Victory or Defeat — John Ridley

Peter’s Denial and the Possibility of Victory

This morning I asked the question, do you really want a blessing from God? And I climaxed our brief visit, dear friends, with another question, is it victory or defeat with you? Is it victory or defeat with you?

And the Lord touched upon Peter, and Peter remembered, and Peter went out and wept bitterly. Yes, it was that look, it was that look that made Peter remember. Beneath its power, and its pain, and its pity, and its tenetration, Peter remembered.

He remembered his boastful utterances. He remembered the Lord's merciful warnings. He remembered his own shocking breakdown and denial. Peter went out, and as one translation puts it, kept on weeping.

Couldn't stop. The fountains of the deep were broken up. The tears rolled down his face. When he tried to stop, he couldn't stop. On went the weeping. Right through the sad crucifixion day, and into the sadder day to follow.

Peter tortured with the memory of a terrible denial of Christ. But if there was one thought above another, which must have cut his soul like a stock whip, it was this. I had a glorious opportunity of victoriously confessing my Lord and Saviour.

And I collapsed at the crisis. I failed at the fateful moment. I crashed at the gate. And as often as that thought came to Peter, I believe, dear friends, that the tears gut forth a friend. And he couldn't stop weeping.

You see, that's the driving charge. That's the driving charge of my message tonight. And every true gospel message has a driving charge in it. That's the driving charge. You and I, as creatures of God's creation, have a glorious opportunity in this world of victoriously confessing allegiance to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

And along with that glorious opportunity, we've got to face up to the awful possibility of a so devastating, so degrading, maybe so denying and damning experience of denial. May God in His grace enable us to be victors for Christ tonight.

The Dangerous Drift from Christ

Ride over that graphic storm, one of the most graphic and gripping in the New Testament. Ride over it on an arched way. I'd like you to read one word. Beware. Beware. Beware of four things. And the first, beware of the dangerous drift.

The dangerous drift. Drift. Drift. Peter followed afar off, away back. Why, there was a time when he was nearer to Christ, more devoted, more consecrated, more wholehearted, and then he got out of sight, out of view, almost out of sight, and then Christ came before him.

It's a double-barreled message. It's a message to drifting Christians and drifting non-Christians, drifting saints of God and drifting sinners of the world. A double-barreled message. And I want to tell you, dear friends, that that Bible is packed full of warnings against drifting.

Wherefore, we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that we have heard, lest at any time we should drift away from them. As one bread drink gives it more, lest then drift. Again, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed that he fall.

Again, watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. Oh, packed full of warnings. What are the causes of drifting away from the God that made us, the God that sustains us by every breath we breathe, the God that will cut the silver cord of life suddenly one day as we're into the eternal?

What's the causes of drifting from such a God? Well, they're very plain here in this story, and they're very true, and they're biblical causes. And the first is prayerlessness. Watch and pray, said our Lord, that you enter not into temptation.

Watch and pray. Peter promptly forgot the warning and he went to sleep. And when Jesus turned and looked on him, Peter remembered. Ask me to name the most hopeful signs in any man and woman, I would say this, the desire to pray, the determination to pray.

When a man prays, he draws near to God, and God draws near to him. No other things are possible when God draws near to a man or a woman. Listen, here is Saul of Pastors, one of the worst men possible, blinded in straight street Damascus, and God is saying to Ananias, you go to him and speak to him all, but Lord, he's been a persecutor of thy people.

And the Lord said, behold, he prayeth. He received his sight and became God's greatest preacher and greatest apostle and greatest missionary. Wesley tells us that he gathered with a number of people in a certain prayer meeting.

And as we prayed through the night, he said, my heart was strangely warm. He was born again. And England was blessed immeasurably in the Methodist revival. Ah, said a great English statesman, one of the greatest prime ministers England ever had.

Ah, I expect like other men, I've neglected prayer too much to expect it will be efficacious on this death bed. Ah, like other men, neglected prayer too much. I want to ask you, dear friend, tonight, have you neglected prayer?

Have you forgotten, have you become too independent of God to kneel down by the side of that bed first thing in the morning and lift up your heart to the creator who has caused the sun to rise and to give him praise for his mercy and to commit your prayer, your keeping, the keeping of your soul to him, to ask his guidance, his grace, his help for today, his power in your life and his preservation from evil?

Do that every morning? Or are you independent of your creator and you don't pray? Have you become so ungrateful that you can return to your home at night, having passed the day safely and you go to the place of rest and you expect, of course, that God will give you sleep.

And yet you won't bend down before him in prayer and thank him once more for his care and keeping power and clean, the cleansing of Christ's blood and the preservation of his power through the hours of darkness.

Do you neglect prayer? Or do you pray? Oh, watch and pray, said Jesus. He went to sleep. I had a letter once, one of the most awful letters I ever received came to me from a woman who had been a very keen Christian apparently.

She'd been a Sunday school teacher, a worker in the church and an active Christian as she said. And then she said this, Mr. Ridley, I began to neglect prayer. I gave up morning prayer. I prayed at night.

Then I got tired and got into bed and prayed in bed. Then I used to fall to sleep praying and then I gave up prayer altogether. Oh, sir, help me to find God. I'm in awful darkness now. I can't find God.

And I tell you, dear friends, if you want to go into spiritual darkness, you give up prayer. You neglect prayer. At any cost, pray, but always to pray and not to thank. But Peter went to sleep. I get to the second point in drifting.

Pride as a Cause of Spiritual Collapse

Christ, Peter was offended because Jesus said all you should be offended because of me this night. And Peter said the whole should be offended, yet will not I? Oh, poor, in other words, you seem to forget who I am.

I'm Simon Peter. The rest of the bunch might be offended, not me, not I. Jesus looking at Peter and loving him said, in effect, you'll be the worst offended of all this night before the cock crowed twice, thou, Simon Peter, thou will deny me Christ.

And Peter vehemently protested, though I should die with thee, I shall not deny thee in any way. They all joined in the course. That's just pride, double boasting of your own power. Peter simply said, you needn't doubt me.

Of any man, I'll be the one that will stand up for you. You needn't have any doubts about my faith in you, Lord. All the others may, but not me. Oh, my dear friends, if ever you're going to wrestle with an enemy in your life, it's pride.

Pride. I've dealt with many men in my life, and I've pleaded with them to come to Christ, and I remember so well that man who was a well-to-do squatter living near my own place at one time saying, oh, Mr. Ridley, don't bring that old gospel to me.

I think I'm quite capable of looking after myself, thank you, without any help from God. But pride. What awful, vulnerable pride. A man, to God's help, lives by the breath of his nostril. Great man, cease from man, he said.

Cease from man who lives by the breath of his nostril. Look above them. Yet man in his pride says, you get through all right, I'll make it when the whips are cracking. I'll be there with the rest of the boys, don't you worry, I'm all right.

The devil won't get me. Pride. I remember a young fellow coming in from the bush on one occasion where we were holding a mission, and telling us he had a great experience out in the bush, and while he was on his own there swagging, he'd met the Lord in some way, and he'd been saved.

And we weren't any glad about it, and we welcomed him into our little company, and he stood in the open air and spoke. But I wondered if there was something about the man that I doubted. We had a little company there for Bible reading one night, and while we were discussing a point in the Bible, this man turned suddenly on me and he said, look here Mr. Ridley, I don't agree with Dr. Schofield there.

I'm a Schofield Bible. I said to my wife afterwards, I wouldn't be surprised if our friend goes well back. But he's awfully proud. Nine months later I came into a town twenty miles from that place in my gospel van, and there was a poor fellow lounging against the post there by the post office, and as he saw our van come up, he rolled down the steps, we could see he was drunk, he staggered across to the gospel van and he began to abuse us and our gospel.

The same man. And the next morning, Sunday morning, I walked into that church to commence the mission, a man jumped up from the back and grabbed my hand and he said, hey brother, pray for us will you, I'm an awful backslider, an awful backslider.

He depended on himself, he counted on his own power to carry himself through, his own goodness, his own ability. Oh, pride is a cause of grisby. And the third one is popularity. Peter went in with John to the high priest's hall.

John must have gone to some other place in the hall or gone out, but Peter didn't. Peter went right over and joined himself up with that motley crew around the fire of Coles and warmed himself and then sat down amongst it.

Just what the devil wanted, got him right in amongst the company he wants him to be in, and he makes himself quite at home in this company, he's quite talkative to the one and another there, and warms himself, and has a word here and a word there, and Peter belongs to those enemies of Jesus Christ.

And you know I fancy like to be popular. Oh, don't we like to be popular? This is Mother's Day. And I say to that mother yonder, mother, what about your son, he used to be by you on a Mother's Day. He's been to church certainly every Sunday, once or perhaps twice.

Why isn't he here tonight? Oh, preach as he says. I wish he'd pray for him. During his national service he got in, you know, with a clique of fellows, and because they were careless, worldly, God-forgetting fellows, to be one with them he just went their way, and now I can't get him back to church.

Oh, pray for him, preacher. It's just that he's got in a bad company, ungodly company. Why I say, father, what about your daughter? She was frequently here in the Christian endeavour, in the Sunday school, and we fancy she might be born again in Christ's servant.

What about her now? We rarely see her. Ah, he says, pastor, I wish I'd just pray for my daughter. She's linked up with a worldly fellow. She'll go off with him to the pictures, and she'll go off to the circus with him, and she'll go off to any show in the town with him, but he won't come to the house of God with her, and she's drifting, she's drifting, pastor, oh, pray for her.

Fuck your lad. I know a man in my own district, dear friends, at this time, who has been under the bus for the place with tremendous power. His wife was saved a little time ago, his son was saved, and they're rejoicing in the salvation of Jesus Christ, and they're praying for dad.

Dad comes, dad listens, dad squirms in his seat, and then he goes back to the back. Why won't he come to Christ? Why won't he respond? Told my wife this, he said, it's going to be pretty hard for the fellows at work if I do this.

I can understand you, God, but I can understand what you say, it's going to be hard for the fellows at work. What's wrong? Can't a man realize that those fellows at work will die, poor human beings, and stand at God's judgment bar, and if he underplays the fellows at work, and forever denied Christ, what a twat.

And yet there are men and women in this world, and I've met them as a soldier time and again, I've met them as one who labored in the outback as a jackaroo, I've met them that they won't stand alone for Christ, they want to be bombed.

They want to join in with the general's corps, have a laugh at the dirty jokes, take a glass with the boys. They want to be popular, and some of them will confess, oh, I'm a good judge, popular, oh, popular.

A father, think upon it, a father. Be aware of those three things. Now what I'm talking about, in 1915 I was very, very much younger than what I am now, but from my glorious experience of conversion to God, I went right into a military camp, with all its teeming temptations, and into a tent there, with a crowd of men whose talk staggered me.

Blessed be God, I have been born again, and I began to realize it's fight or war in this place, and I know whom I'm standing for by the grace of God, I've been the Lord's follower. And I'll tell you this, dear friend, it wasn't such a hard fight after all, for the Lord never forsakes his own.

The Deadly Dart of Temptation

Peter sat down amongst them, and warned himself, and made himself one of them, the Lord's enemies. Beware of the deadly dart, the deadly dart, Peter and Mary slung right into the crack, and Satan straws the neck round him, and he's warming himself, talking to this one, talking to that one, and laughing with them, and then looking across to see if he can see anything of the Lord, and then warming himself again, and suddenly he becomes conscious that someone's trying to see his face, trying to get round and scrutinize him, most uncomfortable feeling.

And Peter twisted his eyes round to see what was wrong, and it was the maid that let them in at the door. And like a shot from the gun, like a bolt from the blue, she calls out, this man was also with him?

This man was with him? This is the great opportunity, up and stand for Jesus Christ, and declare that you are with him. Not a bit of it. Oh, how it must be of his heart, that he's denied them, he's denied Christ, and he lingers in that enchanted ground, he lingers there, where he can fall a thousand times, he won't leave the place, he still will linger in this deadly ground of temptation, where Satan's dark to flash, to get him again and again before he's finished.

You know in the year 1797, 1798, 1798, Lord Nelson fought the Battle of the Nile, shattered Napoleon's fleet, relieved the whole of the situation in the Middle East, came back across the Mediterranean, sailed into Naples Harbour, gloriously acclaimed the hero of Europe, a man of tremendous ability at sea, and out came the Royal Barge, with Sir William Hamilton and Lady Hamilton and the King of Naples, to greet the conqueror of the Nile, greatest naval victory perhaps the world has ever seen.

And Nelson, seeing Lady Hamilton, the most beautiful woman in Europe, and being unhappy with his own wife, began to drift to her flattery, her feasting, her luring, and he knew he was thrifted, and he said to one of his captains, Naples is a dangerous place, we must keep clear of it in future, but he didn't move, the barging of the fleet didn't move.

Two weeks later, he said to the same captain, never again did we come to Naples, but he wouldn't move. One of his best biographers said in the volume that the pleasure of going through time and again, he said this because he wouldn't move when he could move.

The position in Europe so suddenly changed, that he found he couldn't move when he would move. He was caught. The shadow of moral sin fell over the great sailor's otherwise noble character. Oh, what a tragedy, that on a one thing with certain temptations, dear friends, flee from them.

How? Where? To Jesus, for the one who alone can keep you from temptation. Yet there are men and women in this country tonight who will not come to Jesus. There are other men and women in this country tonight who will backslip and they will not return to Jesus.

They are lingering on the enchanted ground where the dance of the devil applies. That great preacher whom I heard in America, Dr. Truett, said a splendid thing on one occasion. He said this, over the doorway of many a man who has failed can be written two words, he doth believe.

Believe. That dear man in my own district, he won't come but he knows he ought to and he lingers and he lingers. It will be a hard fight. The fellas will make it hard for me and he won't come, he leaves.

That's where the devil runs. Why won't you come? Why won't you leave the enchanted ground? Many summers you have wasted, ripened harvest you have seen, winter snows, ice free of spells, yet you linger in your sin.

Come believe me. Come believe me. Come to Jesus. Look at me in regard to temptation. May me your eternal damnation, my friend. Tawd and beware of the disastrous denial. Peter Warner himself says, woman I know him not.

Peter’s Denial and the Distress of Sin

The fire has lost all its force for him and his poor body's cold and miserable and he thinks to himself, well I'm not going to leave the place, I'll see it out, but I'd better not stay at the fire much as I like at war, but I'd better gather up somewhere, I don't know, perhaps all the porch there might be a bit cooler, but it'll be calmer and safer.

I'll just stroll over. I'm not going to leave the place though. I'll just go over towards the porch and he begins to slowly move towards the porch and another leaps in and another dart is poised and another dart is fired.

This man was also with Jesus at Nazareth, says a raucous voice right over the hall and every eye is turned on him. Now he says, come on up and retrieve that denial. The man that came into your own home and took the hand of your fevered mother-in-law and lifted her up and she was well, you don't know him.

That man that walked the shapeless rolling waves of Galilee and when you were sitting stretched out his hand and lifted you up and walked on the water with you into the ship, you don't know him. That man that was transfigured and his face strong like the sun before you, you don't know that man.

Why only a few hours before he was just a simple Greek figure, you don't know him. There he is at the porch now and once more true to his type of popularity, he's talking away, he's entered into conversation, he's just questioned to this one and a little talk to the other one and he's got faith freshly again.

Quite a space of an hour, 60 minutes as the scriptures say. Talking away one another, settle down once more in the dangerous spot and then well one or two get together and they say he is one of them. You listen, you listen, that's the Galilean accent, it is, it is, yes.

Up comes the birds out of temptation and they let fly, they are one of them. Wait a minute, preach the glory of Jesus. Come to us now and reprieve these denials by our divine confession for Christ. Stand up for Jesus now.

No sir, no. Long forgotten figments, swear words and oaths come tumbling out of his mouth, left and right, he begins to swear and curse like a trooper. I tell you something to me, I only came in to see the end of things, he's nothing at all to me, I don't want to know anything about him, don't you accuse me of being on his side, I'm not on his side, I don't love the man, I tell you.

All who come through and the Lord turn and on you and on me, every time we fight for life's sake, I don't know the man, I don't know him. The man, oh, the man of a saintly mother's love, the man of a saintly mother's love, of a saintly mother's teaching and of that saintly mother's prayers, how do you long for you to come and know Christ, but you don't know him.

The man of your Sunday school days when they used to tell you about that wonderful Lord Jesus who was crucified outside the city wall, the man that you used to think of in your dreams as one great and mighty and pure and holy, the man of the cross stretched out there on the cursed tree whose very influence has swept out over the world and transformed the lives of thousands, millions, the man who arose on Easter morning, conqueror over death with the keys of hell and of death in his hands, the man who only has immortality in the light, the man in glory, the man at God's right hand the night you don't know him.

My brother, my sister, there'll come a day when you'll say I never knew you, a disastrous denial. In the hour of trial, Jesus pray for me, lest by faith's denial I depart from thee, when thou seest me waver with a look recalled.

Not for fear or favour suffer me to fall. Yes, and there's one last thing to beware of dear friends, beware of the dire distress. Have a look at him, he's going out now, he's had his fill of that place, he's going out, his face is in his hands and his great big fisherman frame is shaking, the great swords that are bursting from the depths of his soul and he's weeping, he can't stop weeping.

Look at him, he's passing out into the street, I wonder what he can hear, can he hear the crackle of those coals and the fire, can he hear the raucous voices of the servants or the biting challenge, this man was also with him, no, all that poor fellow can hear is the crowing of a cock, crowing of a cock, crowing of a cock.

What he can see with his head there in his hands as he stumbles out into the morning, can he see those glowing coals of fire, can he see those hard stern faces of the people he tried to be popular with, I wonder if he can see the grey dawn of the saddest day history will ever know, I don't think so, all that that poor man can see is the pain, pathetic face of one who in his greatest hour of need was not only betrayed but right denied.

He went out and wept and wept and wept until he stopped, thank God, thank God, otherwise he would have gone out like Judas and put a rope around his neck and hanged himself, but no, his heart was broken, his skin was whole, he went out with the same skin but a broken heart and he couldn't stop weeping with all the anguish, the anguish of having denied Christ time and time again.

And I want to tell you dear friends, as God's ambassador tonight, that denial of Christ always brings distress in its trail. If you are a Christian and you've fallen back into a backslidden state or a rut where you never confess Christ, you're going to have distress for it and you're going to repent and come back with inward tears if not with outward tears.

That's if you're a Christian, a truly born again Christian. But if you're not, you're simply perhaps a church member without any deep experience of Christ's salvation, perhaps you're an out and out unbeliever, perhaps you're one that is quite used to denying Christ, you wouldn't think of standing up and speaking for the Lord Christ before others.

Your day is coming, a dreadful day. Once, twice, three times, four times, from the lips of the Lord who never lied, he speaks about there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Well, in a lost world, when it all comes back, you'll see it all lost in the restlessness.

And you, the pleased, poor, passing men, deny Christ, deny the God incarnate, that you might please the few, feeble-hearted men and women, and behave fellow well-met with the crowd. Three, gnashing, three, four, three.

Wipe the tears from every eye of the saved rather, no matter what their suffering, from the eyes of those who have turned to Jesus and loved him, and in spite of all their weaknesses have stood for him, every fear will be wiped away.

But not from the eyes of those who have denied him and persisted in their denial. No, sir. Dr. Andrew Bonner was no scaremonger. He was one of the finest scholars the Presbyterian Church of Scotland ever produced.

He was a master of grief. He was a man of plain and deliberate speaking, and Dr. Andrew Bonner said this, if weeping and wailing could wash away sin, hell itself would be a vast tower. You bother that?

Weeping, wailing, gasping, teething, and their sin is never washed away by it. If they could wipe away their sin by their weeping, wailing, and remorse, and their weeping, then hell itself would be terrible.

But then he turned around to the great scholar and he said, it's not by that that you're saved, it's by putting unbounded confidence in the blood of Christ that you're saved. And no man can honour God more, no man can please Christ more, no man can honour the Holy Spirit more than by putting unbounded confidence in the blood of Christ crucified for his salvation.

Forgiveness Through the Blood of Christ

Forgiveness of sins, that's exactly what Peter did. Between that ghastly denial of Calvary morning, and that grand compression of Pentecost when Peter stood up with the eleven and said, this Jesus whom you crucified, God hath made both Lord and Christ.

There's none other name under heaven given amongst men whereby they must be saved. Well, that's the man who denied it a few weeks ago. Look at him, speaking like this, and charging these people with being the betrayers and murderers of Christ.

They're just a cave. What's happened? Between that faint and awful denial of Calvary morning and this brave and blessed compression of Pentecost, a wondrous, wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died.

From the distance far off, in all probability Peter saw the agony of the Son of God. Peter saw him die there, not so much from the brutality of man as the grave sinner paid the price of sin. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin.

He only could unlock the gates of heaven and let us in, and Peter believed, and Peter trusted the grave sacrifice, the blood of Christ. That's why he came back, the Lord met him, the Lord said, who dies to his lovers, thou be.

He went forward with the Lord's promise. When I was passing through New York some little time ago, dear friends, I remember the story so vividly that I will tell it to you tonight as I close my ministry here this time.

The Mother Who Saved Her Child

You know it's a mighty city, and some of the suburbs are so far away you travel many miles to get to them. And I recall that story of a suburban home in New York, it's suitable for Mother's Day, very suitable, and a dear mother with one only child and a much loved child, a daughter of ten, had put the little one in bed and tucked her up, kissed her goodnight in the old-fashioned suburban house.

And she said, now look dear, you could read by the candle here for half an hour, thirty minutes, and then blow the candle, and I'll be right down at the front in the lounge room. You'll be alright, but mind you, no longer than half an hour, and the mother left the little girl, she walked right down that soft mattress one into the front lounge room.

And she commenced to knit. And she sat there for half an hour, and then for three quarters of an hour. And then she sniffed something. Try and listen dear friends, this is a bright letter striking, closing our message.

And she sniffed, and she smelled something. And she stepped out of the lounge room, and she looked down the long passageway, and she saw what she feared, a glow of light coming out from the bedroom where her daughter was supposed to be sleeping.

And she raced down that hall, gazed in for a moment, and she saw instantly what had happened. The little thing had fallen asleep, and the candle flame had caught the head-dress of the bed, and it was ablaze all round her.

And the mother raced forward, pushed her head right into the curtains that were on fire, and pushed her hands up and flung them back, carrying them, even in the fire, to fling them off the girl, wrapped the little thing in the blankets, and rushed out the passageway into the street, terribly burned.

But she'd saved her child. She'd saved her child. Mother love would do that, of the grand type at any rate. She was thankful she'd saved her child. Terribly burned, and shockingly burned. Poor thing lingered between life and death for some days, some weeks.

Would she ever come through? At last, she's on the recovery list. She's passing into calm waters. She's back again at the home. Oh, but how disfigured. Her face is so disagreeable and so disfigured and so ugly that she feels never to age, and she hates people.

And she decides that as there's no possibility in those days, of course, of plastic surgery, she's going to hide this face from the world. And whenever she goes out, she has a broad-brimmed hat and a plasma veil hanging loosely to keep that ugly face away from the eyes of men.

But she's saved her child, and that's the thing that matters. Seven years pass. The mother is sitting on one of the main suburbs, some of the main platforms in central New York, waiting for the homebound train.

It's a wild, dusty day. And as she sits there waiting for the train, suddenly the doors of the station, an old factory station, the door opens. In comes a great company of schoolgirls. And with them, a whirling wind, lifting up the loose gospel and bringing it back and revealing this disagreeable, unpleasant, repulsive face.

The girls turn quickly. Mother's daughter is with them. She turns with the girls, and she walks with them right down the other end of the platform. Because the girls felt that she was a bad woman of the street, they got away with her.

And the mother's daughter went with them. I don't suppose that anything more disgusting, anything more ungrateful, anything more tragic than you could think of in a domestic life than that. Seven years before that poor woman had lost all her beauty, same old old, same old.

Now the daughter denies the mother. Walks down to the parking. Says, I don't think anyone would do it. I don't think any daughter would do it. Oh, don't you make any mistake, my dear friend. That illustration is very light to what I'm going to tell you now as I finish.

Christ’s Suffering and the Call to Confess Him

When Jesus went to Calvary on that sad first Good Friday, when Jesus was stretched out upon that cross bearing the abuse and the scandal of all types and conditions of men, not only was he the target of wrath and hell, but suddenly the father turned his face from him.

And God's holy fire upon the sinner, the acceptable sinner. My God, my God, why, why has thou forsaken me? Because he bears our sin on the cross. His face, his face was more mine than any man with a sucker in the dick.

More mine. It ceased to look human. It was twisted, torn, distracted. The fire had fallen. Twenty seconds on. Listen, my heart is melted in the midst of my bowels. What melts? What melts wax? My heart is like wax.

It's melted in the midst of my bowels. What melts wax? God's fire has fallen. Has washed away man's sin. And the blessed Saviour who is God incarnate. And yet, we can turn away and see no beauty in Him that we should desire to see.

No man ever, sucker, no man was ever marred like Christ. I went out on the Hindenburg Line in 1918 and helped to bring in the dead of my own battalion under the command of my colonel and laid them out in rows, the dead of my own battalion, my own friends.

And as I looked at those marred, parished faces, I could not eat anything. The sight was awful. No soldier was ever marred in face like the man of slaughter. It's Mother's Day and every thought turns to the travail of a mother.

That most awful pain that produces the child. But no mother in the most severe agony ever had a face marred like Christ's face. Yes, you can pay tribute to your mother and think it's only right to do it and turn your back on Christ and deny Him with coldness, with indifference, or with blatant blasphemy.

I don't know how, but you can deny Him. Oh, how tragic and inconsistent we are with honor mothers and with dishonor of marred master men, the Savior of the world. There's no alternative. I either confess Christ or I deny Him.

There's no middle road. I'm either for Him or I'm against Him. Jesus said it. You're either for me, He said, or against me. You gather for me or you scatter abroad. There's no buffer. I've come to the end of a mission here.

And I want to tell you what Lord Nelson said is true. In war, time is everything. And in five minutes you'll get all the difference between victory and defeat. And in the five minutes in which I close, or perhaps ten, it'll be victory or defeat.

You'll either deny Christ tonight or you'll confess Christ. You'll either be defeated or you'll get the victory. Get the victory, my friends. What does it mean to confess Christ? It means to own Him, conquer Him.

It means to own Him, God's Son, and your Savior, the one whose face was marred for you, who bore your sin, who paid the extreme penalty for it, so that you have nothing to suffer for sins, but enter through the gates washed in the blood of the Lamb, scepter of God.

And in just common gratitude, but also some of our spirit gratitude, you lift your hands to the salute and you say, bless the Lord. Thou art my Savior and my God. What does it mean to deny Christ? It means you don't want to talk about Him.