The Cost That Counts — Leonard Ravenhill

David’s Costly Sacrifice

The second book of Samuel, chapter 24, verse 24. Using this just as a framework in which to put the thoughts that I want to share with you, but a good picture needs a good frame. And I think this is a very, very suitable frame for our thoughts tonight.

The king, that is King David, said unto Aaron, Nay, but I will surely buy it of thee at a price. Neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the Lord my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver and David built there an altar unto the Lord and he offered burnt offerings and peace offerings.

So the Lord was entreated for the land and the plague was stayed from Israel. David's life is fascinating. He was prepared thirty years before he became a man of God, before he became useful for God. The next twenty years, two decades, he kind of reached a peak, he reached a plateau and then after that twenty years he went downhill for twenty years.

Preparation Before Usefulness

Again, thirty years of preparation. Maybe you remember Joseph was the same, remember he's up in Dothan and his father said, pardon me, he was up here and his father sent him to Dothan and then from Dothan he went down into a pit, his brothers put him in a pit, then from there he went down into Egypt, from Egypt he went down into another pit and he was going down from being about seventeen years of age and then he started going up and up until eventually he sat on the throne of the king but he did not have any official position until he was thirty years of age.

So you have King David who is thirty years in preparation, you have Joseph thirty years in preparation, you have John Baptist thirty years in preparation and even the Lord Jesus himself. The magic thing, there's no magic about thirty as far as I know.

I was reading the other day where King Solomon built a house for himself and the walls were thirty cubits high, cubits about eighteen inches, so it's a pretty tall house. And maybe you remember the ark that was built by David, that the walls were, pardon me, whatever you call them of the ark, they were also thirty cubits high.

Thirty is a, it's again a number of perfection. Now David has come to the end of his very lustrous life, the back end was pretty rotten. Uh, this is not the thing to inject maybe here but I'm going to do it anyhow.

There's a dreadful scourge in the country at this time called herpes. It's, it's the property of homosexuals, lesbians and what have you got. And uh, they've had their fun and now the dividend has come.

God's word is never wrong. And so they're reaping what they've sown and with it there's come a special kind of cancer and now there's another thing called A .I .D .S. which is a great scourge. It's their property.

They thought they could defy God and get away with it. But what's rather a man's fault he reaps? And King David did the same thing. He committed adultery, his children committed adultery. He murdered a woman's husband to have a good time and one of his sons killed his, uh, killed his brother because that brother violated his sister.

So what you sow you reap. And so, and then he had a troublesome son called Absalom. Absalom was either trying to steal the throne from under his father or take the crown off his head. And it's very wonderful that when they told him Absalom was dead he didn't say, well thank God I've been waiting for that for two or three years.

He cried. One of those awful cries you find in the Bible. You can't learn it by elocution. You can't learn it in Bible college. It's a heart cry. He cried, oh Absalom my son. Very much I think like Jeremiah cried in uh, Jeremiah 9 when he says, oh that my heads were watered.

Just as Jesus cried over Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem you stupid Jerusalem. Jesus visualized all the prophets. The greatest men that ever lived were not scientists or millionaires or kings, they were prophets.

Prophetic Witness and Spiritual Decline

In politics today we have no statesmen, all we have is politicians. In the church we have no prophets, all we have is preachers. And most of them are handmade. They roll off the assembly line of a certain Bible school and they all say the same words, think the same thoughts.

They've been listening to professors who haven't had a thought from heaven for the last 25 years, preaching notes with dust on them. And it's almost time for us to cry, oh America, oh England, oh generation that we live in.

Word to God that the heavens might be rent. But again we have here the King David saying that he will not render to God that which costs him nothing. This, this man is uh, Aronah could have given him an offer to give him the, the things he needed for sacrifice.

I'll give you the altar, I'll give you the, I'll even give you my plow, I'll give you the things I work with, you can break them up and I'll give you the bullet to put on them. And David says very rightly, shall I render to God that which costs me nothing?

Now that ought to be your question, pardon me, every morning when you rise. And it maybe should be the last thought on your head, in your head before you go to bed, have I rendered to God today that which costs me nothing?

As I've said so often, an experience of God that costs nothing is worth nothing and it does nothing. The basic thing about the Christian life is sacrifice. There's no way to live it without sacrifice.

And yet so often we render to God, God gets the leftovers in most of our lives doesn't he? We pray if it's convenient, we pray if we have time, we make a special sacrifice at a special time. But David says I'm not going to take anything, I will not present, I will not insult God with something that I got free and it's easy to give, there's no blood, no sacrifice in it.

Worship as Preoccupation With God

Okay, let's go back now to where we've been for a few weeks in Exodus, the 30th chapter. And if you're here for the first time we're glad, but the last few Friday nights we have thought about this almost forgotten art of worship, worship.

And again to make a blanket statement, prayer, prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings and worship is preoccupation with God. The Keswick folk in England sing a great hymn, my goal is God himself, not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but thee my God.

And you cannot worship without sacrifice, without cost. Again you think of the three wise men, I don't know if there were three, nobody else desires it, but there were three gifts brought to Jesus when he was a babe.

We think there were three because there were three gifts, it could have been 30 men, 10 of them bringing gold, 10 silver, 10 frankincense, and 10 myrrh. But this we know that they brought something which was costly.

They brought gold that was always recognized as a gift to a king. They bought frankincense because that's something that the priest has to use in his ministry. And they brought myrrh because that's what was put on people when they were embalmed, when they were when they were dead.

And again it's that which has the cost in it that counts before God. Now this chapter is very beautiful, the 30th of Exodus verse 30 says, Thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons and consecrate them that they may minister not for me, notice, but unto me.

There are more people working for God than working with God. You hear people say, well I'm doing this for the Lord. Well maybe they are, it doesn't mean the Lord's doing it with them. More people work for God than work with God.

You work us together with God, we are God's husbandry. Now again, hmm, that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. Now again, we've referred to this before, if you go back to verse 22, there's a special kind of mixture of myrrh, and notice it says 500 shekels, sweet cinnamon half as much, 250 shekels of sweet calamus, 250 shekels of cassia, 500 shekels and so forth.

And this is ointment which is to be compounded after the art of the apothecary, that's a big word we don't use so much today, we call it the drugstore. In England, we always, in Europe they say the chemist.

And he's to take all these ingredients and he's to mix this holy oil for one purpose only, for everything that's inanimate. It's to sanctify, it's to dedicate the furniture that's there in the tabernacle.

Now again, this tabernacle is symbolic of the Lord Jesus, as far as I'm concerned. You know, Solomon's Temple, it's been said it was the most expensive building ever made, even with inflation today. It was just laid over with gold, it was used as though, you know, like we say, like pouring out water.

It was a magnificent, gorgeous place, but the tabernacle in the wilderness, badger skins, dyed red, ram skins, mercy on us. Well, isn't it typical of Jesus, there is no beauty that we should desire him?

You know, the less of the presence and holiness of God in the sanctuary, the more elaborate we make the church. When the glory departed, we decided we would have gold vessels and stained glass windows and, you know, St. Paul's Cathedral or a crazy place like the Vatican.

Just plaster it with gold, make it, you know, have some super artists. Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, lay on his back and paint the glory of the Sistine Chapel and what have you got? I don't think God's any more interested in that than in his comic strip in the newspaper.

He can't worship God. The tabernacle in the wilderness was totally unattractive. Again, it had three departments. There was an outer court where the priests ministered. But these ministers are not going to minister to people, they're going to minister to God.

And let me lay it down again, that when you come out of a service Sunday morning and somebody says, I didn't get anything out of that, that's not the criteria. The first thing is, what did God get out of it?

Did he get worship? Did he get adoration? Or did he say I wasn't even near the place? This ointment is made to put on inanimate things. But then when you come down to verse 20, you're going to have another ointment that cannot be used on buildings or altars.

Thou should anoint Aaron and his sons and consecrate them that they may minister unto me in the priest's office. You hear people say when they've been abroad. In fact, while I was away on our vacation there, somebody said, did you see a certain thing on TV the other night?

Well, I saw some of it. Horrified. And somebody says, though we were not in America, we're way out of America, but we say in America, we don't realize our privileges. Do you have any ice cream? Oh, well, I want buttered pecan.

If you don't have it, I don't want it. You know, we're not too particular. You see a shop, 28 varieties of ice cream, 28 varieties of donuts. And there are hundreds of countries that have never seen either of them.

We're so used to what we call the American way of life, as though it's our right. You know, the same thing is true in spiritual matters. Do you realize that in Israel, only one man could go into the presence of God, and he could only go one day in the year, and he could only go for one people?

Now, come on, does it ever overwhelm you when you go to a chair or at the side of your bed and say, as I kneel here, I'm doing what the priest had to go through, all the putting on his garments of glory and beauty, and he had to be anointed with a certain oil, and you go through all the things he had to do, and he only did it for a very short time?

In the outer court, again, there was daylight in the holy place, there was candlelight in the holy of holies, there was no light. Well, what do we do if there's no light? We clap and have a good time and get worked up emotionally and soulishly.

I ask this every night, everywhere I go, did you actually come here tonight to meet God, or did you come here to hear a sermon about him? When you go to the first Baptist, first Methodist, first something else, are you going there to meet God, or are you going to hear a preacher that you like?

A man who can fit words together, make nice pictures, stir you maybe emotionally, make you feel real good that you're fundamental, whatever that means. We're an old Irishman, you say it means fundamental, but anyhow, we feel pretty secure because we have the right words, and what have we got?

Well, supposing tomorrow you're going to God's holy presence and say, Lord, I want to thank you that I don't need to put on vestments and I don't need to come in nervously. I don't even have to come in pitch darkness.

In the outer circle, again, in the outer court there's daylight, in the holy place there's a seven-branch candlestick, in the holy of holies there's no light at all. There's no window there. There's no illumination.

If God doesn't come, you're going to stumble around and be in the dark. But if we feel God isn't there, we work it out, and we make, we've got to, after all, it's the preacher's job to make you feel good.

You may be rotten, but he's got to make you feel good, and you go home feeling nice, and you're glad that you set the oven right, you know, so your chicken won't be burned when you go home or something, and we just glide in and out like that.

There's no sense of awe, no sense of majesty. We say people outside, there's no fear of God between their eyes. I sometimes wonder how much fear of God there is before us. Okay, you're not too happy, so I'd better cheer up a bit here.

The Holy Anointing Oil and Spiritual Refinement

Thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, verse 31, and they're going to make a holy anointing oil. Upon man's flesh it shall not be poured, neither shall ye make any other like it. After the composition of it, it is holy, notice, it shall be holy unto you, whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, shall even be cut off from his people.

Now, the Lord said unto Moses, take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, onica, galbanum, sweet spices with frankincense, and of each, and notice a big difference here. When they were making the ointment for the dedication, sanctification, if you want, of the different pieces of furniture there, there's a measurement for each of those things.

How many shekels of this, how many shekels of that, a half supply, and so forth and so on. But here there's no measurement given, no measurement. It says distinctly, the Lord said unto Moses, verse 34, take unto thee sweet spices, stacte, onica, galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense, of each there shall be a like weight, and thou shalt make it a perfume, a confection, after the art of the apothecary, tempered together pure and holy.

Now I've read this dozens of times, maybe in my life I've read it hundreds and hundreds of times. And I've always emphasized the difference, so a lot, Arthur Pink is a very good expositor, there's a Scotsman, but he doesn't distinguish between the anointing of the things in the, that were inanimate, the buildings, and the anointing of the priests.

You could not anoint the priest with the same ointment that you put on the furniture, you could not anoint the furniture with what you put on to the priest. Again there's a measurement given for all the ingredients there, and here there is no measurement given.

Now I had read this essay, I'm sure in my lifetime, hundreds, maybe thousands of times, and only today this thing leapt out of the, out of this chapter. Thou shalt beat some of it very small. Now you know, all these things have a special, special meaning.

Verse 34, again, the Lord said unto Moses, take unto thee sweet spices stacte. Well the only way you can get that kind of gum out of that tree, it doesn't yield it like fruit, like pears or apples or something.

You have to take a knife and you have to wound the tree, you have to open it, and then it does two things. It exudes, it gives you this kind of, like a rubber tree, you could, you get some rubber suction stuff out of it.

New England, you get maple out of the maple tree, but here this stacte comes out, and it does two things. It fills the area with fragrance, and also it has a healing balm, it heals itself. But the thing is, we're told that usually this has to be done in the, in the stillness of the night.

For some reason it flows better in the nighttime. Do you think that there's some kind of hidden suggestion here? Do you think that you really wound? Okay, we were down in the Bahamas for nearly three weeks.

A lady we've known very well, very gracious, always has a smile and whatnot. She was coming out of a crusade that they've just had down there by a Canadian, and as she came out, a policeman was coming up the road about 70 miles an hour, he hit her like that, threw the car across the road, she rolled up, but she got up, she stood up.

Oh, she said, I got a pain. And the doctor said, fortunately for her, she didn't put a, if she put her head forward like that, she had one millimeter left of something, sinew or something, that held her spine and her head together.

And if she'd made her head go forward, it would have broken. But she kept it back. And I went in to see her, and there she was, radiant. She'd been there two weeks. Jacket, stiff thing here. Actually, they put two steel pegs into her head, about an inch.

I don't know how in the world they got them in. And you could see those big screws there holding her head, and she had this steel thing around here, and a body in a cast. Ah, what do you do? What do you say to somebody?

When I was in hospital, very much like that, people came in and said, are you sick? I was always batting my lip. I said, no, I'm just going to play tennis, can't you see? I just said, uh, listen, I know a thing or two about our business.

Yeah, how long were you in hospital? Oh, I was in hospital nearly three months. Stressed up from plaster from here to my hips. Broke my back in three places. Broke my left leg in two places. Broke both my feet.

Tribulation, Refinement, and the Suffering World

Uh, I know a little about it. I know everybody that came in, a lot of famous preachers came to see me. And they all quoted the same thing. Oh, I got weary of it. They all quoted Romans 8, 28. I didn't know it was in the Bible so many times.

Oh, brother, the Lord's with you. Remember Romans 8, 28? Think of it this afternoon, but I have an appointment. I have to play golf. I thought, yeah, I'm sure you'll be thinking of me all the afternoon while you're playing golf.

But one day Dr. Tozer brought a little man in. His face was all pockmarked. He got on the last boat when the Chinese, uh, when the Communists took over China. He just came up and looked at me in his little face.

He was not Chinese. He looked at it. He was yellow. His skin was all pitted. And, and he put his little hand up there like that. And he just said this, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. Good day.

That's what it's all about. Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. Never mind what the playboys in evangelism say in Dallas. The last verse of the 16th chapter of John, Jesus says, listen, you want a guarantee in your spiritual life?

Here is the guarantee. In the world ye shall have tribulation. That's as true and that's as authentic as Romans 8, 28. Again, you came driving up in a lovely car. We sit in this beautiful room. We're so grateful to you.

But remember the suffering world tonight. Remember the people in Russia. Remember the people in Burma. Remember that locked up country of Albania. Millions of people. We, we, we take it for granted. And yet somewhere all over the world there have been people torn with daggers of this, this day of hatred, daggers of starvation.

And on the other hand, there are things that the Lord just allows in his own amazing way to come into our life. We wouldn't choose them. We don't have sense to choose them. Like little boy, I've quoted often there, the hotel isn't there now, the Morrison's Hotel in Chicago.

Little boy ran around the little door, you know, one of those doors where four people make up a party and go. And he went around two or three times and shut off. And we were helping ourselves there at the cafeteria.

And this man, big man said, is there a little boy next to you? I said, no, there's one at the end of the line. Boy, he got a lovely tray, four desserts on it. Cabbage wasn't there for sure. Spinach? Ooh, he had some pie with a topping on like this, you know.

And he, oh, he had all those delicious things. And his father says, come back here. Take three of them off. Well, we'd be much the same if things were left to you. How many of, again I ask you, how many of us can really say in truth, you know, Psalm 51 talks about truth in the word of God, how many of us can really say, I glory in, in what?

In tribulation, in necessities, in reproaches, in adversity. Glory in them, dear God. Don't let them come my way. I mean, I'm so frail and life is before me and I want this, that and the other. And we try to tell God how to do the business of developing us and he's got more sense than to listen to us.

Do you think one day you'll get down in gratitude and say, Lord, I thank you for all the prayers you didn't answer. God, God isn't working to our timetable, he never will. But part of this ointment that's fragrant in the, in the, in the presence of God is, is made up of, again, of this stacte out of our wounds and, and our trials.

And then there's onycha. That comes from a, a seashell. Oh, I could quote a scripture there, out of the depths that I cried unto thee. There's another thing here that's very interesting. Galbanum. You know, it's strange that how nature works, as we say, but how God has made it work.

I said about this first thing here, stacte, that it works best in the night time. But galbanum is always best in the early morning, at sunrise. It's more fragrant. And sometimes God in his mercy allows us a spasm of great joy.

It's not all dark, there's some darkness there. Whatever he's working out, he's working everything after the counsel of his own will, and he's working everything for our good, as bad as it may look. But it says there that you shall take these things, make it a confection of perfume.

You know, I read recently, it's, it's hard to believe, I don't know who worked it out, but there are 16 million known perfumes in the world. You think of that? All you know is Chanel 5 or something. 16 million identifiable perfumes.

One of them will take a 500th part of a milligram. That's not too big. And it will affect 50 cubic feet of air. I remember stopping in a plane in Paris, I was going to be around the world, and I thought, take my wife something real nice.

And there was a little, just a little bottle about that size. I thought, oh, that's a sample, maybe it's free. And I said, well, uh, that little bottle there looks very nice. I said, what is it? Nothing, he said, something like $75.

A dozen? No, no, one, one. I said, what is it? It's perfume. Isn't that perfume? No, that's cologne. You can have a bucket full of that for $75. Here it is, little thing, one drop. Changes the whole atmosphere of the room.

Thou shalt beat some of this stuff that you're going to put together, and it's going to be pure and holy and acceptable to God, and you shall beat it and make it very small. Well, we wouldn't do that today.

We'd take all these things and put them in a blender and press the button and here it goes, like that, and say, it's ready, Jack. Don't sit down. Come on, it's ready, Mary. Beating it. I used to look at a goldsmith's place, never got inside it, but he, he had some papers about four inches square.

They were thinner, they were thinner than, well, it was a kind of tissue paper, I suppose. And he, he had maybe 400 sheets and he would lift a sheet up and put a drop right in the middle like that. He put a drop of pure gold.

And when he got it done, he would strap it down at the corners and then he had a mallet with a head about this size. And I noticed this muscle was up here, well, down there, but anyhow, it was, it was awfully big, that one muscle.

The other was like mine, you know, my muscles hard to find. But these were big, hard. And all he did, he'd look out the window and nod like, and he spun it around with his finger and he stayed there eight hours beating, beating, beating, just as mechanical as a machine.

And at the end of the day, that one drop of gold in the middle, it spread within about three-eighths of an inch from the edge of the paper. There's no other way to do it. It was making pure gold leaf, which is used for some very rare book bindings or put on something that's to be very exquisite.

But it's that pounding, thou shalt beat some of it very small. Don't you wish for the Lord that kind of whispering in your ears, listen, you're going to have a rough time from now till the middle of July, but on the 18th of July, I'll quit and you'll have the rest of your life free.

Wouldn't you like all your troubles and trials and tribulation in a packet for three months and say, well, it's pretty rough, it's nearly killing me, but boy, only four more days to go and I'm through this and after this, I'm going to be as free as a bird and have a marvelous time.

He's going to beat it very small. Oh, Lord, I wish you'd take the pressure off. Lord, I'm getting beaten up in so many areas in my life. I remember somebody showed me a book today of Samuel Chadwick's.

You should get one, they're on sale up at the, I guess you've all already been to Agape and spent your dollar, but uh, they have a book there on the life of Samuel Chadwick. I was privileged to go to his Bible school.

He was going down the street one day after preaching Sunday and he went to the train and there was a, what they don't have much of anymore except maybe out west, they had a blacksmith shop and the blacksmith took a piece of metal and he put it in the fire and out of the fire into cold water, out of the cold water into the fire, out of the fire into the cold water, back in the fire, then he started shaping it, beating it.

And gradually, you know, he got it over the horn at the end and gradually he saw this horseshoe coming out of it. And here's a man and he's a brawny chest, you know, there's an old poem about the muscles of his brawny arms, under the village chestnut tree, the village, under the spreading chestnut tree, the village smithy stood.

And Mr. Chadwick watched the boss with a little hammer go like that. And this man took the thing in on, he smote it for all he was worth. And then the man designing it took hold of the thing and put it in the heat and then put it in the cold and then put it in the heat, then put it on the anvil and this went on for a while.

And Mr. Chadwick said, I said, hey, just a minute, look at that man's chest, he's got rivers of sweat running down him and he can't see hardly what he's doing. And you've got that tiny little hammer poking around and he's smashing it for all he's worth.

Why don't you change hammers? And the man said, what do you do? He said, I'm a preacher. Oh, he said, I thought so. You don't know a thing about being a blacksmith. He doesn't know what he's doing. He knows when I tap once he has to hit at a certain angle, twice at another angle, three times more pressure, so forth and so on.

And he said it would be total failure if I just let him do what he wants to do. I have a design in my mind. You see those gates there? Well, once they were straight pieces of metal and I shaped them, I designed them for a mansion up the road.

And so he went on to state about the work that he had done. Oh, Mr. Chadwick said, well, thank you so much. Boy, you preached a great sermon to me. And he said, I didn't preach your sermon at all. I'm not a preacher.

He said, yes, you did. Well, how did I preach a sermon to you? Well, you said that you point and when you point, the man hits it that way. Pardon me, when you tap, he hits it that way. When you tap twice, he hits it this way.

So where's the sermon? Oh, he said, the devil's been giving me a rough time. I've been asking the Lord, Lord, I'm just getting beaten up. But he said, I see what he's doing. The Lord says, look, I need you to help me.

I need you to help me. My, my son Chadwick needs a bit knocking off there. So he comes and knocks a piece off me there. A week or two after he comes again, he knocks another piece off me there. You say, I don't believe that.

Well, then you don't believe the Bible. What did Jesus say to Peter? Satan hath desired thee to sift thee as wheat. But I stopped him. I said, Peter, leave. I said, Satan, leave my darling little Peter alone.

Don't trouble him. I don't want him to get upset. He'll think I'm cruel and I don't care. Doesn't sound very practical, does it? Satan hath desired to sift you. He's got you put through a series of testings.

And I have prayed that your faith won't fail. Oh, you thought you'd get faith by reading Smith Wigglesworth's life or somebody. Well, he was a good man. I met him once. But that doesn't mean anything for you.

God works everything out to the counsel of his own will. He's going to beat and beat and beat. And if we're smart, we'll thank him that he honors us with doing that. For whom the Lord loveth he what? And what's the other word?

Scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. I remember a testimony meeting in which a lady stood up and she said, God loves me more than you in this place. And everybody said, oh, mercy, that's a wonderful testimony.

God loves me. Why? Because he's been whipping me more than any of you got whipped this week. And he scourgeth every son and he's really been laying it on me for weeks now. And then I discover he's doing that because he loves me.

Christ’s Fragrance, Unity, and the Anointing

You know, really this picture of this frankincense and onychur and everything, you know what it is to me? To me it's a perfect picture of the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, you have various ingredients in the other section and you have different quantities.

But notice here, there's perfect harmony. If these things were taught, the onychur wouldn't say, well, listen, you better all take your place because I'm number one on the list. Notice how much there is of me in the stack to say, no, no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute.

No, no, there's perfect harmony. All the colleges are there. Don't you think about the most easy thing in the world is to get imbalanced theologically? Go to one church that will brainwash you and wash you right out of some of the blessings of God.

I don't know what all these things mean. I know what some of them mean. But have you ever really faced the fact that nobody did or ever will understand Jesus Christ? The angels didn't understand him. The church today doesn't understand him.

The only person who knows all that there was and is in the Lord Jesus Christ is the Father. There are areas in the life of Jesus God Almighty he could never unveil to us. That this we do know, that there was balance in his life all the time.

He wasn't always healing the sick. He did some healing, but then he rebuked people who were in sin. And he did go into the temple and he did shun the synagogue. And he did a lot of things that shows all through his life the fragrance.

You know some of it is very, very, very, very small it says. Isn't it amazing how often you can be a friend of somebody for years and do them a lot of favors. Then one day you do a very little thing and whoop, that's the end of it.

Big doors turn on small hinges. Very little things were revealed in your life more than standing here and preaching a sermon for six hours or sixty hours. Jesus, it says of him he did all the things that pleased the Father.

Now isn't it wonderful that God never made anything ugly? God never made a mechanical thing did he? Everything that God made had life in it. They were all to bring forth their kind. The truth, proof of life is reproduction.

And everything brought forth its life, brought forth its kind. Well then that should be more than true of the church of Jesus. Do you often sit down and look at yourself and say, you know, I'm really, I'm pretty smart.

I know a lot more than a new five years ago. And yet really when I come to really look at this book I'm really dull of hearing. I'm really very slow in my perceptions. God's been trying to show me something all the time.