Cost of Discipleship - Part 7 — Leonard Ravenhill

And now these nice people we're trying to be friendly with. Mr. Carter says we can still establish a second, you know, what is it, phase two of salt treatment. Salt treatment, salt treaty. It'll be salt treatment too if it goes through.

They're bloody deceitful, God-defined, they don't hate America merely, they hate God. We're going to try and get married politically to that rotten harlot system? Well, you better watch out because if we do, there's going to be an awful lot of punishment.

Israel's Holiness and the Church's Calling

I see people reaching into the Old Testament and quoting the scripture for America. Listen, you can't take scriptures given to Israel. Israel, first of all, in my judgment, was not a nation, it was the church.

The people in Israel couldn't marry like other people. They couldn't eat like other people. They couldn't even walk like other people. They couldn't be socially like other people. They were to be holy unto God.

Are you suggesting we've ever been really holy to God? It's true of the other nations, I'm aware of that. If ever God was looking for men who, as we would say, square their shoulders and carry the burden, it's in this day in which we live.

Spiritual Warfare and the Armor of God

If ever we need to be alert that we don't get caught and trapped in false doctrine, it's the day in which we live. If ever there's a day when we should put on the whole armor of God, God in heaven, you know, apart from Mussolini, he was the first to train schoolboys as soldiers, but we don't send schoolboys to the battle?

You don't send babies to battle? They want bottles, not battles? They want the nursery, not the armory? How often do you go to a prayer meeting where you feel there's real engagement against principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world?

One of the most awesome things, I think, that Jesus ever said was to his disciples, I give you power over the enemy, no, no, no, over all the power of the enemy, and it includes sickness, I admit that, but it doesn't mean that merely.

There's only one power that can withstand the onslaught that's on all the nations of the earth right now, and that is the church of Jesus Christ anointed with the Holy Ghost. There's an old saying that all is fair in love and war, and I'll tell you what, if you stir hell up, the devil will stir everything he can against you.

You'll get misunderstood, misrepresented, and if you're not thick-skinned, no, no, no, it's not if you're thick-skinned, if you're not mature enough, it'll get you down. It's not the contradiction of sinners that gets you down, as Psalm 1 says, it's the criticism of saints that gets you down.

Hannah, Paul, and Being Filled With the Spirit

Eli thought that Hannah was drunk. Sure she was drunk, she was drunk with God. She was intoxicated. She got through to God, he was going to remove the barrenness. Paul is God's intoxicated man. He uses the two things together in Ephesians, be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.

Why? Because when a man is spirit-filled, he's like a drunk man. You ever try to ridicule a drunk man, he goes singing on his way, you know, and you say, you idiot, and he says, yes, that's right, I am an idiot, my father was an idiot, and you can't get to him, he's drunk, another spirit controls him.

I stopped on a street in Glasgow the first day of World War II, and a man came up to me, a Scotsman. It was pitch black, it was a blackout, and he bumped into me and he says, who are you? I gave him my name.

Ah, you're not a Scotsman, no, he said. You're an Englishman, yeah. Can you fight? Oh, no, I said, I can't fight. No, you can't fight. Can you sing? I said, no, I can't sing. Oh, he struck up, Maxwell, Tom, Braes, and Bonnie, where all he falls, the dew.

He meant the dew, but that was near enough for a drunk man. Who's your father? I told him my father was Walter Ray. Ah, he says, my father was so-and-so-and-so-and-so-and-so. Then I knew he was drunk because he put his hand in his pocket and offered me all his money.

When a Scotsman does that, you know he's drunk. If I'd seen that man in the morning sober, I'd have gone past and said, good morning, he may or may not have said, ah, ah, good morning, as a Scotsman said.

He'd possibly have looked at me and gone on. But you see, there was something else that got control of him, and therefore he's very vocal, and he's very generous, and he wants to tell me he's a Scotsman, and he wants to let me know that he can sing, and he wants to tell me about his pedigree.

Well, isn't that what happens to a man who's really filled with the Holy Ghost? He's liberated from stinginess. He's liberated from bondage. He's liberated from fear. He's liberated from consequences.

Paul's Assurance in Tribulation

But for a moment, I think the devil almost bit his tongue when Paul said that. Because at the end of Romans 8, he says, Yes, I've had tribulation, distress, famine, perils, nakedness, sword, all these things.

He puts his shoulders back and says to the devil, listen. There's nothing present. There's nothing in things to come. There's nothing in height. There's nothing in depth. There's nothing in any other creature that can separate me from the love of God.

So go back to hell where you came from. You're wasting your time. You can separate me from the church. There are tens of thousands of precious believers in jail this morning, in hell holes. Oh, I'm sure Mr. Carter hopes to pull off the hostages getting free, and it may backfire on him.

But I still wonder again why 10 ,000 to 20 ,000 Jews and other people can get out of Russia every year, and seven Pentecostals have been in the American embassy for the last two years, and we can't get them out.

And somebody challenged Carter on his human rights. He says, yes, but this isn't political. It's a religious thing. Well, aren't they human too? Maybe that's a testimony to the power of Christianity. They're afraid to liberate seven spirit-filled people.

They might go and upset the world. They might go and get into Russia and upset the rotten system. Paul's blind. He says, I see neither Jew, nor Greek, nor botanist, nor free man. If I see a king and he has a gold crown and all his ritual, so what?

Obedience Over Knowledge and the Problem of Stubbornness

In the sense of him, he's dead. Because, you see, there are only two kinds of people in the world, those who are dead in sin and those who are dead to sin. Babes in Christ. One mark is stubbornness. A young lady, I think, testified this morning of stubbornness and willingness to do what God says.

A lot of you here this morning, you don't need more lies. This will only make it worse for you at the judgment. What you need is more obedience. Some of you have known for years what you should do, and you hold back.

Children are very touchy, aren't they? Of course, you rationalize this. You say, no, your trouble is you're so touchy. I'm not touchy. I'm sensitive. You're full of pride. I just have a lot of self-respect.

You've got a bad temper. I have righteous anger. You can always work it out, can't you, if you want to. I have self-respect. You're full of pride. But aren't children very touchy? Aren't they very easily offended?

You know, some of us are not only offended at what comes from other people. We're offended at what God says to us. One mark of carnality is stubbornness. There used to be a great school. Well, it's got another name now.

It used to be in Chicago in 1950, when I first went there. I've forgotten its full name. It was an evangelical something. And at that time, Dr. Hamilton...