Travailing - Part 3 — Leonard Ravenhill

Faith Produces Diverse Ministries

And women. And that's what he shows us in Hebrews 11, how he makes people. They've only one common denominator, and that is they all had faith, but boy, their ministries were as varied as could be. Now this man is tied to a whipping post.

Paul's Physical Suffering and Persecution

He was lashed 195 times. Well he says, five times I received forty stripes, save one, so that's five thirty-ninths. 195 times, thrice I suffered shipwreck, once I was stoned. I don't think he had any smart, wonderful personality.

He says even to the Corinthians, they said, what will this babbler say? I think he's pretty ugly. I think he limped. I think his face was creased. He'd been stoned so many times, his cheeks had been split and his jaws broken.

In weariness, in fasting, in painfulness, in perils of the deep, in perils of my own countrymen. Come on, add them all up. What's the bottom line? He's filling up the sufferings of Christ. But what does he say?

Paul's Burden for the Churches

Does he whine about it? No. He says it's one thing to have a bleeding back and somebody rub salt in your wounds and stick you in a stinking hole and leave you there for days and weeks and months and years.

But he says, you know, the most hurtful thing is this. What does he say? That which cometh upon me, what is it? Remember? That which cometh upon me daily, the what? The care of all the churches. You think you've got problems with your children?

What about a man who has a whole string of churches? They've just come out of heathendom. Many of them are weak and vacillating. There's no revelation. There's no Bibles yet. God pity us. I preached to the, what, the first Friday night here on Elijah.

And the more I see men like that and realize all he did, and yet he never had a Bible. All the heroes in Hebrews 11, not one of them ever had a Bible. And you and I have everything that God is ever going to say to the world.

Boy, we're in for trouble at the end of the line. I like the hymn, Our Firmer Foundation. Remember that hymn? What more can he say than to you he hath said? But here is a man who has had the veil of eternity lifted up.

The Love of Christ and the Terror of the Lord

That's why he says in the chapter that we read, in 2 Corinthians 5 there, the love of Christ constraineth me. Why? Knowing the terror of the Lord. None of this sloppy sentimental love business. God is a just God, a holy.

God has a big investment in you. Your parents have a big investment. They sent you to school, maybe high school and college. They're paying your way here or paying your way somewhere anyhow. But above all, the precious blood of Jesus Christ was shed for you.

The Precious Blood and Its Value

I understand there's a bit of a garment, a bit of a girl's... Do you remember the old-fashioned pinafores you wore that girls used to wear? You know, a lot of holes in them. I don't know what you call that.

You used to wear one, didn't you? Betty? You didn't? Oh, she didn't wear one. They didn't wear one. Okay. But my sister used to wear them. They had holes in them. No, I don't mean holes like you when you rip a thing.

I mean, you know, they used to stitch round them. They were beautiful. There's a piece of a girl's pinafore up in, what do you call a place there? I've just mentioned the name. You've forgotten. What was it?

In Washington? The Museum. Smithsonian. It's not much bigger than my, less than my handkerchief. It's got a brown stain on it. It's one of the great treasures of America. It isn't a chocolate stain. It looks like it, but it isn't.

What is it? When they were carrying the precious man that was murdered there, Abe Lincoln, carrying him out of the theatre, he passed by a girl and some of his blood dropped onto a pinafore. They took that piece of that pinafore and it's a national shrine almost.

The Rockefellers can't buy it. Nobody can buy it. It's stained with the blood of one of the greatest men that ever lived, never mind in America. We could do with him now in the White House, I'll tell you.

Soon with the Black House, the way some things are going. Why is it so precious? It's the blood of a famous man. Just one or two drops of his precious blood. Nobody can buy it. And one drop of that precious blood, sinners plunge beneath that flood, lose all their guilty stains.

Paul Cowper, John Wesley, and Amazing Grace

That's a great hymn written in England by William Cowper, contemporary, a friend of John Wesley. Can you imagine John Wesley and Cowper and Newton who wrote Amazing Grace? And all that bunch of guys getting together every week for discussions and talks.

It must have been wonderful to be there. I wish I could find a tape recording of it. So here you have this man with a comprehension of eternity that maybe nobody has ever had except himself. He says that you may know the height, the depth, the length and the breadth of the love of God.

And he's only touched the fringe of it, he admits that. That that burning, consuming love that never fails, and he talks about it in one... Isn't it amazing that the man who went down the Damascus Road, breathing out threatenings, carrying in his pocket a signed statement that he's permitted to liquidate every Christian he can find.

The Transforming Power of Christ's Love

And then instead of burning with unholy anger, he burns with an incomparable love. They throw him outside of a city on the refuse heap and say that's the end of him. And he gets up, he has a kind of a little private resurrection.

They lash him 195 times, but they can't beat the grace of God out of him. They starve him, but they can't starve it out of him. They send him to prison, they threaten him, they can't threaten it out of him.

A Revival of Love in the Church

If we could get a baptism of that love in the church of Jesus Christ today, we'd shake the world in less than a year. Theology on ice is no good. I would have liked to have been a scholar. I'm not a scholar by any shape or form.

I'd like to have been. But Paul was a scholar. I think he had the greatest intellect of any man that ever lived, apart from Jesus himself. You know, somebody called John, John that gave us the, as we call it, the fourth gospel.

John's Gospel and Its Unique Witness

As I've said often, there are not four gospels, there's only one gospel told by four different men, all with a different accent. And John, somebody called him the Plato of the New Testament. 92 of what he writes is his own.

He doesn't borrow from, like Matthew, Mark and Luke, borrow from each other. 92 of what he says is entirely original. Take the 15th of John, nobody else talks about the true vine. Take the 16th, nobody presents the Holy Ghost like he does.

Take the 17th, the most profound thing in prayer ever recorded. Not the most profound prayer. The most profound prayer was never recorded. It was Gethsemane. It was too holy. It would have shattered us if you and I had heard Jesus.

I'd love to have heard Jesus, but I'm sure I couldn't have taken it. But here is a man consumed. He sees the world, hostile. Every system. If you want a picture of his courage, turn for a few minutes here to the, where will we go?

Paul's Courage in Athens

The Acts of the Apostles. What chapter is it? Chapter 17. I was thinking about a certain message for Sunday morning, and sure it was exactly what the Lord wanted me to speak on, but the Lord said it isn't.

So I've got to obey the Master and change it. But in connection with that message, I'd been thinking of one of the most famous poems ever, I guess, written by an unbeliever, W .E. Henley. Let's take a look.