Featured Audio Sermon： What is your Life？ — Leonard Ravenhill

The Question of Life’s Brevity

I have a text tonight which is a question, and it's a question that we cannot answer collectively. It's a question you have to answer individually. It's found in the very practical epistle, as it's usually called, the epistle of James, in the fourth chapter, and verse fourteen.

Maybe we should read from verse thirteen. Go to now ye that say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain, whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow.

For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then it vanisheth away. Can you think of something that was on earth before Adam was here? And it was removed, and it's in heaven now, and it may come back to earth.

I thought you were waving, a lady putting a sweater on. Well, the tree of life. Oh, were you raising your hand? I can't see very well. The tree of life was there before Adam went into the garden, and now we're told the tree of life is in the other garden, the paradise of God.

And you know, this is about the most fascinating study that there is, and you will never face a more challenging question than this text. What is your life? Now, notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say what is life, because if it did, nobody has an answer.

It doesn't say what is our life, otherwise we could fool all our thinking. It says, what is your life? And it replies, gives a reply here in the text, it is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time.

There are three main questions that come up in life. Children ask this question, where did I come from? And somewhere, sometime, you better give them the right answer, because if you don't, somebody will give them the wrong answer.

And then maybe at your age right now, you're asking another question, why am I here? And then when you get further up the road, which I happen to be, you say, where do I go from here? So there are three basic questions about life.

Where? Where did it come from? Why am I here? And where do I go from here? I was thinking about the different poets who said about this. One of them said this, life at its best is very brief, like the falling of a leaf, like the binding of a sheaf, be in time.

Francis Henry Light, he lived in Ireland near where we used to live, long while before we were there. And there's a big memorial to him in the Royal Pretoria School that my boys went to. Francis Henry Light wrote this great hymn, Abide With Me.

And in that hymn you may recall, he says this, swift to its close, ebbs out life's little day. Another poet says the lives of great men should remind us that we all may be sublime, and departing leave behind us footprints in the sands of time.

Another one says about great men, but how did he put it? Life is fleeting, life is earnest, and the grave is not the goal. Thus thou art to just return us, was not spoken of the soul. Now if this book is about anything at all, it's about life.

Human Attempts to Improve the World

I was looking while I was away this past weekend at a fairly recent issue of National Geographic. And it certainly has some fantastic photography. Part of it was about Somaliland. And there were women there lying on the floor with a bit of a rag round them.

Their ribs were standing out. There were corpses of babies all over the place. And the country right now is in a terrible grip of famine. And while we today couldn't make up our minds what kind of ice cream we like.

I mean, you know, we've got 28 varieties, but surely there must be another one. And 48 different types of, what do you call the thing with the hole in the middle? Donuts. There must be some other kind of thing to eat besides donuts.

And you hear people say, well life isn't just, life isn't fair. One man said life is a feast, another wise man said life is a fast. One man said life is a paradise, another man says life is a prison. You see, the question here is very pointed and maybe it's very personal, it's very impersonal, maybe it's very painful.

Maybe you could answer the question. What is your life? You say it's a failure. What is your life? A success. What is your life? It's a disappointment. But actually it's showing to us by the very context that life is like a vapour.

It's like the steam that comes off the kettle and you try and get a handful of it and it's gone. And in every case in the word of God where life is referred to, that is this physical life, it's likened to something that's very swift.

It's likened, for instance, to a weaver's shuttle. It's likened to a tent that men wrap up and move on in the night. Isaiah likens our life to the grass of the field which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven.

Now you know there's a saying, it becomes almost facetious to say, but it's said amongst many Christians, only one life to soon be past and only what's done for God will last. But that's exactly what the poet did not say.

What the poet said, only one life to soon be past and only what's done for God will last and when I am dying how glad I shall be if the lamp of my life has been burned out for thee. As I say tonight, again it's easy to say the things of earth will grow strangely dim.

You feel very pious when you say that. But you know when you get to eternity and look back, the things of earth will look very grim. We'll possibly discover we've been as earthly minded as the reprobates outside who are dancing and lusting tonight.

Oh we're trying to put umpty dumpty together again you know. I used to ask what that was about when I was a little boy. I never found an answer to it. Oh you can get an illustrated book of nursery rhymes and umpty dumpty is an egg on a wall and he falls off and breaks himself into a hundred pieces and all the king's horses and all the king's men can't put umpty dumpty together again.

Or the old argument, anybody can scramble eggs, who can unscramble them? Life, men have been trying to manage it, direct it. They kind of consider that if you made the environment better we will produce better people.

That's not true. You know there's nobody go around in circles more than the politicians. I can remember in World War I, before World War I, so I'm not too young, there were a group of supermen around at that time.

George Bernard Shaw, he wrote a fascinating play called Pygmalion that sent him bankrupt and so they changed its name to My Fair Lady and it made millions after he was dead, which I think is what he deserved.

But George Bernard Shaw ganged up with a bunch of fellows that were called the Fabian Socialists. George Bernard Shaw again was there, HG Wells was one of the leading spokesmen, Aldous Huxley was there, and all the top-notch guys, you know.

And they suddenly came to a realization that they had solved the problem of inequality, injustice, a way to empty prisons, a way to make this world a utopia. After all, Christianity's had 2 ,000 years, they said, it hasn't done too well.

So we don't need the church, we don't need the bible. And they began to tick off things they didn't need. In 1912, two years before First World War, these fellows made a kind of outline of their philosophy and what they were going to do.

They were going to pull down the hills of wealth and fill in the valleys of poverty and make the crooked races straight. They said we can have a new race of men by intellectual and biological processes.

They didn't talk about repentance and sin, none of that's too theological. They talked about the adequacy of materialism, the inevitability of progress, and the sufficiency of man. That was two years when they declared that they could have a utopia.

If not a new heaven, we don't need it, a new earth. And they gathered people around them and they marched on bravely with a little card saying utopia isn't far off and we will do all this. Well, the Kaiser in Germany had another idea and he upset the apple cart.

Two years after they made their declaration, World War I came, 1914 until 1919. 1919 to 1939 I think were 20 of the most wonderful years for the church, she missed it. And in 1939 another fellow came along.

He had Charlie Chaplin's moustache on his lip and one stripe on his arm, his name was Hitler, and we found we were in serious trouble. And like every war, every war gets more diabolical. The next one is unthinkable.

Why, if you'd been around here a hundred years ago, you'd have walked down the road then. Dirty Indian shot an arrow in my back. Uncivilized wretch that he is. Now the boys from Harvard and elsewhere with brains, they can drop an arrow on a city and wipe it out.

That's education. The uncivilized people killed thought one at a time, they were pretty decent about it. Now we can wipe out whole cities. There's a possibility that a third of the population of the United States could be liquidated in less than one minute.

It's a sudden, terrible, horrible, unthinkable atomic war. And the situation isn't better. Do you know that in the third world we're giving billions of dollars away? Do you know in the third world right now there are more billionaires than in the free world?

Yesterday showed Mr. Marcos and his wife in the Philippines. I think she's just acquired her first billion. One of her friends in another country that we're sending money to has acquired her second billion and is on her way to her third billion.

And yet tonight with all our progressive education, we have more sin, we have more darkness, we have more slums, we have more disease, we have more broken homes, more broken lives. The world is a madhouse.

The Failure of Human Progress

Despite all the lives that were laid out. Oh, how many people perished in World War I? I don't know, maybe a million. And then right after that, 16 million people perished by an epidemic of influenza that swept the world.

And then we had a time of recovery. And then again we came back to 16 minutes to 8 on the 5th of August 1945. When one man in a plane on his belly pressed the button, dropped the bomb, wiped out about 100 ,000 people and left about 300 ,000, many of them still living, blind and paralyzed.

You'd think these politicians would give up. What in God's name are they doing? Apart from wasting money, wasting, dangling a carrot on the end of a stick, when all the time they know there's no, there's no hope.

You know, we learn from history. The one thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history. If we did, we wouldn't be in the mess that we're in tonight. But you see, when that bloody man Hitler began to wipe out cities and countries, I remember walking down the street in Sheffield when people are all listening, holding their ear to the door of a shop that sold radios and what have you got.

And somebody said to a fellow, what's going on? Churchill speaking. And there was old Churchill with his famous slur, you know, those Huns he said, as he called the Germans. They've swept past Paris and they're sweeping down onto the French coast and they're coming over here.

But he said, we shall fight them with bottles if we have to. We shall fight them with sticks. I imagine myself on the chair trying to pull a Messerschmitt out of the sky. And he roused the people. But the war got more diabolical.

And right in the middle of that war, HG Wells, who had already designed, along with his friends, a way to clean the world up out of its moral sewers and out of its fanaticism and insanity and injustice, pull down the hills of wealth, fill in the valleys of poverty, make the crooked places straight.

HG Wells had written his outline of history. He'd written his book Crux Ansata that got him into trouble with the Roman church. And then suddenly his brain woke up. And he wrote his final book, and this was the title of it, The Man That Was Dreaming Great Dreams of a New World Order.

And he had the answer along with all his brothers who were super-intellectual. And his last book was called Mind at the End of Its Tether. And he wrote the whole human race off and said there is no hope, no hope for the human race, because he says man has a blank inside of him.

Well, he got almost theological. Man has a blank inside of him. You've got life tonight, physical life, otherwise you wouldn't be here. You've got emotional life, otherwise you wouldn't love. You've got a social life.

You've got intellectual life, you may have a religious life. But you see, this book is not complimentary in any shape or form. So you find a man saying youth is a mistake, manhood is folly, and old age is a regret.

Fancy having to be a statesman to have a bankrupt philosophy like that. Youth is a mistake, manhood is folly, old age is a regret. Sure it is if you miss the one place to get life. And even in the days of his flesh, Jesus complained, he will not come to me that ye may have life.

Christ as the Source of Life

Now do you remember his great statement, I am the way, the truth and the life. I am the way, without that there's no going. I am the truth, without that there's no knowing. I am the life, without him there's no growing.

I am the way, that's external. I am the truth, that's internal. I am the life, that's eternal. Now this book is completely lost to one idea as far as I'm concerned. It tells us the origin of man. Now I know at school you've got a teacher who's much smarter than that.

She tells you to go to the zoo to see your uncle. And I think when you go back to school you should take a banana and give it to her. And she said what's it for? Say, well I saw your uncle George in the zoo the other day and he had no lunch, so why don't you take this for him.

I was told that not long ago the monkeys had a conference. And they outlawed the idea that they have any relationship with the human race at all. They asked for a show of hands. There were 10 ,000 monkeys there.

Chimpanzees and no run out tanks and I don't know what were there. Every kindred and tribe, the wholesale tribes of monkeys were there. And they asked for a show of hands. Anybody here ever taken drugs?

Raise your paw. And nobody raised a paw. Any of you ever been in jail? Raise your paw. No paw. And have you ever been drunk? No. And have you ever been divorced? No. And if you go to a village and tear it up and murder everybody in the village in one night?

Oh, never think of that. Well that's what those monkeys do that wear clothes. They just raid people at night and kill them. And they destroy. No, no, no. Here is a wonderful, wonderful fact that God has given to us.

It's an amazing thing when you think of it that God gave just one chapter to tell us about the creation of the world and seven chapters about the creation of the tabernacle in the wilderness. I wish he'd changed it round.

But you know he never even asked me for advice these days either. I give him something in my prayers sometimes. Of course, you wouldn't do a thing like that. You're too smart. But the whole thing is about life.

Every kind of life. And supremely about eternal life. And Jesus appears and when he comes, he comes with a miracle birth. And you know this well enough. But in other countries they don't know it too well.

That somehow, though the heaven of heavens cannot contain God, he was contracted to a span and incomprehensibly made man, to use Charles Wesley's wonderful words, he laid his glory by and wrapped him in our tray.

Or the hymn we sing at Christmas, how the herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king. My, oh, ye ladies, glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.

You see, the man in the world there, the man that puts some bits of tin together and sits somebody in it and presses the button and shoots them and they can walk around the moon. He thinks it's far beyond anything that's got anything to do with the Bible, it's all emotional.

That man still has a missing link in his life. That man still has a place in his life that only God can fill. To use the words again of Augustine, we have a space within us. And God made us for himself and we'll never ever be satisfied until he comes and occupies that part in our lives.

It's astounding when you think of it that we, human beings, with all our favour, we can be made the habitation of God through the Spirit. Now, you have a classical confrontation as far as I'm concerned.

The New Birth and the Transformation of Paul

Here is a man of impeccable morality, one of the greatest scholars in his generation. Maybe you stood on the edge of a crowd and saw miracles. Maybe you went to the bazaar to buy some coffee or something, heard people saying, you know that fellow's done some astounding miracles.

And the whole nation had been stirred by John Baptist, but John did no miracle. And then Jesus comes in and does a miracle after miracle. He shows he has dominion over death, over disease, over insanity.

He knocks the demons out of people's minds. He sets the captives free. This Pharisee must have said it over and over again. Year after year, reciting the 35th chapter of Isaiah, that when he comes, oh, when the Son of God comes, when Messiah comes, the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leap as a harp, the tongue of the dumb shall sing.

Do you know that guy, and even Saul after him, those fellows had been to the anniversary of and they accepted Pentecost when it was empty. They rebelled against Pentecost when God fulfilled his word and poured his spirit out on all flesh.

We've got people today that are very happy to celebrate Christmas or Easter or even Pentecost on this saloon as nothing happens. Keep up a tradition. That world outside there is not waiting for a new definition of Christianity, it's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity.

And there's one thing that life does, wherever it goes, life begets life. You can't love theology, you can't even love your Bible. You can only love a person. You can't love a theological concept of God.

I've often wondered what Paul really saw on that Damascus road when he prayed four simple words, who art thou, Lord. If you read it straight it means nothing. Who art thou, Lord? But suppose you read it this way, who art thou, Lord?

Here's a man with a colossal intellect. Here's a man who is in every category, in the highest category. He's a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he's a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he's of the tribe of Benjamin, he's of the seed of Abraham.

He had fulfilled the law. He says concerning the law I was blameless and yet he's going down that Damascus road breathing out threatening with a heart full of fire and hatred. You talk about a miracle of the grace of God.

That man had murdered people as he says in the 26th of Acts. He tore families apart, he changed them, chased them up into strange cities. And that very man whose body, whose brain was filled with theology and his heart was filled with hatred, wrote the most amazing hymn, the most amazing poem on love that was ever written.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have no love, I'm a sounding brass or a tingling cymbal. And if I give my body to be burned, which he was prepared to do on the Damascus road. Do you know I think, I'll ask him in eternity, I think that suddenly when he fell off his horse there, I'm sure there was a horse rider in front of him to protect him and a man behind and one to the right, one to the left.

A man of his class would never walk all the way to Damascus. And suddenly he's pitched off his horse. You say were there only four people there? No. You say there's a man riding in front? Yes, one behind, one to the right, one to the left.

Were they the only witnesses? Maybe on earth. I want to tell you I believe every demon in hell was looking down on that man at that moment. I believe every angel in heaven was looking down the demons because he was their best advocate on earth.

He was fearless, he regarded nobody. He had some letters in his pocket saying he could put to death anybody that he wanted. And then suddenly Jesus came into his life. Would you have thought that man in the dust had inside of him 14 epistles if you give him Hebrews and I think he wrote it.

Would you think that he would go through Asia Minor and establish a dozen or more churches? Would you think that that man in a lousy stinking prison, they wouldn't let you put a dog in today, would write to other Christians as he does to the Philippians and the Ephesians, his love letters to them.

And as he says, rejoice in the Lord. And again they should have been sending letters of comfort to him and he's sending letters of comfort to them. Why? Because on that Damascus road as far as I'm concerned, he came alive.

Religion, formality, ritualism, they were banished forever. And then after that experience he was shut away in the quietness. Maybe that's why God brought some of you around here, so he can get alone under a tree somewhere and talk to God and find out where he wants you to go.

And you have three and a half years in the wilderness. Then he's caught up into the third heaven. And then he sets out on that amazing pilgrimage. And as far as I'm concerned, he explains it all when he said, I'm crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.

Salvation Means Death to the Self-Life

And yet but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live here in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. If I were to ask you tonight, you're saved. Do you say, yes, I'm saved. When? Oh, so-and-so preached, I got baptized.

What are you saved for? Hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from lust? Are you saved from cheating? Are you saved from lying? Are you saved from bad manners? Are you saved from rebelling against your parents?

Come on, what are you saved from? Ninety percent of the people in the nation are not saved, they claim to be. When I went to a malt and I confessed my sins, fine, fine. That's what the preacher said, you confess your sins and you confess them.

Do you know they did that in every Roman Catholic church in the country last Sunday? A man needs more than to be forgiven, he needs cleansing, he needs more than cleansing, he needs indwelling, he needs more than indwelling, he needs undoing.

I was in a place, a country place last week. The pastor was away, his daughter was expecting a baby. Good night, it must have been a big hospital, I think every relative they had went there. Took a thousand mile journey, my daughter's having a baby, my daughter's having a baby, so what?

Didn't make all that fuss when I was born, at least I don't remember it, but anyhow. But oh, when the baby came, you should have heard what they were saying about it. It had everything except wings, it had a halo but it got broken when they handed the baby over to the nurse.

Oh, and this fellow said to me, isn't the birth a wonderful thing? It sure is, it sure is. I'm not asking you tonight, did you one night kneel down and make confession and after that your life was no change, your lifestyle was no different, your appetites were no different, your pay life was no different, come on.

Supposedly change the language. Paul says Christ in you. If I were to stop here tonight and go around the front row and everyone and say to everyone, you stand up brother and when you stood up I say, does Christ live in you?

What would you say? Would you say, oh yes, he lives in me, he rules my life, he consoles me, he pulls me back when I would go too quickly, he urges me on when I would hesitate. The miracle of the new birth.

The Contrast Between Spiritual Life and Spiritual Death

You see the insulting thing about the Bible is that while you may have a colossal intellect and you may invent so many things and you may write great books. Oh, for some reason right here I think of Lord Byron.

He was a contemporary of John Wesley. Byron broke all records for writing poetry and publishing books. The rich people of England would have a whole row of books in pure leather binding. Lord Byron wrote it, Lord Byron.

He went into the homes of all the kings in Europe. He went to the palaces. People begged him to come and grace their home with his presence. He was an extremely handsome man. Had a pale complexion, jet black hair, even curls down to his shoulders.

And people swooned when he came in their presence. But he was dissipated. If I remember right, he died when he was 39 years of age. He died shivering on the coast by the waters lapping his feet there in Greece.

And he wrote this just before he died, My life is in the yellow leaf. The flowers and fruit of love are gone. The worm, the canker, and the grief are mine. What a summary. I was going down Orange Grove in London some years ago.

I saw this swell place and flunkies there in knee breeches, you know. And oh, they looked so nice. Well, I'm glad I don't have to wear that. I've got such terrible legs. I have thin, thin legs. If I wore breeches like that, I'd be arrested for having no visible means of support.

And here was this flunkie standing at the door and he had his beautiful velvet coat and a cravat there and his hair. And I stepped back and he says, Good afternoon, sir. I said, Good afternoon. Could I come in there?

Oh, no, sir. No, sir. No, you can't come in here to eat. Well, yes, you can if his lordship, the Duke of Westminster brings you or the Duke of Argyll or Lord Tallmash. But you see, well, it was just before the Queen, our Queen, got married in England.

The Queen was here last Friday night and her sister was here, too. They stayed until two. We close at two in the morning now. You know, like most church prayer meetings close at that time. And, thank you.

You can't come in here. Why not? I'm clean, I'm upright, I'm a preacher. I mean, I never been to jail. But, sir, you're not of royal birth. You're not a distinctive aristocrat. You can't come in. Why would you like to come in?

I said, I would like to see all the lords and ladies and dukes in society with their sparkling diamonds. And I'd like to get my chair, turn it round and stand up and raise my voice and say, She that liveth in pleasure is dead whilst she liveth.

Oh, sir, he said, you get thrown out. I said, well, that's what I expected. Isn't it offensive to say to people, listen, you may be a genius. You have a colossal intellect. If you fall out of bed, you invent something.

But do you know right in the centre of you, you're dead. Because you've no living relationship with God. Now, there are two kinds of people in the world, only two kinds, not black and white, not rich and poor.

There are those who are dead in sin and there are those who are dead to sin. If I say most people are half-saved, you know what I mean? I mean, you go to the cross, but you never get on the cross. You go and get your sins forgiven and feel happy, and you go do the same lousy thing again the next day.

Come on, what kind of a salvation is that? I heard a famous preacher, and he's an Englishman, terrible, he shouldn't have said that. And he said, you know, the Lord is merciful. You come here tonight, he'll forgive your sins tonight.

He'll forgive your past sins, forgive your sins for today, and he'll forgive your sins for tomorrow. Isn't that nice? Can you imagine a man going up to a judge and the judge says, uh, uh, you've been found guilty of stealing a lady's purse.

Did you steal it? Mm-hmm. Oh, you did steal it. Yeah, it had a hundred dollars in it. Ever stole any other purse? Yes, I have a record. This is the 345th purse that I've stolen. Are you sorry? Yes, I'm sorry.

Well, he says, you're forgiven. I forgive you for all the purses you've stolen in the past, all that you've stolen today, and all you're going to steal for the rest of your life. Wouldn't that be wonderfully sane, or insane?

You see, the miracle of the new birth is this, that when a man is really born, when he gets this life, he doesn't want that life. Oh, I don't think anybody gives it better than Paul. To wind this up, writing to the Colossians, he says, if ye then be risen with Christ, or as the literal translation is, if you've been raised with Christ, you seek those things which are above.

Seeking the Things Above

You say to people, are you saved? They say, well, I don't really know. Oh. Supposing you're carrying a hundred pound sack on your back, and you're struggling up a hill, and your knees are going down, and somebody whips the sack off your back, and you get to the top of the hill without the sack, and the man says, hey, have you lost your sack?

You say, I don't really know. I kind of figured he'd know when somebody took a hundred pounds off his back. And by the same token, a man knows, because the miracle of the birth isn't some intellectual summersault.

Jesus says it is this, that we're dead in trespasses and in sin. And he brings us to life. So now we love the things we didn't like, and we hate the things we used to love. Okay, so Paul says, if you're risen with Christ, or you've been raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sits at the right hand of God.

Set your affection on things above, not things on the... Come on, come on, come on, you fellows now. Okay, you're saved. And yet, I guess you talk more about baseball than you talk about Jesus, is that right?

In the last week, you'll be more interested in the return of Jeddy than you are in the return of Jesus. And you talk to your buddies about it. As far as I'm concerned, the three little bits I've seen on TV, they show, you'd have to be crazy to go watch it.

Set your affection on things which are above, not things on beneath, for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Can you think of anything more wonderful than that? Here is your life. It's hid in Christ, and it's hid in God.

What are you going to do, sneak out and drink a bit of the world's junk? Do you know how you need entertainment? Or any of us, you only need entertainment when you've lost the joy of the Lord. And when we've no joy, we need entertainment.

And when we've entertainment, we've no joy. That went over like a lead balloon, but that's true. You're dead, and your life is hid with Christ. Now, he says, if you're risen with him, that deals with the past.

You're dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Not when I die, but even now on this earth, I bid the world goodbye. Not tearfully, but cheerfully. All of its pleasures, its pomp, and its pride.

Paul puts it best, as he usually does when he talks in Galatians 5, and he says, from henceforth let nobody trouble me. I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Weymouth translates that, I bear in, Weymouth Moffat translates it, I bear in my body the branding.

They know a lot about branding around here. You might get to see some cattle branded. And when Paul wrote this, a man who was a slave could run away from his wicked master, his cruel master that nearly took the skin off his back every day, that demanded a full day's work and hardly gave him enough food to last an hour.

And this man gets away. The first thing he does, he flees to a temple, and there were priests always awake. At least they were always there, maybe not always awake. And the altifiers were burning. And the man runs in, breathlessly, and wakes the priest and says, brand me, brand me, in the name of which God, and there's different irons to brand him.

And the man puts his hand out and closes his eyes, and the branding iron is put on his flesh, and it sizzles, and he yells, and then if he's a garment, he's stamped in the back of his neck, and then he lifts his foot up, and he's stamped in his instep, and they rub a kind of ointment and leave him there for days until he's able to get out.

He goes out, and as he goes down the street, his old master sees him and says to his friend Marcus, there's Aristarchus, go bring him back here. And Aristarchus comes up, and his master says, listen, I'm going to take you back and whip you like you've never been whipped before.

You're going to carry loads you'll never drink, and he starts telling him what he'll do, and he says, just a minute, sir, what do you mean? He said, look, look, look there, and the old master says, I've got no claim on you.

I've got no claim on you. You're the possession of a god. And Paul says, listen, I got branded there at the base of my head, because all my thinking is going to be about Jesus, this man being you, which was in Christ Jesus.

Do you think he went to the Olympic Games because they had them in his day? Do you think he's fooled around with the material things of the day? His head was branded, his hands, his feet. So a hymn writer says, let my hands perform his bidding.