Psalms 33 - Christianity Personal Corporate — Richard Owen Roberts

Psalm 33: Praise and the Sovereignty of God

Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones. Praise is becoming to the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

For the Word of the Lord is upright, and all His work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the loving kindness of the Lord. By the Word of the Lord, the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth, all their host.

He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap. He lays up the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done.

He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord nullifies the counsel of the nations. He frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever. The plans of His heart, from generation to generation.

The Blessed Nation Whose God Is the Lord

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance. The Lord looks from heaven. He sees all the sons of men. From His dwelling place, He looks out on the inhabitants of the earth.

He who fashions the hearts of them all. He who understands all their works. The king is not saved by a mighty army. A warrior is not delivered by great strength. A horse is a false hope for victory, nor does it deliver anyone by its great strength.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, on those who hope for His lovingkindness to deliver their soul from death and to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord. He is our help and our shield.

For our heart rejoices in Him because we trust in His holy name. Let your lovingkindness, O Lord, be upon us, according as we have hoped in you.

Now, this might seem a bit absurd, but if you were standing in my shoes, you would understand. It's terribly dark here. I see some lights that aren't lit. Could they be lit? They're burnt out. Well, thank God you're not, and I'm not, but I am dim of sight, and it takes a whole lot more light than it used to.

But I'll do what I can, and I may require your help. Oh, look here. Wonderful. Thank you. Now, let's go back to where we were this morning. We were looking at Luke chapter three, a perfectly wonderful passage loaded with the great truth so critical to our day and our situation.

Personal and Corporate Repentance

Now, the natural response to Luke three would be personal, the preparation of the highway of holiness, the fruit that was appropriate or in keeping with repentance. Even that wonderful section on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire, that can all be personalized.

But if all we do is to personalize it, we have failed largely. The scripture is not merely personal. It is corporate. And for a long time, that was understood. But now we have become so focused on ourselves that we see most every scripture from a very personal perspective.

Now, many of you are aware that just as every individual sins and must repent, so every corporate entity sins and must repent. And just in case one of the young people is not familiar with such an expression as corporate entity, let me remind you of what an entity is.

When two young people like the dear young folk I'm staying with, Mary, they're no longer two persons. They are a corporate entity that we call a couple. One of these days, I anticipate they will be blessed with children.

And so, the corporate term couple is inadequate. Now, we speak of them as a family. Of course, they are a family, just as two, but in a much greater sense, they are a family. When there are children added.

A church is obviously a corporate entity. A mission society is a corporate entity. A school is a corporate entity. A city is a corporate entity. A state is a corporate entity. A nation is a corporate entity.

Just as every individual sins and must repent, so every corporate entity sins and must repent. It would be quite unwise to speak on the subject of revival and to make it purely and solely personal. Now, just think of what you know about this subject.

Most everyone with any serious Christian concern can quote 2 Chronicles 7, 14. If you, as an individual, is that what it says? If my people, and it doesn't say if you as an individual who are called by my name, but again, it's corporate.

If my people who are, not who is, as singular, but who are. Every passage, practically speaking, on the subject of revival has a corporate aspect. Now that, as I've said, is overlooked to an astonishing degree.

And that whole understanding must be recaptured. And we must think not alone of ourselves, but of our Lord. We call him the king. Is it enough to say he is my personal king? Does not the king have a kingdom?

Are you the kingdom? Or is the kingdom much larger than you? So again, I repeat what I said. As every individual sins, so every corporate entity sins. And as every individual sinner must repent, so every corporate group of sinners must repent.

And of course, God, being far more aware of this than we are, has a form of corporate repentance called the solemn assembly. When his people gather together and repent, and fast, and pray, and seek his face, and respond in obedience to all that the Lord has said.

So, as I began, I'm urging again, think of Luke 3 not merely as a word to you personally. It certainly is that. But it's much greater than that. It is a word to the church. And the implication of that, I'm sure, is obvious to you.

The church must prepare the way of the Lord. The church must bring down the high places, fill in the low places, smooth out the rocky places, straighten out the crooked places. And so I would like to begin tonight knowing that some of you have come from a variety of places.

Has your church made ready the way of the Lord? You tell me, well, we have a half a dozen people in our church who are making ready the way of the Lord. Well, good, but that's not what's called for. God expects the entire church to make ready the way of the Lord.

Is it enough to say that we have individuals in our fellowship who are repentant and who demonstrate the fruits of repentance? Well, again, we're grateful that that is true. But why is it that the bulk of the people in the world hate Christ?

Well, because virtually all the Christians, they know, they think, are hypocrites. Now, you know, when a church is accused of hypocrisy or when an individual is accused of hypocrisy, it is possible to say, well, it's true, we do have some hypocrites in our church.

But that's no excuse for you. But why should there be any hypocrites in the church? Now, there were some hypocrites in the church in the book of Acts, but they didn't last very long. I don't need to tell you the account of Ananias and Sapphira.

Now, if God were to destroy all the hypocrites in every church in America, how many would be left? Well, I don't pretend to know that, and that's not our great concern. I'm just wanting you to freshly realize that this subject of revival, which is where our attention is focused this week, is first and foremost a corporate matter.

And because we are all part of some corporate entity, or perhaps several corporate entities, then it is naturally personal as well. But I do want to urge you to think a little further about what I already said, just as every individual sins, so every individual must repent, just as every corporate entity sins, so every corporate entity must repent.

The Roots of Sin and True Repentance

Now, some of you have already thought through this issue I'm about to mention, but some of you have not. Have you ever seriously asked the question, what is the very essence of sin? Well, you say, I'm not even sure what the old man means, the essence of sin.

Now, to help you in that, I remind you of the book of Jude and of the three root sins that are mentioned in the book of Jude. Now, perhaps you haven't even thought your way through the difference between fruit, F-R-U-I-T, and root, R-O-O-T, sins.

But there is a difference. The majority of people who believe that they have repented have repented of the things in which they were caught. I want to be careful. I don't think I have a political bone in my body, but as an American citizen, I am concerned, and we do live in a hyper-political age, and we do have some awareness of what's going on around us.

So let us speak of a past president, a member of the Southern Baptist Church in the state of Arkansas, a man who sang in the choir, and a man long before he was president who was known as a pathological liar and an habitual adulterer, William Jefferson Clinton.

I didn't think he was much worse than a lot of others. I'm not trying to make an example of him as the most wicked president we ever had. I think it would be hard to compete with the present president for that matter.

But I'm not mentioning him tonight. I'm talking about a perfectly well-known incident in the life of President Clinton. A young man accused of adultery, denying it up and down, his wife even joining in and saying, it's nothing but a right-wing conspiracy.

But eventually, he admitted his involvement with that foolish young woman. Now, at the time he openly admitted his involvement, he was invited to one of the biggest churches in the land to speak. And the pastor of that church said, our president has confessed his sin and we must grant him forgiveness.

Well, he didn't ask my opinion. And you didn't either, but you're gonna get it. Confessing what you're caught doing that is wicked is not repentance. The Apostle Paul, some of you will remember, in that most splendid chapter seven of 2 Corinthians, very carefully spelled out the difference between the two forms of repentance.

He spoke about that form of repentance that is still to be repented of, and that form of repentance that leads to life eternal. And what is the difference between those? He spoke in terms of the sorrow that is of the world and the sorrow that comes from God.

When a person is caught sinning and they acknowledge that sin, they acknowledge it, by and large, with the purpose of heading off the consequence of being caught. That's very different from true repentance.

So in other words, it is possible to repent of the fruit, the visible results of sin in your life and never to have repented of the hidden, the invisible roots of sin. So I do want to take a moment to spell this out.

Some of you, I understand, have read my book, Repentance, where there is a careful explanation of these matters, but I'm not of the impression, sir, I don't really know you, but I'm not of the impression, if you hear me say the same thing twice, I have damaged you.

I don't have any difficulty repeating things. Do you mind if I go over things you've heard before? Thank you. She said no. Now, the boy sitting where you are this morning said no at the wrong time. Some of you will remember.

That was you, wasn't it? Oh, come on now, friends. Let's think seriously. In the book of Jude, there are three root sins that are mentioned. The root sin of unbelief, the root sin of stubbornness, rebellion, and the root sin of pride.

Now, I've already told you, when it was said we must forgive the president because he confessed his sin, they didn't ask my opinion, and you didn't either, but you're going to get it, and here it is. Adultery is not a root sin.

Adultery is a fruit sin. Every case of sexual sin that I have had reason to seek to help someone with true repentance concerning has had underneath the outward visible sin a root cause. Just to illustrate, some years ago, I had some very dear friends in the state of Arizona, and any time I would agree to come to Arizona, they would arrange meetings throughout their region.

Then one day, right out of the blue, a pastor near one of my closest friends called, and he said to me, do you know that your dear friend Vince is dead? Oh no, I said, I talked to him earlier this week.

Well, he's passed away. What? Yes, I think you know his whole family. Yes, I said, I know his whole family. Well, his daughter, she's the wife of the church music director. His daughter came home, and she sat down in the living room with her mother and her father, and she said to her parents, I'm leaving my husband.

I'm sick and tired of wiping the dirty bottoms of little kids, and cleaning their hands and face, and all the rest involved in motherhood. I'm going off with a professor in the college, and these deeply committed, urgent, wonderful servants of Christ, a glorious pastor and his wife, said to their daughter, you can't do that.

You're a Christian. Ha! She said, that shows how much you know. You taught me what you wanted me to say, and I have said it to please you, but I'm tired of pleasing others. Now, I'm going to please myself, and her father, in his own living room, suffered a heart attack, and within a very short time, was in the glory.

Repentance of outward sin may be satisfactory from your standpoint, but I assure you, it's not satisfactory from God's standpoint. So one cannot bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance who has not dealt with both the fruits of sin and the roots of sin, and it behooves me to ask you, have you?

Have you truly repented of the roots of sin? It's very common for me in a conversation with someone to hear them say, well, I admit, I'm a very proud person, and that's said in such a way as to indicate to me, of course, that's no problem.

I got good reason to be proud. I mean, look at my handsome physique. Consider the mass of my brain power. Think of my splendid personality and leadership gifts. Well, I spoke to that ever so briefly this morning in mentioning John, who maintained humility by comparing himself not with other men, but with Christ.

But you understand that what I'm telling you is true repentance deals with the very essence of sin, and the essence of sin is self. Sin is me versus you, we versus them, all versus God, and it is not until the self-life is destroyed by the power of the redeeming blood of Jesus Christ that one can be truly considered Christian.

And so again, I must ask, has self been turned away from? Can you honestly say, I am dead to sin? I am alive in Christ. So the root sense, stubbornness, rebellion, disobedience in the form of unbelief.

Faith, Unbelief, and the Baptism of the Spirit

Let me speak just a word to that in case you're careless in facing truth. What does it mean to believe? Someone wisely questioned a statement that I made this morning. When we talk about belief or faith, are we talking about something that is passive?

The difficulty surrounded the word, well now what was the word it's got? Would you help me out? What was the word this person was troubled about? Ah, there you have it, thank you. Choice, and a deeper issue than that.

Claim, to claim. Now some of us have been exposed to that crowd generally known as the name it and claim it crowd. So the word claim can be an uncomfortable claim. But the word claim is an active word, not a passive word.

One can say they believe and they're just sitting down, relaxing, comfortable, enjoying themselves, I believe. But when you claim the finished work of Christ, that's active, you lay hold of what Christ has done.

You live out what Christ has accomplished in your life. Unbelief might not be observed by your using God's name in vain. You may never do that. It may not be apparent because you say to others, I hate God, I can't stand anything God has to say.

It can simply be demonstrated by a passive lifestyle where these great issues leave you unstirred. You could not be described in the language John the Baptist used concerning Christ. He shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.

You don't have power, you don't have passion, you don't have holiness of life. But now I'm urging you tonight, but not just to look at these things in a very personal way, but to look at them in a corporate way as well.

To understand, to be absolutely impacted by the fact that we are, if we are true believers, part of the kingdom of God. It is not merely that we are sons and daughters. Thank God that's true, but there's a larger issue.

We are part of the kingdom of God. Now that is mere introduction. And as I said this morning, just kindness itself will enable you not to start the stopwatch until we start the sermon. And now we're going to come to the sermon.

Psalm 33 and the Danger of Divine Judgment

And we have read out of the Psalms at chapter 33. And that is our great subject for this evening. And what I've tried to say simply is that what we were looking at this morning is both personal and corporate.

But that a great deal of the teaching in scripture on the subject of revival is corporate. Now, we are going to look at Psalm 33. But as I told you this morning, I'm not in any rush. I'm old, I'm tired, I'm weak.

Yes, I acknowledge all that. But I may live out the rest of this day. And I'm thinking that's a good possibility. I'm going to take advantage of it. So what I want you to think now concerning is this incredibly important truth.

We often hear people say, if God is for us, who can be against us? And an awful lot of relaxation is created by that notion that God is for us. And therefore, no enemy really has any potential power to disturb us.

But while there's great validity in that statement, there's another statement that has to be considered. If God is against us, then what does it matter who is for us? Now, look, the issue of revival deals with that very vital fact.

God becomes the enemy of his own people. Now, you may not like that, but you didn't write the Bible. And I'm not moved by your opinions. Well, you say that's pretty strong language. Well, of course it is because it's Bible language.

If God is against us, what does it matter who is for us? And a good many of you understand that when God intends to bring his own people under judgment, he is very likely to use his great enemy to do it.

Now, I want you to think realistically. Here we are, citizens of these United States. Mostly, at least, there might be a few exceptions, and you're more than welcome if that is so. Now, let me just make up some statistics.

Don't pay any attention to the numbers I give. The intention is not to convey specifics, but to get you thinking carefully about a very important matter. It is thought among many believers that perhaps 10 of those in America who call themselves born-again believers actually have the life of God in them.

Oh, you say that's too high, or you say, oh, that's absurdly low. Don't pay any attention to thoughts like that. Just let us suppose that there are 80 million people in America who call themselves born-again believers, and of that 80 million, 10 are genuine.

I made all that up. I hope you know. I'm not giving you specifics, as I said, but I want you to think along this line. So if there are 8 million believers out of 80 million pretenders, that's worth noting.

But now, let's take it in another direction. There are Muslims in America. How many? Oh, I don't have any idea. I've heard different figures. I don't have any notion of what's accurate and what's inaccurate, but again, I'm just pretending.

Now, I'm just using figures just to get you thinking. Suppose there are 6 million Muslims in America, and suppose 10 of them are genuine Muslims. Who honestly believe that infidels like you and me must be destroyed.

That means, on the basis of 10%, there are 600 ,000 Muslims in America ready to destroy everything that is dear to you. I've made it all up. I don't want you to, for a moment, think I've given you absolute facts.

I'm asking you to think. Now, listen, what do you think the United States government can do to prevent 600 ,000 Muslims destroying this nation? It can't even prevent one from beheading someone. But now, this is important.

When God is angry with his own people and is determined to bring them under judgment, he uses, often, his own enemies. Now, there's not the question in the world, but what Muslims are enemies of God. They worship and serve that which is no God at all, that which is grievously wicked.

The whole tone of their system is evil. It is anything but from the God and the creator of heaven and earth. But I'm asking you, fix that thought in your mind. When God is angry with his people, he causes his enemies to bring them down.

Well, you say, that's quite a notion. Where did you get it from? Well, will you, before we look seriously at Psalm 33, turn to the prophet Isaiah and look with me at chapter 63. Now, you know I didn't make this up.

I made up the statistics, but I didn't make up what we're gonna read. Isaiah 63. Will you join me in picking up the reading at verse seven? I shall make mention of the loving kindness of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness toward the house of Israel, which he has granted them according to his compassion and according to the multitude of his loving kindness.

For he said, now look, friends, before I read on, will you endeavor to get inside God's heart? Now, I know that's hard, but you know, as we read our Bibles, we should be gaining God's heart in our reading.

This is the living word of God, the word that will open the heart of God to us and enable us to a measure at least to see what God sees, to feel what God feels. Very critical to a burden for revival is gaining insight into the heart of God.

The only men and women that I know who have persisted over the decades in seeking God in revival are those who caught at least a measure of his heart in these matters. And you don't feel what he feels if you don't see what he sees.

And I urge you each one without exception to set your heart to see what God sees and to feel what God feels. Now, look again at this passage, verse eight. For he said, surely these are my people, sons, who will not deal falsely.

So he became their savior. In all their affliction, he was afflicted. In his love and in his mercy, he redeemed them and he lifted them and he carried them all the days of old. Can you not almost put yourself right there when God brings his people out of Egypt and for 40 years carries them along in the wilderness and his heart is beating with compassion toward these people.

But verse 10, they rebelled and they grieved his Holy Spirit. And in frustration and discouragement, I don't know what to do. No, no, God is not a God of nonsense. He's never befuddled by the evil of men.

They rebelled, they grieved his Holy Spirit. Therefore, he turned himself to become their enemy. He fought against them. Do you understand that when that happens to a people, they only have one hope? Now we live in a very stupid nation with a lot of very stupid religious leaders.

They have some understanding of how awful things have become and how do they deal with it? By some new way, dreaming up some scheme and we've had an endless series. For instance, the church growth movement.

What good did that do? Now we got the multiple campus ministry, oodles of churches that have numerous campuses where one great preacher presides over the whole. If you have a very inventive mind and come up with some new notion of how to do things, you'll easily find a follower because people love notions.

But if God is the one who turned himself and became our enemy, and if God himself is the one who is fighting against us, what good will any new notion do? That's what we're facing, friends. We are facing a God who has turned himself and become our enemy and it is very common for him then to take his own great enemy and use them to bring us under discipline.

There is nothing silly about foreseeing the strong possibility of the Muslims rising up in mass, not from outside, but those right here and bringing this nation down. Now, to whatever extent our government leaders consider that a possibility, they'll go about it by raising our taxes again, thinking that they can cure the problem by spending more money that doesn't belong to them.

But what good will anything like that do? When God is angry with his people, there's only one hope, that his people change so thoroughly that his anger is withdrawn. Now, I want to ask you very bluntly, did you come tonight?

Will you be here tomorrow and throughout the week because you are convinced there is only one hope? So now we're ready for Psalm 33. Our dear brother Anthony has again read it with wonderful focus and emphasis and we're deeply grateful.

“Blessed Is the Nation Whose God Is the Lord”

But now we want to look at it ourselves. And our focus tonight is not the psalm in its entirety, though we shall go over it just so that you can get a true sense of this psalm. But I want to call your attention now to the text of the evening, which is Psalm 33 and verse 12.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance. Let me read it again. And open your heart wide now and say, oh God, let this passage grip me as never before.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance. Now I want to come back to where we began. The problem that has developed in the American church of individualizing everything, of making salvation purely personal, of discarding all sense that he is the God of the nation, not only the God of the person, that Christ the Savior is the Savior of his people, not merely of you as his person.

Now this passage creates a lot of trouble when an old man like me makes statements like I have made and will made because many say, now that passage has only to do with Israel, nothing to do with us. That's of course how those same people treat 2 Chronicles 7 .14 and a vast variety of other passages.

But now let me ask you to really put your heart into gear and to think of the true problem that we face. Number one, I'll give you a series of thoughts to consider. Number one, we assume that Christianity is individual.

Not corporate. I've already tried to demonstrate the absurdity of that. I hope that you realize how false that is. Number two, we recognize the corporate aspects of Christianity but we suppose it all is well in that realm.

That's where the church by and large is at. We've got these immensely successful churches. Now how can a church with 18 ,000 in attendance even for a moment think there's anything wrong? In my city, the city of Wheaton, I had developed an immense burden and I was very astutely aware that the country goes to the city but the city doesn't go to the country.

Now you might not quite know what I'm getting at but it's just one of those sociological facts. The pastors of the little churches will go to the big churches but the pastors of the big churches won't go to the little churches.

Again, a fact. So with that fact in mind, after a great deal of prayer, I contacted the pastor, a dear man. At that time, pastored the church across the place, across the street from our home and our offices and our book ministry and I asked him if he would be willing to call together the other three pastors of the biggest churches in our city and told him why.

And he said, oh, gladly, I'll do that. We'll meet here. And so we contacted these other men, perhaps unwisely, though I think he had to really. He said, Mr. Roberts wants to speak to us. Well, that didn't interest them.

They had a notion of what a jerk Mr. Roberts was. But nonetheless, out of respect for the pastor that invited them, they gathered together in his office and he again told them, Mr. Roberts has something to say to us.

And so I urged them to get under the burden of revival and I laid out a series of obvious facts and I asked them to start by meeting together themselves, the four of them, for a season, time after time, for protracted seasons of prayer.

And then when there was unity and oneness of heart among them, that they begin inviting the other pastors of the area. And then when there was a powerful prayer base among the pastors, that a series of lectures on revival be announced for the whole area, that the largest auditorium in the region was available and that we could meet on Sunday night after all the churches had their regular service, we would in no way interfere with what was going on, simply add to it by a series of lectures on revival.

Now I angered them to a degree in the next statement. I'd like to ask each one of you to give a lecture on the revival, but you've got to agree to listen to every other man. Well, they didn't like that and most popular preachers don't.

They like people to listen to them, but they don't want to listen to the others. Anyway, I'll not go into that, it's a bit wide of our mark. When I finished laying out these things, the lead pastor, the pastor who had called the men together, said, I believe God has put this upon Mr. Roberts' heart and I am ready to commit myself 100 to the series of things he has called for, but I make that commitment of 100 with a proviso.

And that is the other three of you commit yourselves 100%. Then he added, I know you guys somewhat and I know you're not used to giving yourself 100 to the things that really matter. Well, then it was a period of silence and then a second man spoke up and he said, well, I guess Mr. Roberts might be right and I guess I'd be willing to cooperate.

And then eventually a third man said, well, I suppose it'd be wise. And then the fourth man said, no, no, wait a minute. I know Mr. Roberts very well. In fact, I discussed with my staff before I came what Mr. Roberts would be likely to talk about.

And I got a question that we've got to ask. Do we need revival or do we have revival? Well, we have three services every Sunday morning. We have two Sunday school sessions every Sunday. We've got dozens of Bible classes.

We have all kinds of activity for every age group. I say we don't need revival, we've got revival. And I think you can guess what I did, but I didn't do what I'm doing now. I didn't come back. But look, I mentioned that because this is of extraordinary consequence.

We've got to ask with integrity, do we need revival or are flourishing megachurches evidence that we have revival? Are flourishing megachurches are evidence of one thing. We've got some very clever men.

Isn't it amazing you can have a church with 24 ,000 people in it and no prayer meeting? So I'm giving you a brief series now. I'm asking you to consider these issues. Is it safe to assume Christianity is merely individual?

Is it okay to acknowledge the corporate aspect of Christianity and yet to suppose all is well? Is it possible, number three, to recognize the larger dimension of Christianity, but suppose, now here we come home, but to suppose, my dear brother, that you're too inconsequential to have any impact.

Let me ask you, dear sir, do you think yourself a very important man in the kingdom of God? I didn't mean to embarrass you, but each of us must be honest. We admit there is this huge corporate problem of sin, but we say, I'm not anybody.

What could I do? What could you do, my dear young friend? What could you do? What could each of us do that would matter? We're all inconsequential. I'm as inconsequential as they come, but I'm not home sleeping, because I honestly believe that God uses nobody to accomplish his great purposes.

I do not believe there's a person in the room who God could not use. I wish I had known personally Dwight Lyman Moody, a shoe salesman who considered himself a nobody, and the churches considered him a nobody, but he was a burden for the city of Chicago, and he went to a major church and asked if they would give him a Sunday school class of children.

And they said no, and he decided to start a Sunday school for the urchin children on the streets of Chicago. And before hardly any time had passed, he had 300 children in the Sunday school, and some of the wealthy, godly businessmen of the city, like McCormick and the founder of the Quaker Oats Company, got behind him.

And then a couple of elderly ladies cornered him one day, and they said to him, Mr. Moody, we're praying for you. And he suggested they would be wiser to pray for somebody who needed it. And they said, God led us to pray for you, that the Holy Spirit would baptize you in power, passion, and purity.

And God came upon him. When he went to Scotland with his friend Iris Sankey, and Sankey took along his portable organ, the Scotch church people said he brought the devil's box, for tens of thousands of them.

Turned to Christ. When he went to Cambridge University to speak, multitudes of students came because they were hoping for a happy hour, where they could make a mockery of a stupid American shoe salesman.

And they laughed, and they cheered, and they pointed fingers, and they did everything, crazy thing they could think of. But by the next day, hundreds of them were on their faces before God. And a great boost to the whole worldwide missionary enterprise occurred as those Cambridge seven moved out into a world-transforming work.

Don't tell me God doesn't use nobodies. That's all he uses. And why should not each person here be part of this glorious family of God, made mighty both in word and in spirit, and wonderfully used. But now let me come to a very critical issue.

Christian Nationhood and Divine Providence

Does any of what I'm saying tonight really accurately apply to the United States of America? When I was young, I didn't need notes, but I'm not very smart, and never was, and I don't have quite as good a memory as I did, so I didn't want to take a chance, and I brought some notes.