Cost Of Discipleship - Part 2 — Leonard Ravenhill

Amazing Grace and the Revelation of God's Love

Yeah, it's easier for you and I to sing with eyes of quartz. We're the whole realm of nature mind. I'm afraid we don't do it. Love so amazing so divine. This man had a revelation of God that I don't think anybody's had before or since.

Paul's Life Across the World's Great Capitals

I'm quite sure he quoted with fervency. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He sees the great expanse of the world. Why look at this man's staggering life? He began his life in the historic capital of the world Tarsus.

He ended his life in the military. Were a capital of the world Rome. He went to the intellectual capital of the world. In the 17th of Acts there and and and they discovered this little undersized man when they saw him.

Paul Engages Greek Philosophy and History

They said his bodily presence is weak and discovered he had a staggering scintillating intellect. They quoted poetry answered with poison. They quoted philosophy answered with philosophy. They quoted their history.

He answered with their history. This man is all round. He's fully developed man, and they're staggered by this amazing man, and then he came To a situation that the great Scottish preacher called some years ago.

I'm trying to think of his name as James something, but anyhow the years ago. He said. They listened intently to Paul. They were staggered that this was a Jew should know much so much about Greek history Greek philosophy.

I'm sure he'd read play to all the other stuff, but then As a great preacher says he took the trumpets of the resurrection. He went down the street and when he saw the street. It was lined with churches as we would say it was lined with places of worship all this.

Confronting False Religion and Deceiving Spirits

This doesn't stagger too many of us does it? We just go down the street and say there's a Roman Catholic Church. That's Jehovah's Witnesses. That's the Mormons where the Hare Krishna meet there and the moon the ice meet there and so on.

Does it stir you that those people have been treating to teaching false gods? And they've raped people's minds just that a man might rape a girl's body. It says in the sleepy Elizabethan English That when he saw all these people.

Intellects many of them and yet they were tricked and duped by false religion. And it says in the sleepy Elizabethan English that his spirit was stirred within him. I'm not very fond of the Amplified except where it agrees with me that The Amplified doesn't say his spirit was stirred within him.

He says that when he saw all these people tricked seduced by by deceiving spirits. He was angry about it. Do you ever feel a holy anger? Okay, can you push over there's a crowd a lot of people wanting to come in.

Would you move that way and let them sit? At the end here on the end seats if you can't move to the center. And then they won't have to move everybody else. We're gonna have to put a gallery up Louis.

There's some seats here one two three four. Five six seven now. We'll have to take another offering. They came in late where We're Dealing with 1st Corinthians chapter 3 and talking about at the moment, we're talking about the 14th verse of the epistle to the Galatians where Paul says God forbid that I should glory.

Paul's Pedigree and Intellectual Power

No man ever had a pedigree greater than the Apostle Paul. Of the tribe of Benjamin of the seed of Abraham he has everything going for him. Again I say I believe he had a colossal intellect. I think he had a very brilliant mind.

He he met the philosophers. I said he began his life in the ancient capital of the world Tarsus. He went to the intellectual capital of the world which was Athens and he reasoned with them there and yet.

There is no epistle of Paul to the Athenians. Why? Well, I'm not going to criticize Paul. I'm just going to say this. He didn't talk about redemption what he did say. And they couldn't believe it. He took the gospel trumpet to his lips, and he sounded the resurrection.

You see they did have an altar to an unknown God, and he said that's the unknown God. I declare to you he made the heavens and the earth. His son died and rose again, and he was resurrected. And they showed him the gate.

God's Power to Establish a Church in Corinth

No, we can't listen to that kind of stuff from there he went from the intellectual capital of the world and He'd been also. Later he'll go to the religious capital of the world Jerusalem. But he steps down from the place where they worship the brain to the place where they worship the body.

Corinth. In the days of the Apostle you didn't have to string a hundred adjectives together about a man's corruption. And his life senselessness and everything else. You just tagged him with one word.

He's a Corinthian and immediately you know he was the vilest of the vile. And the old German commentator mayor not F .B. Meyer. He was English, but the other mayor a German commentator says this Blessed and sublime miracle of God that a church of Jesus Christ could be established in Corinth.

Shakespeare said you can't make a Silk purse out of a sow's ear. God can do better than that. He can take the most depraved despised and rejected men and make them Saints to God. It says in the first of Samuel that he lifts the beggar from the dunghill and makes them princes unto God.

Amazing Grace and the Transformation of a Sinner

I Remember about 15 or 16 years ago when we were working with Dave Wilkerson in those days when David was hardly known. And yet we had a full house this side of the prayer chapel was filled with girls this with men.

And a Little fellow stood up, and he said brother Raven. He must come to preach for us. Little Puerto Rican fellow his face was radiant. And he said before he's saying we stand up and sing sing the national anthem.

Oh I thought baloney sing the national anthem right before I preach. I Didn't get what he said. He didn't say sing the national anthem. He sing our national anthem. He said we sing our national anthem, so I thought the Puerto Ricans must have one.

And he stood up there and did not. He started to sing Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I Once was lost, but now I'm found Just grace. That taught my just grace. And you know before we got to the end when we'd be.