Cost Of Discipleship - Part 5 — Leonard Ravenhill

The Human Cost of Armaments

If we're busy putting billions into armaments, we let folk die on our doorstep. So we'll have enough stuff to destroy other countries. Isn't that wonderful? Don't have the answer. He came back. He was tempted on the ship almost to throw himself overboard.

A Professor's Search for Healing

One day he was going down the street not far from Princeton. A man said to him, Excuse me, sir, aren't you Professor James? He said, Yes. Well, you're very sick. Isn't it amazing? People state the obvious.

I was lying in plaster from my chin to my toes. I jumped out of a burning hotel in 1951. I broke my back in three places. My left leg was in three pieces. My feet were in both broken up. Hey, I'm lying in bed, you know.

Can't turn, can't do anything, can't shave, can't feed myself. My darling wife watched me day and night. And somebody walks in and says, Hello, Brother Abel, are you sick? No, I'm just getting ready to play tennis.

Can't you see I've got my tennis things on? It's pouring rain and you're soaking. Somebody says, Oh, it's raining. Oh, thanks for the news. Shivering with cold. It's cold. Yeah, that's why I muffled up to my ears.

It's cold. You're sick. You need to find a deliverer. Friend, there's no deliverance. I've been all over Europe. I spend a fortune. So he said, If you go down the street and knock on the door of so-and-so and tell him John sent you.

Why? Does he have the answer? Mm-hmm. The professor went and knocked at the door. Just a little laboring man came. His hands were not, you know, those smooth, gentle hands that could take a scalpel and do surgery.

They were all knotted and gnarled. And the man obviously wasn't very well educated. The professor said, As you see, I have a terrible disease and it's galloping. It's getting hold of me quickly. I do want to get rid of it and I understand you have a cure for it.

Healing Through Humble Prayer

The man said, Well, I can pray for you. The professor said, What? He said, I can pray for you. I can put some oil on your head. And Professor James said, My psychology was saying, That won't work. And my pride was saying, You can't kneel in front of this ignoramus.

You with a couple of PhDs. But you see, the PhDs didn't do anything for him. And all his philosophers didn't do anything for him. So he went in the house. And he said, Sir, whatever you say, I'll do it.

The man said, Kneel down. He knelt down. The little fellow got some oil, put it on his hand. Papa would have enjoyed doing this. Put some oil on his head. I've done that thousands of times, I think. Whether it's to learn or to...

Some of us, whether... Here. The professor's waiting. He thought some flash would come from heaven or something. The man put his trembling hands on the head of the great professor. And he said a few things.

And then he said, In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Be made whole. The professor jumped out. I felt as though 10 ,000 volts of electricity touched me. Oh, yeah, my legs are all right. Yeah, I'm great.

I don't know how it happened. The little man said, I don't either. Except that God was faithful to answer prayer. The point is, he went halfway around the world in order to answer, find an answer. And we're going all around the world.

The Cross as God's Answer to Human Dilemma

We're trying to find an answer through psychology and paradise and parallel and heaven knows what. And the answer is in the old rugged cross so despised by the world. It's got every answer to our human dilemma, even sickness and mental disorders.

God's Power to Cleanse Human Corruption

I don't care how you emphasize the tragedy that Adam brought into the world. Are you going to suggest to me that there is no way where the human heart can be cleansed? Did Satan pollute the very foundation of human society?

And God has no answer to that pollution? I like that hymn, Break thou the bread of life. I like the phrase in it that says, Then shall all bondage cease and all fetters fall. Paul had seen men and women redeemed from corruption.

He'd seen them transformed and now he's writing to them 18 months afterwards. And he says, you're carnal. You're carnal. He uses two different words in the Greek here for carnality and I'm not going to struggle with them this morning.

I'm sure you're not too interested. The point I want to emphasize is this. He says, he obeys in Christ. You know when a man is going to split a diamond, he has to be very steady. He look at it from different angles.

He magnify any little crack. He could split the wrong way and just be no more valuable than much glass. He's very, very careful. Or in England, we guard the Queen's jewels, the crown jewels. They're surrounded with an electric fence.

You can't steal them. It's an impossibility. Nobody ever tried it anyhow. I think of Michelangelo when he was cutting the head of David out of stone or his pieta. Careful less. Ooh, one slip. And that original piece would mean that the nose was tipped off or the ear and it would be spoiled.

Paul's Care for the Souls Entrusted to Him

But no man had a diamond. Michelangelo never worked with more accuracy. No mother ever had a child that burned the heart. Like the care that the Apostle Paul gave to his church. The tragedy with so much evangelism is we record them as statistics and the preacher goes on next night.

Eternal Destiny and the Necessity of Conversion

This Apostle Paul was no fly-by-night evangelist. The most precious thing we ever handle is the human soul. The pieta one day will go up in dust. The cistern chapel will be blown to smithereens. But the soul of a man will live forever and ever and ever and ever either in eternal darkness or eternal bliss.

There's impeccable joy. There'll be no sorrow. Hell is eternal misery. There's no joy. There is only one way to heaven. There are a million ways to hell. What do you do to go to hell? Nothing. Just do nothing, that's all.

You don't have to thumb your nose at God. You don't have to blaspheme the name of Jesus. You don't have to be adulterer. Just coast on. For the greatest sin in the world is not adultery. The greatest sin in the world is I can manage my life without God.

That's the greatest thing. Paul has established the church but now he's deeply, deeply concerned about them. He says they're babes in Christ. If you were here about a month ago you heard Leland Paris who is the YWAM leader for the Americas, North and South America.

Widespread Christian Carnality and Immaturity

He introduced this message by saying that he had been in a meeting about a week before with Bill Bright and a few others. Bill Bright, the founder of the Campus Crusade, said this that the Campus Crusade recently took a poll of Christians in America.

And this is what he said I've chewed this over. I've laid awake at night thinking of it. Bill Bright said that on their own confession 95 of the people in America who profess to be Christian and it will be true of other countries 95 of the Christians in America said they were one of two things.

Either I am carnal, a carnal Christian or number two, I'm a babe in Christ. Let me transfer that into the out of the spiritual world to the social world.