How Do You Measure Up? — Rolfe Barnard

And you're responsible to God as I'm responsible to God. And while somebody may be of encouragement to somebody else, in the last analysis, the things that are vital, you're going to have to settle yourself.

Nobody can settle vital things for you. It's been said that a man that gives advice is a fool and a man who accepts it is a double fool. But I'm going to ask a question of you tonight. It's a question that I'm concerned about for you and for me.

Christ's Commission to His Representatives

And I'm going to ask this question with three scriptures in mind. The first scripture is in John chapter 20 and the verse is 21. I suppose I, in 30 odd years, have quoted this verse of scripture more perhaps than any other as I've talked to God's people.

The question I'm going to ask you tonight, I'm not going to tell you what the question is right now, but I'm going to ask it in view of the fact that you have been made a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this morning it was suggested that we have the privilege as a priest to offer praise and so forth. And I suggest that it's not simply privilege, it's responsibility, because the book of the Revelation says that he hath made you a kingdom of priests.

You couldn't make yourself a priest, but he made you one. I didn't make anybody a priest, the Lord God did, and so whatever's involved in being a priest under the Most High God, that's between you and God.

You can ride out if you want to on it, but nobody will be hurt but you, for you're not responsible to anybody except God. I didn't make you a priest. If you want to keep on with old traditions and customs and pay somebody else to do your thinking for you and your praying for you and your witnessing for you and your preaching for you, nobody on God's earth can stop you.

But it ought to begin to dawn upon us that if God made us something that's serious and that's blessed and it makes life worth living, he's made us priests. We weren't priests, but he made us priests. We don't have to get anybody to go into the presence of God for us, for nobody can, but we are.

He's fixed us so we can approach God ourselves, and that's a blessed privilege. And that's true of what I'm talking about tonight. In the 21st chapter of John, then Jesus, 20th chapter of John, verse 21,.

Then, this is after the resurrection, when he made his appearance to his disciples in the room where they had gone, afraid they'd be killed next. Then the Lord said to them again, Peace be unto you, as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.

You are representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. The second scripture, of course, is one that we could all stand on our heads, I trust, and quote, going down a stair step on our heads at midnight. And it's from the 28th of Matthew, and I read it again, verse 19, verse 18.

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All authority is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.

And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age. You've been given a commission by the Lord Jesus Christ. And the question I'm going to ask you will be in light not only of the fact that the Lord has made us representatives of him, that he's given us a commission that we share together, and no one can name the name of Christ who is not willing to tote his part of the blanket in this commission.

Salvation Expresses Itself in Witness

If you have not been so saved as to seek to get others saved, you haven't been saved. There's no such thing as being a spectator in this business of knowing Christ and seeking that others shall know him.

Any human being whose one life mission primarily is not that others may know Christ doesn't know Christ himself. The only way you can keep Christ is by sharing Christ. You can argue about once saved always until you're blue in the face.

But if you do not give yourself to winning others, you do not have Christ yourself. Now, that's so. That's so. There's nothing in the Bible about a salvation that fixes you sore. You can live any more except for the purpose of fixing it so others through you may know the Lord Jesus Christ.

I used to try to exhort church members to try to get people to God. I quit that. If you are saved, that's your life's work. I don't need to exhort you to go after souls. You need to go after Christ. I didn't say get them to Christ.

I said seek to get them to Christ. We all stand helplessly and have to wait on the Holy Spirit taking the gospel we give out and causing fruit. But there's no such thing as being a Christian and living for yourself.

Isn't that right? We've been commissioned. We've been commissioned. And then we've been given the word for the world. The Lord says that the field is the world. Everybody in the world then is our missionary test.

And he's entrusted the word to the world to his people. He doesn't preach it himself except through his people. He doesn't preach it through angels. He preaches it through his people. East Stanley Jones.

I wish every one of you would do without a meal if you have to and buy the little paperback book. I think you can get it for $2, isn't it, T? That's right. On conversion. It'll thrill your soul. Maybe set the song fire.

And he tells of how yonder in India many, many years ago a man who as a preacher had fallen into adultery and had publicly confessed it and had been restored to the ministry was holding a meeting and preaching in a tent in India.

And East Stanley Jones knelt outside the tent and was healed inside and outside under the ministry of a former adulterer. Now, that's the glory of the gospel. You say, well, wasn't he terrible? No, he's just a sinner.

But the gospel is for sinners. And the gospel has been entrusted to sinners who've been saved. Not nice people, but sinners. You say, well, I'm guilty of that. Well, you're guilty of something else. And yet somebody said that a Christian witness was one beggar trying to tell another beggar where he found bread.

And that's what it is. It's not somebody sitting up on a pedestal looking down. It's somebody who's a sinner, who's a saved sinner, but still a sinner, is a beggar with nothing in his hands to commend himself to God, telling another old beggar the place where he found the bread of life.

And it is the most challenging thing that ever took place on this earth, except the coming of Christ, that the Lord God has entrusted into our sinful earthen vessels the gospel of his grace. It's a privilege to tell another beggar where you found the bread of life.

And the man that says he can't do that is denying that he is ever hungry and that he is ever fed. We are told that we have been given the word for the whole world. In 2 Corinthians, the 5th chapter is the 3rd scripture I want to read.

It's very familiar. Verse 17. Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us.

What? Anybody here claim to be a Christian? Not willing to get in on this? Given to us the ministry of reconciliation. To which that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. How did he do it?

By not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are. Now then we are. Ours for Christ. It beseech you by. If anybody claims to be a Christian that can lay out the plan of salvation without tears in his heart.

Cannot argue with anybody on God's earth about anything. This is something deeper. We are ambassadors for Christ. Yes you, we stand in there. In all sovereignty to stand at the heart's door of a sinner and beseech him.

He says we do the same thing. Beseech you by us. We pray you in Christ's stead. Be reconciled to God. Be reconciled to God. Now, we are representatives of Christ, are you? Some of you are new converts now.

You listen to me carefully. Are we? We've been commissioned by Christ, have we? We've been entrusted with the word of the gospel to a world of beggars who haven't found the bread. Now I want to ask you this simple question.

Measuring Yourself by Your Calling

Use three brief words to talk about it. And the question is this. I ask you tonight to sit in judgment on yourself. As to by what you are and by what you do. How you're measuring up to your position. You're not your own.

You're Christ's representative. You can't work it out yourself. You've been commissioned. And you've been entrusted with the word of the gospel. Now Gene, how are you measuring up? Nobody can answer that but you.

But God help you if you piddle away the days that God has given you here on this earth. And don't face this thing. I can't face it for anybody but myself. And if I miss out, that won't help you. This is between you and the one who made you his representative.

This is between you and the one who commissioned you. This is between you and the one who trusted you with his gospel. How are you measuring up? First by what you are. And second by what you do. Both are important.

Both are important. I've been amazed at how much enmity two things I wanted to see take place have incurred. I've been amazed and recent events have added to the amazement of how much hostility there is toward our observance of the Lord's table each Lord's day.

I've been amazed at the preachers who seem to hate it. I would not quote to you this morning, tonight, one preacher who says that the eating of the bread and drinking of the wine each Lord's day is cannibalistic in this challenge of what we are trying to do.

The Priesthood of All Believers and Congregational Life

And then I've been amazed at the hostility against the idea that the scriptures do not teach the matter of one local pastor. I have sung for you and prayed for you and hundreds of times got awful discouraged about you.

I believe it's New Testament and I wish you'd work more at the job. That you would not be so dependent on somebody working you up to something. And that you'd face the fact that God has made you priest under him.

God said this morning, set things on fire and we'll do that now. But bless God we could build a laboratory that would break down the awful prejudice of this hour if we ourselves would start to doing what we know we ought to be doing.

That's right beloved, I wish we could do it. I remember the couple that quit coming to our services because they said they came to hear me and never got to hear me. I remember the many phone calls that every Sunday gets out I'm in town and get phone, you're going to be preaching tonight.

They don't care about the gospel or the scripture nothing, just a few like to hear me preach. I don't want to succumb to that, I'm not going to personally and I don't want you to. But somebody's got to lead brethren, that's God appointed.

Somebody's got to shepherd the flock. Somebody's got to encourage. And that must be every one of you encouraging each other. Forseek not the assembling of yourselves together as the custom of some is, but the rather encouraging one another.

And so much the more, and I don't know what this next phrase means, I'm honest about it, as ye see the day approaching. Boy something sure approaching. Under God we're sitting on top of volcanoes that are not extinct.

Only God knows what the day will bring forth. Encouraging one another. I envision a congregation of people every time they come together. They'd be so full of their victories and defeats as they were trying to be a Christian.

And to speak as a Christian. That they'd want to share one with another. Every time they met their joys and their defeats. Our closed mouths and our waiting one upon another. But speak the fact that we're going along for the ride.

You mean tell me that Christian people can take it easy when the world's in the shape it's in now. And I want to ask you, in view of two or three facts, for yourself, just for you now. Between now and last Lord's Day, what have you counted for in the kingdom of God?

Have you weighed anything? Have you? Have you witnessed a good confession? Have you not only prayed for doors to open, but have you entered the ones that opened? Have you? Now come on, between you and God.

The Global Need for Gospel Witness

The other night, I looked at the Pacific Ocean. Wife and I made a hard journey. First time in our 32 and a half years of marriage we ever took a vacation. We made a long, hot journey across this nation, like in from here to the coast.

As I stood there, the night lights were shining on the Pacific. And I closed my eyes. I was with my brother. And I tried to picture Asia and Europe and Africa, where all hell is popping and what isn't popping now will be popping tomorrow.

And I wanted to say some things when I got back. I want you to take a brief look tonight at this world. If the Lord tarries in his presence return, you and I living in this world need to ask ourselves this question again and again.

How am I doing as a representative of Christ, under his commission, entrusted with his gospel? How am I doing? I'm one person in two and a half billion souls living on this earth. I can't, now listen to me, I can't bear the load of this world.

I can't carry the responsibility of two and a half billion people. This world is God's responsibility. Did you get that? This world is God's responsibility. But God, shouldering his responsibility, has made me one of his representatives.

And he's commissioned me with others to carry the only message that can change anybody, anywhere, anytime. And he's entrusted that to me. I can't shoulder the load of the world. You're not big enough to carry the burden of a city, are you?

Bear my burdens that God has put upon me. Every man in that sense must bear his own burdens. And if he's got any quarrel, his quarrel must be with God, for God gave them to us. One thing that will scare you and make the question I'm asking you tonight pretty serious.

We are assured that in 40 more years, now listen to this carefully, in 40 more years, the population of the world will triple. We are assured that by 2000 A .D., if the Lord tarries, there will be over 6 billion people in this world.

Now with civilization spreading, antibiotics and so forth, instead of the babies dying by the millions, and all the other lands, now many of them are being saved. This world, in the next 40 years, you youngsters will live through that span.

Many of you here will, other things being equal. Listen to Brother Mark. We are told by those who know what they're talking about, that in 40 more years there will be 2 billion people, lacking only a few million, being as many people in China as there are in the whole world now.

And the most godless, red-blooded, terrible nation on the face of God's earth is not Russia, but Red China. And ladies and gentlemen, I'm standing here talking to you in a little bitty old tabernacle by the side of the road, a little handful of us folks, but we live in a world.

And in 40 more years, there will be three times as many people in Red China as today, and there's not a missionary of the cross of Jesus Christ in China now. Not a one. They've all been driven out. We're told by those who know that there'll be 1 billion.

You see, they're not 200 million people in the United States now, are they? 180. That's just a million, but we're told there'll be a billion. That's a thousand million, isn't it? People in India in 40 more years.

One half as many people as are alive on the face of the earth now in 40 more years will live in India. You know anything about India? Let me tell you a story that'll break your heart. Mahatma Gandhi. All of you know who I'm talking about, don't you?

Gandhi, one of the greatest men that ever lived. And he had India in the hollow of his hand for over a generation, didn't he? He used to attend a little Methodist congregation in India, and he went there for the purpose of considering the claims of Jesus Christ.

But they were so lifeless and so dead, and died not a Christian. Suppose they had the life of Christ in that congregation. Now there's a billion people going to be in India in 40 more years. In 40 more years, the population of the United States and of Canada will be four and seven-tenths percent of the population of the world.

In other words, the white folks are in for it, folks. Now you think you're facing some trouble here in Winston-Salem, where the whites and the Negroes are about 50 -50. But brother, the yellow man and the black man are going to take this world over.

And in Africa, there are more Mohammedan missionaries in Africa alone than are gospel missionaries in all of the world. Now let me repeat that. You're reading about what's happening over in the Belgian Congo now, aren't you?

Well, a few years ago, that was one of the hot spots of revivals in the world. And yet 900 of the 1 ,000 missionaries have already had to leave. And they're saying now they don't know whether they'll ever get to go back or not.

What I'm simply saying is this. You and I are living in a world where the races that are going to just completely dominate this world are not receiving the gospel at all. You see it? Now we can just face it if you want to, brother.

But it's not only the politicians that are scared to death now. God's people, if we had sense enough to come in out of the rain, would begin to recognize that while we've been respectable Christians, some of us content to tithe and be respectable, this world is rising up in our faces and throwing our gospel down our teeth.

Religious Pluralism and the Urgency of Evangelism

In Latin America, where there are 200 million people now, you know Latin America, Brazil, Argentina, Brazil, all those countries, Mexico, there'll be one half a billion people in 40 more years. And 93 out of every 100 people in Latin America are Roman Catholics.

And only 10 of them ever attend the Catholic Church. In Asia, which will triple in population in 40 more years, they've all got religion. And nobody is preaching the gospel to them. There are 365 million Hindus in Asia.

There are 341 million Mohammedans in Asia. There are 405 million Buddhists in Asia. There are 300 million Confucianists in Asia. There are 25 million professing Christians in Asia. And they've all got their religion.

Windmills. Say that prayer. Now let me give you another sobering fact. Something happened. Within these nations and continents, where the population is going to triple in 40 more years, let me draw this sad picture right quickly.

Communism is on the march. In 37 years, the Communists have taken a third of the people of the world. In these lands, these pagan religions, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Taoism, so forth, Chintoism, are on the march.

405 million Buddhists in Asia. And you know what they're doing? For the first time in the history of Buddhism, they're on the march. And they've created hymns. You know what they're saying over in China now, those Buddhists?

Communists don't mind the Buddhists going to worship. They're saying, Buddha loves me. This I know. To the tune of Jesus loves me. This I know. Chintoism's on the march in Japan. And they say they're going to restore emperor worship.

Which was outlawed, you know, by MacArthur. For the first time in the history of India, the sacred writings of Hinduism are being put in language that the people can read and being distributed all over India.

Roman Catholicism's on the march. Witness what's happening in this nation. The kind of world you and I are living in, and it's not a big world now. When I was a boy living down in Alabama, I used to hear them talking about Cincinnati.

400 and some odd miles away. That fella never get that far. When I was a boy. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from now to anywhere now. We live in that world. And that world is the field. And I've been made a representative of Jesus Christ in that world.

I've been commissioned with my brothers and sisters in Christ to gospelize that world. And he's entrusted the gospel in the earthen hands. And if we don't get it out, it won't be gotten out. I can't bear the burdens of the world.

But God help me, I have to face this question. How am I measuring up to doing what I can do in this world? The New Testament is based on need. It's teaching of you giving yourself and thus what you have is based on need.

My God, the scripture says, will supply everyone. Every need of yours. The scripture say, and distributed them to all as any had need. The scripture say, your heavenly father knows that you need them all.

The scripture says, if anyone says anything to you, you shall say the Lord has need of them. And he'll send them immediately. Need is the Christian basis. If we believe that, not as preachers and people, but as the people of God, we would strike a blow into that awful heresy that has done more to allow this world to get in the shape it's in now than any other thing.

And that's the conception that the only way you can serve God is what they call full-time service. The New Testament calls every Christian not to do a job to make a living and then serve God, but to serve God in his job.

There isn't anything more foreign to the Bible than the division between sacred things and things of the world. Every last one of us needs to consecrate ourselves and our jobs and everything we have into full-time servants that in them and through them we can be God's people in this awful world.

A Christian Life That Makes Others Ask

After we've said everything else, we've used up all the alibis and tried all the plans, the only thing on God's earth that'll work now is for men and women's souls to invest themselves in their daily grind as to serve the kingdom of God and to have men and women taking notice of us to ask us to give a reason for the faith that is within us.

I've never been able to get away from Al St. John. He and I went to school together in the seminary. He was a good-looking duck, came from wealthy Paris. He'd been a terrible, terrible drunkard. He said God saved him.

He was well-educated, but when he got saved, he came to Southwest and trained to be a preacher. And he and I became buddies. He was older than I, but we became buddies. When he got through school, he went to New York City and worked for board and room as an assistant of some kind in the old Bowery Mission.

And later, he was made the superintendent of that mission. Wife and I spent a week. First time we were with him, preached to his bums in the mission every night. Stayed with him day and night. He told me of the greatest thing that had ever happened to him.

He was on the radio, exploiting what they were doing in the Bowery Mission there in New York City. The proprietors of the Adam Hat, I don't know whether it's still a hat or not, but it used to sell all over the country, Jewish men were his sponsors.

And he said, after having dealings with the Jewish men who sponsored the broadcast, for about 18 months, one night a knock came on his door. And when he opened the door, the head partner in the Adam Hat Company was standing outside his apartment door and said, can I come in?

I've got to talk with you. This Jew came in, and when they engaged in the conversation, this Jew man said, I've been watching you, and I don't believe in Jesus Christ, but I've been watching you. And I've come to ask you if you can show me how to get what you've got.

God help us, that said. What's the use of having the Lord suffer every day and going through all these motions, trying to get back to a new pattern if it's not going to develop men and women. And somebody's going to say, I've been watching you.

I'd love to have what you've got. Talk from the time he's knee-high to a death. To have anything to do with this Jesus would be go back on the Bible of his fathers and the religion of his fathers and the God of his fathers.

Comes to a Gentile Christian and says, I don't believe in Jesus Christ, but can you show me how to get what you've got. And Hal said, I haven't got anything, I've got him. Down on his knees they went.

And that Jew surrendered to the one. He said he didn't believe him. Two nights later, three o 'clock in the morning, Hal St. John said, he worked all night with those bums and went to sleep four or five o 'clock in the morning.

He said somebody knocked on the door and liked to knock it down. He opened the door and here's that Jew with his wife. He pushed her in and said, I brought my wife. I want her to get what I've got. I can't shoulder the burden of the world, but I long for you and for me.

Just to be a Christian. Be ready. Give a reason for the faith that's in you. Grady wouldn't be nice, some old bum come over at your place sometime, and you say, Grady, I've been watching you. You've got something I haven't got.

That's what I'm talking about. You've got something I haven't got. Brother, that's our hope. There isn't any hope anywhere else. May God bless you.