities and your talents and your interests and your aptitudes for their best
advantage, even at the expense of yours, that’s love.” If you say to me, “Do you mean that? Do you
mean that the abilities that I’ve got and the talents that I’ve got, that I’ve been taught to use to
make myself secure, do you mean that if I really love, it means giving those to everybody else and
using them for everybody else’s benefit and advantage — even at the expense of my own?” Yes.
That’s what love is. I’d tell you, that’s why so many of us don’t feel loved because that kind of
love isn’t going around.

We kind of know, “Yeah, the guy says he loves me but he loves me as long as it’s to his advantage.
But if it ever turns out to his disadvantage, I know he’ll go to the wall.” It’s amazing how many
parents and children and how many husbands and wives, but certainly I mean our friends at work and
at school, have no doubt. They have no doubt of it. They know with all our talk that that element is
not present in our love.

If you say to me, “Now, wait a minute brother. We don’t have to lay down our lives for each other.”
No, but the person whom you think you’re loving, they know whether that element is present in your
love or not. Do you see that? They know. Maybe all you’re doing is giving them a present. Maybe
all you’re doing is helping them repair their car. But they know whether that life-giving-up
element is present in your love or not. They know whether you would die for them if you had to.
That’s why so few of us feel loved today. We’ve kind of backed it up with that old satanic
definition, “Oh you can’t love other people until you love yourself.”

Well, the poor guy in that situation, he could never have loved himself. If Jesus had said, “No, no.
I am not giving up my life because that’s not loving myself. I am going to love myself and keep my
life here, but I want to love you people as much as I can at the same time.” Well, it wouldn’t have
worked.

He had to give up his life so that we could have ours. That’s what love is. It’s taking all that
you are, your job ability, your professional ability, your mental ability and your physical
abilities and your intellectual insights and your sharpness and your aptitudes and it’s laying them
out for everybody else.

You know the question that comes up in your mind? “What will happen to me? What will happen to me?
I’m out there looking after all you. What’s going to happen to me?” Well, you’re finished — unless
there’s somebody else who loves you the same way — you’re finished.

Isn’t that the wonder of it? The guy who spoke these words, “Greater love has no man than this”, is
the same guy that loves you. The very thing that he is saying to you do, he is already doing for you
— and He will do for you. In other words, you can only love if you have faith in God that he loves
you and he will not let you go to the wall.

Loved ones, it’s a whole new life when you start to live like that. Instead of trying to look after
yourself — and you know how small and petty that gets — we call it ethical choices. It’s just
dumb. It’s just selfishness or unselfishness, but we call selfishness ethical choices. You know
all those subtle ethical choices you have to make: “Will I do this for myself or this for the
other?” It’s a petty kind of existence.

There’s a glorious liberated life that God has for every one of us. He is saying, “For goodness
sake, love. Love and live the way I’ve loved and lived with you. Do what I am doing and you’ll see
the whole world will work together. That’s the way I made it to work. I won’t leave you. I won’t
let your cause go to the wall. I won’t. I’ll take care of you. You’ll be amazed at the way I supply
money for you. You’ll be amazed at the way I give you happiness. That’s all right. That’ll all come,
but get out there and start giving yourself for other people, and living for other people and doing
things for other people. Let my Son’s self-giving life live in you. Let his Spirit come into you and
take over your whole life. And for goodness sake, begin to love the way I love you. Have faith in
me. I’ll look after you. Stop trying to look after yourself. You take care of my people and I’ll

take care of you.” That’s what it is.

So really, have you faith in God? Well, you can tell by the way you’re loving. You can. Now, I agree
with you. I think it’s a great, risky enterprise, but if it doesn’t come off, we’re finished anyway
because he hasn’t kept his word and it’s all a lie. So the whole thing’s a mess anyway. So there’s a
lot hanging on it and therefore of course, you have a lot going for you, haven’t you?

I mean this Creator has to deny himself and we may as well find it out now. Wouldn’t it be better?
I’d rather find out that this was all bluff now, and then try to hack out some course for myself the
rest of my life, than keep on pretending. So loved ones, I think you either have faith in him or you
haven’t. I think you either start loving the rest of us and laying yourself at our disposal for our
benefit — even at the expense of your own. Or you keep on living for yourself and growing smaller
and smaller, and withering more and more, and ending up like Howard Hughes in that darkened room
with the Kleenex sticking to his fingers, dying of malnutrition with more money in his bank account
than anybody else in the world.

In other words, could it not be that it’s all a great lie that you have to look after yourself? Is
it not possible that it’s a great lie that you have to look after yourself and that it’s not true at
all? And everybody — whether it’s Buckminster Fuller or whether it’s Schwitzer or whether it’s
Paul or Peter or Wesley or Jesus or Teresa — when you start living that way and laying yourself out
for all our benefits — there are laws that begin to operate. The mighty God who is your father
begins to take your life into his own hands and begins to protect you and to guide you. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank you for showing us plainly the contrast between this imitation love and this
real love. We thank you Father for showing us plainly the difference between faith in you and faith
in ourselves. Father, we thank you for giving us a glimpse, in your miraculous way through your
Spirit this morning, of what kind of life that could be.

Lord, we all feel some of the freshness of it. We sense some of the freedom that it could mean.
Lord, there’s something inside us that yearns for it. There’s something inside us that wants to
believe that the other is a complete lie, that we have to take care of ourselves. Father, when we
think that the very man who said, “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life
for his friends”, is the very man that is your Son and that is our Maker.

Lord, we would not hesitate another moment. We would change the way our life has been going. We turn
back from this protection of ourselves and this using of our own abilities for our own benefits.
Lord, we’d start living for each other here in this room. We’d even start it right now and wonder
what the other person is going to do for lunch or how the other person beside me is feeling.
Father, we’d start right now. We’d start loving so that other people can begin to believe that there
is such a thing as real love where people will give themselves to others — even at their own
expense — because they know there’s somebody else that is taking care of them better than they
could. Lord, thank you.

Thank you for the whole vision of it and the whole possibility that this very morning, we can now
have faith in you. It’s an act of the will. We can now say, “Lord God, will you take care of me? I
am going to start living this way from this day forward.” Thank you, Father. We’ll do that this
moment for your glory. Amen.

Others Second, Ourselves Last

Romans 13:09

Sermon Transcript By Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Would you take a Bible, please, and turn to Romans 13:9, “The commandments, ‘You shall not commit
adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet and any other commandments
are summed up in this sentence, you shall love your neighbor as yourself’.”

Why do so many of us turn from side to side in bed at night, just before we go to sleep? Because we
remember the guy in the movie who asks, “Who loves you baby?” And we think, “Well, I don’t think
anybody really does.”

Now why do so many of us have that experience? We probably are all much the same: we’ll say, “Well,
my husband cares for me and my parents feel responsible for me and my colleagues respect me and my
children trust me and my friends like me — but I’m not too sure that anybody really loves me.”

Many of us are probably sitting there thinking, “Oh, I thought I was the only one who thought that.”
But it’s strange that so many of us feel that way in a society that is filled with the word “love”
– “what the world needs now is love, sweet love!” And then we hear “I love New York”, “I love my
Honda”, “I love my BSA”! It’s all over the place. We’re all saying, “Love — that’s the meaning of
everything.” So that means that the social workers have to have love, and the teachers have to have
love, and the parents need more love and we’re all talking love, love, love.

Yet so many of us still feel that we need love. We need to love and we need to be loved, but we
don’t experience much of it. And isn’t it true that most of us would say, “Well, all those things
you talked about, all that kind of love, I feel they don’t know what they’re talking about. They
just use the word superficially or they use it in a shallow way. I don’t know what they’re talking
about when they talk about love like that. That’s not the love that I feel I need, I can tell you
that. I feel when they talk about their love, they’re talking about something shallow and
superficial compared with what I feel love is.” Many of us would say that. Many of us would say, “I
know they talk about love in our society but I don’t think they know what they’re talking about. I
think they’ve made up a word and given their own shallow meaning to it.”

And that’s what we talked about earlier: what love really is. And we quoted the well known verse in
John 3:16 because love is mentioned in that verse. Whether you believe the Bible or believe the
Gospel or not, it states it so clearly: “God so loved the world that he gave.” So love is giving.
At least you can say that. Love is giving.

Then you remember we said, “But it’s not just giving — because lots of parents give all kinds of
presents to their children, but they spend no time with their children so their children don’t feel
that they’re loved at all, even though the parents are giving.” And the verse goes on to say “God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” Love is giving something valuable, and
indeed we said it’s giving the most precious thing you have. Love is really giving yourself. It’s
giving yourself to other people for their benefit. Many of us ask, “What do you mean by that? Do
you mean put yourself on a plate and say ‘Here I am — see what a wonderful gift I am giving you’
and the other person is supposed to be overwhelmed by our generosity? Is that what the giving of
yourself is?”

No. We said it’s giving the things that you are: your talents, your abilities, your insights, your
aptitudes, your intelligence, and your awareness of what’s happening in the world — all the things
that are your advantages — giving all those to another person for their benefit. That’s what love
is.

It’s giving all those things to another person for their benefit. It’s laying them at their feet and
saying, “These things I give to you. All that I am, I give to you. I lay them all down before you
for your use, to benefit your life.”

But you remember we said that even that doesn’t go deep enough. In fact there’s a vital element in
love that is lacking even in that big definition. And it’s the lack of this vital element that
makes us all feel, so often, that we’re not really loved. Truly, it’s the lack of this vital
element that makes us all feel, even after somebody has said “I love you”, that they don’t really
love us.

What is the element? It’s the vicarious element — that’s the way the theologians describe it — the
vicarious element. How do we explain the vicarious element? It’s giving all those things to the
other person even if it’s at the expense of your own welfare — that’s it. It’s laying all that you
are at the disposal of other people for their use even at your own expense. And that is what you
find in that definition in John 15:13.

“Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That’s the
vicarious element. That’s what real love is. It’s giving all that you are to another person for
their benefit — even to your own loss and to your own damage — even at your own expense. That’s
what that says, you see, “A man has no greater love than this, that he lay down his life for his
friends.” In other words, he is laying down his life and they’re getting their lives, that’s what
it means. — doing all that for the other person even at your own expense and loss.

Now one of the difficulties you and I have with that belief is because of a great misinterpretation
that is so popular in these days of Romans 13:9, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
There’s a well known heresy that misinterprets that by saying “You love your neighbors by loving
yourself; you see that’s what God’s command is, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’. It means love
your neighbor the way you love yourself, that’s what it means.”

So — how are you loving yourself — pretty good? Okay, better get that “loving yourself” going
otherwise you won’t be able to love your neighbor! So let’s start loving ourselves first — let’s
concentrate on that. The problem is, none of us get any further than that — we never get past
that. We say, “That commandment means love yourself first and then you’ll know how to love your
neighbor.” So there we all are, hugging ourselves like mad, year after year after year and as
somebody says, “How about your neighbors?” We answer “Well, I’m getting around to it. I’m just
learning how to really love myself.”

And it’s amazing loved ones, with that misinterpretation we’ve taken the commandment of God that
says plainly “You should love your neighbor” and we’ve turned it right around and said, “You should
love yourself.”

If you say to me, “Oh brother, that’s not right, that’s not” — yes it is, loved ones. That’s the
way it ends up. You may play around with the definition or the logic of it but that’s the way it

ends up. It ends up with a whole society that loves itself to pieces and has no love left over for
anything.

Of course, the truth is that that isn’t the meaning of that phrase “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
The meaning of that phrase is clearly indicated by Jesus in his statement, “Greater love has no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself” means love your neighbor the way you used to love yourself. Love
your neighbor the way you used to concentrate on yourself in your egocentricity – now concentrate on
your neighbor. The way you used to devote all your talents and abilities to yourself, devote them
to your neighbor. It means you should lay down your life for your neighbor.

That’s what we mean when we say that about our boys that have died in wars, isn’t it? When we apply
it to those crosses that you see in our cemeteries — those rows and rows of crosses of loved ones
who have died in war, we say “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends.” We mean those boys laid down their lives so that we would be able to live ours. That
is the vicarious element.

They laid down their lives so that we would not be defeated and taken as prisoners in war. They laid
down their lives so that we could have our lives. If they had loved themselves, we’d have been in
trouble. If at that vital moment — when they could die if they went over the top of the ditch or
flew forward in a plane – if at that moment they chose to love themselves and decided, “I am going
to love myself and preserve myself first, because if I don’t love myself properly, I won’t be able
to love the people back home” there would have been no America.

It’s because they laid themselves down in place of us that we have what we have. That’s what love is
and that’s why so many of us don’t feel loved. We feel that our parents, or husbands, wives or
friends give themselves to us from time-to-time; they lend us their abilities or talents. They
sometimes lay their time at our disposal. They sometimes give their attention and interest. But in
the back of our minds we feel that if it comes to them putting themselves last and putting us first,
we’re not so sure it would happen. We think they’ll give and they’ll love as long as it’s convenient
and as long as they can preserve their own lives. But if it came to a choice between their life and
ours we’re pretty sure which way it would go. And it’s because that element isn’t in our love that
we don’t feel love.

I agree with you, we don’t need to lay down our lives for each other all the time. But we human
beings know when the other guy would do that if he had to — we know. In other words, real love is
giving your abilities, your interests, your attention, your time, your awareness, your intellect to
other people for their best. You want the best for them and you give all those things to them to
bring about that best even at the expense of yourself.

In other words, all the abilities that we human beings normally use for self-preservation and for
self-improvement, we lay at the feet of other people. That’s what love is. Then comes the obvious
the question: “Wait a minute, you mean I am going to take my abilities, my IQ, my skills, my
talents, my aptitudes, my interests, my awareness, and I am going to lay those at the feet of
everybody else to preserve their lives and to forward them? What is going to happen to me?”

You know that there is no answer to that except disaster and death — unless there is someone else
who loves you the same way. Unless there is someone else who is willing to lay down his abilities

and his talents and his time and his powers and his understanding of the world at your feet for your
prosperity. Unless he wants the best for you and so is going to lay all his abilities at your
disposal to bring about that best.

Of course you know where we ended last Sunday. The very One who said that “Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”, is the one that loves you like that. Your
Maker and his dear son have already proven to you and me their readiness to lay down their very own
life for you and for me. And they’re prepared to do it on a daily basis to meet your financial
needs, to meet your material needs, to meet your career needs, and your professional needs — to
meet all the personal needs that you have. They are willing to lay down themselves before you for
that purpose — even to their own loss. That’s what the meaning of this word “love” is.

That is the very nature of our God, that’s the very nature of our Creator. That’s his nature. That’s
what he does. That’s his whole attitude to you. That’s why your life and my life come free when we
begin to live the same way. When we refuse to live the same way and we cuddle ourselves up, we
shrink and wither and grow small and die in our own selfishness like Howard Hughes.

But when you move out into the middle of God’s nature and you begin to lay your abilities and your
talents out for other people and for their best benefits even at the expense of your own, you find
miracles begin to happen in your life. Bills begin to come at the right time, money comes in to pay
them at the right time, automobiles run longer than you thought they would, sicknesses are healed.
You begin to see your life breaking out into openness instead of shriveling into narrowness.

Some of you may remember Richard Buckminster Fuller. I don’t know exactly where he stood
spiritually, but he deliberately set out on an experiment. He said, “I am going, for the next 20
years, to lay myself out at the disposal of the world to improve mankind’s lot. And I am going to do
it with thought only of them in mind, and not of myself at all.”

Then he kept intricate day-by-day diaries and he says, “I have 20 years of diaries to prove that
that works: that I have not suffered by doing that. That in so far as I have given myself more and
more to others, I have found my own life growing and developing and expanding and having all that it
needed.”

Loved ones, it’s the very law of our lives. It’s the way the world works. And if you say to me that
it’s not the way Vegas works or the Mafia works –that’s the fallen world. But inside that world
there is this other world that works constantly the way God originally intended it, and he is able
to make it work for you.

You may say, “Oh well, it’s very beautiful and I have had that feeling, at times, that you described
about love. And I’ve had that kind of feeling of faith that God would supply all that I needed and
that therefore I was free to love other people. I’ve had that feeling at times.”

It’s not a feeling. Love isn’t a feeling. Faith isn’t a feeling. Both faith and love are actions.
And if you continue to live in that unreality of so many Christians, where you think you have
notions of love, or beliefs, or faith and your mind and your life are filled up with notions and
feelings, loved ones, you’ll never see God’s miracle in your life. You’ll live in that unreal
fantasy world where you’re devoid of God’s miracles. You’ll never see anything happening that
happened in the Old Testament or the New Testament. But when faith and love become the normal every
day action of your life — in other words, when faith and love describe your everyday behavior —

then you’ll begin to see God’s miracles taking place because faith and love are actions.

Love doesn’t commit adultery — either in physical intercourse with another person who is married to
someone else — or where you’re married, and you commit adultery and physical intercourse with
someone else. Love doesn’t commit adultery in your heart by looking at a woman or a man to lust
after. Love does not do that. It does not commit adultery.

Love treasures the wife or husband and does not commit adultery. Or, if you’re single, you do not
commit fornication — that’s the version of it for a single person. But love treasures the wife and
treasures the husband. Love lays itself out for the wife’s benefit. Love wants the wife or husband
in the situation to be happy more than the person themselves wants to be happy. You want your
partner to be happy. You want them to be satisfied. You want her best. You want his best.

You give yourself to her and lay your talents and your abilities at her disposal or at his disposal
and say, “Love, this is for you. I want you to use these things for yourself to make you as happy as
I can possibly imagine God wanting you to be. This is all I live for: that you would be happy. I am
willing never to have intercourse if that makes you feel that I love you for yourself and that I
don’t want to use you. I want whatever will make you happy and whatever will prosper you.” Love
gives to the other person; gives to the woman or gives to the husband, thinking only of their
happiness and their well being.

Adultery is the very opposite. Adultery puts you first. It puts your needs first. Adultery is an
insult to your partner. It’s a betrayal of the intimacy that you have had with your partner. It’s
making a mockery out of your friendship, let alone your love. Adultery is putting you first and
saying, “I need this. I want satisfaction and she (or he) isn’t giving me it. I can get it from this
girl or from this guy.” Adultery is putting you first. It’s not putting you last. It’s saying, “I
want and I need this and I don’t care who I hurt. I don’t care at whose expense I get this.” It’s
the very opposite of love. Love is saying, “I want you to be happy, above everything else, at my
expense. I don’t care if I am happy or not. I want you to be happy.” Adultery is, “I want you to be
miserable. I want to be happy whatever it costs you.”

Love does not commit adultery. That’s why this verse (Romans 13:09) says, “The commandments, ‘You
shall not commit adultery’ are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as
yourself’.” So loved ones, adultery is not love. Loving another person is saying, “I trust God to
fulfill my emotional needs and my physical needs. I trust him to give me as much happiness as I
ought to have and as much satisfaction as I ought to have, and I put you first, whatever.”

Adultery is saying, “I can’t trust God to do that. I know how to get a bit of exhilaration here. I
know how to get a bit of security or satisfaction here and I am going to get it.” Adultery is
unbelief in God; distrust of God. It’s grabbing at a thing because you’re not sure God will give you
enough of himself. But love can only take place if you have faith in God that he will supply all
your needs.

So loved ones, love is not committing adultery, not committing fornication. Love is what we were
brought up to believe it is at school — we were all taught it. I don’t know if you belonged to
clubs or Boy Scouts or something like that, but we were all taught the same thing: it’s God first,
others second, yourself last. That’s the simple thing — nothing sophisticated about it,nothing
subtle, nothing psychological — just God first, others second, yourself last. That’s what love is.

That’s why love is not killing other people — because love is based on faith. It’s based on
absolute faith that God has your life in his hands, that he loves you, wants the very best for you.
And he is laying himself out at your disposal to bring about that very best. It’s based on absolute
faith that he has your whole life planned and he is going to take care of you as the days go by.

So no man can destroy your life or harm it in any way. No man or woman can cause your life to be
less than what God wants it to be. That takes away all fear of man and takes away all desire to
kill man or to liquidate this guy or to blow this guy away or to wish he wasn’t alive or to hate him
or to be angry with him. When you have faith in God’s provision for you, you’re free to love other
people, even those who were out to harm you — you don’t want to kill them. Love is not killing a
person, not wanting them dead, not wanting them out of the picture.

Love actually is based on absolute faith that God will do what he said. Remember how he put it in
Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:25-26, 28, 32, 33. “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your
life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not
life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow
nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value
than they? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell
you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Your heavenly Father knows
that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things
shall be yours as well.” Our God said, “I’ll supply every need of yours from my riches in glory in
Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19) Our God said, “Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians
4:6) And he says “and the peace that I have will fill your heart and keep it in Christ Jesus.”

So faith has that absolute confidence. And anybody that tries to hurt you or harm you is like a
little fly trying to get at you. They’re nothing compared with the Almighty companion that you
trust. So you don’t need to kill the little flies — you have an opportunity to want the best for
them because you know they cannot hurt you. So love is not killing.

It’s the same way with our possessions. Love is not stealing or coveting. It does not want
something from somebody else. It’s wanting the very best for them because you know your God will
supply every need you have; he’ll provide for you. If you lay yourself out for others, he’ll lay
himself out for you. And because you know that, you don’t want to steal; you don’t want to take
things from other people. No. You want them to have more than you. You want them to be happier than
you. You want them to have more food than you, more clothing, more possessions than you because you
know you have a Banker here who will supply you with ten million times what you could get by your
own right arm.

So, real love, loved ones, is not committing adultery, it’s not killing, it’s not stealing, it’s not
coveting because it’s based on absolute faith that your Creator loves you far more than you will
ever actually love other people. And he has laid himself at your disposal to bring about the best
things in your life and he will not fail you if you will do the same thing for other people.

So love is action. It’s not a notion, it’s not a feeling, it’s not even an attitude. It’s action.
So change today. Change today. Please, start today. Why not look around today and say, “Who could I
make happy today?” Start. Act. The moment you act, you will find it’s like Moses. The moment he
acted when God told him to strike the rock with his staff, that moment the water poured miraculously
out of the rock. That’s what it will be like in your life.

If you’ll begin to act in faith and in love, you will begin to experience God’s miraculous answering
of your needs. So I would encourage you. Some of us need to start. If we’re going to keep on
walking in this bluff love and this protection of ourselves, we’re not going to see anything happen
in our own lives or in each other’s lives and we’re all going to be deprived of love, continually.
So start now, loved ones. We don’t know how long we have — let’s start loving today. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we know it is right, we feel it in our hearts. It’s certainly, Lord, what we need
ourselves; we know that. We know it would make all the difference to our fears and our distrust if
somebody loved us like that. Father, we see now that the only way we’re going to realize that you
love us this way and the only way we’re going to experience your love in actual action in our lives,
supplying our needs, is if we actually act this way, from this day on, to others.

So dear Father, we believe that you are God and that you have already supplied all that we see
around us. And that you, in a miraculous way, by a million different permutations of all the
circumstances and all the events that take place in our lives, are able to meet all our needs, if we
will stop looking after them ourselves and will start doing our jobs because you’ve given us them to
do.

Then, from that moment on, we’ll give ourselves, as you guide us, to others for their benefit;
forgetting about ourselves at last, so that you can remember us. Because we are always remembering
ourselves, you cannot remember us. Father, thank you that if we forget about ourselves, you will
remember us. Thank you that you are love, yourself, and you’re always giving. Thank you, Lord.

Now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Love is Action

Romans 13:10a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Theoretical physicists believe they’re approaching the point where they will be able to explain the
universe in one simple equation and they believe that there is some central equation that will do
that.

Now, is there any basic principle that explains the existence of the universe? Is there any
underlying value or attitude that not only explains how and why the universe was created, but that
maintains that universe, and that enables life to continue? Is there any basic principle or attitude
that makes sense of our own lives; that makes sense of your own personal life and makes sense of the
life of the universe as a whole?

Is there any principle as simple as that equation that the physicists are hoping to discover? Yes,
there is. You will find it if you look at your hand — where did your hand come from? Where did you
buy it? Well, you didn’t buy it. Well, when did you make it? You didn’t make it. Then how did it
come to be there? “I just found it hanging at the end of my arm, that’s where it has always been.”
Well, if you didn’t make it and you didn’t buy it, and you don’t ever remember getting it, does
anybody know where you got it? “Of course,” you’d say to me, “my mom had it inside her before it
ever got to me, so she gave it to me.” In fact if you were to ask your mom she’d say, “Yes, that’s
right; I had it inside of me. And I want you to know I looked after it before you were aware it was
there. I actually looked after you when you were too small to even lift a cup to your lips. I looked
after you, and when you didn’t have the sense to know when to come out of the snow, I took care of
you. Yes, I gave you that hand, and I took good care of you before you ever knew me. I gave you all
these things. You didn’t get anything of what you have — your hair, your nose, your eyes, the
mountains, the rivers — all these things, they’ve all been given to you.”

And if you said, “Oh, that’s the principle: it’s giving. That’s the principle that explains
everything; that everything we see and everything that we are, has been given to us.” No, it’s even
more than that. If you asked your mom why she gave you this hand and why she gave you all that care
before you could take care of yourself, she’d say, “Oh I loved you. I loved you — that’s why I gave
to you.” In fact, many of us are born because our mom loved our dad — really did love him; so all
of us are here because somebody else loved us.

In fact, all the institutions in our world — the hospitals and the schools and all the rest of the
things that keep our life steady in this earth of ours — all of them started the same way. The dear
old pioneers that started the first schools and the first hospitals would say the same thing: “We
believe that everything we got was given to us. Everything we have came because somebody loved us.
And in fact we believe that the Creator, the maker of the mountains and the rivers, loved us and
gave us these things. So that’s why we wanted to give these things to other people. He wanted us to
enjoy the things he enjoyed, and that’s why we started these hospitals and these schools.”
Everything that holds life together in our world comes because somebody loved and somebody wanted to
give to somebody else.

It’s very interesting, isn’t it — however much you and I may disagree about different philosophies
or different theologies, however much we may discuss all kinds of theories of the universe, we’re

all pretty well agreed that the basic principle that has made life possible at all, the basic value
or attitude that maintains life today is love. Love is basic to the whole operation. You even find
it in the world of nature, where there seems to be self-sacrifice built in. So I think none of us
would disagree about that. Why then are so many of our lives in such a mess?

Love is the heart of the nature of the Creator, but because we use the word “love” glibly,
shallowly, and emptily, we mock it; we make fun of it. We take our Creator’s name in vain and we
pretend. Love doesn’t do those things. Love fulfills the law and it’s actually much the same with
all the other things. It’s the same with the daughter who says, “I really love you, Dad. I really
love you, but I just don’t believe in marriage, and I don’t believe in that kind of commitment. I
don’t think it’s necessary. But I do want to live with this guy for awhile. I know you don’t like
it, but I frankly think it’s old-fashioned and I just want to do this. I believe I really love this
guy, and I really love you. I want you to know I really love you. But I am going to live with this
guy.”

No, you don’t really love your Dad. You don’t. Let’s just face it and make it plain that what
you’re really saying is, “I hate you. I despise you. You’re a silly old man and I don’t have any
respect for you.” But let’s say that. Let’s be brave. Let’s be courageous. Let’s be honest, but
let’s not make fun of things. Let’s not make fun of language and make fun of truth because of what
Jesus said, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better
for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the
sea.” (Matthew 18:6.)

So loved ones, that isn’t love, you see. Don’t call that love. Love does no wrong to a neighbor.
Love at least doesn’t do that. It does a lot more than that, but it at least fulfills the Ten
Commandments: it doesn’t commit adultery, it doesn’t steal, and it doesn’t bear false witness. Love,
at least, does no wrong to a neighbor.

You see, this would apply to us husbands and wives, to all those of us who live together who maybe
aren’t involved in divorce proceedings or aren’t involved in separation or that kind of thing. It
applies to us, too, because you ladies will say, “I just wish he would show some love that I can
see. He tells me how much he loves me, and he tells me all the things that he wants to do for me,
but if he would just come home at night in time for dinner, that would mean a lot. Or if he would
vacuum the floors a little, if he would just do something that showed that he did love me, and then
I would believe he loves me.” But you same ladies have to see that that love, just as it does no
wrong to you, does no wrong to other people. So you have to see that you don’t talk about others
behind their backs, because love does no wrong to a neighbor.

And we men are the same, you see. It seems to me, love does no wrong to a neighbor, that’s what love
is. And too often we guys are great on the big talk, and the chocolates, and the flowers, and all
the rest of it, but no use in the ordinary, everyday actions that show that we care about the other
person. And the truth is, real love does no wrong to a neighbor.

In other words, loving is doing — it’s acting. It’s doing little things that make the other person
know that you care about them and that you put them first. It is vacuuming, it is doing the washing
at times, and it is doing the floors at times. It’s being kind to other people in your business. It
is refusing to take advantage of the other guy — to go for the jugular. It is. It’s doing those
things even when you have the iron grip on the other guy and you can make sure once and for all that
you have the upper hand in this business situation — it’s refraining from doing that. Love is doing

no wrong to a neighbor. It’s a very ordinary, everyday thing.

Love is very practical. Love is really like faith. Faith is practical. Faith is not committing
adultery. It’s not stealing. It’s not bearing false witness. So love is that too. You must agree we,
probably more than any other people on the earth, will be ready to say, “I love you.” Now maybe us
men not so often! I don’t know if you know that, but in America here, we’re more ready to say “I
love you” than probably any other nation in the world. But often we mistake the verbal expression
for the actual essence of love.

The truth may well be that if you love you don’t have to tell anybody that you love. They just know
you love them. That’s what the Bible says and that’s what God says, “Love does no wrong to a
neighbor.” (Romans 13:10) Now, what is love? We’ve talked about this so often — love isn’t just
giving things, it isn’t just giving presents. Love, you remember, is defined by Jesus and maybe
you’d look at that verse because it’s so solid and so sure. Its John 15:13, “Greater love has no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” That’s what love is. Love is not just
giving things; it’s giving yourself.

It’s not just saying, “Oh I just give you myself. Here I am you lucky guy!” No. It’s giving the
things that you have: your abilities, your intellect, your emotions, your insight, your talents,
your understanding. The physical or mental gifts that you have that the rest of the world regards
as things to use for itself in order to preserve its own life, in order to prosecute it’s own cause,
you take those things, and you give them to the other person for their use. You lay them at their
feet, to bring about the best possible thing that you can think of for their lives. That’s what
love is. It’s putting yourself utterly in the other person’s shoes and it’s pretending you are the
other person. It’s loving your neighbor as yourself — in the way you used to love yourself —
that’s what that means. Love is not loving you first, and then giving the remainder to the other
person. Love does not love as long as it’s convenient for you. Love does not love if you have time.
Love does not love as you are able. Love is putting the other person first, and giving all that you
have in your life to them for their good, and for their benefit. If you ever doubt that, you see,
you only have to look at the dear man that gave us that classic definition of love.

Jesus did not experience dereliction and destruction on the Cross because of his own sin. He didn’t,
because the Bible says, “He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips” (I Peter 2:22) that
would cause his Father to withdraw from him. So when he cried out, “My God, My God, why hast thou
forsaken me?” (Matthew 28:46), he really meant, “Why hast thou, of all people, forsaken me, of all
people — because there is no sin in me.” He did not experience that dereliction and forsakenness
because of his own sin, but because of your sin and my sin.

He took all that into himself and he laid himself out for us. He didn’t bear in his own body his own
sicknesses, because he wasn’t sick. He bore in his own body our sicknesses. He took into himself
every sickness that you have ever had and every sickness that you will ever have and he bore the
agony of it in his own body. He didn’t bear in himself his own, intractable old self, with all its
anger, and its irritability, and its lust, and its disobedience — he didn’t. He had none of that
inside himself. He took your “self”, with all its bad temper, with all its jealousy and its envy and
its pride, and in a few seconds he bore that in himself and he bore the agony of that being burned
out of himself. So he gave up everything that he was for you. He bore all that for you. Yet he
didn’t have to bear any of it for himself.

Now, that’s what love is, you see. It’s giving you instead of the other person. It’s not looking

after you first, and then helping them. It’s laying yourself out utterly in place of them and for
them and if you say, “But then what would happen to him?” Well, what did happen to him? He said,
“Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 24:46) And the moment you do that in your life,
you begin to find that you are more loved than you ever knew — that you are more loved than you
ever believed possible.

The moment you commit yourself to a way of love, and to forgetting yourself, you suddenly find that
there is some mighty one who is saying to you, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your
life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither
sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more
value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? (Matthew
6:25-27)

Isn’t that true, with all our vitamins — with all that we take? None of us can guarantee that
we’ll add one day to our life. “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil
nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if
God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What
shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these
things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” (Matthew 6:28-33)

If you stop looking after yourself, and start looking after the rest of us, the way some people have
done with you in your lifetime, you’d suddenly find that you are more loved than you ever believed
possible. And you’d see that there is an unseen hand that is beginning to take care of your
affairs, and is beginning to supervise your finances, and is beginning to lay out a future for you
that is far better than the one that you have tried to manipulate. That’s it, loved ones.

Love does no wrong to a neighbor. Love fulfills the law because love ends up having to depend
utterly on the Father loving you in order to love other people. And the moment you do that, that
moment life begins to lift for you. Now, I know what you’re thinking — I know because I am brought
up in the same society: we’re taught to look after ourselves. I know that, but loved ones; we’re on
the wrong track. That’s why we always lack so much. That’s why we never have time to look after
anybody else, because we are working it the wrong way. You’re intended to use your abilities and lay
them at the feet of the rest of us and then your Creator lays all his abilities at your feet and
your life works. That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “For whoever would save his life will lose
it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25)

You can change today. You can. You can change today because that is the heart of reality. That is
reality. And there’ll come a time in your life, whatever age you are, there will come a time in
your life in another 30 years, another 40 years, when you will know that what I said is true. And
you’ll see reality in front of you, and you’ll see that that is a heart of love. But then there’ll
be no time to change from loving yourself to loving others. Then you’ll say, “What a fool I was
–you mean this is the way it should work?” Yes, it is. So start now. Start now. If you say to me,
“But the others aren’t, the others aren’t, the cynics, sure they aren’t.” The world has lost its
way; it has lost reality. Stop looking at it. Stop looking at what they’re doing in the media.
Start living in love today. Start laying yourself out for others. Start forgetting yourself, for
the benefit of others. Commit your marriage, your life, your career into the hands of the only one

who can take care of it
anyway — the one who has it all planned — even your Father, the one who is love. Let’s pray.

Dear Father, we want to apologize to you, first of all, for taking part in this whole charade about
love; using the word so glibly, not meaning it at all, and therefore trusting our own lives into
meaninglessness. Father, we want to take back all that superficiality and shallowness. We know that
you are love, and if your love is what we saw on Calvary, there’s nothing superficial about it, and
it takes all a man has got.

So Father, we want to thank you, first of all, that we wouldn’t be here today if a mother had not
shown some love to us, or a husband and wife had not shown some interest in each other. Father, we
want to thank you for all the people that have loved us over the years; for those who took care of
these bodies of ours when we couldn’t have taken care of them ourselves. And then, Father, we want
to tell you that we believe it is all because of you and your love. So Lord, will you keep your
promise? Will you take care of us if we stop, now, taking care of ourselves first, the way we’ve
been doing? And if we start putting other people first and start giving ourselves to bring about
the best in others’ lives instead of using ourselves to bring about the best in our lives?

Father, if we do that, will you come through for us? And will you look after the things that we are
going to have to lay down now; the concerns we have about our career and our marriages and concerns
we have about where we’re going to live? Father we’re going to lay these down now at your feet and
ask you to take care of them. We know you’ll take good care of them, but Lord, we put them in your
hands.

Now we intend to turn around and attend to some business that we’ve left unattended for too many
years. We’re going to look now to the people that we live with at home, and those that we work
with, and Father, we’re going to start putting them first in our lives instead of ourselves, and
start laying ourselves out for them. And Lord, we’re going to stand back and see the miracle take
place in our lives, of your love; similarly doing no wrong to us but doing us only good, just as it
has done so far.

Father, we give ourselves to you for this purpose. Lord Jesus, you are the heart of love. We ask
you to come in and take hold of us, and give us the power to do this for your glory. Now, the grace
of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us
to help us to be real this coming week, and forevermore. Amen.

Loving Others

Romans 13:10b

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Love — the reason for the existence of the world is love. And the reason you’re here and can see
me, or can hear me, is that somebody loves you and wanted you to enjoy life and so, made you. That
somebody either made you directly, or devised the evolutionary process that has produced you — but
you all are here because somebody has loved you. Somebody wanted you to enjoy living and that’s why
it’s such a terrible thing ever to say, “I wish I had never been born,” because there is some dear
person that has put a lot of work into you. You’re unique. There’s nobody like you, and somebody
loved you a lot to make you like this. So never say that — actually you can’t say that. You can’t
say that because you haven’t produced yourself! Somebody else wanted you to enjoy life and they made
you — and that’s because they loved you so much.

That’s what love is: love is wanting the best for another person. That’s what it is — it’s
wanting the best for another person. And it’s because we know all those things deep down in our
hearts, that we actually have the intuitive feeling that what the world needs most is “love, sweet
love.” We do have that feeling. We have the feeling that if there were more love, it would stop the
bombing, that it would stop the wars, that love would stop the divorces. That love would stop the
little children dying of starvation in India.

Most of us have the feeling that love would solve the world’s problems. It doesn’t matter how
different our ideological backgrounds are, almost every human being will agree with that — that
love — we don’t know why we say this, but we feel that love would solve the problems that we are
facing today, both personally and nationally. And yet we have not only eliminated love from our
national lives as well as our personal lives, but the thing that you and I have to face is, that we
have almost completely lost the idea of what love is. For instance, many of us here would feel very
happy and very content to say, “Well, I don’t feel love for my colleagues at work.” That is, we
wouldn’t feel we were necessarily right, but we would think that’s a normal thing to say, “I don’t
feel love for my colleagues at work.”

Some of us actually would find it very normal to say, “I don’t feel love for my relatives. I don’t
feel love for my parents. I don’t feel love for my wife. I don’t feel love for the neighbors that I
have. What has that got to do with it? That’s irrelevant.” But you see, such is our misconception
of what love is, that you all stop at that and say, “Well, don’t be dumb — it’s not irrelevant. If
I don’t feel the love, how can I express it?” But love is not a feeling, you see, love is not a
feeling. That’s how far off base you and I are when we think of love. We automatically think that,
of course it’s right to say, “I don’t want anything more to do with this marriage because I don’t
feel love for you anymore.” What has that got to do with it? What does it matter whether you feel
love or not? Love is not a feeling — so that’s irrelevant. But you and I tend to say, “Oh no,
no, love is a feeling.” No, it’s not. It’s not a feeling.

A lawyer asked Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said, “Love your neighbor.”
The lawyer said, “Who is my neighbor and how do I love him?” Jesus explained how there was a
certain man going on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. And he fell among thieves who battered
him, and stole all he had, and left him lying on the road. And then Jesus describes how several
people passed that man, until a Samaritan comes by. Then does Jesus describe the successive waves

of overwhelming emotion that rolled through the heart of the Samaritan as he gazes — hour after
hour — upon the bleeding man, and feels love for him? Jesus is so good. I’ll ask you to look at
the verse because it’s so different from that, and it’s a good dose of this that we need to quiet
all this silliness that we’re talking about.

Luke 10:33, “But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had
compassion.” That’s the description of the waves and waves of emotion — he had compassion — “and
went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and
brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them
to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I
come back.'”

Now Jesus seems to have missed it a bit. He doesn’t realize that love is a feeling. Jesus should
have spent those versus describing the tremendous waves of love that this man had. But Jesus knows
better than anybody what love is and he says, “Love is binding up his wounds, pouring out oil and
wine, setting him on his own beast, bringing him to an inn, taking care of him, next day taking out
two denarii, giving them to the innkeeper and saying ‘Take care of him and whatever more you spend,
I will repay you when I come back.'”

That’s love — love is wanting the best for another person. Love is not a feeling. It’s not rolling
emotions. It’s not waves and waves of pity and sympathy and empathy. It is doing something for
another person that benefits the other person. It is wanting the best for another person. It is a
disposition of the will. It is an acting in your life. It is the disposition of will and actions,
not a disposition of emotions.

Lust is a feeling. Other people liking you brings about a feeling inside of you. Other people
approving of you brings about feelings. Those things bring about feelings; but love is a disposition
of the will and the actions — that’s what love is. Love wants the best for another person. It’s a
down-to-earth, practical thing.

The idea that love is feelings and emotion is as irrelevant as saying that ordinary life is a matter
of emotions. You don’t come in to the boss at work and say, “Boss, I was lying in bed this morning,
just getting in touch with my inner feelings and I felt that maybe that’s what I should do today. I
should just get in touch with my inner feelings and begin to become a more empathetic person that
will understand your position better. But then I thought, well no, I won’t. I’ll just come to
work.” And the boss would say, “Oh I am so glad you decided to do that, because, really, your
actions means so much more to me than your feelings.”

You don’t. You don’t run your ordinary life all wrapped up in your feelings. Love is not a matter
of emotions and feelings — it’s a matter of action and will. I’ll show you what love is, loved
ones, it’s Romans 8:28. “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who
are called according to his purpose.” Now, what is his purpose? And in what way is he working for
good? “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.”
That’s the greatest good God had. He thought, “The greatest thing I can do for all of you is to draw
you into a place where you willingly become like my son.”

God works all things in our lives to bring about that good — that’s what love is. Love is having a
good that you think is worth more than anything else in another person’s life, and working by your
actions and your will, to bring that about in their life. That’s what love is — but do you see

that many of us have retreated from that?

In this “me” generation that we live in, many of us have retreated from that practical life of
action and will, when we think about love, and we have retreated into our own subjective experience.
And many of us are utterly convinced that love is something we feel for other people. So we’ve
retreated into our experience where we concentrate on trying to work up feelings of love for other
people. And we go round and round into the private dialogues in our own hearts saying, “Do I love
this person? Do I love that person? Do I feel love for this person? Do I feel love for my mother?”

Your dear mom probably is not as preoccupied with your inner feelings as she is with you remembering
her birthday and sending a card or a present to her. Or that you are kind to her, or you wallpaper
the bedroom or paint the door — that comes home to her as actual, practical care and concern and
interest in her. She has no idea what’s going on inside your complex mind, or your complex heart, or
your complex emotions. She cares about you, but she can’t tell all that. She can tell what you do
for her, or what you don’t do for her.

Now, loved ones, many of us are mesmerized by some kind of strange deception that has become a
disease in our society. We’ve become convinced that those things are philanthropy or social
responsibility, but that love is something that I feel “in here”. And I have to get that feeling
and I have to examine if I have that feeling towards other people or not. So, far from us looking
at love as something whose benefits our neighbor can actually experience in a practical way, we look
upon love as feelings that will reassure us that we actually love people. That’s not what love is.
It doesn’t matter too much whether you feel love or not.

Love is action. It’s wanting the best for another person and it’s working to bring that about in
their lives. In other words, maybe the most basic factor in loving others — is loving others. Maybe
the most basic factor in loving others is loving others instead of loving yourself — instead of
concentrating on your own emotions and your own subjective feelings and trying to find out if you
love a person or not. The most basic factor in loving others is loving others — not being
preoccupied with yourself and not being preoccupied with whether you feel love or not.

It’s time to act. To the last generation, this is so basic. But to our generation, I think it comes
almost as a new Gospel. We’ve gotten so wrapped up with this business of “getting in touch with our
feelings” and “do we feel love or do we not feel love.” Many of us are in the same situation as
poor Judd in that old movie “Oklahoma”. The song goes something like this: “poor Judd is dead, a
candle lights his head.” Then it goes on and says how he loved everybody: he loved the little birds,
he loved the little children, he loved the little dogs, he loved the little animals – now this is
the punch line — he never let on. That is, he never let anybody know that he loved them. And I
think a lot of us are in that spot.

We have all kinds of the most delicious feelings inside, the most delicate emotions and affection of
love towards all kinds of people but we never let them know it because we don’t express it in
ordinary, willed, actions that benefit their lives. Loved ones, that’s all that love is. Love is
nothing if it is not something that wants the best for another person’s life. And that actually has
an effect in somebody else’s life.

How many of us have been continually frustrated by our moms? We go home and she says “Have you
enough turkey, have you enough, have you enough, have you enough, have you enough”, and you want to
say, “Oh mom, just let’s sit down and let’s just be together.” Yet, dear love her, maybe we could

do with a lot more of that in our lives.

Maybe we’re too willing to say, “Let me stare at you and love you!” Meanwhile the other poor soul
would far rather you did something that would actually benefit their lives, or would show care for
them, or show a practical interest in what they’re feeling. That’s it, loved ones.

Now, there is another great misconception. Along with this misconception that love is a feeling,
there’s a misconception, in our generation, that love is letting people do whatever they want. I
think it’s come from our old fear — a ridiculous fear. We’re all afraid of a puritanical life and
we are the most un-puritanical lot that has ever been seen on the world’s surface! But we love to
say, “Wanting the best for other people has too often brought about inhibitions and complexes in
them. So real love is just letting them do whatever they want.”

Now, it is true that too often people have wanted the best for another person’s life without a real
concern for the people themselves. And too often, that has brought a kind of moralistic
dictatorship of other people’s lives. But, loved ones, love itself is not just letting people do
what they want, it isn’t.

I’d ask you to think back to that verse that is translated a little differently in the King James
Version. It is Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” Now God
loves us. But he doesn’t let us do whatever we want, because he has a good in mind for us that he
is trying to draw us towards; namely to become like his son Jesus. But he wants us to do that
willingly; because that’s the only way you can become a free will agent like Jesus, if you really
want to, yourself.

So he is trying, all the time, to draw us around to that. But if Richard Burton’s dad did not
succeed in moderating Richard Burton’s drinking, then psoriasis of the liver would. “All things work
together for good to them that love him.” God’s love has direction. God has built into the world of
providence, and the world of nature, certain laws that are constantly, gently drawing us towards
what he wants us to be.

If you don’t teach your children not to be sarcastic and critical of others, then social alienation
will. God has built into our natural world, and our social world, certain laws — certain responses
and reflexes that are, all the time, trying to draw us gently, gently towards the kind of person his
son is.

In other words, God’s love is not without moral content. God’s love is wanting the best for another
person and working to bring that about. It is not letting people do whatever they want and letting
the chips fall where they may. This world is not a “laissez-faire” world where you can do whatever
you want. It is a world that has all kinds of built-in responses and reflexes to draw you gradually
in the right direction. If you don’t learn to be pure in your sex life, STDs (sexually transmitted
diseases) will teach you.

It’s all through the world. Nowhere do you look in this world that God loves, and see a world that
has no direction in its love, no moral content. Wherever you look in our world, you see he loves us.
He has shown us immense mercy and forbearance; but all the time he is working to bring us towards
what he believes is the best for us.

If your parents can’t get you to stop using nicotine, lung cancer will. In other words, the extremes

of those things, not talking about nicotine or alcohol but the extremes of those things, God has
provided built-in responses to in order to correct this.

In other words, what we have here is not a “laissez-faire” world where you do what you like and let
the chips fall where they may. What you’ve got is a world where God says, “I have given you 70 years
here, and I love you. And I am going to be patient with you for these 70 years; but all the time I
am going to be trying to bring you into what I know will make you happy because I made you — and I
know what will make you happy.”

So, loved ones, it’s the same with our love. Love is not just letting people do what they want —
love has moral content in it. Now, if you say “That’s a broad statement — what is the moral
content?” Oh, this dear book (the Bible). If you love a person you won’t commit adultery with them.
If you love a person, you won’t commit fornication. God has tied it all down in this dear book,
not just to give us laws that would make life hard for us, but he has said to us, “Look, if you
really love, you won’t take another person’s property from them, and you won’t steal from them. If
you really love another person, you won’t want what they have, you’ll be delighted with what I have
given you and you’ll want them to have what they have. You won’t covet.”

“If you really love a person when something bad happens to them, you won’t say, ‘Oh lucky me, it
didn’t happen to me’, you’ll be sorry for them. Your heart will go out to them. If you really love a
person, you won’t want to remove them out of your way for your own convenience — you won’t kill
them. You won’t want them out of the way.”

In other words, this dear book has all kinds of laws in it — and elaborations of those laws that
show us what loving others is. And if you want to know if you are loving a person, well, are you
doing to them what God has recommended in this book? If you aren’t, then you don’t love them.

So love is a very practical thing. Love is a down to earth thing. It’s thinking about other people,
and helping other people, and trying to bring about the best in another person’s life. Brothers and
sisters, I think a lot of us have hidden behind a mixture of egotism and what we call liberalism.
The egotism is a self-preoccupation with our own feelings, and the liberalism is this kind of idea,
“Oh let them do what they want.” And we let them do what they want because we don’t want to be
thought of as puritanical, or we don’t want to be thought of as opinionated and it’s not for their
good at all. It’s for our good — it’s to protect us, that we refuse to give direction, or to try
to bring about direction in a person’s life.

Loved ones, you’re not loving the little guy if he says, “Mom, I want to run across the highway” and
you say “Well, if I love you, I’ll let you do what you want.” You don’t! If a little
three-year-old picks up a razor blade, you don’t say, “Well, I love them, so I’ll let them do what
they want.” You don’t! Love, there, has a very definite, moral content.

So love is not a feeling, and love is not letting people do whatever they want. Then what is love?
Well, it’s a commandment. It’s a commandment. And if you say, “No. Love is an intuitive,
spontaneous feeling that I have that bounds up from me and you suppress it every time you say
commandment.” Not according to this dear book (the Bible). This Creator of ours, who knows more
about love than any of us here, he puts it in those terms.

You’ll see it, loved ones, if you look at John 15:12. “This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you.” See, Jesus says, “This is the commandment that I give to you. It’s

second only to the first commandment, which is to love my Father — your Creator who has made you.
This is the second commandment, love one another.” And if you say, “Well, how do I do that?” He
says, “The same way as I have loved you — love one another as I have loved you.”

Now Jesus is the one who made you, do you know that? “All things were made through him, and without
him was not anything made that was made.” John 1:3 Indeed, there’s an amazing verse in the Bible
that says, “Before you existed, you were life in Jesus.” Before you ever existed, before you ever
came into your mom’s womb, you were life in Jesus. So this is the Person, who had you in his own
heart before you ever were known by your mom, who says to you, “This is my commandment that you love
one another as I have loved you.”

Now how did he love us? Oh well, it’s the next verse. John 15:13, “Greater love has no man than
this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command
you.” That’s the kind of love.

You’re to love the rest of us the way Jesus loved you, and loved us. That is, he laid down his life
for us; in other words, that broken, self-sacrificing figure on the Cross in 29 A.D. that we see —
that’s reality. That’s the heart of reality — that’s final truth. That is what will stand after
everything has gone. That will stand, that will remain. That broken, self-sacrificing figure that
gave up all that he had for all of us, that is final reality. And you and I, whenever we at last
see final reality, that’s what we’ll see. However long it takes you to die, or me to die, when we
eventually come to that moment, what we’ll see is that. That’s the heart of reality, love like that.

In other words, Jesus says to you and me this day, “If you will believe what I’ve said, that my
Father is your maker and that he already has plans to take care of you throughout your life, if you
will believe that, and then give your life with its abilities, its time, its interest, its
everything, to loving everybody else and to wanting the best for them and wanting to bring it about
in their lives — if you do that, then you, yourself will find my Father taking care of all your
needs. Then, when you come into our presence at the end of life, you’ll fit right into our heaven.
But if you don’t — if you don’t believe what I say and you regard your own life as your own
responsibility to take care of in your own fashion, and you look after yourself first, and put
yourself first in this world and begin to put everybody else second, your heart will grow hard and
small and withered and at the end”, and here is what he says, “the branches in me that do not bear
fruit will be gathered and tossed into the fire.”

So, loved ones, love is not an option. Love is the heart of reality and you either practice it now,
or we will live in our own burning lusts forever in eternity. So we need to see it as, not some
poetic emotional thing that we feel inside, but we need to see love as the willed direction of our
actions and behavior to bring about the best in other people’s lives at the expense of our own. So
it’s a down to earth thing.

So now I ask you, would you think of your own life, just for a moment? Are you bringing about the
best in other people’s lives? When you’re with a person this afternoon, are you really interested in
them, and do you really want the best for them, or are they just an addendum to your existence?
Think about it.

As God brought home to my own heart, all of us, with all our great plans, and all our great
preoccupation with our great lives, and all the things we’re doing and all the things we’re “doing

for the Lord” or all of the things we’re “doing for our company” or all the other things, what does
it matter unless every person you meet and spend time with, you actually are wanting the best for
them? And you’re giving them your attention, and you’re respecting them, and you’re thinking the
best of them, and you’re trying to make them happy. If you’re not doing that, is your whole life not
going to slide past, with you thinking of your big plans and all your important responsibilities and
all these wonderful feelings you have inside you?

Are you not amazed, as I am, how one day slides to the next? Are you not? How one day slides into
the next, Sunday again, Monday again, and it goes, doesn’t it, and you don’t realize it’s going, and
then an odd birthday makes you think it has gone — but still, it’s subtle, isn’t it? It’s seductive
the way the life keeps sliding past. Don’t waste it on these big feelings inside. Don’t waste it on
these wonderful aspirations that may never come about. Love with all your heart the person you’re
sitting beside today. Love with all your heart the person you’re going to have lunch with today,
that’s what love is.

It’s being kind to the person that you’re with at this moment. It’s wanting the best for them. It’s
trying to do something to make their life better than yours, that’s what love is. Do it now. Today
is the day of salvation. Begin now. Stop all the big feelings, all the aspirations, all the
wonderful plans. Be now what you are. Who knows? Who knows how many of us will see tomorrow?

In a way the guy was right in the song “Tomorrow never comes”, it never does. Tomorrow never comes.
All we’ve got is this moment, really. All we’ve got is this moment. Begin to love now so that some
of the rest of us know you love us. Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for being so practical and down to earth, so ordinary, and straight, and
direct. Lord we thank you for cutting through all our hypocrisy, all our pretences and all our high
and mighty saying to people “go and be warmed and be fed and be clothed.” Lord Jesus, enable us,
now, to be practical and realistic, and to do things for other people, and to begin to be able to
count, at the end of a day what we have actually done for others.

Lord, for too long we’ve covered over that by saying we don’t count up all the good things we do.
But so often it’s because we’ve done no good things. Lord Jesus, we commit ourselves to love, and to
wanting the best and working to bring about the best in our neighbors’ lives. To forgetting
ourselves and beginning to enter into life abundant because we know that when we do that, you’ll
shed abroad in our heart your love that is patient and kind, that is not jealous or boastful. Lord,
we thank you for that.

We ask you, now, to enable us to be what you are willing to fill us to be — like yourself.

Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

How Long Have You Got?

Romans 13:11

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Time goes so fast, doesn’t it? It’s about 17 years ago that God guided me to start expounding the
book of Romans, verse by verse, on the university campus. So even though a few of us, here, have
been together for 17 years, studying this each Sunday morning, there are teenagers here who were not
born when we started the book of Romans.

One of the amazing things is that last Sunday a hundred million Americans watched the nuclear war
movie “The Day After”. And this past week, if you noticed it, the Time magazine cover was on
Orwell’s “1984”. And of course only God could foresee all that 17 years ago, because I certainly
didn’t — I simply come to the next verse. Maybe you’d look at it, it’s Romans 13:11. “Besides
this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is
nearer to us now than when we first believed.” “Besides this you know what hour it is.” A
coincidence, and yet enough of us have been here together long enough to realize that our lives
together have been filled with those coincidences.

We have come together Sunday after Sunday and found God speaking to us directly about the very
questions and the very burdens that we’ve had during the week and we know that it isn’t man’s doing;
we are involved in something that is beyond ourselves, here, when we meet together on Sunday
mornings, and certainly only God would know that it would be appropriate to preach on that verse,
“you know what hour it is”, in such a week as this.

Now, what does this verse mean? Well, loved ones, do you see the English translation there, as we
have it in our Bible? Romans 13:11, “Besides this you know what hour it is.” The Greek, for those of
you who know Greek, is “kai touto”, which we translate “besides this”, just means “as well as this.”
“Eidotes ton kairon” is “knowing the time”. It really hasn’t the word “are” — it has “knowing the
time”. So it means, “besides this you know what time it is”. And the interesting thing is,
“kairos” is just one of three Greek words for “time”. Another word is “chronos”, you know,
“chronology”, and we get it in the name of our watches, “chronometers”. And the other word is
“eion”, which is an age, which becomes our English word “eon”. So those are two other words for
time, in Greek.

This word “kairos” has a special meaning that is different from the meaning of “chronos” or “eion”.
It means “a set period of time”; a time that is distinguished clearly, and marked clearly, to
distinguish it from other stretches of time. It’s a set, determined, period of time — that’s what
“kairos” means, and so it’s become identified, almost technically, with the time that is set that
precedes Jesus’ second coming. And it’s the same word that is used by Paul, in a letter to the
Corinthians; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31, “I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short;
from now on, let those of us who have wives live us though they had none, and those who mourn as
though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those
who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no
dealings with it. For the form of this world is passing away.”

That’s the same word: “the appointed time has grown very short” that Jesus used about 50 years
earlier in Mark 1:15 and you get the continuity if you look at Mark 1:14, “Now after John was

arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled,
and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” So it’s the same word Jesus
had used about 50 years earlier, and those people were right to ignore them both, weren’t they? I
mean, there Jesus was, saying, “The time is at hand, the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of heaven is
right here”, and then here is Paul saying, “Brother, I want you to know the appointed time has grown
short.” Well, actually, they were both wrong — I mean, there was plenty of time — here we are,
we’re all here, and Jesus isn’t here — at least in his physical return to earth that has been
prophesied as ending the “kairos” time. So those people were right, actually, to ignore Paul when
he said, “Brethren, I want you to know the appointed time has grown short”, weren’t they? I mean
ask them, weren’t they right?

You say, “Well, I can’t ask them.” Well, why can’t you ask them? “Well, I know he wrote that about
2000 years ago, but probably about 1900 years ago, all of them had died.” Oh, then he was kind of
right with them, was he? “Well, within 30 or 40 years.” Okay, so that wasn’t too bad then; he was
actually right in saying that to them, wasn’t he? He was saying to them, “Look, the appointed time
has grown short”, and in 30 or 40 years time, they were all dead. So he was right that way. But
you say, “Yes that may be so, but, I mean, Paul was still wrong about the end times, wasn’t he? He
said the appointed time has grown very short — he was still wrong about the end times.” Okay, but
he was right about those people, wasn’t he? You’ll agree with that — he was right about them —
that was the right thing to say to them, “The appointed time has grown short”, because in 30 or 40
years time they were all dead, and they had all met Jesus or they had all rejected him.” But you
say, “Yeah, but they were wrong about the end times, weren’t they?”

I know this is hard for many of us to accept, because we are so overwhelmed with the publicity that
has been thrown at us by the church, by preachers, and now by the media — but they weren’t talking
about the end times. They weren’t talking about the end times; and if you say to me, “But of course
they were — when Paul says the appointed time has grown short, we’ve all interpreted that as him
talking about the end times. ‘The world’s going to end’, that’s what he is saying, that’s what we
all facing. Now, why do you say that he wouldn’t try to identify the end times so that everybody
could get ready for it? Why do you say that?”

I’ll show you why, loved ones, if you’ll look at it — it’s because of Jesus’ own words, in Mark 13.
This is what governed the disciples’ preaching, and the apostolic preaching; these solid words of
Jesus. This is what governed what Paul and Peter and James preached. Mark 13:32, “But of that day”
that is, the day when I will come back to earth in my second coming, “of that day or that hour, no
one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”, that’s why. They
listened to their Lord say that, and they obeyed him. They knew that they couldn’t know the day or
the hour, and there was no point in guessing about it, and there was no point in spending all this
precious time trying to prophecy or forecast it, because even Jesus himself didn’t know it, and the
angels in heaven didn’t know it so they knew they would be only trying to break scripture if they
started to identify it.

Loved ones, that’s the situation we get ourselves into when we do that. We try to out-god God. We
try to do something that even Jesus couldn’t do, that even the angels don’t know; we try to find
that out and we try to talk about it, and we try to interpret it. And instead of producing a same,
sober, responsible desire to get to know God and to do his will, because we are unscriptural in our
emphasis on this “end time” business, we produce insurance policy — a panic-stricken survival, “run
to the hills” attitude towards conversion that does not forward the kingdom of God. The apostles
didn’t do it. They believed Jesus’ words. They believed his words, “of that day or that hour, no one

knows, not even the angels in heaven.” So Jesus is saying, “Look, I don’t know when I’ll return. The
angels in heaven don’t know when I’ll return, only my Father knows. Now you have plenty to do in
your preaching besides trying to find out the things that I tell you, that you yourself do not
know.”

That’s what he says in Mark 13:33, “Take heed, watch, for you do not know when the time will come.”
That’s what the Savior says, “You do not know when the time will come”, so all us busy little bees
start getting preoccupied with trying to prove that we do know when the time will come, and we end
up creating a panic-stricken, survival mentality, that does not produce a sober, responsible,
repentance, but produces the kind of emotional panic that makes people more the slaves of other
people than that makes them free from other people.

In fact, loved ones, Jesus described, and identified clearly, the kinds of people who would spend
their time trying to identify the end times. He did. He described the kind of people who would major
on this sensationalism, and this kind of crowd-drawing, cheap-thrill approach, to salvation in Mark
13:21.
“And then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe
it.” Then he describes them, “False Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and
wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect. But take heed; I have told you all things
beforehand.” Jesus says such people are false prophets.

Now, if you say to me, “What attitude does he say we should take to these things?” He describes it
there, at the end of the chapter, in Mark 13:34, “It is like a man going on a journey, when he
leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be
on the watch. Watch therefore — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the
evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or in the morning — lest he comes suddenly and find you
asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Watch.” That’s it.

Have a sober, sane, consistent attitude of awareness, and consciousness that you’re living in a
determined span of time that is a precious opportunity for you, and live that way day-by-day.
Indeed, in a strange way, if you’re looking out trying to find out when he’s coming, why are you
doing that? Why? Is it so that you can enjoy yourselves up to the last minute? “He is a mile away;
okay — cut it out — put the whisky away?” Is it that? Or is it really because you’re looking, and
you’re anxious for the Savior to come?

Well, loved ones, Jesus knows human nature better than we do, and you may say in all goodness, “Oh
no, I am doing it from an honest motive”, but the Savior knows what the bulk of mankind will do it
for. The reason we put a guy on watch at the classroom door, when the teacher was out of the room,
was not because we wanted him back, and wanted to welcome him, it was so that we could get ready for
his return with as little trouble as possible, and as little inconvenience to ourselves, and the
Savior knows that.

The Savior knows that those who love him, and want him to return, don’t need to be encouraged to
watch for his return; they have it in their hearts. And they will live every day so that, any
moment when he comes, they’ll be glad to be found doing whatever they’re doing, and that’s what
Jesus says about this.
In fact, he actually tells us why we should not misinterpret the word “kairos” to mean the end
times, and he shows us through Paul in 2 Thessalonians. You’ll see it there, and it’ll come home to
your own hearts, even in direct connection with the day after. Here Paul is speaking to a problem

that the early church had and here we are, of course, creating it for ourselves. He didn’t have to
create the problem; he had it, but he was trying to get rid of it. We aren’t so wise; we’re trying
to create it.

2 Thessalonians 2:1, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet
him”, because that’s what they got themselves to, going up into the mountains and assembling to meet
him, giving up their ordinary everyday lives. “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our
assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by
spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has
come.” That’s the reason: that that kind of sensationalism produces excitement and panic, but it
does not produce real change in life. It does not produce real repentance; it does not produce a
sober assessment of your life.

If you say to me, “Oh yes it does, I mean that’s the exciting thing about that movie “The Day After”
— it gets everybody thinking about it”, yes, but they’re thinking in panic, they’re thinking in
chaos, they’re thinking in fear, they fear only for themselves. They’re not preoccupied with how to
save other people; they’re preoccupied with how to save themselves. They’re not preoccupied with
what God wants to do in their lives; they’re preoccupied with what they’re going to do to get out of
this holocaust that is coming upon them.

Loved ones, if you say it produces a change in life, I ask you, has any generation been more
preoccupied than our own with the end times? Has any generation since the invention of the mushroom
cloud, been more preoccupied with the end of the world than our own? Has it changed our society? Has
it taken the crime off the streets? Has it made us a moral people? You know it hasn’t.

You know that the sensational, fearful, terrified, preoccupation that has filled us with panic about
the end of the world co-exists with more crime, and more immorality, than most of us can ever
remember reading about. The fact is, the Savior knew that that kind of preoccupation with the end
times, and with his second coming, and with when the world was going to end, does not produce a
sober, honest change of wills. All it produces is emotion and chaos.

In Belfast during the war we experienced exciting things — exciting is an understatement for it —
because, of course, we were a shipyard city. Many of the ships were built in Belfast, so the German
bombers ended up in Belfast. So we had a little experience of the bombs falling, and, of course, we
couldn’t do much; we didn’t have shelters and that kind of thing. Our mothers, like many mothers,
would put us in a little place under the stairs, which was probably more dangerous than the rest of
the house — but it looked safe! So she would get me and my brother there and we would spend the
air raids there.

So, one of the funny things you would do is, in the midst of the chaos – because we couldn’t get
out of the house, we couldn’t get away you see – we had to just hold on there and wait. And one of
the things she would always do when that panic hit, and the air raid sirens would go on, and you’d
hear the planes going over she would immediately rush for her bag and grab the life insurance
policies! Why she grabbed the life insurance policies – because if we were gone, we were gone and
there was nobody going to benefit! But that’s what happens in fear; that’s what happens when you
panic; that’s what happens when your life is going to end. You don’t act rationally. You don’t act
logically. You act in panic-stricken chaos. And loved ones, that’s what comes about when we
misinterpret this word “kairos” as meaning the end times, when Jesus himself gave us good, solid,
advice.

He said, “Listen, nobody knows when that hour will come. Nobody knows when that time will come, not
even the angels in the heaven. I don’t know it. My Father alone knows it. Now, stop being
preoccupied with it.” So you ask, “What does “kairos” means? “Kairos” means a set, determined,
period of time during which God has given to you an opportunity to either trust in him as your
loving Father, or to sink more and more into trusting yourself only. It is a set, determined, period
of time during which God has given you an opportunity to believe that what he has done in Jesus on
Calvary is real and can be made real in your life, or to ignore him and live as if he doesn’t exist.
That’s what “kairos” is.

How long is it? From Jesus’ birth to when he comes again, that’s the time. It’s being preceded by
the period of the law when all God was able to do in our world was to show us how far we had
disappeared from his will; how far we had parted company from him; how far we had gone our own way.
And now this is the “kairos” of the Gospel. This is a period of the Gospel. This is a window of
mercy that God has opened in time — just a short window of mercy because time is vast — but this
is a little window of mercy that God has opened for every one of us. And he has given us an
opportunity to look in and see that he has forgiven us our sins, that he has changed us in his Son
Jesus, that every obstacle; be it financial or personal that is in our lives, he has destroyed and
changed in his Son. And he is giving us a little window of mercy time to believe that, and allow
that all to become real in our lives.

Is it really as long as from Jesus’ birth to when he comes again? No. No, it isn’t. For most of us
it’s from when we were about 13 till we’re about 70, that’s it. It’s about 60 years at the most, for
most of us. Is it as long as 60 years? Theoretically it is; in actual fact, no. How long — today.
Can you remember tomorrow? Can you remember yesterday? Can you remember two days ago? Can you
remember three years ago? 20 years ago? You know fine well, that the only thing you and I can
really remember very vividly is today. In fact the song is right, we know it’s right “Tomorrow never
comes”, it doesn’t, and it really doesn’t. Tomorrow actually never comes. In no way can you and I
live in tomorrow. No way. And yet we say, “Tomorrow and tomorrow”. It’s a lie. It’s bluff. Tomorrow
we will do nothing. We cannot make any promises for tomorrow. We cannot live tomorrow — we’ve got
today, that’s what we’ve got; today. Yet, not really; not today, not even this afternoon but now —
this second.

Why do I say that? Oh because of a short phrase that is ruthlessly true, “As now so then.” As you
think now, so you will think then, when Jesus comes. Even more than that; as you think now, so you
will think this afternoon. As you think now, so you will think in ten minute’s time. As you are
now, so you will be only more so, that’s right. As you are deciding this moment, so you will be
deciding in two minute’s time. “Kairos”, the time, “you know the time.” That is, you know you have
this second, and you’re making decisions, this second, that ensure the decision that you’ll make the
next second. How long is the time? Carry on sleeping, if you want, and carry on dreaming, and carry
on pretending, that it’s from now to your death. It’s not.

You’re becoming less and less able to make different decisions every second you live. The decision,
or the lack of decision, that you make now is preventing you making another decision in another
second’s time. That’s why the verse goes on, “This is the hour”, and then it gives us the Greek word
for “hour”. “This is the hour when you must awake from your sleep.” This is the hour to be aroused
from your sleep. “Your sleep” is all of us; our indolence, our sluggishness, our forever saying,
“manana, manana”. Our forever believing Satan’s lie that we will do it tomorrow, tomorrow, and
tomorrow and tomorrow I will change. Tomorrow, I will receive Jesus. Tomorrow, I will believe all

this stuff.

You’ll never believe it. You’ll never believe it. You won’t. You’re lying to yourself. You’re
lying in your teeth. Satan is deceiving you. If you don’t change today, you won’t change tomorrow;
that’s a lie. You’ve no control over tomorrow — you know you haven’t. You know tomorrow will come
and you’ll be filled with all kinds of other things. Why do I say that? Because I know Me, too and
you’re the same. We’re all the same — we’re all the same under the skin. We’re all the same.

This is “today”, at this moment, in this second. And if you can listen to the fact that God has
changed you, and destroyed you in Jesus and you’re free, and you can get up and live free from
yourselves, and free from your anger, and free from your impatience, and free from your
irritability, and all your financial problems, and your personal problems have been destroyed and
changed in Jesus — you both believe that now and get up in joy or you don’t believe it. And what
you don’t do now, you won’t do tomorrow, and you won’t do the next day, and you won’t do the next
day and it’ll be harder to do the next day.

“Look out — that fluorescent light’s falling!” You say to me, “You’re kidding” and it’s too late;
it’s fallen. See; it’s not the right reaction. If I tell you the fluorescent light is falling on
you and you respond, “You’re kidding,” it’s fallen. The thing is past. You haven’t read the message
right.

If you respond today and say, “That was a powerful message” you’ve missed the message. You’ve missed
the message. There’s only one right reaction to this window of mercy that God has given each one of
us. God has put all of us in his son, Jesus. He has destroyed all the evil in us, and all the
selfishness, and changed us. Now believe that and live it; go out of here changed and different,
that’s the only right response; any response but that, ensures that the next second your response
will be more along the lines of this response, and the response after that will be even more along
the lines of this response until you’ll get to the point where you are so mental, and so emotional,
in this game that you are incapable of responding. See, that’s it.

Have you ever been in the situation with your dad, or your mom, or your husband, or your wife, when
you couldn’t get through to each other? Have you? When you couldn’t get through to each other any
more? When this dear father that you’ve known for years, or this dear mom, or this dear husband, or
this dear wife, or this dear child, or this dear son, or this dear daughter, no longer seem to be
able to speak to you or you’re no longer able to speak to them? That’s what happens: you get used
to hearing the Gospel. You get used to looking at it. You get used to analyzing it. You get used to
turning it around and looking at it from a different angle. You get used to appreciating it. You get
used to agreeing with it, until you become incapable of responding to it — that’s what happens,
loved ones.

That’s why God says to us, “You know what time it is, and it’s already past the hour when you need
to be awakened from your sleep.” That’s what God is saying, loved ones. If you say to me, “Tell me
again, tell me again, if God has changed us all in Jesus. If that is true then you and I can start
living differently now.” That’s it — we can start living differently now. We can stop worrying
this moment. We can stop sinning this moment, if he has done it, we can. If we set our wills, and he
has really done this, we’ll find our wills able to achieve what they were not able to achieve
before. If God has really changed us all in his Son, if he has really taken all the obstacles, and
all the difficulties, that you’re going to meet in your life, and has destroyed them in Jesus, then
“Yippee” — not another worry, not another care — there’s nothing else to be worried about.

Then you go out with a light heart, that’s what it is. That’s all, you see. That’s the right
response, and we are doing ourselves more and more damage each time we go out of this door saying,
“Oh I really agree with that. I really think that’s right, and I am going to respond to that some
Sunday.” You don’t have that kind of time, see?

We don’t have that kind of time. I do, and you do, as far as time goes, but in here (in our hearts)
you don’t have that kind of time. See, in there (in your heart) you don’t have that kind of time.
Here (in time and space) we do, but this is meaningless. In here (in your heart) you don’t because
“as now so then”. Today is the day of salvation. So believe, repent and believe the Gospel. Please
do it now. Do it now. Let us pray.

Dear Lord, we do thank you for your goodness to us. And Lord, we know that much has been given to
us here. You have given us each other, given us this room that we could share these things in.
You’ve given us all kinds of advantages, but Lord, we do see that those to whom much is given, much
will be required. And we see that we are in a moment of decision, and that we are deciding, even
when we are not deciding.

So, Lord God, we do not want to respond in a way that is inappropriate or irrelevant. We know you
are not asking us to think about this. We know you are not asking us to make promises about this.
You’re saying to us, “Look, I have remade you in my son, Jesus. You might not understand it all, but
I have done that. You’re a changed person: all that you have been up to this moment has passed away,
and you’re a new person now, this moment. Believe that, and go out of here in that faith and be
that.” Lord, thank you that that’s what you’re saying to us and that we can be, and do, that this
very day. Thank you Lord. Amen.

Darkness is Passing

Romans 13:12a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

I have mentioned this before loved ones, and if you could let me speak to the loved ones on
television directly, that you are watching this maybe middle of January some time but this is
actually December 4, and you all know that what we do is, we videotape the service this morning and
that enables us to edit it down to half an hour which is the television time that we buy in Florida
and in other parts of the States.

Now another advantage of videotaping is that you can edit out all the mistakes. So when I give a
Bible reference that is wrong and I try, you remember, to correct it when I get to this bit, then we
can edit that out and that saves time on the videotape, and of course, as you do that, I become a
better and better preacher because you can edit out all the mistakes. And why I don’t like using
this illustration is I know my wife is sitting here thinking, “Hmm. I wouldn’t mind seeing the
edited version of last week.”

In other words, it would be nice if you could do that with your life, because if you came here next
week and asked, “Could I see the sermon that was preached last Sunday morning?” we could say to you,
“Would you like the edited version or the unedited version? Would you like the version with the
mistakes or the version without the mistakes.” And often our wives and our husbands would love it if
we could do that with our whole lives and they’d say, “Oh, I’d like the edited version of last week.
I saw the original and I don’t want that.”

I personally would like to be able to do it ahead of time. I don’t know about you, but I would love
to be able to preview this coming week of my life and videotape it and then I’d love to be able to
go right through it with the old editing machine and edit out the bad parts and the parts where I
wasn’t right and then I’d love to be able to play that version over with all the imperfections gone.
That’s the Gospel. That’s the Gospel. It is. That’s the Gospel. I’ll show you loved ones, the first
part of it. It’s in Isaiah 46.

Isaiah 46:9-10, “Remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God,
and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not
yet done,” – declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done.

God says, “I am God and I can declare the things that are not yet done in your life. I know those
things. That’s why I have been able to inspire prophets to prophecy the future because I see the
future. I know the end of your life from the beginning. I am able to tell you the things that are
not yet done that you will do this coming week. I have seen the videotape of the rest of the days of
your life. I have seen all the lines that will be created in your face by your worries and your
anxieties. I have seen all the sins that you are going to commit. I have seen all the inhibitions
and the complexes that those will create in you. I have seen all those things. I know those things”.

You and I have a tendency to say, “Oh, that’s hardly Gospel to me. If God knows all that, why
doesn’t he just destroy me right now? Why doesn’t he just utterly destroy me? If he knows the things
that I am going to do and I can imagine what they’re like, why doesn’t he just wipe me out now?”
That’s the second part of the Gospel you know, that God doesn’t do that and you’ll see it in an

amazing verse in Romans 11:2.

Romans 11:2, “God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.” It’s amazing. I mean, even though
God foreknows all that you will do this coming week, in fact all the rest of the years of your life,
he has not rejected you even though he knows what you will do. God gives us the right to live that
very life that we choose to live, even though he foresees what we’re choosing to do. He gives us the
right and the freedom to do that.

He does not reject us and then here’s the heart of the Gospel. God has played that videotape of your
life before his own eyes and he has edited it. He has edited it. He has edited out the sins and the
imperfections and all the things in your life that make you a rebellious, miserable creature. He has
edited all of that out and he has a perfect videotape of your life that is completely edited. Where
does it say it? I’ll show you.

Romans 6:6, “We know that our old self”, that’s the old life, that we would live if we had our own
independent power operating, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful
body might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”

In other words, God knows what you will do next week but because of his mighty power, he is able to
set it out of time and into eternity and in his Son, he is able to put that videotape of your life,
that old self, that old videotape, he is able to destroy it completely in his Son and then raise his
son up and raise you up with a new edited videotape that has all the responses in it that Jesus
himself wanted to make in your life from the very beginning — and that videotape is available. That
life is available.

In other words, in heaven, on a shelf, there is the videotape of your life lived by your own power
and by your own will — and on another shelf, put there by the Lamb that was slain from before the
foundation of the world, there is a videotape of your life that is perfect and edited completely,
the life that is lived by his own power. And if you ever doubt whether that second videotape exists,
loved ones, I’ll point you to an amazing verse in Ephesians.

Ephesians 2:10, “For we are his workmanship”, his videotape, “We are his workmanship, created in
Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That’s
just great. It’s an amazing verse. “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

There’s a videotape of your life that is already created in Jesus, that’s the Gospel. The Gospel is
not just that Jesus died so that your sins could be forgiven and then you would laboriously day
after day as hour succeeds hour edit the videotape of your life by your own strength and your own
efforts and your own resolution and your own powers and your own abilities, the Gospel is that of
course your sins are forgiven but that’s a by-product of the greater thing that God did in Jesus, he
recreated your life in his Son.

He recreated it with all the good works that Jesus does in your life and you can receive that edited
version, and if you say, “Can anybody? Can I?” Yes, “Christ died for all, therefore all died”, you
too. That happened to you too. Any of us, any of us can receive it. How do you receive it? How do
you bring that out of eternity and into time? By faith, by grace, by sheer grace, you’re saved
through faith. By faith you can receive that new life of Jesus into you this very day, that whole
lived life, you can receive by faith. That’s how it happens. That’s what the Gospel is.

The Gospel is that God has foreseen your whole life, has foreseen all its sins, all its complexes,
all the lines in your flesh, all the anxieties, all the worries, all the things that you would, that
you cannot do, the evil that you hate that’s the very thing you do, he has seen all of that. He has
put it into his Son. He has crucified it there and raised you up whole and new and that life is
available to you by faith today. That’s how we differ from Muslims or from Hindus or from this
person and that person.

We live a saintly life by faith, receiving it from God himself who has already created it. We live
it by faith and you can receive that this moment. If you say, “How long have I got? How long have I
got to receive that? How long have I got to allow that edited version to take the place of this
version that I am living now?” Well, that’s what the verse was saying last Sunday – that you know
what the hour is. In fact, maybe you’d look at that, it’s Romans 13:11.

Romans 13:11, “Besides this you know what hour it is”, you remember the Greek word there is actually
the word for time, it’s ‘kairos’, it’s really besides this or ‘kai touto’ you remember, this too
‘eidotes’, knowing. We know ‘kairos’, we know what time it is. You remember we said plainly that
that doesn’t mean the time of Jesus coming because Jesus himself said, “Look, I don’t know that. The
angels don’t know it in heaven. How can you know it?” He’s not talking about that.

He is talking about ‘kairos’, a set determined stretch of time that God has appointed, that’s the
time that you and I have to receive that edited version of our lives by faith. We have ‘kairos’
time, a set, appointed time. For most of us, from age 13 to you are 70, that’s it. From age 13 until
you’re 70, God has put you on this earth, he has done this miracle and he has now said, “Now, this
is what I have done. Now I am giving you these 60 odd years to receive this by faith and to allow it
to be made real in time and to give you a chance to re-edit the videotape that will echo down
through the centuries forever and ever the deeds of your life.” That’s the set time we have.

You have 60 odd years to decide whether it’s the deeds of the old unedited version or the deeds of
the edited version that will echo down through the halls of eternity forever and ever. Because you
probably realize that, not only from the Bible, but from people like Einstein, that the deeds that
you do will echo through the universe forever. Do you know that? They will.

Even the scientists can show that if you’re far enough away in the universe, you are able to see
something there that has taken place back here in this location and so even from the point of view
of physics, things that are done in this universe, go on being done forever and ever. So you have to
determine which deeds will echo down through the halls of eternity forever and ever and you have
these 60 years to determine that.

Sixty years? Well, you remember what he said? No, not really 60 years — because it’s like reading
a dirty book. Every time you avoid stopping reading it, you’re reading it. It’s like watching a
pornographic movie, every moment you resolve, “I am going to stop watching this”, you’ve already
made the decision the other way because you’re watching it another moment.

In other words, you’re making the decision when you’re not making a decision. So really it’s not 60
years, it’s this moment. It’s this moment. This is the time. You’re deciding this moment which
version of your life is playing. And by not deciding you’ve already decided that the version that is
playing now will continue to play. And not only that, but as it plays another moment, it’ll make it
more difficult for you to decide the next moment not to play it because all of us know that. You

don’t make it easier to stop doing the thing by continuing to do it another moment.

So loved ones, that’s why time is so precious now to all of us. When I ask you how long have you
got, it’s not just how long have you got physically, it’s how long have you got in there before you
stop being able ever to stop, that’s it. So we have this present moment to determine what we’re
going to live like and what life is going to be lived by us and that’s why Paul is so strong in
this, you see in verse 11, “Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you
to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now then when we first believed….”

Which salvation? Well, he is obviously talking to people who are already saved — but he is talking
to people who say they’re saved but haven’t really started to live this new version of their life in
Jesus. They haven’t really accepted that they were crucified with Christ and that they are new
people — and so he is saying, “Not about salvation”, because in some sense they have received
salvation, the forgiveness of sins. What does he mean by salvation? Oh, the redemption of our
bodies. He is saying that.

For salvation, the completed salvation, the redemption of our bodies is nearer to us now than when
we first believed. Which item is he referring to? Oh, the one that is talked about in those solemn
words, you know that you hear it at gravesides, the Revelation 20. He is talking about that.
Revelation 20:11 and Paul was saying, this is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

Revelation 20:11, “Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth
and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing
before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done. And the sea gave
up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had
done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of
fire; and if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of
fire”.

You and I are nearer to that than we were this morning, see, and you’ll be nearer to it this
afternoon than you are now and you’ll be nearer to it still tomorrow than you are today. That’s what
Paul is saying, “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Salvation for those of
us who are resurrected to eternal life but judgment for those of us who are resurrected to eternal
domination”, and then he says in Romans 13 verse 12, “The night is far gone, the day is at hand.”

Which version of your life are you living at this moment? Which version of your life is being played
before all of us now? Is it the version that you were born with, where you believed there was a God
but you really lived as if there isn’t a God? In other words, you think to yourself, “Well, I am on
my own here. I better use my position and my money and my job to wring what security I can out of
this world, that’s my main job here”, is that the version that you’re playing?

Is it the version that believed that certainly God was there but he didn’t care anything about you
at all and so you were rather much on your own here in this world — and it’s up to you to try to
make other people notice you if you possibly can. And so is it the version that tries to get other
people to notice you and tries to make yourself important and gets angry when they don’t notice you
and when they don’t think you’re important? Is that the version that’s being played?

Is it the version that thinks, “Oh I have only got so long in this life, I’d better enjoy myself

while I am here as I had better wring out all the happiness I can, whoever I deprive of happiness in
order to get it.” Is it that version? Is it that version that is filled with half truths, with half
honesty, with love of your own comfort and love of your own security, with a desire to have the form
of godliness but nothing of the power of it, with a heart that has all kinds of resentments, that
has all kinds of gossipy conversation with other people about your friends? Is it that version that
is being played?

Well, you know, you see. All of us know. You know which version is being played now. You know which
version of your life is being lived here on this earth, and that’s what creates the darkness of
course. That’s why Paul talks about the darkness. When you get four billion of us living for
ourselves and trying to get everybody to take notice of us and trying to use each other to make
ourselves secure and trying to get as much happiness, physical and emotional satisfaction from each
other as possible, you get tremendous darkness.

In fact the darkness is so great that it’s like a dense fog. We can hardly see each other. You can’t
tell where the other person is. You can’t tell what the other person is thinking. We talk about it
today as a problem of communication. That’s a big problem. We have only one big problem:
communication, that’s our only problem. Except it’s not the problem at all. The problem is there
are no communicators.

We’re not communicators, we’re rivals and competitors, we’re enemies, we’re suspects, distrusting
each other and not being able to be trusted by anybody else. So there’s a great darkness that fills
our world, whether it’s in your office or whether it’s in so many churches or whether it’s in our
families, there’s great darkness that separates us from each other because we’re all living for
ourselves and living as if there’s no God but us, ourselves.

So that’s why Paul says, “There is a darkness upon the earth”, and yet how do you get rid of that
darkness? Well, the only way to get rid of it is to get rid of the communicators who aren’t
communicating and that’s what God did. God took the whole lot of us and Christ died for all of us,
therefore all of us died, and if you’re in Christ, you’re a new creation and the old has passed away
and the new has come.

So that’s why Paul says, “The cause of the darkness has been removed and ever since Jesus died in 29
A.D. and that miracle was made known to the world, the hours of that darkness have been numbered.”
And that’s why he says, “The night is far gone, the day is at hand”, so actually it may seem to you
as if the darkness is terrible. It’s worse than ever before but everybody that knows what God has
done in Jesus knows that the darkest hour is right before the dawn and the dawn is about to break,
the day is coming.

So Paul is saying, “Get ready for it, get ready for it.” Oh loved ones, stop talking about the end
times and stop being preoccupied with who is the anti-Christ or who is not the anti-Christ and ask
yourself, “Are you ready? Are you ready now if Jesus comes today, are you ready?” That’s it. Stop
all this fiddly, this silly stuff of diagrams; oh we’re such silly people, getting so ready with our
diagrams that we haven’t time to get ourselves ready for Jesus coming.

The day is on its way, it’s almost dawning, the night is far gone. Now, are you going to live the
kind of life that you’ve lived up to this moment or are you going to go to God today and say, “God,
if you have foreseen my whole life and you have edited it all out and made it all right in Jesus,
then Lord God, I want that life to be made real in me, whatever the cost. Now I believe Lord that

you did that and I want now to live that life.”

But loved ones, that’s what the Father is saying to us today. That’s why he says it. It’s Romans
13:12, “The night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and
put on the armor of light.” That means stop gossiping now, that’s what it means. It means accept
that you’re no better thought of than Jesus, that’s it. You’re no better thought of than Jesus.

There’s no way in which you’re going to be understood by everybody. You’re going to be misunderstood
like Jesus and in fact, God has put you into his son who was misunderstood and was content to be
misunderstood, who was content to be looked down upon and to be contemptuous, and God says, accept
that and be prepared to be that and stop always trying to make things right.

Stop always trying to be understood all the time. Stop all the time trying to make others
misunderstood. Give up all that stuff. Stop gossiping, stop criticizing, stop being concerned about
your reputation, stop being proud. Put off those works of darkness because that darkness has its
days numbered now. There’s only light. There’s a dawning of an eternal day that will spread life and
trust throughout the universe, now get with it. Live like that. Live like that. That’s it. Start
now.

Jesus has changed you completely. Now accept that and live like that and put away the deeds of
darkness that you know are deeds of darkness and don’t look at that pornographic movie for one more
second because if you live like this one more second, you’re making it harder to change tomorrow,
that’s it.

God has worked the change. All you have to do is say this morning, “Lord, I believe that and I now
live that way from this day forward.” And maybe it’s good to say you know, you can hear me this
morning. Nobody here can guarantee you’ll hear me next Sunday. None of you can guarantee you’ll even
be alive to hear anybody next Sunday, none of us.

So it’s an important moment in all our lives. Which life are you living? Are you living the one that
has muddled through so far, or are you living the one that God has made available to you in his son
Jesus and can give you at this very moment? Let us pray.

Dear God, we keep on resolving to try to be different and we do make little changes but Lord we know
that something more is needed. We’re really just tinkering with the things that are wrong in our
lives. We need a thorough sprinkling. We need a thorough overhaul. We need this life of ours to be
utterly remade and dear Father, we hear your words, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”,
and we hear also your words that Christ died for all therefore all died. Therefore in an amazing
way, all of us are in Christ. It’s simply a matter of whether we will believe that or not — and if
we will believe it, we are immediately a new creation, and the old has passed away and the new has
come.

Father, we thank you for giving us another chance today to decide for you and to change our way of
going and to receive what you have done in Jesus for us, by faith. Lord, we thank you for that and
we will be real with you this day, for your sake and for our own salvation. Amen.

The Incarnation

Romans 13:12b

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

There is a verse in a poem that one of the modern poets wrote and it goes like this, “O world
invisible, we view thee; O world unknowable, we know thee; O world untouchable, we touch thee,
incomprehensible, we clutch thee”, and for centuries, all the gurus and the sages and the
philosophers of the human family would have said, it’s impossible, it’s impossible. You cannot talk
about reality in those concrete terms and all their opinions of reality down through the years were
filled with vague generalizations and vague aspirations. So the Hindus would talk about “Oh well
there is Brahmin and there is Vishnu and there is Shiva, gods of creation and preservation and
destruction, but they’re not personal, we can’t know them. You should try to somehow merge in with
them but you can’t ever know them.”

Or Confucius would say, “Well, you can come to a certain peace if you bring about an inner harmony
to your mental and emotional life.” While about the same time in 500 B.C., Buddha would say, “Well,
you can come to a kind of peace if you negate the self.” But it did not matter who it was, whether
it was Zoroaster or Buddha or Mohammed, all of them were saying the same thing, “Well, I think
reality is less. I think reality is like this. I believe the meaning of the universe is this”, but
all we human beings could do was suspect that behind the waving leaf of a tree, there were some kind
of life that brought it about and we ought to try in some way to try to merge with that life. That
was all, loved ones, that we knew about reality by our own efforts. That was the kind of vagueness
that filled our notions of reality.

What then happened to enable this poet of our era to write, “O world invisible, we view thee; O
world unknowable, we know thee; O world untouchable, we touch thee, incomprehensible, we clutch
thee” ? God came to earth and lived here for 30 years, that’s it, that’s it.

God came to earth and lived here for 30 years. It’s as if he looked down at us and watched us with
all our mystical ideas and all our feeling after truth and he said, “Stop that, stop that. All those
things you are trying to do to make out who I am, here, here is what I am. Here, I want you to see
me in your own terms so that you’ll be in no doubt; this is the person who has made you.”

That’s why about 300 years ago, a man called Milton wrote, “That glorious form, that light
insufferable; and that far-beaming blaze of majesty, wherewith he wont at heaven’s high
council-table to sit the midst of Trinal Unity, He laid aside, and, here with us to be. Forsook the
courts of everlasting day, and chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay”, and what did he mean?

Well, all the high-flown statements of the poets and the philosophers never get it over the way that
simple fact did. He meant that Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, and it’s amazing, isn’t it
that the dumbest little three or four-year-old can understand that and they mightn’t understand
Milton or Mohammed or Zoroaster or all the great philosophers but they can understand that Jesus was
God’s own Son born here on earth, and it’s incredible that it’s as simple as that.

Yet that’s what the incarnation is. It’s God saying, “I am going to end all your philosophizing, all
that you’re guessing, all your surmising and I am going to come here to earth incarnate”, in Latin
“In the flesh”, incarnate. “I am going to come incarnate to your earth so that you will have no

doubt any longer what I am really like”, and that’s what the incarnation is, loved ones. It’s at
least that.

It’s a clear demonstration to each one of us of what reality is and what God is like. That, at
least, the incarnation does for us. It brushes away all the guessing, all the philosophizing, all
the generalizin, all the mysticism — and it shows us exactly what God is like, but it is something
more than that. It shows us what God is like if he ever became incarnate in you. It shows us what
God is like if he ever was able to come and live in your life. It shows the kind of life that he
would live, and you remember, it was the kind of life lived by an elder son.

If Jesus lived the life he did, in his own body, then if God were to come into your own life, he
would live the same kind of life. That is, he would do a job of some kind, that’s what Jesus did for
30 years. He made tables and chairs and yokes for oxen. He worked as an ordinary carpenter helping
to bring more order into God’s world and helping to preserve some of the beauty that was in it.

Now, if God was to come incarnate into your life, he would presumably live the same kind of life. He
would do an ordinary job. He would do some job that helped to bring order and harmony and beauty
into his Father’s world. We reckon that Joseph died when the family was young. That’s at least the
best information we have that Joseph died when the rest of the family was young and Jesus of course,
was the oldest son and therefore he helped Mary bring up the rest of the family by carrying on his
father’s business and that’s exactly what he did for over 30 years.

So of course if God were to come incarnate into your life, he would presumably do the same kind of
thing. Now it is true that that wasn’t what occupied him night and day. I mean, he did that because
he lived in the kind of world that we do where there’s a need for a supply of goods and services in
order to maintain life here in time and space but that wasn’t what made him tick. That wasn’t what
Jesus thought about night and day.

He didn’t think about the yokes and the tables and the chairs night and day when he lay in bed at
night. That wasn’t what concerned him. What concerned him was some other business that he was
preoccupied with, and it was a business that he was preoccupied with even before he engaged in his
public ministry.

During those 30 hidden years, this was what consumed him and he expressed it, you remember, even
before he was out of childhood. It was in Luke 2:46. Mary and Joseph you remember had gone to
Jerusalem for a special time and they had left to go back home and found, of course, that Jesus
wasn’t with them and they had to go back to Jerusalem to look for him. And so in Luke 2:46, this is
what happened.

Luke 2:46, “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to
them and asking them questions; and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his
answers. And when they saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Son, why have you
treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously.” And he said to them,
‘How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?'” And actually
the Greek reads, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s things? Did you not know that I
must be involved with my Father’s affairs, that I must be concerned about the same things as my
Father?”

Well, of course that just bewildered Mary and Joseph because he wasn’t planning any building of

tables or chairs and that was his father’s business. But what Jesus meant was, “This is what makes
me tick. I do this with my hands” — as some of you are plumbers, as some of you are teachers, as
some of you are secretaries, as some of you are finance people – “I do this with my hands to bring
order into this time, space, world and to help preserve it. But what makes me tick and what I am
concerned about are the things that concern my Father. He has a dream for every individual in this
world and he has a miraculous ability to get every life into that dream and to get every life back
onto the track that he had in mind for it, that’s what I am concerned about. That’s what I am going
to spend my life doing. I am going to spend my life getting over to others the plan that my Father
has for them — and I am going to help them to exercise the faith that is needed to get back on to
that plan.” That was what he was concerned about.

So, when Jesus said, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s affairs”, that’s what he
meant. And so he lived his life to do that. He lived his life to get as many people as possible in
this world to understand what God had in mind by putting them here in the first place, and then
encouraging them to have faith to do that.

So probably if God would be incarnate in you, he would do the same thing, and maybe he’d work for
early retirement and spend the last three or four years or the last 10 years of his life doing that
full time. He probably wouldn’t retire to Florida to fish and die, probably wouldn’t, and we should
keep that in mind.

It’s so good, isn’t it, to be able to look at Jesus and see that’s what God did when he came to
earth. What would he do in me if he came to earth in me? And that’s what he’d do. He’d spend his
last breath trying to get the rest of us to understand what God’s plan was for our lives and
encouraging us to exercise the faith that is needed to fulfill that plan.

Jesus didn’t concern himself with the latest model camel or the latest model cart. He was a dear
person. And it wasn’t because he was an ascetic or a monastic, it wasn’t. They accused him of being
a winebibber, a drinker, because he went to parties. So it wasn’t because he was monastic or
ascetic, but he knew, “The latest camel, ah, that’s not what we are here for. The latest cart,
that’s not what we are here for. Anyway, it’ll only be the latest for a little while. We’re not here
to gather those things. Those aren’t essential things.”

He didn’t either try to get himself into an elite group — an elite professional group or an elite
group financially — because he was concerned to be close to ordinary people, to help ordinary
people to understand what God had planned for their lives. So if God were to become incarnate in you
or in me, he probably would do that same thing. He wouldn’t get himself into an elite select group
that would cut him off from other people; he would be with ordinary people.

Very interesting — Jesus didn’t even wrap himself all up with family life. He didn’t. He didn’t get
all worked up with the Christian family. In fact, you might say he was kind of hard about it if you
would like to look at a certain piece. It’s in Mark 3:31.

Mark 3:31, “And his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside they sent to him and called
him. And a crowd was sitting about him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are
outside, asking for you.” And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking around
on those who sat about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of
God is my brother, and sister, and mother.'” And it’s pretty straight, isn’t it?

If God were to become incarnate in you, he probably wouldn’t get all wrapped up over his blood
relatives and he probably wouldn’t think that his own blood-son was any dearer to him than the
little child that is dying in Bombay this morning, because he obviously thought of everybody as his
brothers and sisters and everybody as his sons and daughters. So if God were to become incarnate in
you, he probably would live that great expanse of life that is much bigger than the ordinary, narrow
little idea of family.

They said he did not have a pillow to put his head on. He certainly didn’t have a nice house to live
in. So if God were to become incarnate in you, he probably wouldn’t live for a nice house and he
obviously didn’t live for getting married. If God wanted him to be married he’d marry but if God
didn’t, he didn’t make that a big goal of his life.

Obviously, if God were to become incarnate in you and me, these are the things that he would be
concerned about, aren’t they? You know it. You know it speaks so forcefully, doesn’t it, that you
know so well it’s not me trying to put over a line to you because his whole life was standing behind
this and it’s very obvious.

He did not have a nice house, he was not married, he did not get all wrapped up in his children and
his wife. He did not get all wrapped up with getting an elite professional situation. He did not get
all concerned about the latest camel and the latest cart. It’s very obvious, and of course our God
is saying to us this morning, “My loved ones, you know, you know what I am like because you can look
at my son Jesus and you can see the kind of life I lived in him. Now don’t tell me that you didn’t
know. You know the kind of life I lived in him and you know he wasn’t a wild fanatic and he wasn’t a
strange person and you know how much you admired him and you know how much you encouraged other
people to follow him. Now if I become incarnate in you, isn’t it likely that I would live that kind
of life too?”

Maybe that’s the biggest thing the incarnation does for us, isn’t it? It’s God saying, “Stop all the
talk. Stop lording it over one another with your knowledge that you have got from Zen Buddhism or
your knowledge that you have got from Christian mysticism or your knowledge that you have got from
the charismatic movement. Stop all that lording it over each other with your knowledge and what you
understand about God. Be. Be. That’s why I came to earth.”

“I was able to get the knowledge to you in books like this but the only way I could get over to you
the heart of what I am, is by being — because that’s what I am. I am who I am. It’s not a matter of
talking about the love that you have for people. It’s raising Lazarus from the dead because you love
Mary and Martha and you love Lazarus. It’s doing things. It’s being friendly to lonely people. It’s
healing sick people. It’s helping people who are down and out — that’s what being in me is. That’s
what me being in you is, it’s doing things. That’s what I did. I did things. I didn’t just talk; I
healed people. I lifted people. I helped people. I befriended people. That’s what I want to do in
you.” If God becomes incarnate in you and me, he’ll probably be the same as he was in Jesus and
that’s, you remember, the kind of life that Jesus lived.

In other words, Jesus said, “I drove nails straight. I didn’t sell furniture with joints that were
weak. I drove nails straight and I sold furniture that had strong joints in it.” That’s what God did
when he came to earth here. He did things right. He was what he said he was and that’s, loved ones,
what God will do in you.

That’s why Jesus put it into Paul to say, “Love is not irritable or resentful. It is not jealous or

boastful. It is not arrogant or rude. Love believes all things. Love bears all things. Love endures
to the end.” And then Jesus was able to say, “I am patient and kind. I am not arrogant or rude. I
am not jealous or boastful. I do not insist on my own way. I am not glad when others go wrong. I am
glad when others are right. I believe all the things. I bear all the things.”

What God is able to say in you is just that, if he becomes incarnate in you. And could you say
that? Could you say, “I am gentle and kind? I am not jealous or boastful? I am not arrogant or
rude? I do not insist on my own way? I am not glad when others go wrong? I am glad when others are
right”?

If God becomes incarnate in you, he will be what he was in Jesus, and loved ones finally, that’s the
only proof that God is in you, not all your knowledge. It’s not a matter of knowledge of good and
evil, it’s a matter of life. It is a tree of life, and of course, up to that point, our humanist
society agrees, and for two whole weeks, our whole humanist society says, “That’s right, that’s
right. We should be what Jesus is. We should be kind to the underprivileged. We should be kind to
those who are deprived. We should be like that”, and for two whole weeks, our humanist society rises
to that and tries to be that and they, in some sense, engage in at least gestures to that end.

So our whole humanist society believes all that but they can’t keep it up because they haven’t a
Christmas nature. They just put it on for a while but they can’t keep it up because they haven’t a
Christmas nature. Moreover, increasingly don’t you agree, the kindliness or generosity that we all
express at Christmas becomes increasingly superficial as the years go by because however much
kindness and generosity you have, you somehow can’t deal with those problems that are the chronic
problems. The broken family relationships, you cannot deal with those. The personalities that will
not change, you can’t deal with those, and all our kindness, and all our attempts to imitate Jesus
can’t deal with those things. That’s maybe the greatest part about the incarnation.

Not that in Jesus God was good and was kind and was loving, but that in Jesus, there was released in
this world a power that deals with the broken family relationships, a power that deals with broken
bodies and broken hearts, and that’s what Jesus said, you remember.

He said, “There is something that has happened since I came to earth. The kingdom of heaven is at
hand because you can see people being healed. In fact, maybe you’d like to look at it. You remember
when John sent his disciples to see who Jesus was. Jesus answered them in Luke 7:20.

Luke 7:20, “And when the men had come to him, they said, ‘John, the Baptist was sent us to you,
saying, ‘Are you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ In that hour he cured many of
diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many that were blind he bestowed sight. And he
answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the
lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news
preached to them. And blessed is he who takes no offense at me.”

That’s what happened when God became incarnate in Jesus. Jesus knew that God had already healed all
those things. He had already solved them all in his death before the beginning of the world but he
knew that those things would only be manifested here if he expressed his faith that these things had
been done.

Now would you think for a minute what expressing faith was? Was it Jesus going into his room where
nobody could see him and saying, “Lord, that man that’s paralyzed, will you heal him? Heal him Lord

so that he’ll be walking when I get out of this room and I’ll be able to tell everybody, you know
how that happened? God did that.” That would have been a safe way to operate because what if it
didn’t work? Nobody knew Jesus had prayed. But that’s not the way faith works. Indeed that isn’t
faith.

Faith was Jesus in that house surrounded by all kinds of people with all eyes upon him and then
these guys, they don’t only bring the guy in, you know, by the side door, they break open the roof
and let the guy right down, this paralyzed man, right in front of everybody so that stops the sermon
dead, and then Jesus has to show that faith is action.

He knows that this man has already been healed in the Lamb that was slain from before the foundation
of the world in himself. Already he has been healed but he knows that that will never be manifested
in time and space unless he actually puts himself on the line and says, “Rise, take up your bed and
walk”, and he shows that faith is action.

Maybe that’s the greatest thing about the incarnation. It shows you why so many of us live in
poverty, in poverty of spirit, in poverty of health, in poverty of our abilities. We live there
because we won’t go out on faith action and it’s only faith action that enables the miracles that
God has wrought in Jesus to be manifested in us.

In other words, when the man came with blind eyes to Jesus, it would have been a nicer, less
threatening, more fail-safe situation if Jesus could have stayed in his own room and simply prayed
that God, his Father would heal this man and would enable him to see, but he didn’t do that. He
asked the man, “What do you want me to do?” and the man said, “That I might see”, and then Jesus
took mud, you remember and put it on the man’s eyes. Can you imagine the anticlimax if that man had
not been able to see? I mean they would have been pretty mad. All he had got was a dirty face.
That’s what it is, you see.

See, if you believe it, you’ll do it; if you don’t believe it, then you won’t touch the mud, but you
see, our lives lack the power of God because we won’t let God be incarnate in us. That is, we won’t
engage on actions and words that only make sense if God has in fact done this in Jesus death. that’s
it.

See, we’ll say, “Lord, will you help the situation in my office? Will you make it better? Will you
improve my boss’s attitude?” Deep down in our hearts we think this praying is dead easy. It’s a nice
way to go because if it works, it’s good and if it doesn’t then my body isn’t on the line, except
that that’s not faith. That’s the old prayer wheel stuff. It’s not faith.

Faith is believing that God has already healed the situation in the office and approaching the boss
in absolute confidence and with a whole new spirit and heart to yourself that is based on that fact
that you know it’s been changed, that’s it. Why do so many of us see no changes in our marriages? We
approach them the same way.

“Lord, will you try to influence my wife or my husband? Will you try to bring them around?” And we
hope that somehow God will change the thing but we don’t put our own lives on the line by acting
towards them on the basis of the fact that they have already been changed and that’s what Jesus
brought home to us in the incarnation.

Faith is action. It isn’t just praying. It isn’t just words. It isn’t just thinking. It isn’t

working yourself up into a persuasion that the thing is so. Faith is acting in absolute certainty
that this thing has already been done. That’s what the incarnation is about. It’s God incarnate in a
man, so confidently believing that God has removed all the evil in his life and all the evil in the
world already that he does what only makes sense if that in fact is true.

So loved ones, many of us are playing mental games and what God is saying to us at this Christmas
time is, “If I become incarnate in you, I will be exactly what I was in my son Jesus”, and then
here’s the amazing fact. There’s a verse in the Bible that runs like this, “He was the light that
enlightens every man that comes into the world.” Jesus is in you. Jesus’ life is in you. It is
incarnate in you. You can let it be what it is or you can destroy it, and he said because of this,
greater works than these will you all do.

So loved ones, you can be this very moment what God has already made you and greater works than
these will you do. That’s part of what the incarnation means for us. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we are overwhelmed. Thank you. Dear God, we see that there’s only one thing to do and
that is to be this moment and to act and to speak and no more merely to think and meditate and
aspire and hope but to be and think and speak and do, so that we may be part of this great
incarnation, and so that men and women in our places of work and in our world will be able to see
you alive in another person’s flesh, will be able to see you incarnate in us. Lord God, we commit
ourselves to being this for your glory. Amen.

Living in the Light

Romans 13:13

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

It’s really hard to get to used to writing 1984 on your checks, isn’t it? And for those of us who
were brought up on Orwell’s “1984” at college, it’s a particularly momentous kind of time for us
because for 20 or 30 years now we have been watching to see if he was right and to see what would
turn out that way.

Sometimes you think it has turned out that way when you think of what he said about “new speak” you
remember? “New speak” was the kind of language that governments would use to make unorthodoxy
impossible — or “double think” — whereby you thought again and thought the very opposite of what
was true. Sometimes when you listen to the politicians, or when you listen to Andropov talking
about America or Reagan talking about Russia, or you read the newspapers, you begin to wonder, “Do
we not have “new speak” or “double think” right here among us?” Yet some of the other prophecies
we’re just glad weren’t fulfilled. The government cannot watch us on two-way TV screens — yet
anyway — the churches have not all become museums, as he said they would, and procreation does not
take place only by artificial insemination. So some of those prophecies, obviously, have not taken
place, and we are glad of that. Yet you must admit we’re glad in a hopeful kind of way because,
deep down, we see so many of those trends are present, even in our own society, besides the
totalitarian societies.

So it’s certainly an exciting kind of year for those of us who wondered, “Would it be as bad as
Orwell said it would be”? And yet that isn’t really, primarily, why it’s a momentous time for all
of us here in this room, because this book (the Bible) assured us that whether Orwell described it
correctly or not, the whole place would go from bad to worse.

In fact, to me, that’s what it says in Timothy 3:13; God said, “while evil men and imposters will go
from bad to worse, deceivers and deceived.” The whole world will just deteriorate. It may not
deteriorate just as George Orwell described it, but it will deteriorate; there’s just no way in
which you can avoid it.

You remember that this book (the Bible) assures us that actually it won’t be destroyed in a nuclear
holocaust. It won’t. It will be dealt with in a different way, and you may want to look at that,
because some of us allow the fear and uncertainty that comes with the fear of nuclear disaster to
govern our lives in a way that isn’t God’s will at all. It’s in 2 Peter 3:7, “But by the some word
the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of
judgment and destruction of ungodly men.” So the heavens and the earth will not be destroyed by a
nuclear explosion that men have created; they are, in fact, stored up for fire, “being kept until
the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”

So this book (the Bible) assures us that there is no uncertainty about the future; the world will
generally go from bad to worse, but it will not succeed in destroying itself. In fact, Jesus will
come and will take from the earth those of us who are still alive and then the earth itself and the
heavens will be destroyed, and they will be renewed completely, and then there will be a great
judgment that will take place. So in reality, we are not dependent on Orwell or what he thinks about
what will happen.

So this isn’t really a momentous time primarily because it’s 1984. This is a momentous time because
we all are a day’s march nearer home, that’s it. We are going into another of the years that for
every one of us here in this room are getting fewer and fewer. Even if you are in your 20’s, they’re
still getting fewer and fewer for you. That’s why it’s a momentous time. The second Sunday in a New
Year is an important time for every human being because we are a day’s march nearer home. We are
going into another of the few years — how many of which we all have we don’t know — left. We are
taking another step into the unknown world of this time and space age. We are moving a step
forward; closer to that day when each of us will meet our Maker. We’ll meet the person who created
us and gave us this life that we have, when we were little babies. That’s why it’s a momentous time.

We are moving forward to that time that the Bible describes as a time when the Lord of earth will
come in his own glory and all the holy angels with him. And before him will be gathered all nations
and he will separate them, one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The
Bible, you remember, says that that day, the day of the Lord, will come like a thief in the night —
when nobody is expecting it. So that’s why this is a momentous day for every one of us here,
whatever you believe about God, or about religion, or about church; we’re another year nearer the
end of our lives.

How do you get ready for that time? How do you prepare for it? Loved ones, look at Romans 13:13 and
you’ll see very clear direction there: “let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day.” Why?
Why live and behave as you would in daylight? Why?

I’ll show you in Psalm 139:7, “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy
presence? If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! If I
take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall
lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, ‘Let only darkness cover me, and the light
about me be night,’ even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day; for
darkness is as light with thee.”

That’s why; because when you think you are doing something in the dark that nobody can see, or
you’re doing something furtively that you think God doesn’t know about, even darkness is light to
him. He sees it all. He sees everything in your mind at this moment — he sees all your thoughts, he
knows all your little ideas, all the little plans you have. He knows all the little wayward
tendencies that your mind has at this moment — all the things that you are thinking of doing, even
though you know you shouldn’t do them. Those are all light to him.

That’s why we need, if we’re going to meet God, to start living now as in daylight. Start living now
as if you are in daylight, because even if you are not in daylight to the rest of us, or you’re not
in daylight to your wife or your parents or your friends, you are in daylight to God. He can see it
all bright as day. He can see everything you do, everything you think, everything you are thinking
of doing, he can see it all.

There is no such thing as night, you see. That’s what that says – even the night is light to him.
Night is simply a concession that we time-space creatures need to charge our batteries to keep on
going, but there is really no such thing as night, there is no such thing as darkness. There is
actually nowhere to hide; that’s our error — we think there is somewhere to hide. We think if you
do it under the bed boards, or you do it in the bedroom, or you do it at night, or you do it in the

darkness that somehow people won’t see you and God won’t see you, but he sees everything. And we’re
dumb; we’re just pretending like the ostriches; we’re sticking our heads into the sand and because
we see only darkness, we think the danger has disappeared.

Loved ones it isn’t so; God sees you every moment. There is a verse in the Bible (Genesis 16:13)
that says, “Thou God seest me”, and that means he sees your least little thought of criticism that
you’ve just thought, he sees your least little thought of resentment that you have just felt. And
that’s why, in order to get ready to meet him, start living now as if you’re in daylight, because
you are in daylight and you’re only mocking him and pretending to him when you keep on thinking that
he doesn’t see. He sees — he sees everything we do.

Now you know fine well, loved ones, the difference between living in daylight and living at night —
you know that. From the time we were little kids, we all got the idea that you could do anything
under cover of darkness. I know in Ireland at night we’d play “thunder and lightning”; we’d run and
knock on the doors of people and run away, and it was just a little more difficult for them to see
you! Then we raise those little childhood games to the nth degree, don’t we, until we become big
mature adults and can do all kinds of other worse things, and hurtful things, in the darkness. But
it’s all a game, you see. It’s all a game.

It’s as if you have the Garden of Eden here on earth, and God is up above it — as if above a maze
and here are the little people scurrying through the maze. Now, if you are up above it, you can see
and can say “oh take that corner, turn right, now turn left, no, the other person’s going that way,
turn around.”
When you’re above the maze and you can see everything, that’s what it’s like. It’s like we’re in the
Garden of Eden with trees in it, but God is up above and we are behind this tree, then we get behind
that tree and then we get behind another tree so that he won’t see us, and he’s saying “Hi” because
he sees you — that’s it. He can see everything and we’re just playing games, we’re just pretending;
we’re trying to make a fool of him and actually we’re just making a fool of ourselves.

That’s why the first thing, at the beginning of this New Year, is to begin to conduct ourselves as
in daylight, as in daylight. Begin to step out into light in your own life. Begin to be open about
what you’re like and what you are; about the wrong things in your life, and about the right things
in your life. Begin to be open to God, to God; not to the rest of us — although you have to be
open to some of us about some things — but primarily to God. Stop pretending. Stop cutting yourself
off from him. That’s not mannerly, it’s not kind, it’s not loving, and it’s not realistic. God can
see it all anyway, so acknowledge it before him; bring it out before him. Be real about it, step out
into light about the things that you know are wrong in your life, and be open with him about them
and say that to him.

Now an interesting thing happens when you do that, and you’ll find it in Ephesians 5:11. “Take no
part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is a shame even to speak
of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible,
for anything that becomes visible is light.” That’s what you find.

When you make a thing visible, suddenly instead of it being a thing that condemns you and brings
guilt to your conscience, it becomes light to you. In other words, the moment you begin to be real
with God instead of playing these games — pretending that you are really hidden behind the tree of
the garden and that he can’t see you because you do the thing in the dark — the moment you stop
playing that game, and you start bringing things out into the open, and you become real and honest

with him, that moment he begins to give light to you about himself, that’s right. He begins to give
light to you about himself and the things that you make visible, they themselves become light.

Many of you are in the position where you say, “I don’t want to say that I do this thing because I
can’t stop doing it.” Well as long as you continue in that situation, you are going to be imprisoned
by that thing forever because that is the whole deception; that you somehow have to get rid of this
thing first, and then you can admit to God that it was in your life. That’s madness.

The thing to do is to make it visible to him; to say, “Lord, you know this is here; I have known
it’s here for years, and actually so have you. Lord God, I know this is wrong. I admit it’s here in
my life, and Lord God, I ask you, now, to give me light about it, and to give me life and grace and
strength to get rid of it.” That’s the first step; admit that the thing is there, and there’s
nothing so small that when you admit it’s there, God does not immediately begin to pour light in
upon you.

Of course, the reason you can admit it’s there is that he has done something to change you, loved
ones, he has. He has arranged a miracle in his son Jesus whereby he is able to change your whole
personality. And for that reason, he is able and willing to forgive you for that thing, that’s it.

I don’t blame you; I don’t blame you holding back and trying to cover your sins and trying to
pretend they aren’t there; if you really do, you have no reason for believing that God will do
anything but kill you. Well, then, obviously, you’ll keep quiet about the thing. I mean if he is
going to punish you, you’ll want to pretend that you’re not justified in being punished.

But loved ones, he won’t punish you, because he has done something to you in Jesus that is able to
change your life, and is able to get you to walk the way he wants you to walk. So the moment you
make the thing plain before him and acknowledge it, that moment, he forgives you and he begins to
pour light in upon you.

Now, that’s what is mentioned in one of the Proverbs. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it. It’s in
Proverbs 28:13, “He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and
forsakes them will obtain mercy.” Now you know day follows day, week follows week, month follows
month, year follows year and we continue to drift into nothing. So isn’t that the story? I mean,
that’s all our stories, it’s the same; we just drift from year to year, week to week, month to
month, no great change in this and 80 years down the road, we’re little different from the way we
started.

Now the way to stop that is to acknowledge it to God. “He who conceals his transgressions will not
prosper but, he who acknowledges them will find mercy.” Today, loved ones, live in daylight; bring
things out into daylight before your God, be real about them, acknowledge them before him and say,
“Lord God, I need these changed and you alone can change them in me. Lord, will you begin to give me
light about this? I am not going to pretend anymore. I am not going to be a hypocrite anymore. Lord
God, I am going to be real with you now; these things in my life, they’re wrong. I acknowledge
that.”

Do that first, because God has promised, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor
requite us according to our iniquities” but “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he
remove our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:10, 12) And that’s what he will do; he will forgive
you if you live in daylight today and begin to do it now. Don’t listen to any voices that say,

“Well,it’s not really wrong, it’s not really wrong.” If you are in any doubt about it, it’s probably
wrong, and you’d better acknowledge it before God now.

There is another reason for stepping out into daylight about things that are mentioned in that verse
— the debauchery, the revelry — and all the lesser versions of those. I don’t know that too many
of us are engaged in nights of debauchery; apart from anything else that wears you out and you
couldn’t carry on your work, so not too many of us are involved in that. But it’s the things that
are variations of that; it’s the unclean thoughts, it’s the unclean motives, it’s the fantasy dream
of a moment that you entertain. It’s that kind of thing — have done with that — move out of that.

Have you ever got up on a spring morning and everything seems so clean and so bright and so pure
when you see the little birds, and you think, “Oh, I feel so dirty, compared with this clean spring
morning?” Now, loved ones, we’re meant to live in spring-like cleanness every moment of our lives,
and it’s possible; but you start by stepping into daylight.

Now, there is another reason, actually, for living and conducting yourself as in the daytime; it’s
found in the previous verse that we studied a few weeks ago and it’s Romans 13:12, “the night is far
gone, the day is at hand”, that’s it. I know it seems to many of us as if the night is pretty deep,
but actually the night of violence and nuclear warfare, that night is almost gone. The night of
lying and dishonesty, the night of hypocrisy, the night of strife, the night of hatred, it’s almost
gone. It’s worked its way pretty much out to near the end and actually, I think, whether you are
religious or not, you will probably admit that. It won’t go too much further because it’ll just
destroy itself.

The night is far gone, the day is at hand. The day started at Christmas; the day started when God
put his own foot on the ground in his son Jesus. From the day that happened, there came about a new
power in the world. Up to that moment, dishonesty and lying and financial affairs were more potent
than openness and honesty. Up to that point, hypocrisy and pretence in reputation was more potent
than honesty and humility. Up to that time, anger and force was more potent than gentleness and
love. But from the moment God stepped on the earth, he brought a transforming power into the world
by which, in Jesus’ death, he destroyed the elemental spirits of the universe that give the power to
lying and dishonesty in business, that give the power to hypocrisy and pretence in reputation, that
give the power to force in anger in war. He destroyed the elemental spirits that give those things
their power, and he brought in a new order.

So when he healed lepers and he raised people from the dead, he wasn’t just changing the physical
nature of bodies, he was bringing in a new power that changes everything even in the midst of this
darkness. So if you begin to live as in daytime, you link up with that power.

There are two ways to deal with strife in a home situation; one, frontal attack, the power of the
right arm — either in arguing with the person — or having one of those endless sensitivity groups
that never end. Or two — believe that Jesus has destroyed the invisible powers and spirits in that
home that create such antagonism in that other person towards you and that confuses all the
communication in the home so that there is never any possibility of clarity. Believe that that has
happened, and simply love the other person and keep believing and lo and behold you will see a
miracle take place, because the night is far gone, and the day is at hand; the day is already
showing itself.

So, loved ones, the more immediate reason for living as in daylight now, is that you’ve got a power

going for you that will achieve more than the powers of darkness can achieve for you. So God says to
us today, “Stop manipulating; stop trying to manipulate the powers of darkness to get what you want.
Step out of darkness, step into daylight. Begin to conduct yourself as in daylight.” Walk every
moment of your day as if God can see everything, because he really can. Live that way — it takes a
great burden off your heart, takes a great weight off your heart.

Do you know how much burden we bear just keeping up a show? Do you know that? Do you know how much
of your inferiority complex or your schizophrenia or your paranoia is due to you pretending,
pretending, pretending and covering up, covering up, covering up? Stop it. Your God can see you all
the time, so you’re involved in a charade. Be open with him; walk in daylight. Be what you are and
acknowledge to him what you are and he will begin to bring light upon you. He will begin to reveal
the powers of his Son’s resurrection in your financial affairs, in your family affairs, and in your
professional affairs. Let us conduct ourselves as in the day. Let’s pray.

Dear God, in a way it’s a relief to so many of us that you have been seeing us all the time. In a
way, it says to us that we can stop the charade and stop pretending. We can almost feel the strain
draining from our faces as we realize that you have known all the time. We ask your forgiveness that
we have counted everybody else’s opinion as more important than yours; they’ll all be dead, yet
we’ll still have to meet you.

Dear God, forgive us for not being concerned that you were able to see all the things in our lives
and in our minds. We acknowledge them to you now, Lord. This is just a game we’re playing and we are
not going to do it any more. We acknowledge to you the things that are in our lives. You see them;
you see the thoughts that we have and you see our motives. You see Lord, how selfish, how rotten at
the core we are in so many things. Lord, we want to acknowledge each one of them because we brought
them into our lives individually and we want to acknowledge them before you individually. We want to
start walking in some kind of sanity again, some kind of honesty.

So Lord, we acknowledge these things to you. We confess them to you. They are wrong and they
shouldn’t be here; we shouldn’t involve ourselves in them at all. Lord, we confess them to you now
and we ask you to forgive us for them Lord, we want to be done with them — we don’t need them. We
want to finish with them. We ask you now to give us light in life so that we’ll begin to sense your
strength in our lives and your grace.

Then Lord, we give up now, for this year ahead of us, the ways of darkness. We put away from us,
now, the ways of force and anger. We put away from us, now, the ways of hypocrisy and deception and
Lord, we’re going to walk in simplicity; we’re going to be simply what you have made us. And we
trust you to let the power of Jesus work in our many situations and resolve them in your way, in the
way of the children of light and not in the way of the children of darkness.

So Father, we would begin this year of 1984, grateful to be still alive, and ready, now, to conduct
ourselves as in daylight, and to live every moment of our lives in the knowledge that you can see
everything, and that it is all laid out before you. We look forward to the relief and the freedom
from the strain that comes from living in the light, for your glory. Amen.

What Is Faith In Christ?

Romans 13:14a

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Many of us here, if not most of us, have no trouble believing the truth of the statements that we
have been reading in this book the past Sundays. The truths are almost self evident in these days of
tension in which we live. So, maybe you would just look at them, loved ones, it’s Romans 13:11.
“Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep. For
salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at
hand.”

The scientists have that clock you remember, by which they measure the likelihood of nuclear warfare
and they’ve moved the hand back up towards midnight, it’s now again a few minutes from midnight. So
of course, most of us who live in this society are very aware, “Yeah, things do seem to be drawing
to a close.” In fact, we wonder ourselves, how much longer the world will be able to fight anarchy
and chaos, which seems to be encroaching upon us all the time. But then in another way don’t you
think that all of us are very aware of the reality of these verses, in a kind of personal way too,
because some of you are twenty, some of you are thirty, some are forty, some are fifty, some are
sixty and some of us are older than that. And we are beginning to feel that year after year after
year we’ve been saying, “Yeah! We are going to get ready. We are going to get ready to meet God.
We’re going to clean up our lives and get our life in order, so that we are ready to die, we are, we
are, we are.”

And we have been saying “Manana, manana, manana. [tomorrow, tomorrow] I am going to do that, I am
going to do it, I am going to get ready.” And every January that passes we say again, “This is the
beginning of a new year, I am, I am going to make a change in my life now, I am going to get ready.”
And we are very aware that the night is far gone and the day is at hand. We are very aware that it
is full time for us to wake from sleep, and we should have wakened from sleep years ago, and we have
not yet done it.

And of course, we are aware that there is going to be a time when all the things that God already
sees in us are going to be exposed to the light and you know that’s how the rest of that goes in
verse 12. “Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, let us conduct
ourselves becomingly as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and
licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy.” And we say to ourselves, “Yeah! Yeah! I want to
have done with that stuff. I want to have done with the jealousy. I want to have done with the envy
and the strife. I want to have done with the debauchery and the revelry. I want to have done with
the unclean thoughts. I want to have done with this self-indulgence that fills my life. I want to
stop it so that I am ready to meet God.”

But how, how do you stop it? How do you change? Worldly wisdom says, slowly, painstakingly,
uncertainly, no quick and easy answer, no simple solution to how to change habits of a lifetime.
Slow, year after year after year, doing your best, trying to surround yourself with good company,
trying to read the right books, trying to reinforce yourself with good fellowship in some church and
bit by bit, gradually, you get rid of some of the habits of thought and of action and behavior that
plague your life and make you ashamed to even think that God sees them. That’s how you change.

That is a damning lie. That is a damning lie. There are too many of us in this room who have been on
that self-improvement treadmill for years and we are no better than when we started, except that we
see our failings more clearly than we did before. That is not how you change. You change by putting
on the Lord Jesus Christ and you do that in a moment. You put on the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how
you change. There’s no other way. Now, if you say to me, “Brother, that’s not honest. You are
talking about how we get rid of the evil habits of thought and action that we have built up over a
lifetime and now you are saying to us, you just do it by being like Jesus Christ. I mean it’s not
what you are saying. You are saying, all right put on the Lord Jesus Christ like a coat and you know
what I really mean is, be like the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what I mean. Be like the Lord Jesus
Christ. I am just putting it in a metaphorical way. Now, that’s not honest, because you are saying
to me, how do you change these habits? Well, just be good like Jesus. Well,that’s what I can’t do. I
can’t be good like Jesus.”

Loved ones, if “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ” is just a metaphor for trying to be like Jesus,
then I agree with you. It’s a mockery. I think it’s a mockery. Moreover, if this is just a metaphor,
then that whole book (the Bible) there is just knocking us human beings, because all it’s doing is
describing the way we should be and then telling us to be that. And we are pleading, “But we can’t,
we don’t know how to.”

The world shattering fact is, that’s not a metaphor. You know a metaphor is just a kind of a picture
way of saying something that isn’t literally true. That isn’t a metaphor, “putting on the Lord Jesus
Christ”. That is a literal, mental and volitional and spiritual act that you can do in a moment that
will change you absolutely and completely. It is possible, this morning, to put on the Lord Jesus
Christ and to be changed. Now if you say to me, “Well, how can you put on Jesus Christ? He lived
1900 years ago. How can you put on a person who lived 1900 years ago?” Well, because of a unique
power that this man Jesus Christ had. I will show you, loved ones, if you will look it up. It’s in
John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad.’ The
Jews then said to him, ‘You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?’ Jesus said to
them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” Jesus says, “Before Abraham was,” who
lived a couple of thousand years ago, “I am.” In other words, Jesus says, I existed when Abraham
existed.

And indeed there are several places in the Old Testament where he actually appeared to Abraham and
he says, “I existed from before the foundation of the world, I’ve existed throughout time, I only
appeared here in the first century for a short space of time to show you what I was like in your own
physical body, but I am existing all the time. I destroyed the power of death and I have promised
that I will destroy it in each generation. In every generation I will exercise the power I have over
death.” And here is the way he promised that, he said, “Lo, I am with you always.” Jesus is alive
every generation. Jesus is above time, he is outside time and space and he can impinge upon it at
any time at all and that means he is alive here this morning, in this room. That’s how it’s possible
to have any relationship with him. You can do it, because he is alive at this moment. His whole
spirit, his whole power and joy is alive at this moment, right beside you, round about you.

Now maybe you say, “Yeah, but how do you put on a person, how can you put a person on? I mean,
there is no way in which you can do that.” And I agree with you; if he is in a human body like ours
there is no way. I mean I can’t get inside your body and put it on me, the way I can put this coat
on. I could if I were a spirit, wouldn’t you agree? If I were a spirit, I could, because that’s what
happened with Jesus in the tomb, you remember. His body lay there for the three days and nights and
then his spirit returned to it and got inside his body and stood up and walked around, you remember,

and appeared over a period of 40 days. Moreover, you and I know that’s what makes the death of a
relative bearable, isn’t it? The thought that in a moment all you have got there is a body. As you
look at your loved one lying on the bed, you suddenly realize there comes a moment when it’s no
longer your loved one, it’s just the body they inhabited and you realize that the spirit has gone.

So there’s a difference between the spirit and the body. So obviously, if you are a spirit, you
could come in and put on a person. Jesus is a spirit. Ever since he ascended to God, his Father,
and took his body with him and it disappeared from the earth, he has been a spirit. And he is able
to come inside us to surround us, to cover us, to clothe us; his spirit is able to. That’s why we’ve
talked, you remember, about spirits possessing people. In other words, it’s possible for Jesus to be
in us and fill us and to clothe us and surround us. It’s possible to put on Jesus, because he is now
a spirit and it is possible for us to don that spirit and to step into it; not just a spirit in the
sense of a bundle of good principles or a bundle of moral qualities, but an actual spirit who is a
real person. It is possible for us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now if you say, “How?” You are in the same position as Mary and there is only one answer to the how.
Maybe you want to look at it; it’s part of the Christmas story. I remember her reaction was the
same, how? And it’s at Luke 1:31 and the promise was made to her about Jesus, “And, behold, you will
conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.” And then verse 34, “And
Mary said to the angel, ‘How shall this be, since I have no husband?’”

And the answer is not a mental technique. It’s not a transcendental meditation system. The answer is
in verse 35, “And the angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.’”
God alone can clothe you with his son Jesus. God alone can do it, you can’t do it. If you try it
yourself you’ll end up with a system of controlling human temperaments. You will end up with a
technique for the power of positive thinking. You will end up with a method of transcendental
meditation or self-development or self-fulfillment. Only God can clothe you with his son Christ.

Is there anything you can do to make that possible? Yes, respond the same as Mary did, you see in
verse 38? “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your
word.’” You can say that to God. “Lord, I believe what you say you have done to me, I believe it.
Let it be to me according to that.” And what has God done? He has already put you in Jesus. He has
already put you into Christ, that’s right. He has already put you into Jesus. That’s what that great
verse means in 2 Corinthians 5:14, Christ died for all, therefore all of us died, all of us. All of
us were put into Christ by God our Father, and were changed in Jesus. God, by a mighty feat, by a
mighty act in timelessness and spacelessness, took all of us and put us into his son Jesus and
crucified us and raised us with him. You only have to say to God, “Be it onto me according to your
word, let it be as you have said you have done to me, let that be unto me.”

How else do you explain the magnanimous feelings that you have at times? Aren’t you surprised at
times that you have such generous feelings in the midst of all the selfishness, in the midst of all
the misery and the self-indulgence and the envy and the jealousy? Isn’t it amazing, the good
feelings you have at times, the good attitudes, the good acts that you almost surprise yourself by
doing? That’s because you are already in Christ. It’s Christ that does those, it’s not you; you
aren’t good and I am not good. There is no good but what God does and if there’s any good in you, it
comes from the Christ Spirit that is already clothing you. The tragedy is that his Spirit can only
do that while your will is not resisting him.

That’s why it only happens at times, when you’re kind of relaxed or something, that you find
yourself doing something, or you’re not caring or you’re not anxious about something, some of you
find yourself doing something really nice. You think, I didn’t think I was as nice a guy as that.
Well, you’re not really. It’s Jesus, but you think, oh, I’ve really surprised myself. Well, you
don’t, it’s Jesus that surprises you. But it’s only in those moments when your will is not resisting
that he is able to do it, or when your mind is not consciously believing, I am me and I am only me
and there is nobody else in my body but me.

But the moment you believe, what is actually true is that God has put you in his son and that he is
round about you, and in him you live and move and have your being; he is like a great ocean around
you, and he is like a great ocean filling a little bottle in which it’s floating on the ocean. Once
you believe that, then the whole life and power of Jesus begins to manifest itself in your everyday
action and your behavior, and you are changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

The moment you believe that, that’s how you put on the Lord Jesus Christ, you believe it. You
believe, “Father, I believe that I am in Jesus, I believe that you’ve placed me in him, I believe
that I see this world through the cushion of his dear womb. Father, I believe that he is round about
me. Lord Jesus, I believe that you’re surrounding me and that you are all around me and in my mind
and in my motions, Lord, whatever you want to do, that’s what we’ll do.” You say to me, is that all?
Yes, that’s the first vital step. If you believe that, you’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then you put your coat on and you button it up and you cuddle up in the fireplace corner and you
say, “Boy! I am not going out into that cold until I get something to keep me warm.” And if you do
that you’ll never experience the benefits of having this coat on. In fact, you live in a fool’s
paradise. You’ll have the coat on, but you’ll never experience the benefits of that coat unless you
go out into the snow and the rain, that’s what this coat is made for. And so you put on the Lord
Jesus Christ and then you don’t make provision as if he wasn’t on, you make provision as if he is
on. You put the coat on and the coat is made for snow and rain; you go out into the snow and the
rain and you feel the benefit of the coat around you.

Otherwise, it’s like putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and then saying, “Yeah, but I am not going to
go abroad until I get my investments settled, my retirement arranged, until I get married and have
children and I am sure of everything else; then I am going to go abroad, since I have now put on the
Lord Jesus Christ.” But the whole purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ is to take care of all those
things. So if you’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ and then you start making provision as if you
haven’t the Lord Jesus Christ on in another words, as if he isn’t there to take care of you at all,
then you will never enter into the benefit of him being upon you and you will eventually lose him.

And part of the problem is this. Some of us try to put him partially on. So we get one arm in the
sleeve, and we open the door a little. This is the arm of our business practices so we put him on in
regard to our business practices and honesty with the IRS and then we open the door a little, we
stick the other arm out. That’s the arm of our sex life, we get frost bit, because you have to put
him on completely, you have to put the Lord Jesus Christ on completely for all of your life, and you
have to go forward believing him in all of your life, making no provision for the flesh in any part
of your life. That is, giving no worry again to what you eat, or what shelter you’ll have or what
home you will have, or what your retirement will be like, but going forward into the snow and the
rain, confident that this Lord Jesus Christ that you have put on will make provision for all your
needs. That’s how you change.

And you keep going that way even when a little gap opens and you feel a little cold and God is
testing you and saying, “You’re really sure? Seems you’ve just discovered cancer, do you think Jesus
is enough?” So, he opens that little coat to see if you are still walking by faith. And even though
you feel a little dart of cold, you say, “Yes, I have put on the Lord Jesus Christ, I believe he is
sufficient, I believe he has made all things and without him was not anything made that was made. I
believe that he is sufficient. I’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ and I am not making any provision
for the flesh. I am not making any more provision for the things that I thought I needed.” In other
words, if you’re a sister, you say, “I’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I know we’re all supposed to
have magnificent and maternal instincts and we’re all supposed to have a real desire for a man, but
the Lord Jesus Christ is more man than I could ever want, and I believe he is sufficient. If he
wants to give me another man, that’s up to him, but I believe him. I believe that he is sufficient.
But I am not going to lie and make a mockery of him. I am not going to put him on and then say, “Now
you’re not enough. I need a warmer coat as well.”

Or we men, we put on the Lord Jesus Christ and then we say, “That’s sufficient, I don’t need any
more success than that.” But, if we then say, “Well, I’ve put on the Lord Jesus Christ, but I also
want to hit the top on my sales for this year and I want to have the kind of two car set-up that
everybody else has, and I want to be looked upon as a success.” Then you may as well not have put on
the Lord Jesus Christ, because he has promised that he will add all these other things on to you,
and that all you need is him.

And so that’s how you change. That’s what the Bible says. You should look at it. It’s Romans 13:14,
the last verse of the chapter. Romans 13:14, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no
provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” The Greek actually means, don’t take any
forethought for the things that your body says it needs. You obviously need to give it food and
clothing, but we’re no fools, we know we’re not arguing about that, we’re all fairly sensible
people. We know it needs that, but the secret is, that you put on the Lord Jesus Christ and then you
don’t get out the old binoculars to look for the girl, or to look for the next little emotional
thrill that you need, or to look for the next little comfort. “Poor me! Nobody really loves me.” You
stop that. You make no provision for that sneaking, cowardly little flesh that wants all kinds of
comforts beyond what Jesus himself is. You put on the Lord Jesus Christ, you put on the coat and you
get out into the snow and the cold and the rain for the next seventy or eighty years of your life,
and you find that he is sufficient, plenty.

Loved ones, it really is true in regard to sickness as well. We get what we expect. It is unto us
according to our faith. And if we believe Jesus is sufficient, he in fact will turn out to be
sufficient. How do you change? You can do it this morning. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, make no
provision for any other solutions, you’ll find you‘ll change by the power of God. Let us pray.

Dear Father, it all makes sense to us, that Jesus, who made all things and without whom was not
anything made that was made, is the sum total of all those things himself and indeed is better than
those things. Father, that makes sense to us. We know that the artist is always greater than the
art. We know the carpenter is always greater than the wood. We know that Jesus is always better than
the brightness and sunlit waves of the ocean, than the clear, clean air of mountain snows, than the
exciting downhill thrill of the ski jump, than the warm affection of a man or a woman. We know Lord
Jesus that you have made all these things and you are better than them all. And when we put you on
and accept that you’re all round about us and that our Father has not sent us here to earth naked
then Lord the moment we believe that, that moment we find, we’ve all we need.

Lord, we commit ourselves now to making no more provision for those little titillating satisfactions
that our emotions or our bodies or our minds demand. We intend to make do with you, Lord Jesus. And
we know that making do with you is having everything. We commit ourselves to you for that dear
purpose and thank you for yourself, so real and alive this morning, so warm with your arms around us
for so long. We’re sorry we kept you so long, our Jesus, ignoring you and pretending you weren’t
there. Now we believe. Let us go forward together, you and I, into this world for your glory. The
grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of his Spirit be with us forever
more. Amen.

Faith or Knowledge?

Romans 14:01b

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Do you remember the woman who had been haemorrhaging for 12 years and had spent all her money on all
kinds of doctors and was no better? And then Jesus was going to heal someone else and was in a
crowd, and she stretched out her hand and touched the hem of his garment, and she was healed and her
haemorrhaging stopped right there. Now why was she healed? Was there some magic in the cloth of
Jesus’ garment? And you know there wasn’t because Jesus said, “I perceive that power has gone out
from me.” So obviously it was power that had come from Jesus. But why did the power go to the
woman? I mean why didn’t it go to all the other people in the crowd, why did it go to that woman?

Probably you could answer the same way as I can, “Well, didn’t Jesus make it clear? He said, “Your
faith has healed you.” It was her faith, that’s what healed her.” And there probably isn’t one of
us here this morning, who doesn’t agree that faith is the key to everything. In Hebrews 11 it says,
“Without faith it is impossible to please God.” And so, probably every one of us here would say,
“Yeah, faith is probably the most important thing in the world.” And yet am I not right in saying
that even though you and I have studied faith and read books about faith and listened to countless
sermons on faith, probably there are quite a few of us here, who have certainly never had our
sickness healed through our faith. And there are probably a surprising number of us here, who
actually wonder if we are pleasing God and who are very uncertain still about what faith really is.

And so we talk about faith a lot and we share with each other about it. But yet it might surprise
us how many of us are kind of still a little vague about what faith actually is. So that’s what I
would suggest we do today. We are just beginning another chapter in Romans and that’s a big moment
in our life here in this body, that we are beginning chapter 14. It might be a good opportunity to
look again at what faith is, and you will see it mentioned, loved ones, in Romans 14:1. “As for the
man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions.”

Now what is the essence of faith? Only if we are clear about that will we know what it is to be
weak in faith or strong in faith. You could begin at least with one of the verses we quoted already;
it’s in Hebrews 11:6. And it’s that one you remember, where I mentioned, without faith it is
impossible to please God. Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For
whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
So, that’s an essential element of faith, that you believe that God exists and that he rewards those
who seek him. So that’s one essential of faith.

Faith is believing certain things are true. So, you believe that 2+2 equals 4. Or you believe that
the world is round, or you believe that your car is where you left it before you came into service,
you hope. Faith is believing that certain things are true. In other words faith is to some extent
an idea, it’s an idea in your head, it’s a concept that your mind grasps. It’s something that you
think; it’s something that you can tie down as existing as a thought in your mind. Faith is at
least that, it’s at least a thought or an idea.

Now even in the New Testament, faith went further than that. It referred not only to believing
those things but it referred to the things that you believed. So, it began to be known as “The

Faith” or “The Christian Faith.” And that’s even in the New Testament. You get in that little
book called Jude. The book of Jude is easy, loved ones, because it’s just before Revelation. And if
you don’t know where that is, you are in trouble. It’s Jude and verse 3, “Beloved, being very eager
to write to you of our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend
for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints.” So even in the New Testament faith
went further than just believing certain things are true and it began to refer to the things that
you believed were true.

And of course that was because in the early centuries people were interpreting Jesus in all kinds of
ways. You remember in the First and Second Century they disagreed about in what sense he was the Son
of God. Some said, “Oh, he is just an ordinary human being, upon whom the Logos came when he was
conceived in Mary’s womb.” Others said, “No, no he was existent from the very beginning.” So they
had to state what they believed about him and they stated this in forms of words which they called
Creeds. So for instance, the Apostles’ Creed tells you the things that the Apostles believed. The
Athanasian Creed tries to deal with that issue of, “Is God really in Jesus and is Jesus really God?”
And it’s the creed you remember that says, “He is very God, a very God, begotten not made.” And so
that makes it very clear, that he is divine.

So the faith began to refer to the things that people believed. And of course any of us here who
went through confirmation class have no trouble believing that faith means that. Because in
confirmation class, or in Methodist Church membership class, or in Baptist classes, we tended to
concentrate on what Luther believed about salvation, or what the Conference believed about adult
baptism, or what Wesley believed about faith, and our emphasis was on what we believed. So all of
us know that, “Yes, it’s very easy to say that faith is what you believe.” The disastrous tendency
of course is all of us could testify too, and it is to begin subtly to believe, that if you think
the right things about God, then you are a child of God. And I think many of us got caught in that,
not only in our confirmation classes but maybe here in later years.

We think, “Oh yes, I believed the right things about God, therefore I am a child of God.” And of
course there is a verse in the Bible that makes it very clear that the inhabitants of hell believe
the right things. And that believing the right thing is not all that faith is, and believing the
right thing does not necessarily make you a child of God rather than a creature. And that verse
loved ones, is in James 2:19, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe –
and shudder.” So, even the devils in hell believe the right things about God. You know loved ones,
that it’s very easy to regard yourself as a Christian simply because you believe the orthodox things
that all other Christians believe, and indeed there is a great tendency in our day, isn’t there, to
regard faith as just that.

Faith is believing the right things about God, that’s what makes you a child of God and the only way
to grow in maturity is to absorb more and more teaching about the right things to believe about God.
And so many of us think that growing deeper in faith is just getting more and more information
about God and being able to explain more and more difficult questions that come up to us about
revelation, or about the end times or about Baptism, or about the fullness of the spirit, or about
new birth. And indeed, we can carry it even further, we will say, “Oh yes, and about the behavior
that stems from that belief.” You need to know all about that, you need to know for instance, what
kind of attitude a Christian should take to abortion, what kind of attitude a Christian should take
to nuclear disarmament. That’s all faith and if you have all that, and you get more and more of
that, then you are growing in maturity.

Loved ones, that’s not what faith is. That’s a necessary basis for faith, that belief part. But you
can see that even the demons believe the right things and yet they shudder, because they are not
children of God. And in our day, when Christianity is so popular, it’s very easy to go to church
Sunday after Sunday and to feel, “Well, I believe all the right things and I know all the answers,
so I must be a child of God.” Loved ones, even the devils know the right answers, but that doesn’t
make them children of God.

What more is faith then? If it isn’t simply believing the right things or it isn’t the right things
that are believed, if it’s more than that, what more is it? Well I think you can see a little more
of what it is, if you look at that lesson that we read for the New Testament reading earlier in the
service, and it’s back in Matthew 8, if you like to look at it. And you remember the centurion came
to Jesus and he said, “My servant is desperately ill and he is in great pain and in great distress.”
And you see that in Matthew 8:6, “And saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in
terrible distress.’” And the centurion’s faith in Jesus certainly believed that he was the same
yesterday, today, and forever — that he was able to heal sickness. And so he had that faith, but
he also expressed that to Jesus. He said, “Lord, will you heal my servant?” And not only that, but
he had such confidence in Jesus that he said, “Look you don’t even need to come to my house. I know
that you have power over life and death. I know that you can just speak a word at this moment; you
don’t need even to come under my roof. I am not worthy to have you come there. Just speak the word
and my servant will be healed.”

And you can see that there faith is not just believing but it’s actually putting yourself out on
quite a limb, isn’t it? Because it’s obvious that he did care about the servant. I mean he was
concerned — otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered, it would just be another slave, he’d let him die
— but he was concerned about him. He said, “My servant is ill and in great distress.” So he had a
lot to lose if Jesus didn’t come through, or he had a lot to lose if Jesus couldn’t work at a
distance.

And real faith is that kind of thing. It’s action that depends absolutely on God coming through in
a certain situation. And of course, brothers and sisters, isn’t it our tragedy that we try to avoid
those situations? We try to avoid those if we possibly can. We try to run this life absolutely
safely by our own power, so that we’ll never need to end up in that spot. And indeed when we do cry
out to God in desperate emergency it’s a trouble situation, it’s a situation that we don’t want to
repeat again. Indeed we’ll often use those words, we’ll say, “Well there is nothing left to do, but
pray,” because we run the rest of our lives, virtually without God’s intervention. And actually
without the expression of much faith. And yet faith is only faith when it’s expressed in action like
the centurion’s.

You can see the dire consequences that would have come about, had his faith been misplaced. You can
see what a fool he would have appeared — he was a ruler of the people — if he had gone to this man
and asked him to heal his servant, and nothing had happened. Now that’s faith, ready to get itself
into tricky situations that will be disastrous, if God does not come through — same with Moses, you
remember? Thousands of men, women, and children all around him and the Red Sea in front and behind
him Pharaoh’s army, so he hadn’t too many alternatives, and yet he was in the same spot. It would
have been nice to get into his tent and do a little quiet prayer. “Lord, I am whispering so that
the rest don’t hear you.” But he didn’t, he didn’t. That dear guy went right out there and got the
old staff and stretched it right across the water and kind of commanded the water to go back and he
would have been a dumb-dumb if not a thing had happened.

But do you see a wee bit, what faith is? See, it is us going on record ourselves; we have to go on
record. And if you are like me, you’re a little fearful being that hopes that you will get God to
commit himself without you committing yourself. And loved ones, if you keep on doing that, your
faith will stay mental and intellectual, it will. That’s what happened to me for years. I believed
the right things and I had a whole intellectual experience, but nothing ever happened in my life by
God’s power because I never acted on my faith. I never went out on a limb and trusted God to
actually do something, in a situation where if he didn’t do it, I would have egg on my face. I
never did that, I always kept clear of those awkward situations and yet, that’s what faith is.

Faith is committing yourself in action that makes sense only if God comes through. Now, that’s what
the Bible says, if you look at it in James 2:22, loved ones. And God is talking here through James
about Abraham and his sacrifice of Isaac. Verse 22, “You see that faith was active along with his
works, and faith was completed by works.” In other words, God said, “I want you to lay your son
Isaac on the altar, and you have got all the things underneath him ready for making a fire, and I
want you then, to be prepared to sacrifice him.” Now, Abraham didn’t say, “Now Lord, he is heavy,
how I am going to get him up there? You know, I am going to sacrifice him. You know I don’t need to
actually do it.” But he did actually have to do it.

Now, that’s where we lose it. We play a mental game, we say, “But God you know I am ready, you know
I am really ready, I mean you know I am ready to give this money, you know I can trust you with
that, you know Lord, so, why not come through just before I give the money?” And God won’t do it
because he requires you to express your faith in actual action, so that you are committed, and only
when you are committed will he commit himself. It’s the same as conversion, loved ones, it is.
Some of you say, “Wait a minute, what’s the big deal about making restitution, what’s the big deal
about making apologies to other people, what’s the big deal about giving money back that I stole?
Sure God is a sophisticated person. He knows if I am serious inside.”

God will not move an inch until you move. He won’t, because faith is action, action that makes
sense only if God comes through and that’s why James says, “Faith is completed by actions.” So
faith is not just believing the right things about God; faith is not even the right things that are
believed, faith is actually action that makes sense only if God comes through.

And loved ones, it’s actually more than that. Because some of you might say, “Oh then faith is kind
of a calculated risk, it’s kind of a throwing yourself out on a limb to show that you really
believe. It’s kind of a wild gamble; it’s an Evel Knieval [an American daredevil and entertainer]
kind of thing. You just take a run and a jump and a leap, just to show God and show all the angels.

Well, it’s interesting that those men that express the faith, didn’t seem to have that jittery risky
kind of feeling, did they? I mean they seemed very solid about it. If you look back at Matthew
there, at that centurion and you realize that he was a man who was respected in the society and
obviously was a man that was reliable and responsible and a man that did not gamble. And you see
his approach to Jesus in Matthew 8:8. “The centurion answered him, (answered Jesus) “Lord, I am not
worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I
am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to
another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

In another words, the centurion had great respect for Jesus. He pointed out, “Lord, I myself have
power to command my servants and my soldiers. But I know you well enough to know, that all that

company of heaven is at your disposal, so I know it’s nothing to you, to say to an angel, ‘Go to
this man’s house and heal his servant.’” In other words, the centurion was not going out on some
wild limb. The centurion knew Jesus and he knew who Jesus was and what he was like, and he trusted
him deeply and had a deep confidence in his abilities. That’s what faith is. Faith is a confidence
and trust in your Jesus. It’s a deep confidence that you have in Jesus, your own personal friend.
That’s what makes the going out on a limb seem so easy.

It’s a close intimate confidence, with a person whom you have got to know day after day, through
your prayer and your Bible study. And you have begun to know him and have confidence in him, that’s
what faith is. Faith is not an “I – it” relationship. It’s not a faith in beliefs or a faith in
certain knowledge about God. Faith is a close intimacy with your Savior, that’s it, loved ones.
It’s a confidence in Jesus; it’s a trust in Jesus, that’s what faith is. It’s a personal
relationship with the Son of God.

It starts with you believing that he is there and speaking to him in prayer, as if he is there, but
it continues as he begins to speak back to you, through your thoughts at times and sometimes apart
from your thoughts. But as you wait before him and spend time with him, you begin to get to know
him. Loved ones, I think some of you have real troubles with faith, because you don’t actually
spend much time praying, and I don’t blame you in a way, I mean it gets kind of boring if nothing is
happening. And yet, you have to stay there long enough for your own thoughts to run out, do you see
that? It’s not that God is not trying to get through to you; he is trying to get through to you.
But it’s like what happens with those FM radios when you get near the center of the city, there is
one that just goes out every time it comes near the IDS tower. It’s that God is trying to get
through to you but there is so much interference, so much crackling, so much high frequency noise
out of your own head, you have so many thoughts and so many ideas in your own mind, that his stuff
is hitting all that shrapnel as it comes towards you. And you have to stay before him long enough
for all that to run down.

And so there is a real need to be prepared to wait in quietness before him and you know anyway
that’s a good thing, good for mental health according to everybody today. Nobody is quiet, nobody is
at peace, nobody rests; so even just from that angle it’s good. To be quiet before God, to be still
and know that he is God and then to begin to say, “Jesus if you are there, will you somehow try to
get through to me? I need to know you myself. I need to know you myself, not what Pastor says about
me, not what somebody else says about you, but I need to know you myself. Jesus, will you somehow
come through to me? I need you badly.” Loved ones it’s there that you begin to develop a confidence
and a trust in Jesus himself. And so in the New Covenant meaning, faith is a belief that you have
been completely changed in Jesus. That God has destroyed all the evil in you and all the evil in
your life’s circumstances in Jesus.

And then secondly, it is a life filled with actions that are based on that faith. So if all your
old desires have been destroyed, then you no longer want those desires, so your actions show that.
You don’t want those desires, you simply don’t want them, you have no time for them. If you really
do believe that all the evil in your circumstances have been destroyed, then you don’t face this
week with fear, you face it with confidence. And then you do that not because you have worked
yourself up into it, not because you want to prove to yourself that you have faith, but because you
have confidence in Jesus. You know him, and you know that he is going to come through in this
particular issue.

But finally, faith is confidence in Jesus, confidence in a person whom you know intimately, because

you spend time with him day by day. And loved ones, that’s for all of us here, really. That’s for
all of us, whether we have suffered the old confirmation classes or whatever we had been through,
that’s for all of us here. You can get to know Jesus because he is alive today and he is the same
yesterday, today and forever and he’ll start right back at ‘A,’ right back at square one with you.
Never fear, he’ll start right back at the beginning with you, if that’s where you have to start.
But faith is confidence in him. So, what is faith? It’s trust in a person called Jesus.

Let us pray:

Dear Father, we know these things in our heads, and yet Father we often find ourselves running
around the edges of this thing called faith. Trying to make it real for us by all kinds of
techniques and reading all kinds of books. We tried even by going to the Bible study groups and
coming to church service. But Father we do see that there is one simple way to have faith, and that
is to begin to treat your Son Jesus for real. So, Lord Jesus, we would begin to talk to you
personally as if you are really alive and as if you are really a person.

And we ask you to forgive us for the brief times that we have tried to pray. We realize that we
would give more time to an earthly king than we’ve given to you. So Jesus, we are going to spend
some time waiting upon you, as people of old waited upon kings. We are going to spend some time
waiting upon you and give you a chance to come through to us and to let us know that you are real.
And Lord, we know that there is nothing else will make up for that knowledge, knowledge of you as a
real person, who is our friend. So dear Jesus, we would ask you to do that for every one of us here
who is willing to start seeking you with all our heart. We give ourselves to you for this purpose
Lord, so that we may begin to exercise faith and may begin to experience salvation. We thank you
that you are real and that you are a person, thank you Lord. Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and
the love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us, now and evermore. Amen.

Faith is Personal Trust

Romans 14:01c

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Will you take a Bible please and turn to Romans 14:1: “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome
him, but not for disputes over opinions.” I think many of us would say that’s a good verse. There
should be more verses like that, because that’s me, I am still a bit weak in my faith and I think
many of us might think that. Yeah, that’s good, that’s talking about me because I am weak in faith.
Or somebody asks you, “How is your relationship with God?” And you say, “Well, it’s all right but
it’s just my faith that is weak.” And yet, as year passes year, you find yourself tending to say
the same thing, “Well yeah, if I just could get my faith a bit stronger, I’d be okay.” And then
five years pass and you find yourself still saying that, “Well, if I could just get my faith a wee
bit stronger, I’d be surer of myself and surer of my relationship with God.”

Now why is that? Why is it that so many of us are hoping year after year that our faith will get
stronger and yet year after year we’re still surprised how weak it is? Well, one reason can be
this: that it isn’t faith at all. It isn’t faith at all. You may say, “Well, what is it then?”
Well, it’s belief; it’s belief. I think many of us have belief; we have belief that certain things
are true. That God exists, that Jesus is his Son, that Jesus died to bring us salvation. That God
is willing to forgive us our sins, we believe all these things and we have a very strong belief, but
it isn’t faith. And you may say, “Now come on, belief is part of faith, isn’t it? So, surely in a
way, you can call belief faith.”

Yes, loved ones, it is part of faith. But there are vital elements in faith that make it absolutely
different in essence and quality from belief. In fact there is a real way in which belief is
something like a stone. It’s inanimate, it’s dead and it doesn’t matter how long you wait, it
doesn’t matter how many centuries pass by, the stone will never turn into a flower because the stone
is dead and the flower is living. There is a real sense in which belief and faith have the same
relationship to each other. It doesn’t matter how long you wait, belief will never evolve into
faith.

I think many of us experience great frustration in our life with God and in our own private personal
life because we’re always hoping that our belief will somehow evolve into faith. And the fact is
they are two different kinds of beasts, that’s it. They are two very different kinds of thing; they
are as different, one from the other, as a stone is from a flower. One is just as dead as the stone
and one is just as living as the flower.

Now if you’d say to me, “Well, what is the difference?” I think that I could point out one of the
obvious differences in a story that some of you have heard before. It’s the story of one of the old
time Evel Knievels [a daredevil] — he was the great Blondin and he specialized, you remember, in
walking tight ropes in all kinds of hideously dangerous places. And on this particular day, he
stretched a rope right across Niagara Falls. And with the crowd kind of gasping, he lifted a
balancing pole and he walked across, right over the tight rope, right over Niagara Falls to the
other side. And then he amazed everybody by laying the balancing pole down and walking back across
the rope to the side he started from. And then they thought that was enough, but he went over and
he picked up a wheelbarrow, that had a groove in the wheel, and he put the groove and the wheel on
the rope and he walked back over again with the wheelbarrow, and got to the other side. And

everybody of course, was applauding madly.

And then he said, “Is there anyone here who believes that I could take that wheelbarrow back across
Niagara Falls but this time with a person in the wheelbarrow?” And there was absolute quietness
until one big guy got up and said, “Blondin, I believe you are the greatest, you are the greatest, I
believe you can do it, you can do it, I have no doubt you can do it.” And Blondin said, “You do?”
And he said, “Yes.” And Blondin said, “Get in.” And the guy went pale and then he went red and then
he sat down. That’s belief, that’s belief. That’s belief. He believed the other guy could do it,
as long as he didn’t have to commit himself to that belief in any way by his actions. That’s one
difference, loved ones.

Mental belief is like holding that E=MC2. Or old Martin Luther nailing up his 95 theses; E=MC2,
big deal. It doesn’t matter to him, whether it does or not, doesn’t make any big difference to his
life, it doesn’t take much to nail up 95 theses on something like that, because that doesn’t affect
your life, but that’s just mental belief. Faith is committing yourself in action to what you say
you believe, and many of us, of course, have never experienced faith, because we have never taken
any action that would put us in a disastrous position if God failed to come through, we have never
done that.

We say we believe God will take care of us, we say he will look after us, but we’ve been careful
never to put ourselves in any position by our acts that would prove a disaster to us if God failed
to come through. In other words, we always hedge our bets. We always have ourselves well looked
after, so that if he comes through good, it’s a help. If he doesn’t, it’s no big deal. The result
is, we have never experienced faith and we’ve never had faith proven. And therefore we are very
unsure of God. He has never for us come through at any memorable crisis moment when we have had to
depend utterly and completely upon him, and so our belief has stayed a mental belief. And that’s
part of the difference between belief and action.

Belief is acceptance of certain concepts as being true, but faith is committing yourself in action,
on the basis of those beliefs. In other words, it’s God saying to the Israelites, “I am going to
open the Jordan, so that you can go through and get into the Promised Land, but before I do it, the
priests must walk ahead with the Ark of the Covenant and they must actually walk into the river.”
That’s what faith is. Belief would be standing back saying, “Lord, just open it a little even, if I
see the waves receding a little, I’ll go, I’ll go, but not until you have moved the waves just a
little, move them a little, you must move them a little,” that’s belief. Faith is walking in; “I
know you are going to move this river, Lord.”

Or take the walls of Jericho. Belief is praying in your room, “Lord, will you bring those walls
down? I am really praying to you and you can see I am praying, and you can see I am trusting you.
You know I am trusting you Lord, I am praying, you bring the walls down.” God is saying, “Get out
walk round the wall seven times. Get out, walk around them seven times.” You are saying, “No Lord,
no, don’t let me. Look, I might make a fool of myself if – well, I know it won’t happen — but what
if it did? So I’ll just pray quietly here.” Reputation is saved and there is nothing being laid on
you. That’s belief. Faith is getting out, walking around the walls.

So, faith is acting on your belief. Now, you might say well, is that then what faith is? That’s all
it is, it’s just belief in action. Well yes, but you have to be sure it’s the belief that produces
the action. I mean you can imagine the guy in the Blondin incident, getting into an awkward spot.
He said, “Blondin, you are the greatest, I know you can do it,” and then Blondin says, “Okay, get

in.” And then the guy is kind of embarrassed and looks around and sees everybody watching him, and
he thinks, well I don’t trust this guy at all but everybody is looking at me and I’ve kind of put
myself on a limb here, so I’d better get in. And you can imagine him possibly getting in, just
because everybody else expected him to get in. And he’d have lost face if he hadn’t got in or he
might be some kind of daredevil and gambler himself and he might say, “Well, it’s a calculated risk,
I’ll have a go with this.” So, it is conceivable that he could actually act apparently in
accordance with his belief but not really because of his belief, not because of any belief in
Blondin but just because he put himself out on a limb.

So, there is a heartless Christian faith abroad in the land. There is a heartless Christian faith
in America that believes all the right things about God and then is pretty well independent of any
personal trust in Jesus. They believe certain things about abortion, they believe certain things
about honesty, they believe certain things about filling in your income tax properly, they believe
certain things about fornication, and they align their own lives and wills with those things. But
actually there’s no dynamic cause-effect relationship between their belief and their action. Indeed
you could say they are both just beliefs.

And the tragedy of that faith is it is a heartless faith and a lifeless faith. And of course, it so
often ends up in legalism; it is a mental ascent to certain things being true on the one side, and a
mental ascent and a volitional commitment to certain ethical behavior. But the two are not actually
related to each other dynamically. In other words, faith is not just belief, it’s not just belief
plus action, but faith is personal trust in Jesus. Go back to the guy in the Blondin situation.
Faith for him would be observing Blondin, taking that barrow back and forward across the rope, and
knowing Blondin’s character and then trusting Blondin personally with his life, that’s faith. Faith
is not just a speculative rational thing, a cold lifeless assent, a train of ideas in the head. It
is a personal trust.

In other words, faith is believing that God has made all of us free. And that he has given us
personalities that are very much like his own, but that we have messed them up in all kinds of ways
and we have perverted them in all kinds of ways, so that they are incapable of doing what he wants
us to do. And so we become desperate in our attempts to overcome our selfishness or overcome our sin
or stop our fornication and we become overwhelmed by trying to overcome these things and we cannot,
we cannot. And then we turn to Jesus and we realize that God has put us into him; has completely
remade the whole human race in him, recreated us all new, and in desperation we hug Jesus to
ourselves and we cling to him. That is faith.

It is a personal trust in Jesus. It is a coming to the place where you have tried everything else
and nothing works and Jesus is your only hope. It’s our personal trust in Jesus. It’s too
dangerous to say, it’s our belief in the Savior. It’s too easy to say the Savior. ’The Savior,’
everybody else’s Savior, it’s not. It’s a personal embracing of Jesus your dear friend, who had you
inside himself when he died on Calvary. It’s a personal embracing of him. It’s a closeness to him.

You may say well, I can see that, I can see that there is a way in which that constrains you to be a
certain kind of person that impersonal belief doesn’t bring about, but how does that personal trust
come? Much the way it came with your dad. If your dad was in the mold of our Heavenly Father — now
maybe he wasn’t and maybe your mum was — but if you have a dad that is in the mold of your Heavenly
Father, he becomes very dear to you. You begin to know him. You begin to like the smell of his
clothes, you begin to like the way he talks, and you enjoy being with him. If he tells you to hold

his hand and go somewhere, you go in absolute confidence, not because you know where he is taking
you but because you know him, yourself. You trust him and you know that, really you’d be happy to
die in his arms, because when you are in his arms, everything is safe. And that’s because you’ve
observed him over the years. You watch him, you know he loves you, you know he thinks the world of
you; you know he wouldn’t let anything happen to you that would be wrong.

Now that’s with Jesus, that’s what it is with Jesus. It’s a personal trust in your dear Jesus. It’s
a readiness to go into hell as long as Jesus is with you, that’s what faith is. It’s closeness to
Jesus. Now if you say, well, what makes that saving faith? Oh honesty. Honesty makes that saving
faith, just honesty. As you cuddle-up to Jesus, he says, “You know that lust that you have? Well,
part of the reason I bled on Calvary, was the pain of that being burned out of me, for you.” Well,
immediately, you say, “Lord, that’s it, good, great, that’s the end of lust for me, I walk free of
that from this day on, if that’s what it cost you Lord, great! I am finished with it.”

Or another day, he whispers to you, “You know that pride that you have, well I bore that for you? It
was destroyed in me and you have no need to have it, no need to have it at all. You can walk free of
it this very moment.” Well, you immediately say, “My Savior, my dearest friend and I walk free,
that’s the end of it, I am finished with it.” It’s that honesty that creates saving faith in you.
It’s that honesty with the Savior that enables him to witness in your heart, you are with Me in
paradise. That’s it. And whenever he says to you, “You see that selfishness you have? Well I bore
that for you.” And you shrug him off, and you say, “I want to hold on to that.” You lose the
witness of his Spirit in your conscience. You break with the friendly love that he is communicating
to you. That’s what faith is, loved ones.

Faith is an honest personal trust in Jesus and a life that remains absolutely in line with that
honesty, that’s what faith is. But it’s a personal trust in Jesus. It’s not this hard thing about,
“I believe God is this” or “I believe in creation as opposed to evolution” — and I do myself — but
that’s not that stuff. I mean those are the things that you believe. But the Bible all the time
says, “Whosoever believeth in creation, whosoever believeth in salvation, whosoever believeth in the
Lord Jesus.” Believing in Jesus is a personal faith in him.

There’ll be a moment in all our lives, when all the rest of us cannot get through to you, you know
that. That’s real, doesn’t matter if you’re the most irreligious person here this morning, you know
that’s real. There’ll come a moment when we all fade away from your consciousness. Either when
you’re a very old person and you’re dying, or when you‘re a young person and you have had a disease
of some kind that kills you. But there’ll come a moment, when you’re lying on the bed, and I don’t
know how many of you have been at a deathbed? I suppose I have been at many of them through the
years. But at that moment, there is a great gap, it’s amazing. Your dearest one can be holding your
hand but there is a vast gap between you and them, there is a terrible gap that opens out then on
that deathbed.

Now, you will come to that moment. Now it’s vital at that moment, that you have your hand in the
Person who has control of the other side of the universe. And who can lead you gently in. Now,
that’s why it’s so important to have personal faith in Jesus. At that moment, it doesn’t matter if
you agree with Billy Graham, it doesn’t matter if you agree with anybody else, doesn’t matter if you
agree with all the tenets of the Church. At that moment, the only thing that will give you peace is
that you know your Savior, and you know he knows you, and that you have walked in close harmony with
him over the years. And that everything that he has born for you on Calvary, you have let go out of
your life. And there is no sin in your life that causes him pain that you have not relinquished.

That’s what it is. So really, it’s not any different from me knowing you. Not any different from
that. It’s just two persons being really honest with each other. And Jesus is willing to be that
with you this morning.

Let us pray.

Jesus we would approach you, each one individually. And Lord we want real faith and we want to
personally trust you. And we want to know that you know us. So Jesus, we even just want to say our
names to you now. Seems funny, but at least just introduce ourselves to you, and tell you who we
are. And Lord Jesus we want to be in you, and we want to know you. And we know that you alone know
the way through death. And we know that at that time, we won’t have the consciousness or the
composure to think these things, and so we want to settle this now. Jesus, we want you to come into
our lives and we want you to begin to save us from our sins. And Jesus we want to start being real
with you ourselves.

So we ask you now to come into us. And we understand that we cannot treat you as a thing and we
understand that since you’re God, we can’t play fast and loose with you and ignore you one day and
expect you to come running to our bidding the next. Jesus, we will treat you as the Lord of the
universe, and we will respect you, and we will do what you tell us to, if you’ll make that plain to
us. We’ll begin to obey you in our wills, and we would thank you for all that you have done for us.
So Jesus we ask you now to help us to start a new life with you personally, as our personal Savior
and our own dear friend, we ask you to do this. And now the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of
God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and evermore.

Mental Assent Or Weak Faith?

Romans 14:01d

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Many of us today in our society don’t know why Christianity doesn’t work for us. We just don’t know.
We don’t see why Christianity doesn’t work for us, we think it should. But we don’t know why it
won’t work for us. We’ve believed all the things we are supposed to believe, we have done all the
things we are supposed to do, but somehow Christianity still doesn’t seem real to us, and we don’t
really understand why.

We are really a bit like John Wesley you remember that we talked about last Sunday, the founder of
the Methodist Church. After 34 years of life, he was still trying to believe the right things, and
do the right things but somehow still the Christian faith was not real for him. And many of us are
like him. We believe all the beliefs about Jesus and about God and about the Bible, and we do all
the things that Christians are supposed to do — we go to church and we read the Bible and we pray
and we try to give money to the right people and the right causes — and yet still our Christian
faith doesn’t seem real to us.

And the whole reason for it or the whole heart of it is exposed by two separate questions. The first
question, do you know Jesus? And many of us would answer, “Oh I mean the same way as do you know
Reagan, yeah I know Reagan, sure.” Do you know Jesus? “Yeah, yeah I know Jesus, I know Jesus.” And
many of us would be in that position. We’d say, “Yeah, yeah of course I know Jesus, and I believe he
is the son of God, and I believe he is the Savior of the world, and in some way he saved me too; yes
I know Jesus.”

But the second question we’d have a little more trouble with. Do you know that Jesus knows you? In
other words, you can ask a person, do you know Reagan, and they say, “Sure I know Reagan. That is, I
know who he is, I know about him, I know what he looks like, I have seen him often on television.”
But do you know that Reagan knows you? “No, I have no question — he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t
know me from Adam, he never met me.” And when we would be asked that question about Jesus, do you
know that Jesus knows you? We’d feel uncomfortable with the question, many of us. We might say,
“Well, he knows everybody, so he must know me, but no I don’t have a particular consciousness in
myself that he actually knows me. I am not conscious that we have a relationship with each other.”

In other words, there are many of us here this morning who believe and regard ourselves, and are
regarded as, part of the company of the friends of Jesus — but we are more conscious of the friends
of Jesus than we are of Jesus. That is, the company of the friends of Jesus — the others in the
church or the others in the body — are real and living to us, whereas Jesus is still a little bit
of an historical figure, still rather a far off ideal that we are aiming at, still a kind of example
to us. A bundle of principles that we regard as Christian, but he himself is not very real to us.

Now many of us would say, “Well the reason for that is my faith is just a bit weak, if my faith were
stronger the reality of Jesus would be stronger to me.” But actually the reason is not that our
faith is weak; the reason is that isn’t faith at all. That many of us have a purely mental assent to
the beliefs of Christianity and together with that we have a strong willpower by which we follow
what is called the ethical behavior that Christianity demands. And so, we feel we have the two parts
that make up faith: belief and action. Except that it’s not real belief, it’s mental assent. And the

action is just a set of standards that we keep trying to live up to. And in actual fact we have no
personal sense of Jesus in our own lives and the reason is that we have not personally appropriated
what Jesus has done for us on Calvary.

We haven’t entered into a personal trust with him. We simply have an acceptance of him in our minds
and we try to follow him in our lives and we try to keep company with the people who respect him but
we ourselves have not personally appropriated him by personal faith into our own lives and hearts.
And therefore we have not actually received anything from God. We haven’t. We haven’t actually
received anything from God, we haven’t actually been regenerated, we haven’t received the New Birth
in the spirit that God alone can do, we haven’t actually received through the working of the Holy
Spirit that life changing, and heart warming experience that is called the New Birth.

Now, we say we are born again, but we say we are born again in the same sense that many
intellectuals will say they are born again. They are born again because they see things completely
differently, they understand things better than they ever understood them before, and they will
often say “Oh, it was like a new birth I entered into.” Now, many of us talk about the New Birth in
those terms. We say, “Look, I see things differently, I really see what you Christians are saying, I
see what the church is saying, I see what the Bible is saying, I see what God is after, I see how
Jesus is the Savior of the world, I see how he has borne our sins, I see how God has forgiven us our
sins, I see all that, and so it’s a new birth, I see things completely differently.” Except that it
is primarily a mental change for us, it’s primarily a cerebral change but there has not been done a
work in our hearts that has given us a new motivation, a new love of God, a new love of others, and
the new love of Jesus, a loyalty to Jesus — a personal loyalty to Jesus, and a love of his word,
and a love of prayer day by day.

And so we say to ourselves, well yes I am a Christian I am not a Christian the way some people are,
some people – boy, they seem to have a very personal sense of Jesus in their lives. Yhey seem to
have a very personal loyalty to him. Me, when I want to know what to do I kind of listen to
everybody else, what the Christians say we should do, and I think the thing through and then I
decide. But I really don’t have that kind of personal, kind of mystical — (we love to call it
mystical because it kind of gets us off the hook)– I don’t have that personal mystical awareness of
Jesus that others seem to have. But then I’m not built that way, or my faith is maybe a little
weak.

But many of us I think are in that spot, where we say, “Yeah I am a Christian but I don’t have a
personal loyalty to Jesus the way some people seem to have and I don’t have a great love of his
word, for instance. Well, I sometimes read the Bible, I sometimes don’t read the Bible. When I am in
trouble I read the Bible, I sometimes pick up the Gideon Bible and look up the places where you need
help in sickness, or help in financial trouble, I read it like that — but I don’t have a personal
love of God’s word — and I pray at times but I don’t pray every day.”

Loved ones, that is mental assent. I don’t blame you for saying to me, but don’t many people regard
this as Christianity? Yes they do, sure they do. Sure we are in the same situation as many loved
ones in India who say, “I am Christian.” They mean they are not Hindu; they are Christian. They
were brought up inside the Christian ideology. So many people today talk about mental assent plus
aligning their lives with the Christian ethical ideals as Christianity. Except that they don’t have
any personal loyalty to Jesus. They don’t have any personal love of God’s word and they don’t miss
it particularly if they don’t pray each day. And that’s because a work has not been done in their
hearts. When a work of regeneration is done in your spirit you love the Father, the Spirit cries

“Abba Father,” and you want to talk to him, and you want to read his word, and you can’t do without
reading his word every day, you want to be there and you enjoy it. It’s something that comes from a
work that is done within.

Now why are some of us caught in this mental assent kind of Christianity? Why is it not even as this
verse that we are studying? It’s the verse in Romans 14 and it says “Those who are weak in faith,
welcome them, but don’t welcome them to dispute about opinions.” And what we are doing is just
preparing to study that verse in these introductory sermons, but why can we not even be called
people who have weak faith? Why are we people who have just mental assent, why do we end up caught
in that position?

For one great reason, there is one great reason that looms above all other reasons and explains why
some of us are cerebral Christians — not really Christians at all. Some of us are mental believers.
We are not really born of God. Some of us are just kind of camp followers we have not experienced
the work of regeneration in our hearts and our spirits. One great reason looms above all others, has
loomed above all others throughout the centuries and looms further above all others in this society
of ours today, and the reason is you don’t take sin seriously. That’s it. We don’t take sin
seriously, and so we don’t really see the need of a Savior that we receive by personal
appropriation. We don’t take sin seriously, we don’t.

And I am talking about sin. Not just crime, we all are worried about that. Not just vice, because we
are concerned about that when it affects our neighbourhood. But we don’t take sin seriously. As a
generation we don’t take sin seriously, as a people we don’t take sin seriously — and worst of all,
those of us who sit under this Christian word, we don’t take sin seriously. Sometimes I have thought
the poor old soul that drinks himself to death and doesn’t come near church sometimes he is more
afraid of God than all of us, who have kind of comforted ourselves with a false Gospel. And
sometimes the dear old sinner out there is nearer a real fear of God than those of us inside the
churches who are comforting ourselves with a light healing. The reason so many of us are caught in
mental assent rather than in a real New Birth is, we don’t take sin seriously. Now, what is sin? And
how serious does God regard it?

Well I’d ask you not even to go back to the New Testament. I would ask you to go back with me not a
thousand years ago, not two thousand; let’s go back three and a half thousand years ago to the time
which we regard as mankind’s childhood. We regard this time as the primitive primeval times of the
Old Testament when things were crude and cruel and human flesh was cheap and we feel, boy they were
hardly even regarded as pagans. They were almost savage animals in those days. Let’s go back to
those days and see what God calls sin and how seriously he regarded it.

Loved ones, you find it way-way back in Exodus. And it’s Exodus 21:17, “Whoever curses his father or
his mother shall be put to death.” Because cursing your father or your mother is sin. And Romans
6:23, four thousand years later says, “The wages of sin is death,” “Whoever curses his father or his
mother shall be put to death.”

In other words, if you wish your father or mother were out of the way, so that they wouldn’t bother
you, whether you’re young or whether you are old, that’s what cursing is. Wishing they were out of
the way, damn them. I wish they were damned. I wish they were out of my way. It’s wanting ill for
your father and mother, it’s desiring ill for them. It’s failing to love them. Whoever curses his
father or his mother should be put to death. Why? Because in God’s eyes it’s as bad as hitting them.
That’s in verse 15, “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.” So, hitting

your father or mother is a sin so heinous that the only thing to be done with you is to kill you and
destroy you, at that very moment. Why? Because you hit your father or mother, or you curse them
because you think that they are going to spoil your life in some way. And you think that because you
don’t trust that God is able to modify anything that they do to you, so that his will will be done
anyway.

So the real sin is not simply hitting them or cursing them, it is your lack of trust in God, your
independence of him. You are feeling that “Yeah, he can’t do anything about it anyway. If I can’t
stop my mother or father doing this they’ll spoil my life.” So it’s a lack of trust in God’s ability
to overrule their actions, that’s the sin. And that’s why you must die. The wages of sin is death.
And so, hitting your father or mother, or cursing them or wishing they were out of the way — in the
primeval savage pagan days, those days which were crude and cruel, when human flesh was cheap, those
days that knew nothing of our sophistication, or the evolution that we have entered into in society
— in those days, if you hit your father or mother or you cursed them or wanted them out of the way,
you died. That’s how serious the sin of distrust in God is regarded in his eyes.

Now loved ones, why is that? Well, I’ll explain it to you through another verse in the Old
Testament. This is, the reason that a person who hits their father and mother or curses them has to
die. Isaiah 11:9, “They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” That describes the way life will be
after this world is ended. But you see that’s the way it is now in God. God is like that today. No
one hurts or destroys in his presence. And to preserve that he has, as it were, heat seeking
missiles, or sin seeking missiles that are launched immediately at any human being that hits or
strikes, or sins, or distrusts him. He has sin seeking missiles that go out and destroy them and
ends the stream of uncreative life that flows from him to them and they are left with the empty
shells of their physical mental lives. And that happens all the time, you see that happens now. We
are the dummies, we think it doesn’t happen and we wonder why we have the sense of emptiness and the
sense of condemnation and sense of guilt at times. Why? It’s because that has happened, that has
happened. Sin has wages that are death whether you know it or not.

And the marks of death are the sense of guilt for one thing but also the sense of emptiness, the
sense of pointlessness. Naturally, you feel empty and pointless if already the eternal life that was
flowing into you has been taken away from you. Sure the whole personality reacts and responds in a
suddenly conscious, “I am going to die at 70, that’s going to be it, utter darkness after that.”
Certainly there is a great pointlessness and emptiness that comes into your life at that moment. And
so, that’s working anyway whether you know it or not, whether you believe it or not. Whenever you
sin, this power from God from his holy mountain comes out and cuts you off from the flow of
uncreated life that comes from him and you say, “Well I am still alive.” Yes, sure you are left with
the physical shell that you have here, the mental shell that has been given life unconditionally for
70 years or so. But after that goes, that’s it.

The tragedy is we don’t believe that. You listen to me at this moment but you psyche yourself into
not believing that. Here is the way we do it. We say, “Well now wait a minute, things are different
now, aren’t they? I mean you couldn’t hit your mom or dad then or you couldn’t curse them without
dying. But since Jesus came and since he died we can hit our mom or dad, we can curse them and we’ll
be forgiven.” That’s the tragedy we’ve got ourselves into. We believe that. We believe that. “See
that’s the old covenant, that’s the Old Testament. Somehow God had higher ideals back then. But
after two thousand years with this crowd he kind of has lowered his sights.”

It just doesn’t make sense, does it? Because even a liberal theologian or a liberal philosopher will
say “Oh, we’ve evolved today, we’ve evolved. If that was the standard of ethical behavior back in
those days we’ve evolved into something higher and finer than that. We surely must live at least as
high as they did back then.” But what’s more important is, does God change, does God change? Does
God say back then, if you hit your father or mom, or you curse them you have to die — but now you
don’t have to? It’s not so. You remember Jesus; if anything he emphasized that sin was even more
inward than that. He said “Look, you’ve heard how it was said of old, you shall not kill and if you
kill you are guilty of the judgment. I say unto you, if you are angry with your brother you are
guilty of the judgment.”

And in actual fact, loved ones, God has already exercised that death penalty on every one of us. He
has actually taken us and put us into his son Jesus and destroyed us utterly there, and absolutely.
And that has already been done. And the Holy Spirit is constantly trying to actualize that in our
lives today. God is all the time trying to bring home to us the destruction that took place in
Jesus’ death on Calvary. And meanwhile we keep on playing a silly game. We look at Jesus death, not
as C.S Lewis did or as the man, George McDonald did who had such an influence on C.S Lewis, not as
the method by which God destroyed the sin and the sinner. But we keep looking at that as a cheap
admission ticket into heaven. And we keep taking the attitude, “Yeah, well I hit my father and my
mother and I strike them or I curse them or sometimes I don’t want them, or sometimes I get angry
with my brother, sometimes I criticize, sometimes I gossip, sometimes I steal, sometimes I worry —
but the Gospel surely is that despite all those things somehow because of Jesus’ death — I don’t
know what it has to do with it — but somehow because of Jesus’ death, I am going to get in on the
lower level than the rest of the people.”

Well then are you going to turn heaven into hell? Are you going to get in as a gossiper and a
worrier and an angry person and a striker of parents and a curser? And you’re somehow going to live
with the other people who allowed Jesus’ death to operate upon them? And loved ones that’s it, only
when you and I see sin inside us, as a blinding, deep rooted, hopelessly over powering force within
us that makes us distrust God and trust only ourselves, that makes us independent of God and depend
only on ourselves and the world. Only when we see sin that way, will we see that it is an integral
part of us and that there is only one way to be freed from it and that is to be destroyed with Jesus
and be remade completely new and be born again.

And while you and I keep seeing sins as inexpedient little human traits, that we ought to try to get
rid of to make our entry into heaven more appropriate, while we keep taking that attitude to sin, we
will never grasp Jesus with all our hearts in desperation. And loved ones the fact is that, Jesus
bore for you the pain of utter destruction and utter death to your sinful self. And only he can
manifest that in your life and that’s what you need. You are so bad and I am so bad, that our Father
knows the only thing is to wipe us out and start over again.

Now, only when you come to Jesus with that kind of attitude can the Holy Spirit do anything for you.
But you see that’s where we make the mistake. See, we have been kind of taught to come; “Oh come and
receive Jesus, receive Jesus.” Well you know it’s true, you have to receive Jesus — but what you
have to do about everything else, is grasp the dear Man’s arms and legs and say, “Lord Jesus, I
would never have seen light of day if the wrath of God had to burn out my sin the way it burned it
out in you. Savior, Savior I have no life outside you, I am dead, I am a condemned man to death. All
the signs that I have of guilt, of worry, of anxiety — they are like the marks of cancer in me. Sin
is within me and right through me and out the other side; I am a dead man apart from you. Lord
Jesus, I have life in you and you alone. Savior, I pull you to myself and I hold you and I praise

you night and day, morning by morning, moment by moment.”

That’s living personal appropriation of Jesus. But you don’t do that, unless you see the trouble you
are in, loved ones. And what we need to see is what sin is. And we need to stop this game we are
playing with the Old Testament and this game we are playing with the New Testament. And we need to
stop listening to the false prophets. You remember the Old Testament prophesied that there would be
false prophets who would say, “Peace, peace when there is no peace.” And “Who would heal my people,
my people lightly?” That is, people who would smooth it over and say, “Just believe in Jesus and you
can do what you like, just believe in Jesus and you will get into heaven.” Loved ones, believing in
Jesus means grasping Jesus with every ounce of your strength. It means embracing him with your heart
and your will and your whole being. It means a desperate grabbing for the Savior and a hugging him
to yourself and saying, “Lord, Lord I was with you on Calvary when you died. Savior, what in me did
you destroy that I am not free from? Show me, show me Lord Jesus, personally show me.”

And the Lord Jesus is able through the power of the Holy Spirit to speak out of eternity into you
here in time and tell you. And so he will say to you, “My pain was partly caused by your desire to
be well thought of and the tendency you have to boast. That caused me more pain than you can think.
That part made me cry out, ‘My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me?’ And I have destroyed that
now, it’s destroyed, it no longer exists. What you are expressing there is the fantasy of it, or the
shadow of it, or the memory of it, or the lie of it, that Satan is trying to persuade you is still
there.” And then you have to say, “Lord, you have done it, that’s enough for me.”

See the truth is, loved ones, God has worked a mighty miracle that is very hard for us to
understand. The closest we can come to it, is the thirty second delay that you get in T.V. shows
where there is audience participation. With our crude technology, that’s as close as we can come to
it. You know the way they actually record the program and then they telecast it maybe 30 seconds
later. So, it’s telecast almost immediately but there is that 30 second delay so that a very alert
or well-trained monitor can erase anything that the network regards as legally or morally
objectionable.

Now, if we can do that with our pretty crude mechanical machinery, you can see that God from his
position in eternity where he can see past and present and future all at once, he is able to see the
life that you already chose to live and he is able to see that, that life has led you to hell and
has already condemned you to outer darkness, and he moment by moment has taken that life as it is
manifested here in time because actually he can see it in eternity all as one great thing. But it’s
manifested in time moment by moment and as it were in each moment but actually before each moment
occurs. He put it into Christ. He destroyed it and renewed it so that you have the freedom and the
opportunity to see the life as you chose to live it, to reject it and to live the life that Christ
has for you. And that’s what is going on moment by moment by moment by moment.

So it is like an eternal miracle that is continually appropriated at moment by moment by moment. And
as you do that you are delivered from sin and your life lived that renewed born again life in Jesus.
And so of course God graciously looks at you and he can tell how radically you are ready to commit
yourself to that. How radically you are ready to commit yourself to that and he understands you’re
real and in the light of that he gives you utter and absolute peace in your conscience, do you see
that? So, you say to me, “Oh, well then God can only accept me when it is all through?” No, God can
read you. God can read you like a book. He knows how radically committed you are to total repentance
— and total repentance is not repentance for this sin and that sin, it is a total turning away from
yourself, a total rejection from the evil within you and a total acceptance of Jesus.

And in the light of that God’s Holy Spirit knows how real you are and in the light of that he
manifest to you peace in your conscience and that’s how you know you are forgiven. And that’s why a
person can never know true forgiveness over unconfessed sin or over a partially committed life. They
can’t. You can never know true forgiveness and the true peace of God’s acceptance of you in your
conscience unless you have actually repented completely and turned against yourself and turned
utterly towards the Savior.

Now, you can see, that’s a pretty radical thing. That’s a real appreciation of sin and that’s
radical repentance. And if you do that, you have a devotion to Jesus that will out distance your
devotion to your mum or dad, or your husband or your wife; or your mother, your father, or your son
or your daughter. You’ll have a personal devotion to Jesus that will live through thick and thin.
Loved ones, that is what salvation is. The Savior has borne you in himself in a way that he did not
bare me. He bore me in some terrible ways but he bore you in some drastic ways. You cut his heart
open, you caused him pain that cannot be described, you caused him agonies of forsakenness in his
Father’s relationship, that nobody can explain through a few words like, “My God, my God why hast
thou of all people forsaken me?” You caused him pain that none of the rest of us did.

You have a personal repentance and a personal receiving of him to do that none of us can do for you.
When you do that, at last peace is manifested in your conscience and you at last sense you’re at
peace with the world because you are at peace with the Creator of the world. And there is nothing
like that peace. And that’s clear, loved ones. I would suggest that you do make that peace, if you
haven’t done it. If you have lived with a mental assent then I would suggest to you that you make
that peace this morning, and that you do it definitely and deliberately.

I would think that you are better to put your all on the altar, you are better to come up here, you
are better to kneel down and you are better to say, “Lord Jesus” and confess to him your sins and
repent of them. And explain to him that you didn’t know that at all. And if you want him in your
heart and you want him to live in you from this day forward and that you will devote yourself first
and foremost to him because you owe him everything, then just get up and go back to your seat. But I
think really, if you’ve lived in that unreality for years, I think you should make a definite
commitment and turn your life over to him in a definite way. So that other people can see, so that
above all you know on such and such a Sunday I did that. I made my commitment to you, Lord Jesus,
and I will stand by that until I see you face to face.

Is Your Faith Weak?

Romans 14:1e

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Did you notice that Andropov’s son Igor, when the Politburo, Chernenko and the other members of the
Politburo, were passing Andropov’s body to express their sympathy to his widow and his daughter,
Igor the son, was standing there and of course Chernenko came up you remember, and then it just
surprised you, didn’t it, that Igor burst into tears right there, at that moment? And it’s always
seemed to us that there is nothing as cold and hopeless as those communist state funerals? Seems so
absolutely hopeless, it seems that they have nothing to say at that moment.

It seems that the very essence of the failure of communism is laid bare there at that moment for
everybody to see. And people like ourselves are just bewildered, we wonder how could Andropov — a
man like him — or Brezhnev, or Khrushchev, how could they believe something that they find is a
total deception, a moment after they die? How could they? And yet it’s possible for us here in
America to be in the same situation, it is. It’s possible for us to be living in a deception that we
find out about, only a moment after we die.

In other words it’s possible for you or me to think we have faith, when we haven’t faith. That’s why
we are studying that verse, you remember. It tells us that we should, those of us who are strong in
faith, should welcome anybody who is weak in faith, but not to disputes over opinions. Then in
connection with that verse, I asked you the question, “Is your faith weak? Or what is weak faith?”
Then you remember what I asked you, “Is your faith even faith? Is your faith, faith?” Because I
think many of us are like John Wesley. He was the founder of the Methodist Church and after 34 years
of life here on earth, he was an Anglican minister, he had come to America as a missionary to the
Indians and then he returned to England and was met on the dock by a Moravian, called Peter Bowler.
And this Peter Bowler said to Wesley, “Do you trust that Jesus is your own Savior?” And Wesley was
an intellectual from Oxford and thought about it and then said, “I believe that He is the Savior of
the world.”

And I think many of us can have that kind of faith. Not faith at all, not faith at all, it’s belief.
I believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world, I believe that God is the creator of the world, I
believe that he is our Father, I believe that he answers prayer, I believe that he forgives sins, I
believe that he will take all to him at the end to Heaven who trust him in this life, I believe
these things. But it’s only belief. It’s a belief such as I believe E= mc2 — I believe it. It
doesn’t have any effect on my life, it doesn’t change me at all, but I give mental assent to that
truth. I give mental assent to the truths and the concepts of Christianity; I believe these things.
Who wouldn’t? You see that’s the subtle thing, loved ones. Who wouldn’t believe these? I mean, you
can’t get away from it; the history is so powerful, the manuscript evidence is so unanswerable, you
can’t avoid believing these things — of course they are true. You have to be twisted in your
thinking to disbelieve them or to disprove them.

But the danger of that is, that many of us will say, “Of course I believe those things, isn’t that
what faith is?” And of course that isn’t what faith is. Belief is part of faith but belief itself is
not faith. Belief in that sense of a mental assent, of a grasping of an idea in your head, that
itself is not faith. And of course some of us say, “Well yes, but my faith is a bit more than that,
I mean, I do believe that you should in fact try to get the world to accept that.” Yes, but do you

feel any burden for yourself personally to fulfill the great commission? Do you feel any burden in
your own heart for the people in your office who don’t believe it? And so, many of us say, “Well no,
I don’t, but that’s just because my faith is a little weak. It’s not quite as emotional as other
people’s faith is.”

Could it be, that it’s because it isn’t faith at all? That’s why you don’t feel any burden for
souls, that’s why you don’t feel any desire to fulfill the great commission even though Jesus has
told us to go and preach the Gospel to all nations. Could it be that what you have is belief, mental
assent but not faith? And some of us of course are like Wesley in another way, we say, “Well, we
have something more than that. I understand what you said last Sunday. You said that faith is not
just belief but it’s belief plus action. Well, I believe that, I believe that. I believe that if my
belief is real then I should have action in my life that goes along with that belief. Well I do
have, I come to church, that’s because I believe. I read the Bible at times, that’s because I
believe. I pray at times, that’s because I believe. I give money to other ministries, that’s because
I believe. I try to be a good father, a good mother; I try to be a good son, a good daughter, that’s
because I believe. I have belief plus action. Now, isn’t that what faith is?”

Well that was Wesley’s situation. He knew that faith was not just belief, that it was belief plus
action. That David, little David believed that God wanted him to slay Goliath. So he took the little
stones, got out of his bedroom, took the little sling, went out into the middle of the plain,
refused to have the heavy armor that they offered him and slung a stone at Goliath’s head. And he
had faith that God would bring Goliath down. And many of us say, “Well, I know that’s what faith is,
that’s what I have in my life.” Except that so often our actions do not stem spontaneously from our
faith. They are something that we add to our belief because we know there should be action along
with belief.

They are a bit like John Wesley’s actions. He said, “Oh, I believe that God is real, so I should go
to church. I don’t feel I want to go to church, I don’t feel the need of church, but I believe I
should go to church. I believe I should attend Communion, I believe I should pray.” But those things
did not stem or spring from a living dynamic faith in a dynamic cause effect relationship; they were
something that he added on.

So many of us say, “Well, I know my faith should have actions, so my faith does have actions. I go
to midweek services, I go to Bible study groups.” But all those things we do as good works, not as
faith works. We do them because we believe they will help us prove the authenticity of our faith.
But they do not actually, if we are honest about them, spring from our faith, they don’t. They are
more logical conclusions that we draw from our belief. We say we believe this, therefore we should
do that. It’s evident for instance in regards to worry. Worry? We say to ourselves, if we trust God,
we shouldn’t worry and then here is the step we take. Therefore I must not worry. That’s what we do.

I believe in God, I trust in him, therefore I should not worry. Therefore I must not worry. Stop
worrying, you dupe, stop worrying! And dear love us, we then labor under that law, we labor under
that law, now I am worrying, I am worrying, I have to stop worrying, I have to stop worrying. Pastor
said I shouldn’t worry, I won’t worry. I won’t. It’s a work of law. It’s a good work that we try to
do. It doesn’t spring from our trust in God. It doesn’t spring from a real living faith. It is a
work that we believe we ought to do, because we say we believe certain things. We believe in God, so
we have to obey his law. That’s the way it operates. And so, our life has not a fresh, springing
spontaneous quality about it, it has a heavy set of beliefs and an equally heavy set of “do’s and
don’ts” and we try to say that that is belief plus action. Well, it is. But it’s a belief that is

purely cerebral or intellectual or mental plus an action that is a set of laws, as heavy as the laws
that the Jews had to bear up under.

It’s the same experience Wesley had. On the way to America, there was a tremendous storm that broke
out. The journey of course at that time in the 18th century took weeks and weeks. A great storm
broke out. The ship seemed almost to be sinking. There were Moravian Christians in the holds, men
and women and children, in absolute and utter peace, absolute and utter peace. Wesley was an
Anglican minister, had his collar on and all his regalia and he was terrified, but he knew he ought
to try to keep calm to show how faith affected your practical life. But his heart was filled with
fear and when he saw these Moravian men, women and children in absolute peace, he knew that what he
had was belief and not faith.

Loved ones, what is the difference between authentic faith, which marries belief with action, and
this counterfeit faith, that has a set of beliefs there and a set of actions there, that we observe
because we want to try to make ourselves consistent with our belief? What makes the difference
between those two things? What brings you out of that counterfeit faith, into real faith? Personal
trust in Jesus, personal trust in Jesus, that’s it. Believing first, that you are like the rest of
us, that as God said, “Every one of us here, have sinned and we’ve fallen short of the glory of
God.”

That you are exactly like that, that inside in your heart, the bit that I can’t see, or none of us
can see, you want to be your own God. You want to control your own life and in many ways we are all
rather inconveniences to you and you often see us like that. And indeed that you believe that God in
some way exists for your benefit and that you have every right to have your own way and that you
really are constantly trying to get that way, whoever of us may be hurt in the doing of it.

First, you need to believe that. You need to believe that you are no different from the rest of us
here on earth. You are a sinner like the rest of us and a sinner is not necessarily a terribly
immoral person, most of us here are not terribly immoral. It’s not necessarily a criminal person,
few of us here are criminals, but it is a person who wants to be his own God, who wants to run her
own life and to have her own way whatever it costs anybody else. You need to believe that first, if
you are going to come through to a personal trust in Jesus.

And loved ones, if you are going to play that old psychological game saying, “Oh well, you are
really good people,” you are just believing a lie, you are not really good, you are not really good.
God is true and honest and he says you have sinned and you’ve fallen far short of the glory that he
had in mind for you. And primarily you have fallen short because you challenged him at being God;
you want to be God, inside you want to be God.

And then it’s vital secondly to see that’s why you can’t obey his laws. That’s why you can’t obey
his laws. That’s why you can’t do what you want to do. What you think you should do, you can’t do.
That’s why you so often try and you so often fail; you try to stop worrying and you can’t stop
worrying. It’s because inside, you yourself want to be God and you don’t want him to be God,
therefore you don’t really want to obey his law. You say you want to obey his law on the outside
because we are all supposed to want to do that. But inside you don’t want to obey it and actually
you don’t do it, you get your own way and you have to see that. That is why he found the only
solution possible and he stated it very plainly in the Bible. He said “The wages of sin is death.”
The only thing God can do with a group of creatures as perverted and as self-deifying as ourselves
is to kill us all and start all over again, and that’s what God says. He says, “The wages of sin is

death,” not the wages of sin is a little slap on the hand called death, but the only cure for people
who want to be God is to kill them, so that there is only one God.

And that that’s what has to be done with you and me: that we have to be destroyed utterly and
absolutely, destroyed completely. And if we’re ever to live again, it has to be because God chooses
to create us again, to enable us to be born again, to enable us to start all over again. And loved
ones, you have to believe those things. If you believe, “No, no, I can train myself to be like God.
I can train myself through Bible study and prayer, I can train myself through going to church, I can
train myself to be like Jesus.” Loved ones, you are not believing God and there will be no cure for
your situation and you will finally go to hell and you will burn in your own selfishness and your
own pride forever.

It’s vital to see that you are so incorrigibly evil and selfish and self-deifying that you have to
be destroyed and that’s why God says, “The wages of sin is death.” He says, “Those are the wages
that sin pays. The only thing I can do with sin is to destroy it and that means destroy the person
in whom it dwells.” That’s the two things you have to believe about yourself, if you are going to
come into real faith. One, that you are a sinner like the rest of us. That you want to be God. You
are very nice and respectable, very moral, but inside you want to be God and that there’s only one
thing to do with that desire and that’s have it destroyed, because it will not die on its own.

And then the second thing is something that Jesus has done for you. That God commends his love
towards us, and that while we were yet sinners, even when you didn’t care a bit for God, Christ died
for you. God took you and put you into his Son with all your selfishness and all your sin and all
your pride and all those rotten things inside you, particularly your rotten self centered self. And
he put that into Jesus, his Son, even before the foundation of the world, when God first foresaw
that you would ever live. He miraculously was able to foresee what would happen to you and he put
you with that old perverted, twisted self into his Son Jesus and he burned you out of existence in
his Son with his wrath.

That is what Jesus suffered on Calvary. And we see a little of the pain that he bore on Calvary. We
see a little of that pain there that he bore in eternity when God put you into Jesus, and destroyed
you and burned you out of existence and re-created Christ and with Christ created a whole new world,
so that this whole world here, is already condemned to death and is dead and destroyed in God’s eyes
in Christ and there is no existence outside Jesus.

Then if you believe that, you will cleave to the Savior. You will cleave to the Savior. You say, “I
believe that God, I believe that what your word says is true, I have no existence outside him,
that’s why this pitiful existence that I have is so sad and so sorrowful and so disappointing. I see
that. Lord Jesus, I have no existence outside you, I grab at your feet, I embrace you, I hug you to
myself. Savior, I have no existence or no life outside you. Come, come and live inside me and make
me alive.” That’s a personal trust in Jesus.

It has nothing to do with the proud intellectual examining of a thing and deciding, will I, won’t I;
“comme ci comme ça” — it has nothing to do with that. It is a desperate condemned hopeless sinner
grasping at the feet of Jesus, and in that miraculous desperate desire to hug Jesus, blasting
through the gates of eternity, beating H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine”, lifting out of time and into
eternity, that’s what happens when you grasp around Jesus like that. And it’s like any personal
encounter. It will only be real if you don’t blink. It will only be real if you don’t evade Jesus’
glance. In other words at this very moment, this moment of truth in your life, in personal encounter

with Christ, he comes through to you, and he points to his personal wounds, and he points to the
personal sin in your life that caused that wound. And if you don’t blink and you don’t evade his
glance, your immediate reaction is, “Lord, if you bore it for me, then it’s dead, it’s gone– I walk
free from it, thank you.” That’s it.

But if you blink, or you avoid his glance for a moment and you say, “Well, there’s this other sin
that somebody else told me is in my life.” Or, “Yeah, well that may be, that may have caused that
wound in your side, but I am not ready to deal with that yet.” If you blink or you evade his glance,
all is lost, all is lost. And you sink back into that cerebral belief and that religious good works
stuff. The moment of encounter demands that you do not blink and you do not evade his glance and
when the Savior points to his personal wounds in his side, and points to the personal sins in your
life that brought those and that caused that pain, that you at that moment say, “Lord, thank you.
That sin no longer exists because you bore the pain of it. Lord, thank you, I walk free of it, not
simply because I don’t want to pain you again, but because I know it’s destroyed and I walk free of
it.”

And then, as you go on in your life, faith begins to spring up in your heart at that moment. It
springs up in your heart, so that you know that Jesus is your Savior and you know that he knows you.
And then as you go on and he points more wounds out that he bore for you and more sins in your life,
you continue to walk free of those sins. And as you walk free of more and more of them, so faith
continues to spring up in your heart and life and takes you on into the fullness of the Spirit and
on into more and more experience of all that God has done for you in Jesus on the Cross. But that’s
it, loved ones, that’s what personal faith is. Faith is something that springs up in your heart,
when you accept what God has done to your sins in Jesus and walk free of them. But, you cannot have
faith over unconfessed or unforsaken sin. You can’t, it’s impossible.

You can’t exercise saving faith over unconfessed or unforsaken sin, it doesn’t work. The truth of
the God of the universe will not let it work. He will not let his Son stand here with the bleeding
holes in his side and you stand there and the Savior point to you the wounds, and point the sins to
you and then you continue the sins and yet have a real relationship with the Savior. That makes sins
insane; that’s madness, that is not honesty. That would pervert and contort all possibilities of
personal relationships in this universe for the rest of eternity, and it does not work.

And that’s why when you blink, or you evade his glance, or you refuse to confess a sin, or you
refuse to forsake it, you lack saving faith and you end up with that belief game, plus the religious
actions — instead of a dynamic saving faith that comes from personal trust in Jesus as your own
Savior. Because the truth is, Jesus bore pain for you that he bore for none of the rest of us. He
bore sins for you that he bore for none of the rest of us, that’s it. That’s why you have to make
your personal peace with Jesus. That’s why saving faith springs up in the heart from anyone that
personally embraces Jesus and deals honestly with him.

And you can do that today, but if you have never done that, do it. If you have wanted to know, where
do you come from? That’s where I come from, that’s where I come from, that’s the key to it all.
That’s why you are born of God. See that’s what New Birth is. Faith springs up in your heart when
you forsake the sins that Jesus reveals to you personally, he has borne for you. Faith springs up in
your heart, so that you know that Jesus knows you. That’s the beginning. Then as he continues to do
that as the years pass, he leads you on into the fullness of the Spirit. But that’s the start,
that’s the New Birth in the Spirit. Have you faith, have you real faith? If you’ve thought that you
have faith up to this moment, and find you haven’t, exercise faith now. Do it now in this time of

quietness, just begin. Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus Christ, we know you lived, we are convinced of that. We know you died and rose from the
dead and that you’re the Son of God, but Lord Jesus we have not really faced the evil in our own
hearts. We have been taught almost by our society to think that we are not too bad. We see Lord
Jesus that we are going to get nowhere with you or your Father, our Creator, unless we believe what
you both said. And we see that he has said we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So
Lord Jesus, we believe that. We seem to ourselves pretty good people, compared with the majority of
people in our society. We seem very respectable and moral. But we do know that we have a desire
inside to get our own way and we would never have called that a desire to be God of our own lives,
but now that we think of it, we see how we resent things when they go in a way that’s different from
what we planned.

So, Lord Jesus, we confess that we are sinners. And we can see how that prevents us obeying God or
his laws. And Lord we have always tried to plead that we really wanted to obey his laws, but there
was something in us that didn’t. We do what we want and we actually don’t want to obey you, Lord
God, we want to regard ourselves. So, we do see that your penalty is justified; if we were you, we’d
do the same. There can be only one God. We see that we have to be destroyed and changed. And Lord
Jesus, how can we thank you? That you have died for all, therefore all have died. How can we thank
you that while we were yet sinners, you died for us? That you took all our desire to be God into
your own heart and allowed your Father to destroy it with his wrath and bore the pain that we could
never have borne.

Then Lord will you now personally show us, the wounds caused by our sins, the sins that caused those
wounds? Because Lord, if they caused those wounds we know that you bore them, and you bore them to
death and destroyed them. So, Lord, we aim to forsake them now, because they don’t exist anywhere
except in the fantasy person that Satan has created and called by our name, but we know that we are
now crucified and dead and condemned to death with you. So we know that those don’t exist.

So we walk clear of them now this very day. We intend to get up and walk free of those things,
because they are now mirages, they are not real, they were destroyed in your death in Calvary. Lord
Jesus, we thank you and we walk free of them. And we embrace you and Lord, we have no life now, it
is all destroyed. So Lord Jesus will you come into us now? Will you come in to us and bring the new
life that you’ve made for us? We want to find out what it’s like because we don’t know it, but you
have it within yourself. So will you come inside us and show us that life and begin to lead us
forward in it, as new creations? We receive you now Lord Jesus as our own personal Savior and thank
you. And now may the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God be with us now and evermore. Amen.

Tree of Life or Tree of Knowledge?

Romans 14:01f

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Will you take a Bible please and turn to Romans 14:1 “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome
him, but not for disputes over opinions.” Many of us like that verse because we think that it
describes us – we’re weak in faith. So we like any directive that encourages other people to be
kind to us like this, so we kind of like the verse. And yet we need to be concerned that so many of
us who have had almost a lifetime exposure to Christianity, still think of ourselves as weak in
faith. We need to wonder about that. And then we probably need to be absolutely clear about what
God means when he calls people weak in faith.

That’s the kind of thing we’ve been talking about over these past weeks — what does it mean to be
weak in faith? It’s obvious that it means that you do have faith. You can’t be weak in faith if you
don’t have it — so it does mean you have faith — but you are weak in it. You are just a beginner
and you need to be strengthened in it. And then we have said that it’s not just general faith that
is being talked about here, but a saving faith. And we talked about what saving faith is. It doesn’t
just believe all the Christian concepts about God being our creator and our Father, and about Jesus
dying to enable his Father to forgive us. It isn’t just the Christian concepts about the day of
judgment, about the second coming of Christ. It isn’t just that kind of mental belief — that is
just believism — it’s having in your head a set of ideas. Saving faith is not simply mental
belief, or mental assent to the truths of the Gospel.

Then we said too, that saving faith is not believing all those things and then deciding “Oh wait a
minute, if these things are true, I better clean up my life. I better make my life act in accordance
with what I believe. I better start going to Church, I better start attending Bible studies, I
better start giving money to certain ministries, I better start praying, I better start reading my
Bible.” That isn’t saving faith. Many good Muslims and good Buddhist do just that. In other words,
there are many people throughout the world that accept the irrefutable proof that there is a God and
so they say to themselves “There must be a God and I am going to meet him at the end so I better
clean up my life and get ready to meet him.” There are lots of people who do that, loved ones. There
are many Muslims that do it, many Buddhist that do it, many good, honest, sinners who have no belief
in Christianity yet have that kind of reaction. Saving faith is not that. It’s not believing
certain things about God and then doing certain things in your life that are in accordance with
that. That isn’t saving faith.

Saving faith is a definite belief in what God has said; that all of us, every one of us in this
room, have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and that the wages of sin is death, and we
believe that. We believe that our lives have a great deal of self in them and a great deal of desire
for our own way. Many of us have resented and criticized our parents, things that people were
killed for in the Old Testament. And we believe that there are, in our hearts, many things that God
has declared will never enter heaven. There is envy, and anger and jealousy, often, in our hearts.
We read God’s word and it says “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Galatians 5:21) And we realize that we have no chance of
living with God the way we are and that the only thing to be done is to change us completely,
destroy us utterly, and recreate us absolutely new — to create a new, fresh, pristine person that
fills the airspace that we have filled up to this present time in this world.

Saving faith believes that and then it goes one step further — it believes that God has already
done that. It’s a little like what happened after they dropped the bomb in Hiroshima. Do you
remember some of the stories that witnesses of the scene immediately after the dropping of the bomb
reported? They saw people standing in the street, apparently alive, until they went up to them and
touched them. The person just fell to the ground, disintegrated. The incineration had been so fast
that it was like the ash of a piece of wood in a fire. You know how it’s burned, yet it still has
the shape of the wood and it looks exactly like the log, but you just have to poke it and it all
collapses? All it is — is the ash — still in the form of the wood. That’s the way it was after the
dropping of that bomb. The incineration was so fast that although the person looked whole and
complete, they were simply a burnt out person — just the form of the ash — that fell immediately
when you touched them.

The person that has saving faith realizes that that’s what has happened. That all of us have been
crucified with Christ and what we now see are the burnt out ashes of what we used to be. They have
the form of a person but in eternity, in God’s eyes, we are already destroyed. And a person with
saving faith realizes that. They realize, “Lord I have no right to live on this earth — you have
already destroyed me in Jesus and I have no existence. Somebody will poke this ash of my body in 70
years and it will disintegrate and there will be nothing left. Lord, I have no existence unless you
have recreated somebody with my name in your son Jesus.

A person with saving faith realizes that that’s exactly what God has done. That he has remade them
in his son Jesus’ resurrection, and there is a new person with their name that they are able to
begin to manifest on this earth. And they rush to Jesus and say, “Lord I have no existence outside
you. I come to you, Savior, asking you to manifest this new person in me. Enable me to be
recreated, born again, and to begin a new life.” So they grasp Jesus with all their heart and with
all their soul and they pull him to themselves. And in response, God sends the spirit of his son
into their hearts so that burnt out ash is filled with a new spirit and a new life and a completely
new person. Then begins a new life — a new creation completely — the old has passed away. That’s
what saving faith is.

Now what is it to be weak in that faith? Do you see that it does mean you have the faith? Weakness
in faith is weakness in faith. It’s not, no faith. Weakness in your pitching arm means you still
have a pitching arm and it does pitch, it just needs to be exercised and strengthened, but you do
have a pitching arm. Being weak in faith means you have faith, you have saving faith, but you are
weak in it. Why are you weak in it? Many people are weak in it, strangely enough, because they
believe they are saved by their faith. They think it’s their faith that saves them. They don’t
realize that they can’t get anything except what they got at the beginning and that if you ever move
at all from that dear person on the cross, you’ll have nothing. Everything you have received comes
from him and his death. Everything is in his death that you need, and that’s all that you need, but
they don’t realize it. They allow themselves to begin to think, “No, it’s our perception of that
death that saves us. It’s our faith in that death that saves us.” And they start to move out in
that dangerous approach where they try to strengthen their faith.

It’s a bit like people with eyesight — the eyesight is only useful in that it sees objects —
that’s the only purpose of eyesight. As long as they continue to look at objects, the eyesight is
exercised and strengthened. The moment they start turning in and saying, “Oh I must strengthen my
eyesight, I’ll have to strengthen my eyesight” that moment their eyesight begins to weaken, because
it isn’t being used. It’s the same with faith. The Bible says you are saved by grace. You are

saved by the grace of God recreating you in Jesus death and resurrection, that’s what you are saved
by. You are saved by his generosity in recreating you even while you were yet sinners — that’s the
source of your salvation — that’s the continuing part of your salvation. That’s what saving faith
concentrates upon. That’s where saving faith gets its value. But you are saved by grace through
faith, not by faith. Faith is just the means through which you receive the power of what God did to
you in Jesus on Calvary. But what Jesus did for you on Calvary is the ground and basis of your
faith and the ground and basis of your salvation. And faith is only the means through which you
receive that.

But it’s amazing how many, who are really born of God, and come into a deep conviction of sin, and
come into a real repentance of self, and come into an absolute desperate embracing and grasping of
Jesus as their only hope and draw him into themselves and yet they start very soon after to reckon,
“What we need to do now is strengthen our faith.” And they start to try to strengthen something
called faith that they believe is inside them. And the moment they start to turn their eyes upon
their faith, they have to take their eyes off Jesus on the cross and his dear wounds, and the moment
they do that, their faith, which gets its only meaning from Calvary, it begins to weaken itself.
In other words, it’s strange, but you become weak in faith, the moment you begin to try to
strengthen your faith, thinking that it’s your faith that saves you. The moment you turn from Jesus
on the cross, that moment you have stopped being saved.

It’s a bit like humility — if you aim at humility, you’ll miss humility. If you aim at Jesus you’ll
be made humble. If you start concentrating on your faith, you’ll grow weak in faith. If you
concentrate on Jesus and what has happened to you in him on Calvary, you’ll become strong in your
faith. But do you realize it’s almost an occupational hazard in Christendom? Do you know how many
of us say, “Well, I’ve got problems. I’ve got problems in my life. I am a Christian — I am born of
God — but I’ve got problems and it’s because my faith, isn’t strong enough so I think I’ll have to
try to strengthen my faith.” Then they say to themselves, “Now faith is belief plus obedience. So
what I need is to be clear about what I believe. I need to understand more what I believe.”

Do you realize that that’s what feeds the absolutely massive Christian publishing business? Now,
books are good, I’m for them – they’re a blessing. And tracts are good and they’re a blessing. But
loved ones, christendom is strewn with lives that are weak in faith — they are intent on
strengthening their faith by being clearer about what they believe. So they keep saying to
themselves, “If we only understood it better. If only I understood more about the end times. If
only I understood more about what was going to happen on judgment day. If only I understood more
about the theories of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. If only I understood more about the theories
of the atonement — if I understood more about those things, then I know I’d get strong in my
faith.”

It’s not your faith that saves you — it’s what God has done to you in Jesus, his son — that’s what
saves you. That’s the mystery that saves you — it’s as you’re eternally grateful to God, even about
the mystery, as you are grasping Jesus. And because you are not quite sure what he did for you, you
have to grasp him all the harder because if you don’t quite know what a guy is doing, you hold on
faster. And it’s as you hold on to him that you continue to be saved. But the moment you begin to
try to strengthen your faith, you begin to get another separate little crutch under you. So there
are many of us here who are saying to ourselves that if we could read more books, or could
understand the Bible a little better, then our faith would become stronger.

And what loved ones don’t realize is that it’s the beginning of Satan leading them back to the state

of Adam before he fell from God’s fellowship in the garden of Eden. Satan is trying to lead us back
to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he is beginning to whisper in your ear, “You
know, your faith would be stronger if you had a better knowledge of what is good and what is evil in
the spiritual life — if you had a better understanding of what is right and what is wrong. If you
could do that then you would be stronger in your faith.” And all he is doing is trying to get you
to substitute knowledge for the life that comes from your relationship with Jesus. So many of us
sink from knowing him to knowing “it”. Many of us sink from knowing the person of Jesus, who is
infinite and limitlessly satisfying and fulfilling to us, and we turn to knowing an “it”. We turn
to knowing a set of beliefs; knowing revelation better, knowing what will happen in the last times
better, knowing what this person says about that or what that person says about this –knowing an
“it”. And gradually our faith becomes smaller and smaller until it disappears completely and there
is no living, personal trust of Jesus. There is just a head full of dry facts about Christianity.

You might say, “Isn’t it true that even the theologians will say the gospel and the new testament
has kerygma in it?” Kerygma is a Greek word which means proclamation of what God has done in Jesus
to us, so yes. But it’s interesting, if you look at what the teaching is about. It’s teaching the
first Christians that ever lived on the earth some of the plain, ethical issues about marriage,
about what our attitude to rulers and authorities should be, about what our attitude should be to
open sin if it occurs in the church. It’s teaching about clear, ethical issues that are new in that
the Christian gospel was new at that time.

But whenever a person came to the apostles and said, “How do I pray” or “How can I be free from sin”
or “I have trouble with bad temper, how can I be free from that?” the apostles didn’t recommend a
book on temperament. They didn’t. And yet, loved ones, you know the situation — we’re shot
through with it. We are wearing ourselves out teaching, teaching, and teaching. And we dumb guys
that are teaching think we are brilliant because you all want teaching! The apostles didn’t tackle
it that way. They said, “There is one place where you get everything — God did to you in Jesus all
that is needed in your life — so seek the wounds of Christ. Get back to Jesus. Get on your knees
and ask him, ‘Lord, what have you delivered me from in your death that I need to have manifested in
my life today?’” And he, through his Spirit, would reveal it and it would come as power to you and
you would be really delivered. You wouldn’t be delivered from your bad temper for a week until you
read the next book on temperament. You’d be delivered and changed. And so the apostles spent all
their ministries saying what Paul was saying in I Corinthians 2:2 “For I decided to know nothing
among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” In other words Paul was saying, “I did not come to
you with words of worldly wisdom, I came to you with one message, Christ and him crucified.”

There is a mystery and a miracle that God did for you in Jesus that he didn’t do for me. There is a
mystery and a miracle that God did for, and in, each one of us in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
That is the power of God to us. If you ask me how — there is only one answer. When Mary asked,
“How shall this be — that this little one would be born inside me who would become Emmanuel?” (Luke
1:34) The angel gave the answer, only one answer, to “how” in verse 35, “The Holy Spirit will come
upon you.” The Holy Spirit will miraculously bring to you what happened to you in Jesus. He will
make it real to you — he will make it real in you. And then you’ll be independent of all of us
would-be leaders.

And that’s what the New Testament said, “You have no need that anyone should teach you; as his
anointing teaches you about everything.” (I John 2:26) Loved ones, where we started our new birth
is where we have to abide. That’s why the old hymns said, “At the cross, at the cross where I first
saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away. Because there by faith I received my sight

and now I’m happy all the day.” “When I survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory
died.” It’s at the cross. It’s in Jesus. It’s never further than the cross. That’s where everything
is. If you say, “I don’t know how to think about that” you have to get on your knees. You have to
go to God and you have to ask him to show you. He is the only one who can show you. What man can
show you isn’t worth knowing. What man can teach you won’t deliver you because it’s not a matter of
strengthening the belief part of faith. It’s a matter of gazing upon Jesus and spending time with
him and asking him to explain and reveal to you what he did for you in his death on Calvary. And as
you do that, your faith will become strengthened.

And that’s why this verse says, “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for
disputes over opinions.” Not to arguments, not to a preoccupation with, “Let me show you what’s
going to happen in the end times” or “Let me show you my explanation of revelation.” Don’t do
that. Because that feeds in every human being the worst that Satan uses — that desire for more
knowledge, more “stuff” that we can understand and therefore we can control. There’s only way to
have saving faith and that’s by seeing that God has changed you in his son Jesus. And he is more
than willing to show you how he has changed you. If you ask him that, as the days follow and your
life unfolds, you’ll begin to see that being made real in your own heart and life. So, he who is
weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes and arguments.

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we are so used to doing things ourselves and so used to finding answers in the human
sphere that we can see how we have been seduced. And Lord we repent of that. Father, you said in
Ecclesiastes “of making many books there is no end” and we know that books are good and have much
value as they elaborate what you did for us in Jesus on Calvary. But Lord we see that we have too
often gone for the gospel of Jesus — plus. Jesus, plus, is understanding of psychology. Jesus,
plus, is understanding of human temperament. Jesus, plus, is training. Lord we see there is Jesus
only. Jesus is the alpha and the omega — the beginning and the end.

Lord Jesus, you can only save us when we go for you only. While we think we have some other means of
salvation you’ll leave us to ourselves. So Savior we come back to you, to the place where we first
met God. And we would abide at the foot your cross. And we would abide in you on the cross and
allow the Holy Spirit to raise us in your resurrection and ascension.

Lord, we thank you. Thank you that this is so simple that a person who cannot read can find the
way. We thank you for your great kindness in arranging it like that. We thank you, Lord that with
the heart of salvation is a friendship with Jesus, our Savior.

Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
you now and evermore. Amen.

Weak Faith or Impenitence?

Romans 14.01g

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Loved ones, will you take a Bible and turn to Romans 14:1, “As for the man who is weak in faith,
welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions.” This is about the fifth Sunday we have been
studying this verse, and the reason is that all of us here know that faith is probably the most
vital thing you have to have in your life and yet the fact is that many of us are still vague about
what faith is. And even though I think all our hearts have been touched by God over these Sundays as
we have seen different ones of us come forward and settle things with Jesus firmly as our Savior,
yet I think there are still some of you who will watch that thinking, “I think I have done that and
yet I am not absolutely satisfied.”

I think there are some of you that hear someone here testifying to being healed by God, or you hear
someone else talking about how great the bible study is that they have each day, or how great their
daily prayer time is, and you say, “I don’t feel those things; I haven’t experienced being healed by
God, and I don’t too much look forward to reading the Bible, but I think that’s just because my
faith is weak.” The great tragedy is that if you reflect for a moment, your faith has been weak
since you got it and it hasn’t grown any stronger over the past five or ten years. You keep saying,
“I don’t have the burden for souls that other people have” or “I like Campus Church but I don’t feel
too much that I have to go abroad, or I don’t feel too much that I have to tell other’s about Jesus.
I think it’s just my faith is not the same as others faith; in some ways it’s weaker and some ways
it’s stronger.”

That kind of vagueness, unfortunately, results in great vagueness about your own spiritual
relationship to God, and you know that. You know that whatever is right or wrong in your comments
about weak or strong faith, you still end up with great vagueness about your relationship to God.
Now faith itself, ordinary faith, is not difficult to define because we all use it every day,
everybody uses faith. Faith is just belief that certain things are true and action in accordance
with those beliefs. So we all use faith, all of us; whether we are Christian or Hindu or Buddhist or
Spiritualist or Islam; we all use faith.

We all believe the air is pure in this auditorium, so we breathe it. That’s faith; it’s belief about
the purity of the air, and its action in light of that belief. If we hear that the Twin City purity
index is very dangerous, then we avoid breathing the outside air — so we act on our beliefs. Every
morning, because of your observation of repeated facts, you go out confidently believing that if you
turn your ignition key in the car it will start. So you go out there in faith, and you put the key
in — even though there are mornings when it doesn’t work that way — you still have faith that it
will work that way.

All of us exercise unbelievable faith in bankers; you go up to a desk where there’s a cashier whom
you have never seen in your life before, an absolute stranger — and you gaily hand all your money
over to them. You’ve absolute faith that it will be there the next day. The only thing you could
question more than bankers is computers, and yet we have absolute faith that those old computers
will keep those records right for us. And of course we exercise great faith in the stock market —
any of the stock markets operate purely on faith. Those in that chaos[on the trading floor], where
those guys are raising their hands, it’s just simply word of mouth and a handshake; there’s absolute

faith in the transaction that involves thousands of dollars. In medicine we exercise great faith in
doctors whom, again, we don’t often know any better than the cashier, and yet we do what they tell
us to do. So everybody exercises faith — everybody.

We couldn’t live without faith; the whole world is built on faith; the whole of the Wall Street
operation, the whole of the reaction of the nation to recession is built on absolute faith. It’s a
belief that certain things are true and its action on the basis of that belief. Now loved ones isn’t
it true that many of us exercise that same kind of general faith about God? Again, whether we are
Christian or Buddhist, whether we are Spiritualist or Christian Scientist, we apply that same kind
of general faith to God. We believe that the laws of gravity will operate tomorrow. Even if we were
in Australia we believe that if we go outside in the morning we won’t fall off the bottom of the
world but that the laws of gravity will operate. So we confidently go out of our house without
tying ourselves to the floor! We apply that to God also; all of us who are theist — Hindus,
Muslims, Spiritualists, all of us who believe there is a God, we apply that same kind of faith to
God. We say, “Behind the laws of gravity there is a God.” Now many of us go further then that; we
for instance in our Christian tradition say, “We believe that this God cares for us and that he is
willing to forgive us for our sins because of his son’s death on Calvary.” The Muslims put it
slightly differently, the Hindus put it slightly differently; but they all believe that same kind of
thing. They may not believe in exactly the same nature of God, they may not believe that the
salvation is exactly the same, but with that general faith they observe the things that have taken
place in their world and they believe certain things about God.

They actually do what we do; you believe there’s a God, you believe Jesus is a son, you believe that
God forgives us because of Jesus’ death and therefore you act in accordance with that. You come to
church; you go to bible study, you pray, you give money to Christian causes. Hindus do same thing;
they believe certain things about God, so they do certain things, they act in a certain way.

In a sense all of us are involved, in some way, in general faith like that. But that general faith
does not bring about the mighty change in the heart that changes a person from the inside, it
doesn’t. That general faith is what all religious people share. But that general faith does not
bring about the mighty change that God promised he would work in our hearts in a new birth through
sending the Spirit of his son into us and changing the motivation of the center of our lives so that
we became different people. That general faith does not bring that about, loved ones. I think many
of us here this morning have that general faith. You are dear friends of mine, you are dear people,
and you are some of the greatest people that I have ever met. Many of us have that general faith in
God; we do our best to live according to the Christian standards and to live up to the best that we
know, but loved ones, that general faith is not what brings about the new birth. That general faith
is what we’ve called “believe-ism” and sometimes today it’s called “easy believe-ism” because the
idea is that that mental, volitional adaptation of our personalities is the new birth –it isn’t.
There is no work of God whatever in that, no work of God; it is all a work of man.

I know because I lived in that general faith for a long time and I used my mind to size things up
and I used my will to govern my actions. But there was no mighty, supernatural work done in my
heart or my spirit. And I think many of you experience frustration because you hear many of us
talking about faith and you say, “Well that’s the faith I have, I believe exactly what you said. I
believe it.” Yes, but there’s been no mighty work done in your heart and so you are not born of
God. He has not sent the Spirit of his son into your life, because you’re involved only in general
faith and general faith will never enable God to work the new birth in you. That requires saving
faith.

Saving faith is a very different entity. I’ll show you, loved ones, in the Bible where it is
mentioned. It’s in Ephesians, Chapter 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” That’s
saving faith — faith that saves; “For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not
your own doing, it is the gift of God.” General faith is a belief that there is a God, that Jesus is
his son, and that Jesus has died to enable God to forgive you for your sins. Therefore you commit
yourself to live by the golden rule and by Christian precepts as well as you can — that’s general
faith. Saving faith is a deep, intense, conviction that this is not your own doing, and that you are
so shot through with sin and selfishness, with distrust of God, with independence of him, that
unless he absolutely destroys all that you are at this present time and remakes you there is no hope
for you at all — that’s saving faith.

Now loved ones, that requires honesty, humility, an absolute distrust of self that is not present in
Buddhism, in Islam, in Hinduism, in any of the great religions of the world and in most of the sects
that we have in our country. Saving faith is only possible if God has in fact destroyed you utterly
in his son Jesus and remade you. And saving faith is faith that you need to be saved. It’s faith
that you cannot, with all your goodness, with all your adaptation of your behavior to the things
that you believe, you cannot save yourself; you cannot do anything to improve yourself. You are so
shot through with sin and selfishness that the only thing that can be done is to destroy you and
remake you. In other words, saving faith is an absolute conviction that you are already dead in
Jesus, that there is no “you” left — no “you” as you have remembered you over the years — and that
the only way God can fill that airspace that you used to occupy is through his son Jesus, in whom he
has created a new you. Therefore you’ll rush to Jesus to find that person, because until you find
that person, you regard yourself as non-existing — that’s saving faith. It’s an absolute total
turning from yourself and an absolute turning to Jesus. It’s an absolute confidence that he alone
can recreate any being in you because the being that you have been deserves nothing but to be
destroyed.

That’s what God has done in Christ. That’s what saving faith is. Saving faith has little of the up
on your hind legs; the noble pagan kind of doing what he believes is best to try to please his God,
saving faith is not as proud as that at all. Saving faith is a humble, all repenting,
self-surrendering trust in Jesus only; regarding yourself as deserving nothing but to be destroyed
in him. Now what is the element that distinguishes saving faith from general faith? Personal
appropriation of Jesus’ death and resurrection to yourself, that’s it. Not regarding all that as
true just for me or for somebody else, but for you; personal appropriation of Jesus’ death and
resurrection to yourself; as occurring for you only, as if you had been the only person in the whole
world —
that would still have happened because God loves you so much — personal trust in Jesus, a personal
encounter with him.

Now, what makes that possible? Only one thing, — repentance; a deep repentance makes it possible
for a person to turn to Jesus and personally appropriate Jesus to himself. In other words it is
going to Jesus and saying, “Lord, I deserve only to be wiped out, I am such a mess — I am so shot
through with selfish motives, but I can’t begin to disentangle them; I need to be completely remade,
Lord Jesus and that, I believe, is what happened in you. Tell me what you’ve made me and whatever
you show me, I’ll walk clear of it, I’ll walk away from it.” That’s what repentance is; it’s going
to Jesus and embracing him as your only hope. In other words loved ones, repentance is completely
turning from what you are today; convinced that that is utterly wrong, and simply turning only to
Jesus. Repentance comes from believing God’s word. Here are some of his words, if you would look at

them. Its some of the Old Testament; Leviticus chapter 19:17. “You shall not hate your brother in
your heart, but you shall reason with your neighbor, lest you bear sin because of him. You shall
not take vengeance or bare any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your
neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” Repentance is taking that to yourself and saying, “Lord, I’ve
hated my brother in my heart, I have resented my brother in my heart, and so there is something in
me that is not like you, but something in me that opposes you. There is something that isn’t good
in me.” It’s a readiness to say with Paul, in Roman 7:18, “For I know that nothing good dwells
within me, that is, in my flesh.” It’s really as if to say to God, “I am not like that.” Repentance
is not saying, “Well, I sometimes might have hated my brother, but I don’t hate him all the time and
I don’t have resentment against people all the time. And I don’t want to take vengeance all the
time.” That’s like saying, “I’ve only a little bit of cancer inside me. I have only a little bit; it
won’t do me much harm.” Real repentance is saying, “Lord, I’m not like that; I do hate my brother; I
do have resentment against other people; I do have critical thoughts and critical feelings about
people. I’ve maybe not cursed my parents, as you say those who do should die, but I’ve often wished
that they were far away. I wished that they were not a nuisance to me. I’ve wanted, in my heart, the
things that you say are wrong. Lord, I need to be changed completely and utterly,” that’s it.

There is a verse that, I think we just skirt around; I think we bluff ourselves on it. It couldn’t
be plainer or more definite, but we have continually avoided it because it convicts us of our sin.
Galatians 5:19: “Now the works of the flesh are plain : fornication, impurity, licentiousness,
idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy,
drunkenness, carousing and the like.” We have a tendency to think of the fornication or the
licentiousness, or to think of the things maybe we are not involved in. But it does say anger and
jealousy and envy and the like. “I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things
shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Loved one’s, real repentance is honesty with God: it’s
saying, “Lord I have had those things in my heart: I have had envy in my heart, I have had anger and
jealousy in my heart, Lord God, if I keep these inside me, I’ll go only to one place at the end of
this life. Father, I need to be destroyed and remade again in your son Jesus.” Repentance is coming
to Jesus and saying, “Lord, I need that — what you have done for me — that’s what I need done.
Explain it to me personally, Lord Jesus. What pain did I cause you by my sin?” That’s repentance
loved ones. And it’s only repentance that enables a person to experience saving faith, because
saving faith is desperation, its desperation. Saving faith is a desperate grabbing at Jesus, and
then embracing him and saying, “You are my only hope.” That’s the only thing that pulls the eternal
son out of heaven into this temporal earth. It’s the strong, desperate yearning of a heart that sees
that it is lost unless Jesus engages with it in some way. This is a very personal thing — that’s
why the gates of hell can’t prevail against it. That’s why it doesn’t depend on Pope or preacher or
anybody else. It depends on two people — you and Jesus. And when you have that kind of relationship
with him, then you will go through that moment at the end with peace.

I don’t think it’s unfair of me to point to the simple reality of that because we all know it: there
will come a moment after you breathe the last breath, when there’s outer space and nothing else, we
all know that. Now at that moment, you need to know the only one who has control of that space; you
need to know your Savior. You need to know there is Jesus, who has allowed the flames of his
Father’s wrath to burn out all your sin in him. You need to come to him now, not just for the sake
of the future, but for the sake of the sheer reality of it — this man has done this for you. You
can have saving faith today, you know that. It’s up to your own heart.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we bow before you. We are sorry for the rationalizing of our sins; we can see that it’s
an alternative to what you have done for them. We think if we persuade ourselves they’re not so bad,
we’ll be all right. But Lord we know that your Father said the wages of sin is death and that’s the
only thing that can be done with them, they have to be destroyed. And Lord Jesus they are such a
part of us, a part of the warp and woof of our own lives, part of the veins and the blood vessels
that we have, a part of our brains and our feelings — Lord it seems that we ourselves had to be
destroyed and remade.

Lord Jesus as we believe that you have done that for us in Calvary, we believe that it is a
manifestation of the remaking of us that your Father brought about in eternity. So Lord we come to
you now, and Lord Jesus we ask you to show us your wounds and show us what sins of ours made those
wounds. And Lord if you bore those sins in your body on the cross, then we see there’s no reason for
us to continue to bare them. And there’s no need at all for us to practice them, whatever they are
and however closely they come to us and how persistent they have been. If you have borne them to
death on Calvary, then Lord we know we can walk free of them this moment; we can turn from our sins,
we can turn from our wicked ways, and we can repent and turn completely to you. And so Lord Jesus,
in these silent moments, we would each one make our peace with you. Lord, we ask you to come into
our lives, then to our hearts. Will you run them from this day forward and we’ll obey you. We’ll
begin to listen for your speaking through the Bible and through prayer. We thank you Lord Jesus.
Thank you Father for sending the Spirit of your son into our hearts. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus
and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and forevermore. Amen

OBEDIENCE OR LEGALISM?

ROMANS 14:02

by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Let’s imagine that you are not feeling too well and so you go to the doctor and he says to you, “So,
you are not feeling well?” You say, “No, I’m really not.” And he says, “You do look very pale.” Then
you sit up and say, “I could get more sunshine; it’s true — I’m not getting much sun because I sit
in a lot. Maybe I could get out in the sunshine more and I wouldn’t look so pale. And maybe I could
go to some of those tanning studios. And now that I think of it, I have some of that lotion in my
drawer at home that prevents sunburn and helps you tan at the same time. Maybe I could use that, so
maybe I wouldn’t look so pale.” And at that point, he is just sitting back, staring, and says,
“Stop, stop. Paleness isn’t the problem, I just said you look pale but that isn’t the problem —
it’s what causes the paleness that’s the problem and that’s what I have to discover and diagnose and
treat.”

“You could do all those things that you were suggesting, you could get all the sunshine you wanted,
you could put suntan-lotion on and you could come back looking the picture of health, but the
sickness would still be deep down inside. All you would have done is to remove the symptoms so that
it would be harder for us both to understand what the real problem was. Now tell me, do you have any
other symptoms?” So you sit back, and we all want to produce what he wants to hear, so we say,
“Yeah, I feel tired at times. In fact sometimes I feel so tired I feel almost like I’m going to
faint. But now that I mentioned that, I could get more sleep. I think I could get more sleep. I
could get more sleep at night and maybe not get up quite so early in the morning. And maybe I could
take some of those pills that would give me more get up and go. And I haven’t had a vacation for a
long time, maybe that’s the problem.”

And he is going glassy eyed again! “I said, stop – stop! You are at it again; it’s not the
tiredness that’s the problem, that’s just a symptom. I just asked had you any other symptoms? But
that is not the problem, that’s just a symptom. Your tiredness is caused by something else and
that’s what we have to discover together. And you could do all the things that you are doing with
the tiredness, maybe it would help for you to get more sleep, maybe it wouldn’t be bad for you to
have more rest. But normally, your natural responses have prompted you to try all those things
before you came to me. And the reason you came to me is you need help. You need someone to heal you
or someone to do something for you that you can’t do yourself. Now let’s get down to it; let’s try
to find out what the sickness is that is underneath this tiredness and this paleness.”

So the doctor does some tests on you and he diagnoses anemia and prescribes iron for you and in two
months time you are feeling completely different and you are healed. Yet you are only healed because
you were able to go to someone who was able to look below the symptoms and to deal with the real
sickness. If you hadn’t done that, it is conceivable that you would have run around for months, and
even some of us for years; treating the symptoms; removing one symptom after another and yet still
deep down feeling sick and the sickness producing ever-new symptoms day after day. And you really
never are getting any better.

You know yourself that we, in this present world, are used to having to go to doctors at times, when
we can’t solve the thing ourselves. We are used to going to plumbers, when we can’t solve problems
with our plumbing; we are used to going to electricians when we can’t solve problems with our

electrical system. We are used to going to lawyers when we can’t solve some legal problem. We are
used, often, to going to professionals and putting ourselves in their hands and saying, “Look, will
you do something for us? W can’t deal with these ourselves.” And yet you all know that they
couldn’t do anything for you if you keep getting into the act yourself. If you keep trying to fix
these things yourself, they’ll finally say, “All right, you do it, carry on until you run out of
energy or until you run out of your own resources; until you get out of my way, and then I’ll do
something for you.” We all know that in our own lives.

Now it’s just the same in our relationship with God. It’s just the same thing: God speaks to us
very clearly about certain things in our lives. Let’s just look at one of them that we’ve mentioned
before in past weeks in Exodus 21:17: “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to
death.” We have a great tendency to say, “Oh, I’m glad we are not under the old Covenant, otherwise
we’ll be put to death for cursing our father or mother, or for wishing them out of the way, or for
being irritated by them, or feeling that they were such a disadvantage, or so cruel to us. I’m glad
that Jesus has died so that I wouldn’t have to be put to death for that.” And God says to us this
morning, “You are trying to do the same thing as the person who went to the doctor because you are
saying ‘I’m glad Jesus has died for that and I’m not going to do it any more. I’m not going to curse
my father and mother; I’m not going to wish them out of the way.’” And God says, “You are just
dealing with the paleness, that’s all you are doing. I know you think you’re saying a very laudable
thing when you say ‘Lord, if I have to be put to death for doing that, then I’m not going to do
it.’” But God says, “The cure for that is the one that is stated there, do you realize that:
whoever curses his father or mother must be put to death. That’s the cure for it, that’s not the
punishment. Now when you say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to curse my father and mother, I’m going to stop
doing that’ all you are doing is dealing with the only thing you can deal with: the paleness, the
tiredness — you are dealing with the symptom. The sickness is still underneath. I’m not a wrathful
God in the sense of a vengeful God; I’m not mad at you because you are cursing your father and
mother so I’m going to put you to death because I’m mad at you — that’s not why. I am putting you
to death because that’s the only cure for the sickness that causes that symptom.”

Of course, the Jews never did see that. God said to them, if you remember, “If you are right
inside, in your relationship with me, you’ll have no other Gods before me. You won’t make graven
images to yourself. You won’t steal, you won’t murder, and you won’t commit adultery; you won’t do
these things if you are right inside in your relationship with me.” The Jews got up on their hind
legs in the Old Testament and said, “If you don’t want us to do those things, we won’t do those
things: we won’t steal, we won’t kill, even though we want to, we won’t.” And they compounded their
independence by determining to produce the symptoms of dependence, independently. They compounded
their independence of God by determining to produce the symptoms of dependence on God independently:
they got themselves into a twisted, perverted attitude to God’s law.

God’s law is not there to be obeyed. God’s law is not there, first and foremost, to be obeyed. What
is it there for then? I’ll show you; it’s Romans 7:7, “What then shall we say? That the law is sin?
By no means! Yet, if it had not been for the law, I should not have known what it is to covet if the
law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’” The purpose of the law is to expose sin. Verse 13: “Did
that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through
what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin and through the commandment might become
sinful beyond measure.” That’s the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is to show us that
there is something rotten inside; there is a sickness inside us that is producing these symptoms
that are labeled adultery, murder, stealing, anger, bitterness, criticism.

The purpose of the law is to list those symptoms and say, “There’s something rotten inside you; you
are sick even unto death. There is an independence of God inside you that is so all pervasive, that
it is absolutely dominating your life. There is an independence of God that is so through and
through rooted and radically grounded inside you, that it’s going to bring you to death if you let
it continue.” That’s what the law does. Our only response to it can be, “Lord, the sickness is
there, there is something inside me that’s wrong in my relationship to you. Lord will you show me
what it is? Will you show me what you destroyed in Jesus that causes me to be like this?” Only the
laser beam of the Holy Spirit can cut those things out of your body without destroying you,
yourself. And the only right response to the Gospel is, “Lord Jesus. you destroyed what needed to be
destroyed in Calvary, will you reveal it to me so that I can let it go and believe it to death in
me?” All else is legalism. Do you see how much beside the point it is for you to say, “Well I’m
going to be a good Christian; I am going to stop my anger.” God is saying to you, “Stop it. Go to my
son Jesus on the cross and find out what he destroyed in you that causes you to be angry. Seek the
wounds of Christ and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you what the sickness is inside you — that’s
what repentance is. Repentance is not a lot of tears; it’s not a lot of regret or remorse.
Repentance isn’t even lining yourself up with all the laws that everybody gives you. Repentance is
going to the Savior and saying, “Lord Jesus. What did you do on Calvary to deliver me from this
inward sin that is causing these outward symptoms?”

Repentance is going to Doctor Jesus and saying, ‘Doctor Jesus, I have trouble here, I have a
paleness that shows itself in dishonesty; I have a tiredness here that shows itself in dirty
mindedness. I have something wrong with me that is spewing up all kinds of symptoms, now Doctor
Jesus, will you tell me what happened to me, in you, on Calvary, that will deliver me from this?”
That’s what real repentance is. Remember a couple of Sundays ago we said that some of us missed
faith because we thought we were saved by faith? That is, we think we’re saved by our faith, rather
than by grace; by the grace of what God has done to us in Jesus. We tend to think we are saved by
faith and we break faith up into to belief and obedience.

We say, “It’s important then that I strengthen my faith, because that’s what saves me. So I have to
be clear about what I believe; I have to line it up; what do I believe about abortion, what do I
believe about political freedom, what do I believe about the death penalty, what do I believe about
what Christians should do about prayer?” And we concentrate on belief things. It’s like humility:
when you aim at humility, you miss it. When you aim at Jesus, you get it. When you concentrate on
the belief part of your faith, you miss faith entirely because it’s not what you believe, it’s whom
you believe. It’s the same with the other side — obedience. We tend to say, “Obedience is the other
part of faith, and I am saved by my faith. So I have to strengthen my obedience. So now I have to
concentrate on what to obey: what should Christians do? Should they eat meat? Should they eat
vegetables? What should they do? What should be their attitude to this political issue? What should
be their attitude to this theological issue? We concentrate on what to do, and what we should obey,
instead of whom we should obey. Now that’s it: it’s whom we should obey. It is coming to Jesus and
saying, “Lord Jesus, your dear Spirit can tell me what was destroyed in you, in me, on Calvary. Now
will you tell me that, and I’ll turn from that?” That’s what faith is.

Faith is not legalism. It’s not this business that Paul was talking about, where you remember he
says one person believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. It’s not
that, that’s not what faith is about. Faith isn’t about legalistically obeying this or that. Faith
is a matter of using the law to show you some symptoms in your life that tell you that you are a
sinner. And then you go to Doctor Jesus and say, “Lord Jesus, on Calvary you destroyed this thing
in me. Will you reveal to me what it is?” That’s why I have said to you several times this past

month — cling to Jesus. He alone can show you. The rest of us here, oh, we can give you great
opinions of what you should do and how rotten you are compared with us and all the rest of it. We
can all write books and tell what you should do and what you should be, and why you’re wrong.
Doesn’t matter any of it: there’s nothing to do with your salvation because God is speaking to you
[pointing to the audience] about one thing and to you about another and to you about another and to
me about another and it’s not that thing that he is speaking about; it’s something inside us, that
we can’t even see and that Jesus alone has dealt with. The Lord Jesus has borne something in you
that is independent of God and destroyed it, that he has not borne for any of the rest of us in this
room. There is something that Jesus has done for you that he has not done for anybody else in the
whole universe. You have to find that out by going to him and asking him. And when he reveals it to
you, you simply walk into it, and you find you’re free from it. It’s a miracle; the moment you see
it, you can walk free from it because you know its dead and you are freed from it.

So, have you ever gone to him like that? Have you have ever gone to him with the things in your
life — you know what they are. There are things in your life that aren’t right. Now those are the
symptoms to show you that you are sick unto death — and Jesus has taken that sickness away from
you: he has destroyed it in himself. Now, he can reveal that to you, if you approach him
personally. That’s what faith is: it’s believing in Jesus, trusting in Jesus personally and obeying
Jesus personally. That’s why it’s such a dignified position. You are not at the mercy of the rest of
us. You are not at the mercy of all the great legalists; you live your own life, you and Jesus.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, we thank you. Thank you for your own perfect life. Thank you for the law in the Bible
that exposes the fact that we are not right with God; that we are not resting in our Fathers love,
that we are not trusting him. Lord Jesus, thank you. But it doesn’t just mean we are bad — maybe
we are bad; maybe we are criminal, but Lord, that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it is, we are
criminal or we are bad, because we’re sinfully independent of God and we are not trusting him as our
dear Father and we are not respecting him as our Father. So Lord Jesus, this thing inside us has
been there a long time and we do believe that you have written it out in yourself. Lord, we ask you
to reveal it to us: reveal to us in what way we do not trust our Father in heaven; in what way we
are not really obeying him. Lord Jesus, will you reveal that to us? Oh Savior! We ask you to do
this, even this morning. The grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the
Holy Spirit be with each one of us.

Me and My Actions

Romans 14:03

Sermon transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Do you think abortion is wrong? And do you think it’s wrong in every situation? For instance would
it be wrong in the case of a mother who had a genetically inherited insanity and would therefore be
bound to pass it on to her children? There was a family in a small town in Minnesota who, for
several generations, had simply passed the insanity on from generation to generation.

Now, would it be wrong in the case of a 13-year-old girl who had been gang raped — would abortion
be wrong for her? Would it be wrong for another young woman who just got herself into trouble and
the guy wouldn’t marry her — would abortion be wrong for her? Or would it be wrong for a mother
whose life is threatened? What attitude would you have to anyone who was a Christian who got up and
said, “Well yeah, I do believe in abortion and I actually believe abortion is right for a couple who
have an unwanted pregnancy.” Now, what would your attitude be to that person? Would you say, “That
little fetus inside that mother’s womb is a human being so if he says that, he believes in murder —
he believes in killing a human being?” What if he replies, “No, I don’t believe that little fetus
is a human being and therefore I don’t think I believe its murder.” Then maybe you’d say, “But it
is. Many medical authorities say that it is even the shape of a little human being and certainly it
has many of the capacities of an adult human being in embryonic form. So it is a human being.” And
what if he replies, “Well, no. I mean it has no rights before the law and it has no
responsibilities before God until it’s separated from it’s mother’s body, and so that’s why,” he
says, “I am almost drawn to call it an “it” because to me it still is not a separate human being
before God and the law.” And then you reply, “No, it’s a shame even to call it “it”. It’s “he” or
“she” we can even tell the sex of the child in certain situations. No, that little human being
inside there has rights of its own and if you kill it, or you stop its birth, then you are
destroying life.” Now, what if the other person says, “Look, I believe in Jesus and I believe in
God, but I do think that this is open to question. I think different people have different views;
some medical authorities wouldn’t treat “it” as a normal human being so I really think that I am not
reinforcing murder, I am simply saying that this woman has the right to determine what happens to
her own body.” And then you reply; “No, she hasn’t that right; she hasn’t the right to kill a human
being.” And he replies, “But she doesn’t believe it’s a human being so she doesn’t believe that
it’s murder; she believes she has the right to control her own body.” Now, do you have a tendency to
say, “Anybody knows that this little fetus is a human being? And anybody who is thinking straight
knows that abortion is wrong. Now either you are not thinking straight, or you are not a Christian.”

Loved ones I do believe that there is even deeper truth than the obvious one in what God says to us
this morning in that kind of context. Maybe you’d like to look at it. It’s his word, and I do
believe that it speaks not only to that situation but to something deeper in our own relationship
with him. Its Romans 14:3, “Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who
abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him.” And you may say, “Well, what do
dietary fads have to do with abortion? What has that got to do with what we have just been talking
about?” The fact is it’s not just a dietary fad. God speaks a lot in his word about this whole
question of eating meat and eating vegetables. You might say that you don’t see why a Christian
would ever even dream of being a vegetarian. I’ll show you why they would in Genesis 1:30 loved

ones, “And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps
on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And
it was so.” So there God is saying to all the animals and to every living being, “I have given the
green plant for food. You may say, “Well that settles it — it means we should all be vegetarians.
Why does any Christian ever eat meat?” Well because of Genesis 9:2-3, “The fear of you and the
dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything
that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every
moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and as I gave you the green plants, I give you
everything.”

So there God is saying, “You can eat animals and eat the flesh that you find in animals, you can eat
meat.” You may say, “Well, that’s it, that’s why I eat meat.” But I would ask you — why don’t you
eat kosher of meat — because look at the next verse in Genesis 9:4, “Only you shall not eat flesh
with its life, that is, its blood.” So now, why do you eat meat out of which the blood has not been
drained? And then you reply, “Well, Jesus, by his death abolished all those ritual laws, so we are
freed from that and Paul says that all things are clean. That’s why we believe we are not tied to
what was primarily a ritualistic law.”

Now do you see the relevance of it? God is saying to us this morning, “I have spoken about murder in
my word and I have spoken a lot about eating meat and not eating meat. I haven’t mentioned abortion,
but even though I have said so much about eating meat, yet I say this to you, “Let not him who eats
despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats, for God has
welcomed him.” And God says, “Despite the fact that I have said many things about eating meat and
not eating meat, yet I tell you as my children, do not despise somebody else who says they are our
brother and a Christian. Do not look down on them because they have a different view of eating meat
to what you have.”

Then you see the obvious sequel to that; if that’s the situation with eating meat about which his
word says so much, let it be particularly the situation in regard to these modern issues that we
have. In other words don’t let’s get ourselves into this position where we despise those who don’t
take the same view on nuclear disarmament or abortion or war as we do. “Let not him who eats despise
him who abstains, for God welcomes him.” Why is it so important to have that attitude of love to
one another? Not just to keep us all together; not just to maintain unity; not even just because
it’s intelligent to do it — there is a deeper reason. It is wrong to judge the authenticity of a
person’s Christian faith by what they say they believe just as much as it’s wrong to judge the
authenticity of their Christian faith by the things that they do or don’t do. The Christian faith
is not, simply, concerned with the facts you believe, or with the things you do, or the things you
don’t do. The Christian faith that brings us into relationship with our Creator is deeper than that.

That’s why I would love us to think about this, this morning. It’s very fashionable today to
identify a relationship with God with certain views of things, or certain practices, or habits in
our lives. And so our idea of Christian faith is getting shallower and more superficial as the years
go on. This always happens at the end of some kind of movement in society — the things that people
were concerned about become very coarse and become very superficial; they separate themselves into
categories and it dissipates in a series of different views and different habits.

Christianity and the faith that brings us close to God are deeper than that. Let’s just reflect on
what the Christian faith is by mentioning again a sin that we have referred to several times during

this past months. This is a sin that God mentions in scripture and a punishment for that sin that
he makes very clear and it’s mentioned in Exodus 21:17, “Whoever curses his father or his mother
shall be put to death.” We said that our reaction to that tends to be “Boy I am glad I am not in
the Old Testament dispensation when I would have been put to death for cursing or swearing at my mom
or dad or wishing evil upon them. I am glad I am under the Christian dispensation where Jesus has
died for us and we just have to confess and ask God to forgive us and then do our best not to do it
again.” And you remember what we’ve said – no — the penalty for cursing your father or mother is
death, whatever dispensation you are under.

The Old Testament dispensation actually physically killed you, but in this dispensation it’s still
there. Why? Well, why do you curse your father and mother? Or why do you wish they were out of the
way? Why do you wish evil upon them? Extend it to anybody — why do you wish evil upon anybody?
Why do you wish that boss would lose his job? Why do you wish so and so would be out of the way?
Why at times do you wish — you don’t wish them dead — but you wish they were out of your hair? Why
do you have that kind of attitude to anybody? Is it not because we fear what our mother or father
could do to our lives? Is it not because we fear what effect the boss’s action could have on our
lives, on our prosperity, on our future, on our reputation with other people or on our comfort and
our wealth?

Are we not afraid that they can affect us in some way so that we have that gut reaction, “I wish
that person was away?” We wouldn’t want that if they couldn’t have an effect on our lives, but
it’s because we fear they’ll have an effect on our lives; we actually think that our lives are at
their mercy. We actually, deep down, feel that what they do will govern our lives and indeed that
our lives are, in a sense, at their mercy. If they like us, than we’ll prosper, if they don’t like
us we’ll not. If they want evil against us or want to hurt us, they are able to do it. We really,
deep down, believe that all God can do is affect a little, at times, the general influence that
their lives have on our lives. Isn’t that why we only resort to him at odd moments when everything
else fails; because deep down we don’t think that he can change their attitude — we don’t think
that he can over rule their actions? We don’t think that our lives — our professional lives, our
job lives, our career lives, our financial lives, our family lives, our school lives — are actually
in his hands. We think they are actually in the hands of all the myriad people we have to deal with
at school, and at home, and at work.

Now that’s why we end up cursing our fathers or our mothers, or wishing them out of the way. That’s
why we end up cursing our boss or wishing our neighbor out of the way; because we feel that they
really have our lives in their hands. And is it not true, loved ones that that attitude is built
into us right through every grain and every part of the texture of our bodies? Is it not true that
our whole being operates that way? Is that not why, when the bank account goes down, the heart pumps
immediately — you don’t have to tell it to pump — it just pumps because your whole life is
oriented that way. It’s utterly convinced, whatever you say in your best religious moments, that you
are at the mercy of the banker, you are at the mercy of the boss, you are at the mercy of your wife,
you are at the mercy of your children, you are at the mercy of your colleagues, and you are at the
mercy of your professors. It’s because of that, that your whole being is utterly dependent on what
we call “the world.” The world of people, the world of circumstances, the world of things, the
world of the economy; you feel that’s what determines your life’s direction and that is shot all
through your being. That’s what sin is. I don’t blame you, if you don’t think that’s not sin, but
that’s where all our problems come from; that’s the disease or the sickness that has to be dealt
with, and cursing your mom or your dad is just a symptom.

We used the example of the person who has a certain symptom of a disease. He goes to doctor and
says “Treat the symptoms, treat the symptoms.” Or he tries to put the symptoms right while the
disease continues rampant inside. Now that’s why God says the only remedy for cursing your father or
mother is death. He is saying to us, “I myself would curse my father or mother if I depended the way
you do on the affect they can have on your lives either for good or for evil. I myself would wish
the boss out of the way if, like you, I felt my life was in his hands and not in my hands.” He is
not knocking us for doing that. He is saying that the reason you do it is because your trust, your
dependence, your whole faith attitude is in these people. And these things and these people and
this world is utterly unpredictable and utterly unreliable, so you are constantly going to be
wishing these people out of the way if you put your faith and your dependence upon them. He is
saying to us, “You are so shot through with that kind of faith in the world that the only way I can
get rid of that sin sickness inside you is to destroy it and you; because you are both utterly
intertwined with each other.”

That’s why God says the only cure for the sickness of sin is death with his son. He says “All you
can do if you want to be my child, if you want to be related to me, is go to my son because I placed
you in him and I destroyed you in him, and I remade you in him. Go to him and ask him, ‘Lord Jesus,
show me how you destroyed me and show me what attitude in me you destroyed. Show me what attitude
you’ve replaced it with so that I can express it.’” That is the personal interview and encounter
with Jesus that any child of God has to go through every day. It’s a continuous, sensitive
relationship with Jesus that believes that you were actually changed in him and that you can
experience that change by personally asking him to tell you what particular side of your nature he
destroyed and how he remade it and therefore how you are to express it. And as you do that
day-by-day, you are related to God and your life begins to relax and you begin to back off the
adrenaline and the worry and the anxiety. Then Jesus’ death and resurrection, by which he remade
you, begins to be manifested in you, and you begin to be changed as a person. You begin to be
changed and day-by-day you begin to change. You don’t understand how it comes except that you know
it is connected with the mighty work that God did in Jesus and that it’s just being manifested in
you day-by-day.

Satan comes along and whispers, “Now if you are really a child of God, will you not believe this
about abortion? Will you not believe this about nuclear disarmament? Will you not believe this about
prayer in schools? I mean other people are children of God and they all have these views. Are you
not a child of God too? Will you not believe the same things as them? If you are a child of God,
will you not behave this way? And will you not behave that way? And will you not behave the other
way? All of your other (Christian) brothers and sisters are doing it, why won’t you do it?”

So Satan tries to get you to change the ground of your justification before God — the ground of
your salvation, the ground of your acceptance with God — from that daily interview with your dear
savior Jesus, to things that you have to do to be a Christian or things that you have to believe to
be a Christian. He’s trying to get you to move from believing and trusting a person; your dear
friend Jesus, to believing certain tenets of the faith. He’s trying to get you to move from
trusting and obeying the day-by-day and moment by moment movements of Jesus’ Spirit showing you what
he did for you on Calvary, to certain behavioral habits and certain legalistic obedience’s, that
everybody is supposed to obey.

It’s interesting; Satan is never completely wrong, you see. There is some truth in what he says, he
doesn’t speak just untruth, he often speaks a lot of good truth; he often speaks the truth about

abortion. He often speaks the truth about nuclear disarmament or about all the other things. It’s
not that those things that he urges are wrong, but it’s the use he makes of them as he tries to drag
you by the nose, out of salvation by faith, back into salvation by works of law, or salvation by
eating of the tree of knowledge of good and
evil so that when someone comes in who thinks differently from you about abortion, you’ll go for him
because you are utterly convinced that anybody who thinks that just isn’t a Christian. And it’s not
long before you lose all the sense of graciousness of that personal relationship with Jesus; you’ll
lose it in the midst of a series of beliefs that you have to believe if you are a Christian, or a
series of things that you have to do if you are Christian.

Do you know that Augustine, one of the great fathers of the church, went to extremes to speak
against this? It’s a dangerous one when shared in our society, but he said it and he obviously was
determined, somehow, to get this over to his congregation. He said, “Love God, and do what you
like.” In other words, concentrate on loving the Father. Concentrate on coming into a trusting
relationship with your savior, Jesus, and then let his spirit show you what you have to do
day-by-day. In that way you will be a great family of many sided, many faceted pictures of Jesus;
you won’t be a bundle of stereotypes who all believe this and all think this and all do that.

Do you know there is a verse in the Bible that is almost as dangerous? It says, “The spiritual man
is judged by no one.” [1Cor.2:15] That is, the person who goes day-by-day to Jesus and has that
little interview, “Lord, I know you destroyed me in yourself on Calvary, Lord show me what you’ve
changed in me that you want to manifest today, and reveal to me what you’ve made me today.”
Everybody who has that little interview walks by the [Holy] Spirit and can be judged by nobody else.
Another person can say, “You know I wondered at the way you are going” and we delight to test it
against scripture, but they can’t really say you ought not to do that. All they can say is, “Well as
Jesus told you this, and there are other marks in your life that show that you are walking in his
way, then you have the right to go that way.”

When I was in Belfast I was a liberal Methodist minister and I probably didn’t know any better; I
really wasn’t sure if this was God’s wording, so that leads to a lot of trouble. I was a working in
a city mission in Belfast and city mission work in European cities is involved a lot in helping
people — poor people who have not enough food, not enough clothing and then of course it’s a very
Evangelistic outreach on Sundays and Saturdays. So I was involved in a city mission and at times in
doing funerals in different parts of the intercity and one of these funerals that I did when I was a
young Methodist minister who really knew very little, but I was involved in going to this house and
conducting the funeral. There was a little pastor there who was doing a prayer; I was doing the big
thing, and he was doing a little prayer. It was a case of the old saint and a young one. I
discovered that this man’s name was Pastor Evans and he was a saintly man and an Evangelical
preacher and had been for years in Belfast; one of those saints that you rarely meet. I got into
conversation with him, and we met several times after that and talked. He told me he was Welsh, and
he had that Welsh lilt to his voice. He told me about a certain situation, he presumably knew where
I was, and knew what God had to say to me through him. He told me a story about a barman who was
converted in his services in a little hall called the Iron Hall. I think it was called that because
of an iron roof the rain rattled down on all the time. So he had a barman that was converted in the
services who prayed through and received Jesus and came into a real relationship with him. He said,
“Pastor Evans, I am a barman, I serve in a bar in Belfast. I suppose I have to give up my work.” And
I thought that Evans, being an Evangelistic preacher, would say surely that’s the devils place; you
should be well out of the bar and get into some Christian work of some kind. But Evans replied to
him in that Welsh voice, “No good boy, no; don’t leave the bar; you stay in your job and you pray

for your customers and you witness to them.”

That’s exactly what that guy did. It was interesting to me, as a kind of a liberal guy in those
years, to realize that here was a man, who surely must stick closer to this word [the Bible] than
anybody else I knew, and yet when it came to that situation, he said “Get your relationship with
Jesus right, and then do what he tells you. Don’t get rail-roaded into legalism — either in your
beliefs or in your practices.” And loved ones it seems to me while we listen to God’s word and take
that attitude “let not him who eats despise him who abstains for God welcomes him” while we take
that attitude not only to each other, but especially to ourselves, the life of Jesus and the life of
God will remain alive inside us in a sensitive and gracious way. Whenever we turn from that daily
interview with Jesus and we begin to hammer out these views “that all Christians have and that I
have therefore I am a Christian”, or these things that “all Christians do and that I do therefore I
am a Christian” the whole beauty of Christianity disappears from your life and you become one of
those hard-nosed Evangelicals that drive people away from Jesus instead of driving them to him.

So I would ask you; what is the basis of your daily walk in God? Is it coming to Jesus every morning
and saying “Lord I know the only reason I am a child of God is because you included me in yourself
in Calvary. I don’t know how, but you included me and you destroyed all the things that needed to
be destroyed in me. You brought death to all the things in my attitude that needed to be brought to
death in me. Lord would you show me today how you created me in you? Show me part of the new
creation that I am in you. Reveal part of it to me today so I can manifest that.” And then you go
for it and do what he shows you. Loved ones it’s a different life. I will tell you it’s a lot easier
to serve one master than to serve six or seven hundred of us. It’s a lot easier to serve one master
than to serve a thousand people who have opinions and views on everything under the sun. You and I
are called to serve one master; we were saved by one man’s death, we were delivered into heaven by
one man’s resurrection and that one man is the one we need to be concerned with.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus we know in our hearts that this is right; that our whole hope of heaven and our whole
hope of any kind of life here on earth depends on you and what you did for us on Calvary. So Lord
Jesus we would come to you this morning as we would come to you in future mornings, and we would say
we know there are a lot of wrong attitudes in us. We’ve faith in a whole lot of wrong things and
wrong people and we have very little faith in our Father, your Father, who alone can affect our
lives. Lord we know that you’ve changed us in your death, Savior we believe that; will you reveal to
us this morning how you made us new, or what new part of us you want us to see and to manifest to
everybody else today? Lord will you show us? Have we had a certain attitude towards our husbands or
our wives that is wrong, that puts too much faith in them and too a little in you? Have we had
certain attitudes about our jobs where we put too much faith in our job and too little in you? Lord
will you show us? And then Lord Jesus we believe that you are showing us things that have already
been destroyed and therefore we can walk free of them with almost no exertion of our wills, but
simply deciding to do them. So Lord we would; we would go forth now and manifest that this day, this
very day. And then Lord Jesus, we thank you that there is no reason for us to look down upon people
who have different views to us, or who do different things to us. Lord we remember what you said
when Peter said, “What shall this man do?” You said, “What is that to you?” Lord we thank you. So
that’s what you say to us when we say, why does this man think this way about abortion? Or why does
this man do this? You say to us, “What is that to you? Just keep your eyes on me and I will keep you
alive in my Father.” Lord we thank you for that.

Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with
each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Only One Judge

Romans 14:4

by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Romans 14:4, “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master
that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand.”

There are different ways in which you and I can build prisons for ourselves. In other words, you
can build a dungeon for yourself. It’s God’s will that we should fly high and free, that we should
be at liberty; that in our hearts and in our spirits, we should be light as birds. That’s his will
for us — that we should be happy people. But we have a tendency to build dungeons for ourselves:
little dark prisons where we’re chained to walls by manacles so that we can’t move by either our
wrists or our ankles.

We find ourselves encased in iron; the iron of our wills or the iron of our own minds. And we find
we’ve lost the freedom that we either once knew as children or we once knew even as children of God.
There are different ways to build these prisons but one of the ways that we’re talking about this
morning is connected with an attitude that we all are born with, and if you let that attitude
develop inside you, it creates a prison for you, either before you become a child of God or after
you become a child of God.

A particular attitude is an attitude that we inherited even from our dear parents; it’s just
inherent in human nature. It’s the attitude that we know what is right for ourselves and we know
what is right for everybody else — that’s it. And it’s incredible loved ones, how long that not
only lasts in all of us even after we become, as we say, Christian, but how subtly it develops in us
even as our life passes; this feeling that we know what is right for ourselves and we know what is
right for everybody else. It’s the attitude that was referred to way back in this dear book [the
Bible] in Genesis, where Satan said to Eve, “Listen, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, you’ll be like God at knowing the difference between good and evil.” That’s the attitude:
the feeling that we are gods; that we know what is right for us and that we actually know what is
right for everybody else.

It’s funny, though we may say, “Oh brother, me a god? I have a terrible self-image. I have no
self-esteem, I have no self-worth, I have a terrible inferiority complex. But I am a god: I am a
god with an inferiority complex, but I am a god. I am a god with poor self-esteem: but I am a god. I
am a god with no self-worth: but I am a god.”

Deep, deep down in all of us, even though it’s absolutely paradoxical, we have this feeling that we
know what is right for us and we know what is right for everybody else and that gets such a grip on
our lives that it often steals all lightness and joy and happiness from our hearts because in actual
fact, we’re not gods.

Each of us here are little finite creatures full of mistakes, full of errors, full of things that we
don’t understand, full of things that we can’t control and when we try to walk as great gods, the
weight bears down upon us and oppresses us and destroys our happiness. We can walk bright and happy
if we walk as finite creatures and little children of God, but if we try to walk as great gods that
know exactly how everything should be for everybody else and for ourselves, then the sheer weight

and oppression of that will bring frustration to us and we’ll walk in a prison.

Now loved ones, the amazing thing is, we were born in that attitude. That’s what theology says: it
calls that attitude ‘original sin’, and the Bible says we were actually born in that. It’s in Psalm
51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” That doesn’t
refer to who David’s mother was, it refers to the fact that all of us were brought into a world; a
psychological world, a spiritual world, a physical world, an emotional world, a volitional world, a
mental world that is utterly shot through with this feeling, “I know best: I may be stupid, I may
be uneducated, I may be poor, I may be hopeless, I may not be the brightest and best, but I know
best.” We’re caught in that and we’re born with that attitude.

Funny thing, the attitude itself is not bad until it begins to produce things in our life, and of
course it does that very quickly, but that basic attitude is what sin is, you see. What you and I
get caught in is the idea that sin is all kinds of other things — but that’s what sin is.

Of course, the tragedy is that many of us allow our legitimate authorities to reinforce this
illegitimate authority. I don’t know that there’s a parent here, or a teacher or a boss that will
not agree with this fact: that you have a legitimate responsibility as a Father or a Mother to
train your children, to correct them; to point out what’s wrong. But the tragedy for many of us
moms and dads is we allow that to feed the illegitimate feeling that we’re right in everything, and
before we know it we’re everybody’s Father and Mother.

We’re not only the children’s Father and Mother, but we’re everybody’s. We don’t only know what is
right for the children, at the times when we do actually know what is right, but we tend to think we
know what is right for the children when actually we don’t know what is right for them. So the
legitimate authority reinforces the illegitimate authority and we begin to find ourselves imprisoned
in our function; imprisoned in forever being a Father and Mother; imprisoned in forever evaluating
our children; imprisoned in forever checking out whether they’re right or wrong and therefore losing
the freedom to be a brother or a sister or a friend to them, at those moments when God allows us to
be.

So we find that this feeling that we are right and we know what is right, being exercised not only
in the legitimate functions that we have ,but becoming the very habit of our lives. I can certainly
speak of it from the other angle — not as a parent — but if you have a position of authority in
your job or your business or your workplace or in church where you’re always responsible, you know
how it goes for telling people how to do this and how to do that and telling them where they’re
wrong and where they’re right. It’s so easy for that to become the mental habit of your life until
you’re always looking at people from the point of view of where they’re right or where they’re wrong
and it becomes the very atmosphere in which you dwell and live.

That becomes your very breathing, and your very air, and your very blood, and of course it steals
from you all joy because you’re always totting up who is right here and who is wrong there. You
always feel responsible for telling other people where they’re right and where they’re wrong, and if
you don’t get telling them, at least it registers inside your own little mind.

So your mind becomes filled with what’s wrong with this person, what’s not right with that person,
how that person should do this, how this person shouldn’t do that, instead of living as a free child
of God: responsible for your own life and for those moments when you have to tell somebody as a
Father and Mother, or you have to tell somebody as a boss and then escape from that as fast as you

can, back into freedom as a little child of the Father; acting before the Father in humility saying,
“Lord, you alone know what is right and you alone know what is wrong.”

Loved ones, it’s very easy for us to become imprisoned in this kind of spot. I’ve tried to put it
down because I thought it was so insidious; it’s so easy for the habit of authority to become the
only life you have inside: you get caught in your own function; you see yourself as an eternal
Father, as an eternal Mother, as an eternal boss, as an eternal head of things and you get caught in
that. Your habits of speech become filled with constant judgments on other people instead of doing
your job of instruction or correction, then stepping back into the reality of being a humble child
of God who enjoys the protection and guidance of God along with your colleagues. You continue to
live in that dry, shallow, soil of your particular authority position and are deceived back into
getting your nourishment from your knowledge of good and evil.

So you become an expert on whether abortion is right or whether it’s states rights, right or wrong;
whether you should read the Bible at a certain time, or pray at a certain time. You become an
expert on all the do’s and don’ts, and the goods and the bad’s, and though you think you’re living
off the tree of life, you’re actually living back in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Loved ones, it’s so easy for us, as children of God, to fall back into that prison. We experience
the liberty of being God’s children. We realize that he wiped out all wrong in us and he dealt with
it, but it’s so easy to fall back into this and do you see the paradox of it at all? Jesus didn’t
die to destroy drunk driving. Drunk driving is wrong, but Jesus didn’t die to destroy drunk driving.
Jesus didn’t die to destroy abortion. Abortion is wrong, but Jesus didn’t die to destroy abortion.
Strange enough, Jesus didn’t die to destroy fornication, though fornication is wrong. Jesus died to
destroy the feeling that we are gods and that we know what is best. Isn’t that tragic — that we who
are blindly pointing our fingers and pontificating and telling people what is right and wrong, we
are expressing the very sin that Jesus died to destroy; that feeling that you are God — that’s what
will kill you.

I mean, the drunk driving will kill other people and it may kill you too, but the only thing that
will kill you spiritually is that feeling inside that you know what is right for you and all the
rest of us; where God is not your God, and you’re not bowing down in humility saying, “Lord, teach
me what is right to do next.”

Loved ones, that’s why Paul spoke as he did. Because he says the weak among you, those of you who
are weak in your dependence upon God and who are still strong in your idea of what is right and
wrong and what will get you to heaven, instead of strong in your dependence on God having made
everything right in Jesus inside you — those of you who are weak in the faith, that is; those of
you who are weak in trusting that God has made everything right inside you and are strong in the
idea that righteousness is doing this and not doing that — those of you are weak, tend to accuse
the strong.”

You tend to say, “Look — that’s wrong and that’s right and that’s wrong and that’s right.” Paul
says, “What right do you have to say that? A man is responsible to his own master, and you’re not
his master. Who are you to judge another person’s servant? That servant is responsible to his own
master; you leave him to his own master.”

There comes a great freedom when you do it with your sons and daughters, and when we do it with our
friends at work. It’s really interesting; a great peace comes between you and them, a great peace.

They no longer feel you’re judging them, — so maybe they are sleeping around and that’s wrong, and
maybe they are drinking too much and that’s wrong, but the moment you start accepting that it’s not
your job to judge them, but it’s your job to have faith for them and love them, a great peace comes
between them and you and they sense that. They no longer sense judgment, maybe its good to
remember; even the Holy Spirit doesn’t judge us. Do you know that? Even God, apart from his judgment
through the natural consequences of things — through venereal disease producing physical
consequences and that kind of thing, apart from that, God does not judge us in this world. Do you
realize that?

Even the Holy Spirit doesn’t judge us. The Holy Spirit convicts: he points out, “Now this is not
trusting the Father, this is trusting yourself”, but he doesn’t judge. There will be no judgment,
that is, there will be no condemnation to hell or no exultation to heaven until after death.

So loved ones when we judge other people we are taking upon ourselves, not simply a responsibility
that God alone has, we are taking upon ourselves a responsibility that not even God undertakes
during this lifetime. So when we judge another person, we’re not only being God, we’re being more
than God. And that comes home to them and drives them from us.

That’s why Paul says a man is responsible to his own master — he is not responsible to you; you
aren’t his master. Who are you to judge another person’s servant? Of course what he implies is it’s
even worse than that because, he says, “That person will stand because the Lord will make him
stand.” Why? Because whatever sin he is involved in, he isn’t exercising the centrality of sin
that you are in judging. Because the centrality of sin is being god: knowing what is right for you
and for everybody else — that’s what real sin is. You are the one who won’t stand.

So loved ones, you see the seriousness of the situation. Get out of the prison because it is a
prison. It’s a miserable, dark prison where you’re involved in continually adding up pluses and
minuses — get out of that prison. Fulfill your obligation as a mom or a dad, or as a boss, and then
get as far from that as you can as fast as you can. Get into the arms of Jesus and say, “Lord God,
you alone know what is right and wrong and I leave them in your dear hands, I leave them with you.”

Loved ones the moment you begin to live like that, the sheer love that comes from your heart and the
acceptance of the other person that comes, will begin to open their hearts up like a flower and
they’ll begin to want to share with you because they sense that you, like your Savior, have not come
to condemn the world but that the world, through you, might be saved. I pray that God will help all
of us to live in that freedom. Let us pray.

Dear Father, many of us want to turn away from this sin that we’ve discussed today because we sense
we’ve been caught in it. Even if we haven’t pronounced judgments on other people, our dear heads
have been filled with them: filled with “this person does this, and that person does the other.”
Lord we can see that the purposes of all of these fine pronouncements have one thing in common: to
make us appear more clever or better, or to show us that we were right and everybody else was wrong.

Lord, forgive us and we will turn from this now, our Father. We thank you for the positions of
authority that you have given us in our homes, in our businesses, in our churches; but Lord, we
thank you that that’s a very temporary thing that can be exercised in a few minutes here and there,
and you want the habit of our minds not to be that of a god or a judge, but you want the habits of
our minds to be that of a child: trusting its loving Father, forever asking his Father what he
should do.

Lord, we want to live in that freedom and that liberty. We want to trust you with our friends and
our colleagues and our children, and trust you, dear Holy Spirit, to do the convicting work that
only you can do and we will give you plenty of room by staying out of your ministry.

So Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you that this is a world that is free and is full and
beautiful for your children and it is not a world where we have to be concerned with all the shadows
and all the works of Satan. There’s a world where we can be filled with your love and your joy and
your peace and Lord we thank you for that.

The grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each
one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

The Cure for False Humanity

Romans 14:5

By Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Romans 14:5, “One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days
alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind.” Several times I have mentioned to you what
is obvious to all of us who have watched the buildings go up after the IDS Tower and that is that
Minneapolis is changing radically as a city. Obviously the big money, in a sense, was always here
with companies like Cargill and Pillsbury, but the big money is certainly rolling in now in large
amounts and the big buildings are rolling in and the pseudo-sophistication is rolling in from the
East — from Chicago and New York.

Really, the city and its character are changing. And the old neighborhoods with their personalities
and their individuality are beginning to disappear and the single-family dwellings are beginning to
disappear and the condominiums are going up instead of the apartment buildings and that’s the way
our modern cities go, whether we like it or not.

The small neighborhoods, with their sense of personal individuality and personal loyalty to each
other, go down and these great amorphous masses of city dwellers move in, who really don’t know each
other and live virtually apart from each other. So the city and its character are changing and
there’s really very little you can do to stop it.

The only thing you can do is plant as many Garden Courts and as many Eden Townhouses — as many
little communities, little trusting communities — as possible, in as many cities in the world as
you can. But there’s really no way to stop the development of the modern, mass city.

One of the facts that this development makes very clear to us is man’s real nature. Isn’t that true?
Man’s real nature becomes very clear as he crowds together in these mass cities. It’s like the
improvement in communications and the widespread use of television: all these modern developments
that draw man together force us to face man as he really is.

There is not a perversion in any corner of the world that is not blasted on all our screens and
there isn’t a mass murder that takes place in any country but we all watch it in the evening news so
that one of the things that results from this modernization is that we see man much more as he
really is.

I don’t know if you have ever thought of it; but when we were all divided up into little towns and
villages and all separated from one another in our own nations and our own countries and we couldn’t
tell what was going on in Italy, or we couldn’t tell what was going on in the western part of the
States, in those days we were kind of isolated from each other and in a way, the horror of man was
isolated from the horror of man.

Actually we didn’t see man as plainly as he really is. You probably know that from the 1850s on,
man began to industrialize and began to realize that he was a humanity of his own — that he was a
universal humanity — and he began to see himself as a universal power in the world. And from about
that date, when the Victorians were in their heyday, from about that date man began to realize
“We’re strong — I am not just this little man, this little village, I am not just a little

character in this little country — we are humanity. We can achieve some things. We can do some
wonderful things in the world by our own power.” And that great confidence filled mankind.

You’ll almost smile when you hear this poem which was written, not by a Christian, and not with any
sense of our Christian kingdom, but purely as a secular poem, but this was the rising confidence
that came into humanity; “These things shall be a loftier race than ere the world have known shall
rise with flame of freedom in their souls and light of knowledge in their eyes. They shall be
gentle, brave and strong to spill no drop of blood, but dare all that may plant man’s lordship firm
on earth and fire, and sea, and air. New arts shall bloom of loftier mould and mightier music fill
the skies, and every life shall be a song when all the earth is paradise.” John Addington Symonds

You just feel the cold thrill up your spine, don’t you? Because you realize, “Yeah, he wrote that
in terrible naivety, back in the end of the 19th century.” H.G. Wells wrote this; “Can we doubt that
presently our race will more than realize our boldest imaginations, that it will achieve unity and
peace, that it will live, the children of our blood and lives will live, in a world made more
splendid and lovely than any palace or garden that we know, going on from strength to strength in an
ever widening circle of adventure and achievement? What man has done, the little triumphs of his
present state, and all this history we have told, form but the prelude to the things that man has
got to do.”

We just feel tired. We feel like the oldest, most cynical skeptics in the world when we hear that
because we’ve had two world wars since then, and we’ve had numerous Koreas and Vietnams, and we’ve
watched on our TV screen some guy claim that he did 500 murders. And we, who might arguably be one
of the most moral nations in the world, are aware that we’ve supplied the planes to the Iranians who
in mad abandon are bombing apart the tankers that bring oil to us for us to build planes.

The whole world, as we look at it, looks more and more like a tale told by an idiot and we of all
generations say, “Forget it. We have seen what man is. We’re living 50 or 100 years after you people
wrote those poems and we are in a worse state now than we have ever been in.” And in fact the whole
thing is being spoiled by just one thing — by man — that’s what’s spoiling it.

I think, loved ones, we’re clearer than ever that there’s something radically wrong with man’s
nature. And now, as we see each other more and more clearly by means of these great communication
systems, and by means of these mass cities that we live in, we realize we’re not more secure when we
crowd together. We thought we would be, that’s why we all crowd together — but we’re not more
secure; we’re less secure when we crowd together. We trust each other less when we live next door
to each other than we did when we had acre lots. And suddenly we realize, “Man is radically
perverted in such a fashion that he cannot do anything but destroy himself.”

That’s the perversion, isn’t it? We’ve discovered that inside us we want what we want whatever it
costs anybody else. And even though it means destroying ourselves, we still want what we want and
that runs through all our lives — internationally, nationally and in our own homes. And then the
perversion is kind of double because now we not only want what we want, but we feel that we are
right in wanting what we want. We feel we are right in getting what we want, whatever it costs
anybody else and that’s of course what the Bible says.

The Bible says that there is something so radically wrong with us human beings that there is no way
in which it can be redeemed the way these people talked. There is no way in which it can produce
this paradise. There is no way in which it can avoid producing the hell that we’re beginning to have

here on earth and that verse loved ones, is one you know, it’s Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is
deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?”

The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt, and loved ones, education
does not solve it. Education helps us to see the hideousness of our situation but education doesn’t
solve it. Education just gives us the weapons of science so that we have a more extended ability to
impose our will on everybody else whatever it costs.

Actually knowing what is right and knowing what is wrong, that doesn’t even solve it; that just
feeds our desire to prove that we’re right and everybody else is wrong. In fact, there is only one
thing to do with this human nature that we see so plainly before our eyes in these days, and that is
for it to be utterly and absolutely destroyed and started again in the fresh spirit of God. That’s
the only thing that will change it. It has to be utterly destroyed and and recreated again in the
fresh Spirit of God and that’s what the Gospel is. A lot of us have the feeling, “Oh no, the Gospel,
brother, is forgiveness.” Loved ones, we need to be changed. We don’t need to be forgiven; we need
to be changed.

The Gospel is 2 Corinthians 5:14, “Christ has died for all, therefore all have died.” The Gospel is
that every one of us have been destroyed in Jesus and raised up in him and made new. And the moment
we believe that, that moment the miracle will be done in us by God’s Spirit. Now those of us who are
strong in faith, because that’s what Paul is discussing in Romans here, the strong in faith and the
weak in faith, those of us who are strong in faith, know that.

We’ve seen the other side of hell: we’ve seen the other side of hell in our own natures and we’ve
seen the other side of hell in humanity as a whole. And we know the only thing that will change
this is to blot the whole thing out and start again. The only thing that will change it is if you
can destroy man and start again new.

Those of us who are weak in faith still hanker back to the old hopes: “Well maybe if you clarified
what was right and what was wrong, maybe if you’d help people to understand what was right and what
was wrong, then maybe they’d rise to it. Maybe that’s why it’s such a mess: they don’t know what is
right and what is wrong. They don’t know that abortion is wrong or the other is right. They don’t
know that nuclear disarmament is right and that nuclear arming is wrong.” And some of us who are
weak in faith still hanker back to that.

We think, “If we can only tell them what is right and what is wrong, that’ll cure it.” Those of us
who are strong in faith know, “Look, the problem isn’t that. Sure, at times they might not be sure
what is right and what is wrong, but the problem is they have to be changed so that they can do what
is right.” That’s why Paul says what he does in this verse in Romans 14:5: “One man esteems one
day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully
convinced in his own mind.” Now he doesn’t say one man esteems murder as different from love and
another man esteems murder and love alike — he’s not saying that.

He is agreeing that there are certain things in the Bible that are plainly right or wrong: murder is
wrong and love is right. And he is not saying that if you believe that man’s primary problem is to
be made again in Jesus death and resurrection then you’ll end up being tolerant about things that
are wrong, no. He is not saying that.

He is taking something about which the Bible has not made clear distinctions and he is saying, “Stop

being all preoccupied with these fine distinctions. What you need to do is be fully convinced in
your own mind. Because if you get preoccupied with ‘this is right and this is wrong and this is
right and this is wrong’, that can drag you out of your dependence on the Holy Spirit remaking you
in Jesus’ death and resurrection, and you can become preoccupied with moral issues.”

Did you notice the way the religious movement came down with a whimper? Did you notice the
development? Do you know the last strong kick that it gave? The moral majority – really; now, I am
for it, but it’s interesting, isn’t it –the Holy Spirit was in some sense moving even in those
“Jesus movement” days. There was a great mixture, I agree; some got lost in a lot of the
spiritualism and a lot of the unethical behavior, but it’s interesting that there was a freshness
back there.

Then you remember how it went; it went into the “shepherd movement” and the “hierarchical movement”
at some of the Pentecostal groups. Then gradually it gets down to “All right, we can’t change the
hearts of people by seeing Jesus death made real, let’s change the law so that they’ll have to be
good.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it? It’s interesting the way we take the blessed work of the Holy Spirit and
we then work it out into something that’s purely political and earthly. [Martin] Luther stated very
clearly: there’s the power of the sword — the power of politics — and there’s the power of the
Spirit and the two are separate. And you must keep them separate because the power of the Spirit
works in men’s hearts. But you see the same can be true in our personal lives — it’s very easy to
lose the freshness of the Holy Spirit in your life through ceasing to trust in him keeping you in
Jesus’ death and resurrection, which alone is what changes you day-by-day. That’s alone what keeps
you changed — trusting the Holy Spirit moment-by-moment to keep you destroyed in Jesus death and
recreated in his resurrection. If you take your eyes off that and you set them on, “Well this day
is better than that day and this day is better than that day and you should do this and you should
do that”, soon you become purely a moralist. No better really than the moral rearmament people,
those secular humanists, that operated in Europe for so many years.

Loved ones, that’s what Paul is saying; don’t major in the minors. Don’t major in the minors; stop
arguing about whether this day is better than that day. Don’t strain at a gnat and swallow a camel;
don’t be straining to define exactly what is right for a Christian to do and what is wrong for a
Christian to do and meanwhile lose completely your relationship with Jesus on the cross through the
Holy Spirit.

Obviously what was happening in the Roman church was a debate over the Jewish Sabbath. Presumably
some of them were saying, “Now the Jewish Sabbath is still something that we have to observe in
order to please God.” So the weak in faith were saying, “Now you must keep doing that, you must
keep doing.” And the strong in faith were saying, “Listen, we are kept right with God by trust in
the Holy Spirit to keep us in Jesus’ death on the cross and in his resurrection. That alone is what
keeps us right with God. We are kept right by faith and as a result of that we may do certain
things, but we don’t do certain things in order to get faith. We have faith because we believe in
Jesus.” Some of them are coming along and saying, “No, no, you must still observe the Jewish
Sabbath.” And of course you know where they got it if you’d like to look at it, you’ll find it in
Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your
work but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or
your son, or your daughter, your manservant or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner
who is within your gates; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is

in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”

Some of the Christians, the Jewish Christians and the Roman church, said, “Now that’s plain; that’s
one of the Ten Commandments that we should observe in order to please God.” While those who were
strong in faith said, “No, there’s only one thing we must do to please God and that is take our
place in Jesus in his death and resurrection and allow the Holy Spirit to change us completely
inside out.” Now why did they say that? Because of verses like what you read in Matthew 12, where
Jesus clarified the Sabbath and the way the Sabbath was to be regarded.

Matthew 12:8, “For the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath.” Jesus said, “No, the Sabbath is to be
used by God’s children to do God’s will; it is a day that is to sanctify all other days. It isn’t
the day that is to be set apart specially different; it’s a day that is to sanctify all the other
days to make all the other days days on which we do God’s will and God’s service. It’s right to do
good on the Sabbath. The Sabbath is not just some kind of ritualistic day to be observed.” And of
course, that’s what happened when Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

Everybody who believed that they had been raised with him suddenly began to realize the first day of
the week is a precious day for us. That’s why, you remember, in Acts 20:7 for instance, in light of
what Jesus said about the Sabbath, you find that they just naturally made the first day of the week
their Sabbath, because that was to them their precious day.

Acts 20:7, “On the first day of the week” it was Sunday, “when we were gathered together to break
bread, Paul talked with them intending to depart on the marrow; and he prolonged his speech until
midnight.” And the first day of the week began to be the time when those who believed in Jesus
rejoiced in his resurrection and they did that because just as the Holy Spirit had been poured out
on even the man-servants and the maid-servants in the new Covenant whereas before it was poured out
only on the kings and the prophets, so all days were to be holy unto the Lord. The Sunday was to
sanctify every other day and those who were strong in faith regarded the Jewish Sabbath as the same
as all the other days of the week; days when you were to do God’s will and fulfill his commandments.
Those who were weak in faith still wanted to cling to, “No, we’ll fulfill this law and we’ll please
God.”

Loved ones, it’s the same with us; it depends which issue you’re talking about. Some of you deal
with drinking and smoking and to many of us it seems kind of dumb to do it. It seems you’re kind
of destroying your body and it seems as if you’re not taking care of the temple of the Holy Ghost.
But there are eating habits, there is nuclear disarmament — there are all kinds of questions. And
God’s word is, “Don’t argue about those things; let each man be fully convinced in his own mind.”
And the reason for that is you will stay in Jesus on the cross as long as you are tender with the
Holy Spirit. As long as you submit sensitively to the Holy Spirit.

When you begin to turn from the Holy Spirit and you get hold of some of these ethical issues and you
start making a complaint about them, do you not notice your own spirit gets coerced? Your spirit
gets coerced. Do you not know that’s why many of us who are involved in these campaign issues have
all kinds of chaos in our homes? We have all kinds of chaos in our personal relationships because
our spirit has got coarser and coarser as we more and more ignored the Holy Spirit and got hold of
these rights and wrongs and this knowledge of good and evil.

In other words loved ones, it’s very easy to leave the tree of life and start eating of the tree of
the knowledge of good and evil again, and lose all the salvation that God alone can keep you in, in

his Son on the cross. So in regard to those things, don’t worry about them — don’t major in the
minors. Be fully convinced in your own mind that what you’re doing is what the Holy Spirit wants you
to do.

I don’t want to carry it too far but it is really conceivable that one brother back there could be
smoking 20 cigarettes a day, (and I think you’re dumb if you do), but you can be smoking 20 a day
and yet the Holy Spirit has not brought that before you yet because he is dealing with some other
more serious problems in your heart and your life. And yet you’re abiding in the Holy Spirit by the
way you’re living.

For somebody else the Holy Spirit could have said, “That’s wrong — I cannot keep you in Jesus on
the cross if you’re going to continue to smoke 20 cigarettes a day.” That’s the way the Holy Spirit
deals with us; he deals with each of us individually and personally and that’s what’s so beautiful
about our God and so beautiful about salvation — it is individual. It is you responding to the
blessed Holy Spirit as he gives you more and more light.

So one man estimates that all days are the same, one man esteems one day above another; let each man
be fully convinced in his own mind. But don’t forget you will meet that dear Savior some day and he
knows whether you have responded to his indications to you. So in a real way it doesn’t matter what
he has told the rest of us, it doesn’t. You and he have a unique relationship that none of the rest
of us has, and you’re responsible for your response to that.

Let us pray.

Dear Father, we thank you that being right with you is exactly that. It’s being right with you
personally, responding to the rights and wrongs that you have revealed to us in our conscience
whatever other people may do or don’t do. So Father we thank you that you have determined to keep
everything personal between us and you. So Lord, just at this moment, we would be honest before you
now.

Holy Spirit, is there anything in our lives that you have convicted us of and we are continuing to
do it because everybody else seems to do it? Holy Spirit, we want to be real with you. So we will
now, this moment, bring our behavior into line with our own conscience so that when we meet you,
Lord Jesus, on the final day, we can stand up straight knowing that we have been true to our
conscience. Then Holy Spirit, if you see us in some kind of bondage, legal bondage, over something
that you have not spoken to us about, but we have followed the crowd on, we ask you now to make us
aware of that and enable us to walk free from this day forward.

We thank you our Father that salvation is a joyous, personal relationship with you through the Holy
Spirit. We look forward to that these coming days. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love of
God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

The Holy Spirit Our Coach

Romans 14:6

By Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Maybe we should all start on the same verse and then you’ll know what we were studying, loved ones,
its Romans 14:6.
“He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the
Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives
thanks to God.”

So Paul is saying, “Really, the big deal isn’t which day you’re observing or what kind of food
you’re eating, or whether you’re a vegetarian or whether you’re a meat-eater or whether you think
this way or that way; if you do it as unto the Lord.” In this chapter he is dealing with things
that actually are given the Latin name “Adiaphora”; they’re things that don’t make any difference,
but they’re things over which we strain at gnats and swallow camels.

We Christians are expert at disagreeing like mad over little, infinitesimal points of doctrine, or
infinitesimal points of behavior and yet we miss the whole heart of our position in Jesus. So that’s
what Paul is talking about loved ones and that’s what we would like to share about together this
morning for a few minutes.

I’d ask you to imagine that we’re all part of the field and track team that is going to the
Olympics. Some of us are sprinters and some of us are shot-putters and some of us are javelin
throwers and some of us are like Eric Liddle; we do the quarter mile or we do the 100-yard dash.

So we’re all meeting together here with the head coach for the first time and he says, “Tomorrow I
am going to watch you all perform because I want to analyze your performance and then I want to
outline a training schedule that the assistant coaches will be able to follow with each of you.
Okay?”

We all go home and come back the next day and go through our routines as the coach watches us
closely and then he outlines training techniques and practices for each one of us and of course
they’re all different because different events put different demands on all of us. You high jumpers
have different demands put upon you then those of us who are hurdlers, and those of you who throw
javelin have different demands from those of us who will put a shot or who do the high jump.

So we all have different demands put on us by our events. Therefore the techniques and the practices
and the exercises that the coach gives to each of us are all different. There’s another reason why
they’re all different: we’re all different. Each one of us is different; there may be six or seven
of us here who are hurdlers, but we all are at different stages of physical development and mental
development. We’re all at different stages in our training and so the coach gives us different
exercises and different techniques, not only according to the events we’re entering but also
according to the stage of our mental and physical development. Now think what it would be like if
you sprinters went over to the classes for shot putters and said to them, “I’ll tell you what the
head coach has given us to do: we’ve to do the 100-yard dash in this number of seconds. Now I really
think you ought to do the same thing because if it’s right for us, it’s right for you.”

So that massive giant of a man that puts the shot, starts trundling down the track trying to keep up
to the time that the coach has set for the sprinters. Well, if the guy doesn’t get a heart attack,
he certainly won’t, at least, be able to enter for his event! Or think if the fellow who throws the
javelin went to the sprinters and said “I want to give you some of the exercises that the coach has
given me to build up my shoulder muscles. Now, I want you to really work at them because obviously
if they’re right for me, they’re right for you. That’ll just make you strong too.” So all the
sprinters give up running and they start trying to build up their shoulder muscles.

Well, you know we’d all say, “That’s dumb. I mean that’s silly; it’s not a case of what is right for
the sprinter is right for the javelin thrower — it’s not. Or that what is right for the high jumper
is right for the hurdler, it’s not; they’re all different. They all need different techniques and
different training and different exercises and you can’t apply one law right across the board for
everybody.

You can’t, in other words, get a set of laws and regulations and hand them out to all the hurdlers,
all the high jumpers, all the long jumpers, all the javelin throwers and expect that if they all
follow all of those laws, they’ll all be prepared for the Olympics. You know what you would say,
“There’s only one right thing to do: listen to the coach, that’s why we have coaches.” Coaches
personally adapt the exercises and the techniques to the needs that we, individually, have and
that’s why you have to listen to the coach.

That’s why God, through Paul, speaks like this to us this morning in Romans 14:6: “He who observes
the day”, he who does certain exercises that are right for him, “observes it in honor of the Lord”,
does it in honor of the Lord. “He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord”, since he gives thanks
to God, “while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord” and gives thanks to God and the
reason for that is found in Colossians 2:16 – 3::3, “Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in
questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are only
a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you,
insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, taking his stand on visions, puffed up without
reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head from whom the whole body, nourished
and knit together through it’s joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still
belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch,
(referring to things which all perish as they are used), according to human precepts and doctrines?
These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting rigor of devotion and self-abasement and
severity to the body, but they are of no value in checking the indulgence of the flesh.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at
the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” That’s the heart of the Gospel: you
have died and your life is hid with Christ in God. Do not submit to this regulation and observe
that law and follow that pattern and believe this way but — you have already died and your life is
hid with Christ in God.

Here is the explanation for those of you to whom that’s new: our Creator put all of us in this
world to bring it into a certain degree of order under his will in a way that only you can do. Now
you’re different from every one of the rest of us; you have some floors to wash, you have some money
to count, you have some letters to type, you have some order to bring into this world that none of

the rest of us can bring. You’re unique. You’ll do it in a unique way and you’ll express part of
God’s nature in a way that none of the rest of us will do. But for the sake of preserving free
will, God allowed you and me to be born into families and neighborhoods and societies that had
rebelled against him. They had used their free will to rebel against him and so we were born into
families that trained us differently from the way God intended us to be trained. So for instance, he
wanted you to use your mind to work out how to bring the particular part of the world that he had
put under you, into order under his will.

But you and I, through our parents and our grandparents, through our teachers, through our bosses,
have been trained to use our mind to manipulate other people, so that’s what many of us do: we use
our mind to manipulate other people and in the process of misusing the things and the abilities that
God has given us, we’ve all become kind of twisted and perverted. We’re like a bundle of hurdlers
who have become champion pie-eaters. We’re really like a bundle of athletes who have developed all
the wrong way and are doing the wrong things and that’s the reason we cannot do the good that we
want — that’s it.

That’s why we call out so often, “The good that I would I cannot do” [Romans 7], because our whole
personalities have become perverted by using the gifts that God has given us for ourselves. What God
has done is to change us in his son Jesus. The amazing thing is — if God hasn’t changed you from
being what you are, there’s no hope for you. Like that little Italian coach,[in Chariot’s of Fire]
said to Harold Abrahams, “Man can’t put into you what God has left out.”

If God hasn’t put speed into you, man can’t put speed into you. If God has not changed you from what
you have become into what he originally wanted you to be, you can’t do anything about it with all
your exercises, with all your techniques, with all your training, with all your church-going, with
all your Bible-reading, with all your praying. You can’t put into yourself what God has left out.
If you are still a miserable, self-centered creature that God has not changed, then you won’t be
able to change that.

If God has not put purity into you in Jesus, you cannot become pure. If God has not put love into
you in Jesus, you cannot become loving. But this dear word [the Bible] says that you have died and
your life is hid with Christ in God. God has put you into his son and has remade you and has changed
you completely and he says this: “I have sent you a coach, a counselor who can reveal to you the
changes that I have made to you in my son. And this coach will begin to show you how to manifest
those changes in your day-by-day life.”

He says to us, “Listen to the coach. Listen to the Holy Spirit who is within you — he will show you
how God has changed you in his son.” And loved ones, if you and I would do that, we’d begin to live
freer lives. We would, but we are just so self-willed. Our predicament is all about us because we
don’t believe that. You don’t believe that God has changed you in his son Jesus — that that word is
true; you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God and that if you have been united with
him in a death like his, you’re certainly united with him in a resurrection like his and that you
have become a new creation because you are in Christ and that Christ has died for all therefore all
of us have died. So many of us don’t believe that, therefore we end up uncertain about ourselves and
our relationship with God, and we end up trying to obey all kinds of regulations to build up our
assurance.

We end up doing what we do in our secular life; we listen to everybody. We listen to everybody with
their regulations and their suggestions of how we can become like God — that’s what we do in our

secular life — you know it. I don’t know if you realize it but Europe often looks at America as the
land of conformity. Now, it’s very paradoxical that they do because of course we’re the people who
say, “We’re free; we’re individuals.” But Europe often looks at America through the eyes of Evans
Packard in his early book “The Hidden Persuaders’, and says, “All Americans do everything the same.”

Well, I think they’re wrong: they’re not right, they’re not fair; we are in a way still more
individualistic than probably most other people, but loved ones the fact remains; we are governed by
the elemental spirits of the universe so often in our secular life, aren’t we? We are governed by
what society tells us to do. You must admit when hoola hoops are in (hoola hooping was an exercise)
we’re all hoola hooping like mad! When jogging is in, we’re all jogging like mad; doesn’t matter
what shape we are or what size we are, we are all jogging madly — to death sometimes — but we’re
jogging. It is true that we are programmed in our dear minds to so often do what society says we
should do.

We laugh at those things but you know fine well that we not only admire the Michael Jacksons and the
Jane Fondas but we so often end up not exercising our free will at all. We so often end up doing or
trying to be like them, so that many of us have given up any fresh, spontaneous life inside
ourselves at all.

We are utterly under the pressure of a money magazine telling you how you can build financial
security for yourself. We’re utterly under the influence of whatever happens to be the next craze.
And sometimes, if you ever look into your closet, you wonder where you got all that equipment and
you can almost date it! We are governed so often by what the world thinks and the tragedy is that
great numbers of us in Christendom run our life with God the same way.

We forget that the heart of our salvation is that God took you, with the 25,000 idiosyncrasies and
faults that you have that are different from everyone else’s 25,000 idiosyncrasies and faults, and
God put you into his son Jesus and he rectified all that. And he has sent you a dear coach called
the Holy Spirit who will begin to whisper in your heart what part of that mighty change he wants to
manifest in you today. And as you listen to that, you will find the power that God has built into
you coming forth in your life.

So often in Christendom we turn away from that quite voice within us to the noisy voices in
Christendom that say, “If you’re a real Christian, then you should think this about state’s rights.
If you’re a real Christians you should think this about politics.” And because we’re so trained in
our secular life, it’s very easy to begin to run our life with God by those crude, coarse, external
directives.

In other words, it’s very easy to start going to the hurdler and saying, “The javelin throwers are
doing this exercise, you ought to do it too,” or going around to the sprinters and saying, “Now the
milers are doing this — you ought to do it too.” Meanwhile there is a dear, kindly, gentlemanly
person called the Holy Spirit who does speak in your heart at times. Even if you’re not a Christian
and you don’t think of yourself as Christian, the Holy Spirit has spoken, at times, even in your
heart and if you would once begin to listen to that little voice, and begin to do and follow after
the things that he guides you about, you begin to find the miraculous change that God worked upon
you in Jesus taking place in your life.

Loved ones, it will work for you, it will. Often the things he tells you won’t be so much connected

with this practice or that practice; often they’ll be finer things that nobody else knows but you.
Often they won’t be, “You can’t go to a restaurant on a Sunday” often they’ll be, “Are you going to
a restaurant on a Sunday just to indulge yourself?” Or, “Are you going to express love to somebody
else and to take them with you?”

Often it won’t be so much, “Are you going to church every Sunday”, but, “Are you going to church
with a critical spirit? Are you going to church with a real loving spirit anxious to glorify God?”
Often it won’t be the practices, it won’t be the exercises, it’ll be the attitude with which you do
them that the Holy Spirit begins to reveal to you and as you listen to him, he will bring you into
more and more of the freedom that God has given you in Jesus.

Loved ones, that takes you well away from this argument about what to eat or what to drink. It takes
you well away from those crude coarse rules and regulations that we Christians make for eating and
drinking and for attending places of entertainment. Don’t you see that it’s true? You could stay at
home in a very religious frame of mind on a Sunday and watch one of those TV movies that would fill
you with more violence in your heart than anything else you can imagine and yet you would apparently
be spending a very holy Sabbath day at home.

The Holy Spirit will begin to touch you with those things. He’ll begin to reveal to you the ways in
which — maybe you’re going out to a lake on a Sunday, it’s just a wonderful thing to do, and it’s
God’s world and you know, the whole argument that you sense God more under the sky and all that, and
so going to a lake seems a wonderful thing; and then the Holy Spirit comes to your heart and says,
“But you know, that was an utterly dissipated day you just had, utterly dissipated. You didn’t touch
alcohol at all, you didn’t do anything wrong but your mind, your emotions, they’re utterly
dissipated. You’ve spent no time in recollection. You’ve spent no time in quietness before God, no
time receiving his peace into your heart for the coming week.” The Holy Spirit, always like any
good coach, tunes the training and the exercises to your need precisely.

Loved ones, that’s what God is getting at here: so you observe the day and I don’t observe the day;
you eat meat and I don’t eat. You abstain from eating meat and I don’t abstain from eating meat.
Does it matter? They’re just exercises. They won’t do anything for you. If God has not put speed
into you, you won’t become fast. If God has not changed you in Jesus, you can’t become like him.
But if he has, then there’s only one person who can manifest that in your life, there’s only one
person who can tell you what God is working on in your life today and that’s the Holy Spirit; not a
preacher, pastor, writer, author, not your dearest friend, only the Holy Spirit.

Loved ones, that’s how personal our God is. So I’d encourage you and encourage myself to listen to
that little voice within us, that voice of the Holy Spirit, and allow him to begin to refine us and
make us more like Jesus deep down in our spirits. That’s where we’ll live in heaven forever, and
there there’ll be no Sabbaths and no non-Sabbaths, there there’ll be no meat or vegetarian, there’ll
just be a spirit of love and that’s what the Holy Spirit will work on in you. Let us pray.

Dear Holy Spirit, we know there is freedom in living in response to you instead of ruled by all
these laws and regulations that everybody thrusts upon us. We know, Holy Spirit, that at times we’ve
become confused over trying to do what this person said was right and trying to avoid what this
person said was wrong until gradually we’ve lost the friendship of Jesus and we’ve lost the whole
personal relationship with you that we had at the beginning.

We are sorry for that and Holy Spirit, we ask you now to live in us and to speak to us and to show

us what our Father is working on next in our individual lives. We so thank you that this gives us a
sense of worth and value that nothing else can; that the God of the whole universe is adapting the
death and resurrection of his son to me personally, Holy Spirit, thank you. We ask you to give us
each light that we may become more like Jesus this day and through the days of this coming week and
that we may be delivered from legalism and from all the pretence of being righteous when we are in
fact self-righteous.

Father, we thank you. Thank you for changing us in Jesus and thank you for the Holy Spirit who will
manifest that change in us today as we listen to him. Now the grace of our Lord Jesus, and the love
of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

No Man is an Island

Romans 14:1

by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

Many of us here remember when we first realized that Jesus was alive and that you could know him
personally — even though he was the son of the Creator, you could know him as a real friend. And
many of us remember going home and telling our parents all about what we had discovered and, of
course, trying to convert our father and our mother right on the spot.

Most of us remember too, not only telling them about Jesus but telling them about the Campus Church
song book and about Watchman Nee and about all the other things that were absolutely essential in
order to get to heaven. What we in fact found ourselves doing, of course, was telling them about a
lot of things that weren’t essential at all, and that weren’t important. They were just things that
we, as a group, had as attitudes — they weren’t essential. Jesus alone was essential.

And yet there are so many of those things loved ones, that we get distracted by. Even our idea of
doing business and using business here and abroad to express Jesus’ love and care to other people,
that’s really non-essential; it’s just something that God has led us into, but it’s not an
essential.

So for many of us who are experiencing community living, it’s not an essential, it’s just one of the
things that God has led some of us to and there are many of these non-essentials in the Christian
life. But many of us are misled into thinking they’re essentials so we get caught up with all kinds
of views and attitudes and practices that we think are part of being in Jesus and they aren’t —
they aren’t vital at all.

We get caught up as we’ve often said, in certain attitudes to state’s rights that we think everybody
who is a Christian ought to have, or a certain attitude to war, or a certain attitude to nuclear
disarmament, or a certain attitude to abortion, or a certain attitude to euthanasia. And before you
know it, we lose all the freshness and the simplicity of our love for Jesus as it gets buried under
this mass of legalistic obligations and attitudes that we begin to get preoccupied with. That is
what God is speaking to us about in these first verses of Romans 14.

He is really saying, “When somebody who is weak or young in the faith comes into your group and gets
all preoccupied with these non-essentials and gets all pre-occupied with the do’s and don’ts of
Christianity, don’t you, who are a bit stronger in faith, start showing your great superior
spiritual knowledge by arguing with them about those things. Don’t do that, because by doing that,
you yourself are eating again of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and that’s not the
problem of mankind.”

“Mankind’s problem is not, knowing what is good and what is evil — he knows that. Man’s problem is
doing what God has told him, personally, to do and being interested in that. So God has been saying
to us these past few Sundays “Don’t get caught up with what is the right attitude to euthanasia,
what is the right attitude to state’s rights, what is the right attitude to this and to that. Don’t
do that. That’s not the essential thing.”

There is one essential and what Paul does is bring us back down to that one essential. He says the

one essential is what God is personally telling you to do in your life. What attitudes and what
things is he guiding you, personally, to do and to take and to think? That’s what’s important.

That’s what sin is: sin is not doing that. Sin isn’t so much the euthanasia. Sin isn’t so much
killing people. Sin is losing that sensitive relationship to your Creator by which he tells you
what he wants you, personally, to do. That’s the heart of these verses, so maybe you’d look at them
in Romans 14:1-7, “As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over
opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who
eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God
has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own
master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand.

One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let
everyone be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day observes it in honor of the
Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who
abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God. None of us lives to himself and
none of us dies to himself.”

That’s the verse we’re studying: “None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.” Of
course, what Paul is really saying is that it’s not what these people are doing or what these people
say is right, it’s what God is telling you to do, that’s what you’ve to be concerned about. You may
remember a quotation I once shared months ago that came from Bismarck. If you know anything about
European history, Bismarck was one of the most stubborn and willful and militaristic leaders that
Germany ever had, and he virtually ruled Germany at one of its greatest periods as a nation.

Bismarck is a man you would think is like a Sherman tank: he’d just go through anything! In
pictures of him, he looks the consummate militaristic dictator and yet it’s very interesting, one of
the things he said. He said, “Statesmen are not men who move nations and who control history. Big
things like that are not in the hands of puny men with weak wills; big things like that are in the
hands of a higher providence than statesmen. Statesmen (and he was hoping that he would be such a
one) are men who listen for the footsteps of God.” And if you knew Bismarck, you would think he is
the last one to say that! Yet all of us here who have seen the formation of Israel, all of us here
who have seen things happen in the world in the Second World War and the First World War, you have
sensed that haven’t you? Things are not really in our hands.

There is a mighty, providential God that is moving powerfully in the midst of history and those who
are sensible and who want to survive in this world will listen for the footsteps of God. They’ll
watch to read what way God is moving. Loved ones, that’s what Paul is saying we need to do in our
own lives.

You need to start listening for the footsteps of God in your life. You need to stop this business of
saying, “I am going to do this and I am going to do that.” You’re not doing anything that he does
not permit you to do; you’re not. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen yourself break repeatedly, and things
that you were determined to do — everything looked good, and it didn’t work out.

If you’re going to go anywhere with your own life, you’re going to have to start listening for the
footsteps of God. Not just reading circumstances; circumstances can come from Satan or from other
people but listening for God’s footsteps, listening to him and beginning to sense, “Lord God, which
way are you moving with me? What do you want to do with this life of mine?”

Now, if you asked me what prevents us doing that? What prevents us walking in that kind of liberty
— because it would be liberty — it would be great liberty to walk to one drummer, especially if he
beats a rhythm that is just right for my life and nobody else’s. It would be much easier to go to
the beat of one drummer than the way I go at present; listening to half a dozen drummers. Now what
prevents me living in that kind of liberty where I would just listen for one person’s footsteps to
see what I should do with my life?”

The thing that prevents us is an attitude that is built deep into our present day society and it’s
an attitude, actually, that comes out in the normal misinterpretation of this verse that we’re
studying. You remember this verse is, “None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself.”

Now what do you think is the normal misinterpretation of that in our society or the normal
interpretation? “None of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself.” It’s the one that
Simon and Garfunkel used in their song. It’s the one that hundreds of song-writers use and it comes
from this old quotation that was written in the 17th century. You’ll recognize it immediately, and
this is the attitude that prevents, probably most of us here, from walking after the footsteps of
God — it’s the interpretation of this verse, “No man is an island entire of itself, every man is a
piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any
man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for
whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” [John Donne].

That’s the way we all interpret that verse. We say, “That’s exactly right. No man lives to himself,
no man dies to himself because we’re all part of each other and we’re all part of mankind and that’s
why we’re all one.” And you know the next step? The next step is, “Therefore it’s very important to
me, what you think. It’s very important to me what you think of me. I am part of you and you’re part
of me, so what do you think — what do you think I should do?” That’s the disease of our society.

I don’t know that there’s one of us here that hasn’t had trouble with that very thing; “What do
people think of me? What do people think I should do? What does the boss think of me? What do my
friends think of me? Listen, what do you think I should do with my life?” Isn’t it true that we get
that from this whole interpretation; we say no man dies to himself, no man lives to himself, that’s
dead right because we’re all part of each other. No man is an island; we all belong to each other
and therefore it’s very important what we think and it’s very important what others think of us and
it’s very important what you think I should do. So let’s just be all open with each other and let me
run my life according to the way you think I should run it.”

Isn’t it true that thousands of others in our society are living their lives like that? Is that not
the reason why we have so few strong leaders? We have so few strong leaders because the leaders are
always looking behind them to see if the other guys are following or if they agree with them, and so
we don’t turn out strong leaders today; we turn out people who are filled with man-fear and what
they are filled with, we are filled with.

We are so often preoccupied with what other people think we should do and that’s what prevents us
living our lives listening for the footsteps of God. We are all preoccupied with listening for all
your little footsteps. We’re all preoccupied with, “What does my dad think I should do, what do my
friends think I should do, what does my boss think I should do, what do my neighbors think I should
do”, and so there’s so much static inside the old system coming through your antenna that God can’t

get his clear voice in at all. So you rarely listen for the footsteps of God.

You don’t need to; your ears are filled with the footsteps of everybody else. In fact, isn’t that
why you’re often confused at times? You often say, “Oh, I don’t know what I should do because John
says I should do that, my dad says I should do that and somebody….” It’s terrible! There’s no
peace, and no singleness of mind, because we think that that’s what that verse means; “No one lives
to himself and no one dies to himself. No man is an island because we’re all part of each other and
therefore it’s very important what everybody thinks.”

In other words, we have taken “mankind society” and we have raised him up and made him an idol and
we have brushed God off the stand. And the God we listen to is society, and each other, and our
friends, and everybody else. We do it because we think, “But isn’t that what that means –no man is
an island. I mean we are not on our own, are we?”

No; that’s a blasphemous misinterpretation of that verse, “No man lives to himself and no man dies
to himself.” Loved ones, do you know that the dear guy who wrote that original quotation that I read
was not a secular humanist at all. “No man is an island, entire of it’s self. Each man’s death
diminishes me. Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

He wasn’t a secular humanist; he is John Donne, an English writer and poet who was an Anglican
minister in the 17th century. And that is the last part of Meditation 17, which is a devotional
that he wrote in his devotions one day and the devotion begins and forms the real basis for that
like this, and you see what he really meant when he said that.

“Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill” he himself was ill at this time, “as that he
knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they
who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.” And he
meant “Maybe I am so sick, I am dying, and it’s actually tolling for me.”

“The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all. When
she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body
which is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a
man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies,
one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter
must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by
sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God’s hand is in every translation and his hand shall
bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one
another. As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the
congregation to come, so this bell calls us all.”

No man lives to himself and no man dies to himself because we are all part of the mainland, which is
God in his son Jesus. That’s the sense in which no man lives to himself, or no man dies to himself;
we are secondarily part of each other, but only because we are part of God and part of Jesus.

It’s in that sense, loved ones that your life is not in your own hands. You can’t just say, “I am
fed up with it; I am going to take an overdose and end it.” You haven’t that right. You are not your
own; you’ve been bought with a price; you are part of God, you are part of Jesus.

If you say to me, “I don’t care about God, I don’t care about Jesus; I swear at them everyday — I

don’t like them. I don’t believe in it.” You are still part of their life. The very life that makes
your heart beat cannot be explained by any doctor or specialist however clever; none of them can
explain why the heart beats. That heart beat depends on the flame of life that exists in one place
in the universe: that is in Jesus.

You live, whether you like it or not, by the very life of Jesus. It is his flame of life that
enables your mind to keep thinking. You are only alive today because he has continued to pass that
life to you. You say to me, “So that I could blaspheme him; so that I could tear him apart and be
sarcastic?” Yes, that’s how much he loves, yes. He was even giving life to the Roman soldiers who
were at that very moment putting a spear into his side.

The life that you have is part of God’s own life, and so you are part of Jesus, and you’re part of
God. No man lives to himself, no man dies to himself. When you die, a part of God goes; a part of
Jesus is hurt. You are not just your own; because of that, you’re part of the rest of us. But
first, because you’re part of him.

You’ll see it very plainly if I ask you what trouble you get into if the stomach bypasses the head
and just deals directly with the mouth and you eat lollapalooza after lollapalooza? [an enormous
ice-cream sweet] It is absolute chaos — and that’s how we get into chaos; the stomach doesn’t
bother going through the head but goes right to the mouth and the mouth gobbles like mad, and it
doesn’t work — the body gets lopsided. The body goes out of sync and it’s hopeless. The hand
cannot get that food to lift without going through the head, and it’s so with us; the only way in
which we can be part of each other is first by listening to the head. The way you can best fit into
society is by listening to the head, listening for the footsteps of God. He knows where you fit
into his plan and he’ll fit you into society.

The Minnesota Multiphasic test and the vocational guidance tests are second best; they’re a way to
keep society hobbling along as long as it refuses to listen to the head that made it.

The other way to find out where you fit into society, and the way to begin to march in step with the
rest of us, is to take your eyes off the rest of us and to begin to listen for the footsteps of God.
Could I point you to one last verse, an incredible verse, if I explain to you the right translation
of it? It’s John 1:4. I checked it again in the Greek just to be absolutely certain that the
footnote was right; it looks harmless enough and looks the way we’ve always read it.

John 1:4, “In him was life and the life was the light of men.” Then you see the little footnote: it
says, “or was not anything made.” And then a period and then the new sentence, “That which has been
made was life in him.” And it’s right; the Greek says that ‘ho egan ato’; “that which has been made
was life in him.” You heart beats because that heart was life in him and it’s his life that keeps it
beating. Your mind’s ability to think thinks because it was life in him, that’s where life comes
from. Are you all clear? We’ll never get life in a test-tube unless we’ve actually let a little bug
get in there. We’ll never create life. We’ll somehow think we’ve created it because there was life
in there that we couldn’t isolate, but there’s only one place where life comes from and that’s in
Jesus, both natural and spiritual life comes from his life.

So none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. Suicide — who of us haven’t thought
it might be an answer. Who of us haven’t had moments of depression thoughts? But you don’t have any
right — you don’t have a right. You are not your own. You’re not killing something that is yours to
kill. You belong, and are a part of, Jesus and part of our Creator. So he is vitally concerned with

what you are doing these days.

So will you begin to spend some time in quietness; listening for the footsteps of God and finding
out what he wants you to do? Forgetting what all the rest of us think about euthanasia, and
abortion, and all the other things. Start finding out what God wants you, personally, to think and
let him deliver you from this idol that we have set up in our day. Let us pray.

Dear Father, we’re brought up to respect what everybody else thinks. And Lord, we do know that
there are many godly people who can tell us things. And we do know that we should confirm with them
what we get from you, but Lord we thank you that we’re personal and individual and you have a plan
for us that you have for nobody else. We’ve to listen first to you and only then ask somebody else
what they think of that. But Lord even then we realize that we have to bow before you first and
simply check back with you and see if what you said is what we understood. And then Lord, we are to
do that.

Lord, we thank you that that’s your way for us to walk like [Robert] Frost and “The Road Not Taken.”
Lord we want to walk that road. We know that that makes all the difference in our lives; if we walk
the individual road you have for us. We know that that’s what you are yourself: so real and such
integrity and such reality. So Lord, we commit ourselves to beginning to listen for the footsteps of
God in our lives and to begin to look to see what your idea is for us, and what you had in mind when
you put us here in the first place.

Lord we ask you to help each of us to do that. Now, the grace of our Lord Jesus and the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with each one of us, now and evermore. Amen.

Pleasing God

Romans 14:8

Sermon Transcript by Rev. Ernest O’Neill

We’ve often said to one another before that it’s very difficult to step outside yourself and look at
your own life from a distance. We spend so much time inside our own minds that it just is a great
exercise for us to actually step outside of it and try to see ourselves as others see us. It’s just
hard to do.

You don’t spend a lot of time doing it and so it’s difficult ever to do it. Yet it is what
distinguishes us from animals. You probably know that. The old self-critical faculty is the ability
to kind of look at yourself from outside and see what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. It’s
what prevents us going on blindly in some activity that is getting us nowhere. Whereas you know a
little dog will continue to wrap himself around the tree, it doesn’t matter how long, he does it.
He’ll continue to do it because he can’t get outside his own mind and say, “You dumb dog, look what
you’re doing?” He just keeps on doing what he is doing whereas we, human beings, are different kinds
of animals. We are able to get outside ourselves and kind of be self-critical. That is, we are able
to look in upon ourselves and see what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.

That’s what I’d ask us to do right this minute. I would ask you to answer this question, what was
the basic motive that governed you in your childhood? You might say, “Oh just to be happy as a boy
who plays in a sand box, just enjoy myself. That’s it, just to be happy.” Or somebody else might
say, “Well, to get my own way. That’s what I wanted as a child, always to get my own way and that’s
what dominated my childhood.” Do you not think there’s another motive lying underneath all of those
that we all had in common as children?

Do you not think, underneath the skin of every human being born into this chaotic world, there is
deep down a desire to fit in? Do you not think we kind of look at this big world and all these big
adults around and we look at all the things that are happening and you just feel kind of scared
inside? You say to yourself, “Well, I am not going to last long here unless I fit in with it all.”

Do you not think that this carries on through a great deal of our lives? We keep on acting on the
basis of that. In fact, that kind of becomes the basic motive of our whole life. It becomes the
drive that is underneath everything we do. It becomes the undergirding reason for our lives. We kind
of subconsciously want to fit in. We want to fit in with everything.

We want to fit in with the world itself. We want to fit in with the people who are important. We
want to fit in with the current fashion. We want to fit in with the trendsetters. We want to fit in
with the habits that everybody approves. We want to fit in with all the norms that everybody
respects. That kind of governs everything we do in our lives.

In fact, in a strange way, Darwin is kind of right about the old animal kingdom — that the survival
of the fittest depends on adapting to your environment. In a way many of us have acted like little
animals throughout great parts of our lives. We’ve governed everything we said or did or thought or
ever dreamed of. In the light of this almost self-preservation instinct we have that we ought to try
to fit in with everything.

We ought to fit in with what people are thinking. We ought to fit in with what the world expects of
us. We ought to do what everybody thinks we should do. Of course, that wouldn’t be too bad if the
world itself was kind of healthy. Then you would be fitting in with something healthy. But the
tragedy is that this old world has decided utterly and irrationally that it has no maker, that it
made itself, and that it exists for itself by its own power. So most of this world exists to please
itself. So what happens with little ones like us if we govern our whole life subconsciously by this
desire to fit in? We find ourselves trying to fit in with a world that doesn’t believe there’s a
maker and that lives for itself and to get its own way. We actually end up living our lives like
that too.

Now, it’s plain to any of us that any Maker faced with that kind of an irrational creation that he
had just finished putting his best ideas into, if we were him, we’d just destroy the creation. We’d
just wipe it out. We’d wipe it out if only to prevent the chaos of such a self-centered world
extending to the rest of the universe. There’s no doubt, loved ones, any Maker would be justified in
that.

When he creates something that he had plans for and it turns out the very opposite, he is fully
justified in destroying the whole thing and wiping it all out and starting over again. Now, the
amazing thing is that our Maker didn’t do that. He didn’t wipe it all out like that. He found a
better solution and if you follow with me during some little twists in reasoning, I think you’ll be
able to see it. You’ll be able to see how it applies to your own life and to my own life. What he
did, loved ones, is outlined in a book in the New Testament, Galatians.

Galatians 6:14, “But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” It’s the middle clause there, “by
which the world has been crucified”, and you see before that clause it says, “in the cross of our
Lord Jesus Christ.” That means in Jesus’ death “the world was crucified.” That’s what God did.

He didn’t destroy the world but he took the spiritual powers of the world and he brought them to an
end in his Son Jesus in a timeless miracle in eternity. In other words, he so controlled the power
of a Hitler that his influence would be terminated at death. Hitler’s influence would only extend
over this earth as far as his death. Then at his death, his influence would cease. So God terminated
all the spiritual powers to spread chaos and self-centeredness throughout the universe. He
terminated them at death. It doesn’t matter how bad we are. It doesn’t matter how rotten we are. It
all ends at death. We can’t expand it beyond that. We can’t extend it beyond that. It ends at death.

God has so arranged the death and destruction of the power of evil in the world that it all ends at
death. Actually those powers then will be walled in to a certain place that is known in the Bible as
hell. They will be walled into a certain place. They will be held there forever to destroy
themselves. So God, in Jesus, has destroyed the power of the world of evil to extend itself beyond
death.

Now, the amazing thing is that this is the future expression of that destruction of the world. But
actually it is backdated into our present world. I’ll show you the verse which explains this. Romans
8:20, “…for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who
subjected it in hope.” In other words, God has actually backdated that destruction that occurs in
hell down through our present centuries so that we’re aware of it. We’re aware of it, for one thing,
through our conscience.

When you do something that fits in with the world and doesn’t fit in with God; when you do something
or think something that fits in with the world, or exerts your own way and tries to glorify
yourself, or tries to make something big of yourself — your conscience registers that the thing
will be terminated at your death and that it’s wrong.

In other words, your conscience tells you that a certain thing is wrong because it is still aware of
the death and destruction that is going to come to you at the end of this life if you continue as
you are. That’s why “conscivi” in Latin, means “to know very well.” The conscience knows very well
something that you don’t know. You can’t look with binoculars down the road and see what this
present action will lead to 70 years hence but your conscience can and your conscience yells at you,
“Stop, stop! You’re going to destruction if you continue that way.” That’s what the conscience is.

It’s kind of the shadow of hell backdated down to our present time and our present life. So, in a
sense, the destruction that God wrought in Calvary is recognized by our consciences continually.
That’s why your conscience will tell you at times things differently from my conscience. Because
your conscience knows what God is dealing with you about in your own life and he knows what he has
had to destroy in you in Jesus, his Son. He is letting you know that so that you could accept it and
be free of it because if you don’t, it’ll be destroyed in hell forever.

So your conscience registers that. That’s one way in which the destruction that God has wrought in
the world in hell is backdated down through our present life. Another way is “Murphy’s Law”. God has
destroyed the evil powers in the world and has sent certain futility through this present physical
world to let us know that everything is not right. Otherwise we would kind of think, “Oh, this is
wonderful. This is the way the world should be.”

God has allowed certain repercussions and certain reverberations from the destruction of the world
in hell to come back down through our present life. So, why does your seatbelt always fall outside
the car door and not inside? Why do those Murphy’s Law things happen? Why does a thing go wrong if
it can go wrong? Because the Creator has built in certain parts of the destruction that he has
wrought in Jesus into our present material world to let us know that something is rotten in the
state of Denmark. There is something not right here. This is a world that has gone astray. It’s a
world that has fought its way out of its Maker’s control. That’s why those things occur.

Now the amazing thing, loved ones, is the other side of the crucifixion. Because God has done
something else besides destroying the evil powers of the world in his Son Jesus. Look at it if you
would. Ephesians 2:4-5, “But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have
been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ
Jesus.” God destroyed all the evil in you and me, and the world and our circumstances that needs to
be destroyed, and he raised us up. He made us the way we were meant to be at the beginning — new
and clean and whole and well.

That is why at times an alcoholic who has been an alcoholic for 30 years will still have a strange
hope that he could change. A strange hope will come from nowhere that he can change. And with
respect to all of you who are Christians, it can come to an alcoholic who has no touch with
Christianity. There can be people in all kinds of hideous situations of hopelessness. Somehow there
will come through the darkness a ray of light, “I can change.” Now where does it come in such an old
black destroyed world? Where does that hope come from? It comes from the fact that the alcoholic
has actually been raised up in Jesus and sits at God’s right hand. He can live there forever if he

believes it, if he will have faith. If he doesn’t, he will spend eternity in hell, but it’s because
of that raising up of all of us in Jesus that God has done. Even an alcoholic can have that feeling.
You have had it yourselves, haven’t you?

There have been dark, dark moments in your life when you’ve been without a job. There have been dark
moments in your family life when everything has seemed hopeless. You don’t know where it comes from
but there’s been a strange rising up of hope within you. “This thing could turn around.” That’s an
echo of the great turning around that God has carried out already in his Son Jesus.

That’s why a Churchill can turn up in history or, Roosevelt can turn up at the right time to give
hope to many. That’s why I think you’d say Reagan was a good thing. That’s why a Reagan can turn up.
In national history, when everything looks black, when the hour seems absolutely hopeless, there
seems to be something beautiful that rises up in the midst of it.

Loved ones, it’s because God has actually made the world as it was meant to be in his Son Jesus and
he is allowing echoes of that to be backdated down through our present life. Now everybody
experiences that, even those who reject this whole belief, everybody experiences that. That’s why
amazing miracles happen among people who don’t even believe in God.

Everybody experiences something of that mighty work of destruction and resurrection that God has
wrought in his Son Jesus. Now if they experience it, how much more those of us who believe it?
Because the fact is, not only is the futility of the destruction backdated but the liberty of the
victory is backdated also. So all of us who are raised up and made new in Jesus will actually live
in a state called heaven, where the limitlessness of God’s powers will be extended throughout the
whole universe in our lives.

The amazing fact is that just as the futility can be experienced today in Murphy’s Law, the liberty
can be experienced today in our own lives. Every time you or I will with God, in dependence on God,
in a desire to fit in with God, in a longing for God –and we reject fitting in with the world and
depending on the world — every time we act and will in regard to God in dependence, he brings the
victory of what he wrought in Jesus into our lives. And actually our cancer can be healed because it
was borne in Jesus on Calvary.

The conflict in the home can be resolved because God has destroyed those elemental spirits of the
universe that caused the anger and the irritation in his Son Jesus. Every one of us who believe that
and live according to that, see that victory made real in our present lives. Now loved ones, that’s
why this verse is true that we’re studying today. Romans 14:8, “If we live, we live to the Lord, and
if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” It
doesn’t matter whether it’s Hitler. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Oswald [Lee Harvey Oswald-who
shot John F. Kennedy]. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the cruelest dictator that ever lived or the
most cowardly murderer that ever lived. All of them live and die unto the Lord.

They live only under God’s permission and their evil can extend only as far as God allows it and it
will be brought to an end in death as God wants it brought to an end and they will be under God’s
control in death as they really have been in life. If we live, we live unto the Lord; if we die we
die unto the Lord. It’s the same with us here. Whatever we do, we live and die unto the Lord.

Loved ones, who should you please? Not all of us here. We’ll probably die before you and if we
don’t, we have no power over the next world. There is only one who has power over you and me. There

is only one final arbiter. There is only one who made us and who will receive us to himself at the
end. That’s the God who made us and created us and controls all the things we’ve talked about during
these few minutes. If we live, we live unto him and if we die, we die unto him. If we drink, we
drink unto him and if we eat, we eat unto him, and if we eat meat, we eat meat unto him, and if we
eat vegetables, we eat vegetables unto him, and that’s what Paul is saying.