Tokens of His Compassion - Part 9 — Leonard Ravenhill

Seeing the World Through God's Eyes

He said, please God, will you show me the world as you see it? I said, do you really mean that? You'd like the Lord to cut the world in two, like sometimes you take a rosy-cheeked apple, cut it in two and find it's all rotten and corrupt inside?

Would you like God to show you the fallacy and hypocrisy of modern Christianity? Would you like God to expose to you the power and awesomeness of a devilish colony called Russia? Here, Jesus is lonely.

That's hard to take, isn't it? It's harder to take when in a state of anguish and a state of confusion, when you feel the whole world is breaking to pieces and God isn't doing much about it. I think the most awesome thing in the world tonight is for a person to dare to say they're a Christian.

Trembling at God's Word and the Gravity of Preaching

It makes me tremble, I'll tell you that. Do you want to know the key to preaching? It's in the words of Jesus that we read tonight, Isaiah 61, in which it says, So this man will I look to him that trembleth at my word.

I don't tremble at crowds. I used to, my knees used to knock. I don't tremble at crowds anymore. I don't even tremble at the power of the devil, I don't think. But I tremble at the awesomeness of delivering God's word.

Salvation, Rejection, and Eternal Consequences

I believe in every meeting where God is, somebody is born again. By the same token, I believe in every meeting where God is, somebody dies when they reject the message of salvation. You could go to hell from this meeting where God is.

Christ's Strength Through Communion With the Father

Jesus had his miniature Gethsemanes, I'm sure, before that final Gethsemane. He had his repeated audiences with the Father. I think maybe he even had miniature, as it were, transfigurations where he communicated with the Father and saw the glory and holiness of God.

Do you wonder he was as strong as a lion, that he didn't tremble before kings? He didn't tremble before rulers? He didn't tremble before the antagonism of hell when hell broke loose on him? He says, This is the will of God that I am here.

For this hour, he says, I came into the world. Everything up to here has been preliminary. Everything's been an exercise in my spiritual life. And now, Father, I'm ready. I believe some of you can have a death when you're in a class meeting.

You make a decision about a certain thing. But there comes a time when you have to make the final decision to die. Die to your career. Maybe die to a courtship. Die to your plans. And there's a moment when you die.

Dying to Self and Surrendering to God's Purpose

And then comes the awful revelation as to why God has caused you to be saved and filled with his Spirit. Not just to be easy to live with, though we should be easy to live with if we're filled with the Spirit.

I'm sure Jesus was easy to live with. Go labor on, spend and be spent. Thy joy to do the master's will. It is the way the master went, should not the servant tread it still. Toil on, and in thy toil rejoice.

For toil comes rest, for exile home. Soon shalt thou hear the bridegroom's voice, the midnight cry. But before then, men die in darkness at your side. I don't know why this came to me, but in the 1930s, 1932, if I remember correctly, I met Norman Grubb for the first time.

Missionary Formation and Spiritual Pioneers

He was the son-in-law of C .T. He started that amazing missionary. They had a school in England. Later they had, and I think they still have, a school at Washington, just outside of Philadelphia there.

I was wondering why today they turned out men of such tremendous spiritual quality. It seemed every man that went out of the classroom was a pioneer. I think the first book that moved Paul was Fenton Hall's Life, written by C .T. Studd, written by Norman Grubb.

They remained, they produced such a race of spiritual giants at that time. Constantly they had fresh information. People were coming in from around the world. They didn't used to go out loaded with cameras and all the stuff they take today.

They didn't go for a weekend giving tracts out in Guatemala and think they'd done God's service. The original missionaries went out on a one-way ticket, no return trip. They had men again like Fenton Hall.

The Word of God and Intimacy With Him

A little family in Ireland where a lady has two little shops. One she runs to pay the family bills and the other one she runs to raise children for missions. She has four children on the mission fees.

She's paid all their fees and supported them all their lives. Do you know what the reason was? Because they got sunk in the Word of God. Every morning, though they were busy people, every morning their breakfast was 8 o 'clock.

It was 9 o 'clock. They had an open service every morning in the year. Met round the Word of God from 9 o 'clock till 12. I was privileged to share some of those mornings. I felt I could hide down a mouse hole sometimes when I heard those mature missionaries.

Not just telling of their achievements in going and pioneering in fields where it seemed as hot as hell and as dark as hell, but their intimacy with God. And they would tell you the only reason that they went as they did and carried the load they did was because they had such a revelation of the awesomeness of God and of eternity.

The Glory of God Revealed Through Christ's Suffering

The hour has come. All the years of preparation. All the years of opposition by the devil. All the opposition by demons. All the opposition by the church. And it's come to the final hour. He says, glorify your son.

As the father glorifies the son, the son glorifies the father. I know it's a dark way. It's a bloody way. It's a lonely way. It's a hard way. I don't know. You can't imagine it. I can't. The Lord has laid on him, that precious sheep of God, the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.