Mysteries of Nature 01 — Walter Wilson

Seven Themes of Grace from Genesis to Revelation

There are seven things that begin in Genesis and end in Revelation. The first is the beginning of the natural earth, the creation of this earth. That begins because that's the sphere of God's grace. He only shows his grace on this earth.

The second is the beginning of man, because he's the subject of God's grace. And the third is the beginning of sin, because that's the cause of God's grace. And then there's the beginning of sacrifice, for that's the means of God's grace.

Then there's the beginning of the nation of Israel, for that's the channel of God's grace. The beginning of the nations is there, for that's the scope of God's grace. And the beginning of the life of faith is there, for that's the result of God's grace.

Now those seven things that begin run all through the Bible and end up in Revelation. You'll enjoy running them down. I'm not going to talk to you about it, but that'll help you to see that there are seven wonderful things to learn, generally running through the whole scripture and ending up in the book of Revelation.

Air as an Evidence of God's Grace

We live by grace, and one of the things that proves God's kindness to us is giving us air. Air is 21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen, and nobody knows where it comes from. And nobody knows where it's mixed, because it isn't a combination, it's just a mixture.

Oxygen and nitrogen are made somewhere, and nobody knows where it's mixed. And we get up in the morning expecting to be able to breathe. It's just God's kindness, for he has to make it and he has to mix it and give it to us, and we live by the grace of God even in the air that we breathe.

Now, there are four other combinations of oxygen and nitrogen, and all of them are deadly poison. So if God would let that formula, 21 .79, change, you and I wouldn't get out of here alive. God has to keep that proportion of oxygen and nitrogen all the time in order for us to live.

That shows how wonderfully we are dependent upon the grace of God. Now, we had rain last night, and that reminded me of a verse God said to Job, "'Hath the rain a father?'. Job 38. God asked him, "'Hath the rain a father?'.

And you might think that's a peculiar question, but it isn't, because no human being can make a drop of water like a raindrop. No matter what you use, whether it's a pipette or a sprinkling can or a hose, no man can make a drop of water like a raindrop.

The raindrop falls a mile or two miles, driven by a strong wind, and whenever it strikes anything at all, it spreads out immediately. It strikes a pansy leaf or a wheat leaf or a piece of tissue paper, it doesn't matter what it strikes, it at once spreads out.

But the drops of water that we make are like bullets. They have to strike something hard enough to make them spread out. Nobody's ever found out the secret, but God is the father of raindrops, and we ought to remember that this rain just proves the grace of God, because rains come in the spring when the tender vegetation is coming up, and these raindrops strike pansies and strike the fresh leaves, the old little tender leaves, and doesn't hurt them any.

And if God didn't do that, the rain would tear the vegetation all to pieces, and we wouldn't have anything to eat. How wonderful it is that God has taken care of even that particular part of our lives.

The Mystery of the Beginning and Ending of Life

And then nobody knows when the heart begins. I brought babies into the world for 35 years. I never found when a baby's heart gave its first beat, whether it's a closing beat or an opening beat. What makes it do it?

Nobody's ever found out. I was in the surgeon's room one day with five other surgeons, and each one of them, well, one of them had brought over 5 ,000 babies into the world. And I said, Dr. Lapp, when does a baby's heart give its first beat, and what makes it do it?

And is it a closing beat or an opening beat? And he said, well, Walter, you've got better sense than asking me that question. I've been trying to find that out for many years, but I haven't found out.

Nobody knows. What does make it start? And is it an opening beat or a closing beat? And when does it start? We know approximately when. It's about 16 weeks, but nobody's ever heard the first one yet, and nobody knows what does it.

You see, we live by the grace of God. He starts it, and the one who starts it is the one who's going to stop it. And we don't know any more about the stopping of it than the starting of it. Now, mine's been running for nearly 82 years.

I never greased the valves nor ground the valves nor wound it up nor did anything to it. The truth of the matter is, you wouldn't know you had a heart if you didn't get mad at somebody or fall in love with somebody.

Weeds, Memory, and the Propagation of Evil

Then, of course, the thing gets out of bounds a little bit. Now, a word about weeds. How many of you plant weeds, dandelions, ginseng weed, dogfell, cocklebur, sandbur, beggar lice? Every weed is self-propagating, but nothing that we use for food is self-propagating.

Wheat won't plant itself, nor corn nor rye nor oats nor barley nor potatoes or tomatoes or anything else that we eat. Nothing that's good for us is self-propagating. Everything that's bad for us is self-propagating.

Now, a cow will go through a pasture, a weed patch, and come out with beggar lice and cockleburs all over her tail, and every time she switches it, she plants a few. But you can send her through a garden of vegetables, she won't come out that way.

Or any other thing, corn or wheat or rye or oats or barley, she won't bring anything out unless it's in her stomach, because weeds are self-propagating. A dandelion comes up and goes to seed and goes all over the neighbor's yard before you can get out there and dig the thing up.

It has a sail to carry it, and a little hook on the end of the seed to make it stay there when it gets there. But corn doesn't have that. Wheat and rye and oats don't have that. Nor potatoes nor carrots.

I don't know why anybody wants to eat carrots anyway. But there are some things that are not... Nothing that we use for food is self-propagating. That's a wonderful thing. And God is telling us by that, that evil is the same way.

You hear a dirty joke and you remember it for ten years. You hear it the same day you hear a good verse of scripture or a thought about that verse and you've forgotten it tomorrow. Any wicked thing sticks to us and is easily carried and told from person to person.

But things that are a blessing and helpful and profitable, why, we don't carry those. We forgot about them. In fact, tomorrow if somebody asks you what Wilson preached about yesterday, you won't know.

We don't remember it. I was in a meeting in Philadelphia, in Minneapolis, and a boy led the singing, sat right in front of me about five feet, just about as far as those letters there, right in front of me when I spoke.

That night I was in a church giving an address on personal soul winning to the Sunday school teachers of that big church. And that fellow was there. And I said to him, what did I preach about? He said, Dr. Wilson, that was a wonderful sermon you gave us this morning.

That was wonderful. I tell you, I like that. I said, what did I preach about? He scratched his head. When a man scratches his head he's looking for something. So he didn't know. He didn't know what I spoke about.

That was the same day. And so after a while the Sunday school superintendent came in. He said, Dr. Wilson, you made me late to work this morning. I said, I'm sorry, I didn't see you at the meeting. No, he said, I was on my way to work and I had my radio turned on and I heard you speaking.

And he said, that was wonderful. I never heard anything like that in my life. You know, I read that verse many a time, but I never saw that in it. I said, what did I preach about? He said, surely I come quickly.

And the boy said, oh yeah, yeah, that's what it was. Yeah, sure enough, that's what it was. Same day he didn't know what it was because the good things don't stick to us. But weeds, boy, they're made to stick.

And some of them have a seal, Scotch thistle, has a sail on it, you know, just like the dandelion does. And the wind carries it all over the country. And then there's always a little hook on the end of it, of the seed, to make it stick when it gets there.

Because everything that's of the devil is self-propagating. But the things of God, we have to study them and memorize them and learn them and work over them and pray over them and help each other to think of the things of God.

The Power of Life and Metamorphosis

Now, you can't keep a good bean down. You plant a bean, I don't care what kind it is, and then there's been no rain for a while, and the surface of the earth is hard. And after a while, you go out and you say, oh, my garden is coming up.

And so you see a big cloud of dirt there, big as that Bible, and it's sticking up. And you wonder what's doing it. And so you lift it up and you find this bean has started up and has two tiny leaves on it, little leaves, soft as velvet.

And those two soft velvety leaves are pushing up that thing that'll weigh five pounds. You figure that out. You can't. How could you take those and lay them on the table and put a blotter on them and lock them down flat?

Yet those two soft leaves will push up that, because that's the power of life, and you can't explain it at all. But it does. And then when it comes up, it brings a half, one leaf has half of the bean on, the other leaf has a half of the bean on.

You see, it's proud of its father and mother and brings them up to show them off. And if it's a climbing bean, it goes up the pole from left to right. See, all the beans that you eat are left-handed beans.

They always go up from left to right. But morning glories go the other way, and peas go the other way, from right to left. And if you unwind them and wrap them up the other way, they'll die on the third day.

They won't grow contrary to nature. They can't have their own way, so they die of a broken heart. You can't get any vine that climbs from right to left will not change from left to right. You can't make them do it.

And you can't understand it. You know, beloved, this thing of understanding is, I quit years ago. Every 100 miles somebody says, I can't understand this. I say, well, you don't need to, do you? Quit it.

You save your mental processes. Now, there's another remarkable thing in nature that God uses in our own Christian life, and that's a metamorphosis. That's a Greek word that means a change from one form of life to another.

The caterpillar goes into a cocoon, wraps itself up in a cocoon, and when it comes out, it's a butterfly. It goes in yellow, it comes out red. It goes in crawling, it comes out flying. It goes in with a mouth and comes out with a proboscis.

It goes in with 14 legs and comes out with six. And when you look in that cocoon, you can't find those other eight legs in there. It goes in with hair and comes out with scales, and when you look in there, you can't find the hair.

Does the caterpillar eat the hair off itself, or does the butterfly eat the hair off the caterpillar? Where does it go? And it goes in with 14 legs and comes out with six. Where are those eight legs? Does the caterpillar eat its own legs off, or does the butterfly eat the legs off the caterpillar?

Where do they go? They're not in there. You know, what we understand, wouldn't fill a very big book. And in the green scum pond, there's a grub about as big as your thumbnail crawling around. It looks like a dune bug.

And after a while, it gets a funny itching feeling, and it climbs up a reed. And when it gets to the surface of the water, it bursts open, and a dragonfly comes out out of that burb. What is it that, what does that?

I don't know. But that's what's called a metamorphosis. God plants a handful of carbon in the ground, black carbon. When men dig it up, it's a diamond. And God plants a handful of yellow clay in the ground.

When it comes up, it's a sapphire. And God goes, puts some sand in the ground, and when it comes up, it's an opal. What does that? I don't know. That's what's called a metamorphosis. Now, and you take an ugly bulb and plant in black soil and surround it with vile-smelling fertilizer and water it.

Transformation by the Holy Spirit

And after a while, you have a white hyacinth coming up out of that black dirt, and one of the sweetest-smelling flowers you ever put to your nose. That's a metamorphosis. Now, in Romans 12, 1 and 2, you read this, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body, B-O-D-Y, body.

It doesn't say your well body or sick body. It doesn't say a pretty body or an ugly body. It doesn't say a fat body or a thin body. It's just the kind of body you have. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body, make a present of your body, a living sacrifice, holy.

When you give it to Him, it's a holy thing. And acceptable to God. That's God the Holy Spirit. He's the one who wants your body, the Holy Spirit does. The Lord Jesus has His own body. What does He want with yours?

The Father doesn't need a body. He never gets one. But the Spirit of God wants your body. He has come down without any body, and He lets you give Him yours and mine. And then the next verse says, now the first verse is in the active voice, something we do.

But the second verse is in the passive voice and something He does. When you give your body to the Holy Spirit, He does three things. The first thing is, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world.

He keeps you from being like the others. But be metamorphosed. Be transformed. That word transform is this word metamorphosis. By the Holy Spirit, by changing your mind, He fixes the mind up. By the renewing of your mind, so we think God's things all day long.

We think God's things when we go to the market, or to the office, or to the books, or wherever we go, whatever we do. He changes our mind to think His business, and our thoughts are along the lines of the things of God.

That's the second thing, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. So when He controls our minds, you don't say, why did this happen to happen to me? Why did I lose that money?

Or why did my relatives treat me like that? Or why did I get a cancer? Or why did I lose my sight? You don't think that at all. The Spirit of God changed your thinking that His will is good and acceptable to you, and perfect.

Now the Lord wants to do that in our lives, that metamorphosis. Change us from the kind of a person that we naturally are, into the kind of person that we supernaturally should be. And the Lord wants that in our lives.

Then the next thing. You see, I'm just jumping around to give you different things, because there's a tree I have that has branches in every direction. Do you remember reading in Matthew, If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness?

If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness? Now, I didn't understand the meaning of that until one time in Dallas, Texas. I went to an exhibition of the General Electric Company.

They were showing the newest things in electricity. I was in a building, not as large as this, about a fourth as large as this, perhaps. It was in July, and all of us were dressed in fancy clothes. I had on a fancy necktie and colored shirt and a blue suit, and others all over the place were dressed in fancy colors.

The women had their fancy summer clothes on, and the men had fancy neckties and so on. Lots of color. And on the walls, which were solid, there were no windows, there were conventional designs of many colors of lines.

Every kind of a color was there, and in the middle of them was a black line. It went in all sorts of directions, jagged lines all around you. The man on the platform had a table, and on that table he had a very large electric light bulb.

He said to the man in the wings, turn off the house lights. And he did, and it was dense dark in there, absolute black. Then he turned on this light, and every color in that place was gone. There wasn't a color left.

All of us had on gray suits, gray neckties, we all had gray hair, and the hats were gray hats. The only thing left there was gray. And the black lines, the black line on the walls, we could see that. But all the other colors were gone.

So he changed that, and he turned this off, and he turned the lights on in the place, and there were all the colors again. Then he did it again. He did that three times, and each time he turned this light on, all those lights disappeared.

I said, thank you, Lord. I know the meaning of that verse now. That verse, if the light that is in me be darkness, how great is that darkness? And then he explained to us that this bulb he had there was full of sodium vapor.

And he said when light goes through sodium vapor, it abolishes all other colors except black. And he proved it to us. Couldn't see any color there except black when he turned this light on. And I said to myself, thank you, Lord.

I appreciate that. You see, Christian science turns on their light, and God disappears, and hell disappears, and heaven disappears. All the lights of this Bible disappear when she turns on her light. The Mormons come along and turn on their light.

The Catholics turn on their light. The Russolites turn on their light. Everybody that turns on a light, a homemade light, man-made light abolishes something in this book. Some of the light of this book disappears when every false religion turns on their light.

False Religion and the Loss of Gospel Truth

I said, thank you, Lord. I'm glad you told me that. Because I found my own taste, both as a physician and as a preacher. I get up against every kind of a thing there is, from Mohammedanism and Buddhism and Confucianism to the worst we have in this country.

Every one of them turns out some light that comes from this precious book. And the truths of this precious book are abolished, some of them by one denomination, some by another, some by another. I must tell you a case I had out in Independence, Missouri.

That's the headquarters of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And I know their doctrines pretty well. I've been mingling with them a good deal. And one of their doctrines is that they're saved by baptism, water baptism, immersion.

But the only sins put away are up to the time you're baptized. It doesn't put away any of the rest of the sins, only up until the day you're baptized. And I knew that. So at the end of one of my Bible classes out there, I was speaking on the power of blood.

A woman came up and said, I disagree with you. I believe we're saved by baptism. I said, have you belonged to this Reorganized Church? I do. How long have you been a member? Four years. Were you baptized when you joined?

Yes, sir. Were your sins put away up till then? Yes, sir. I said, have you committed any sins in the last four years? Well, I'm sorry to say I have. She was an honest woman. She meant business. I'm sorry I said I have.

Well, I said, how are you going to get rid of those? She said, I never thought about that. My gracious. Well, I said, I'll tell you what you do. You might be asphyxiated tonight or get in a fire or die of a heart attack.

You better send for the elders of that church and get baptized tonight because you might not live overnight. She said, that's right. I certainly will. Well, I said, I suppose they come and baptize you tonight.

How about tomorrow? Suppose you commit some sins tomorrow. How are you going to get rid of those? My gracious. Well, I'd be in a mess, wouldn't I? I said, you would. I said, lady, I'll tell you what you do.

Justification by Faith and Spiritual Blindness

You fill up the bathtub and get in there and stay under. That's the only safe place for you. If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness. One of the executives of Montgomery Ward came into my office one day.

I used to build lots of stuff for them in my factory. And he came in and over my desk I had that verse, Romans 4 and 5. To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

He looked at that and he was a very fine man, a well-educated man. He said, Wilson, I never saw anything so crazy in my life as that. I was always taught that God hated sin. Here you say he justifies sin.

And you want me to believe in a God that justifies a man for going out and committing murder and adultery and thievery and everything wicked? You mean tell me God justifies that kind of a man? I spent 30 minutes trying to explain what justification was and the meaning of that verse.

And when he went out, he was just as black as when he came in. How great is that darkness. I didn't make a dent on him. And I thought I knew how to explain that. He didn't get inside of his heart, though.

That's how dense the darkness is. The devil blinds the minds, the mind, where the thoughts are. The devil blinds the minds of those that believe not. So they can't see just the plainest things in the word of God.

I was in a church down in southern Missouri on Sunday. I was going through and stopped there. And I went to one of the churches. And a woman was teaching the church. And the lesson was on the 13th of Matthew, the seven parables.

And that dear woman got up and said, I've read that chapter over and over again. It's all black to me. I can't see one thing in there to talk about. That's where the seven parables are, you know. One of the richest parts of the word of God.

And that precious woman, after reading that over and over again, saw nothing. The mind is blinded. That's the reason we have to have Romans 12, 1 and 2. He changes the mind, the Holy Spirit does. When you trust the Lord Jesus and he saves you, and you take the Holy Spirit and let him be your teacher, then he opens up the mind, and we understand the things of God.

The Person and Ministry of the Holy Spirit

Well, that's all I'm going to give you on that subject. I want to talk to you now about the Holy Spirit for a few minutes. I hope you know him. I hope you know him. Most God's people don't. Never get acquainted with him at all.

And some years ago when I was writing my little book on Ye Know Him, I wrote to five of our finest Bible teachers in the United States and said, can you tell me the name of any book about the person of the Holy Spirit?

They couldn't give me one, except one man told them about Dr. Howard Kelley, Mr. William Kelley, who wrote a book a hundred years ago called The New Testament Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. You can't get it now.

It's gone out of print. But I got the names of lots of them about his work. Lots of them about his work. I want to ask you, how many of you ever heard a sermon on the person of the Holy Spirit? Not his work, his person.

One. Nobody preaches about his person. It's his work. A lot of his work. How many of you heard a sermon on the person of God the Father? Put your hand up. The person of God the Father. One, two, three.

Isn't that strange? You see, the Father and the Holy Spirit are utterly ignored, except by a sideline. We want to get something, we go and ask the Father for it. But that's all. He's a banker. We go to him and ask him for something.

And yet the whole book of Romans is about the Father. There are twenty times as many references to the Father in the book of Romans as either of the other two persons of the Trinity. The Romans is the revelation of God the Father, yet you never hear anything about it.

Somehow or other, we miss these two wonderful persons, and yet Christ says that no man cometh unto the Father but by me, that he might bring us to God, that's God the Father, and so on. He's the ultimate.

He's the goal. The Lord Jesus saves us and brings us to him, but he's bringing us to him. But we pay no attention to him. And you listen to the prayers. There's almost no prayers about the person of the Father or the Holy Spirit.

I want to help you this morning. Stir up your pure hearts by way of remembrance that there are three persons in the Godhead, and each one is to be loved the same, obeyed the same, listened to the same, and loved the same, and worshiped the same.

Receiving the Holy Spirit in Salvation and Baptism

They are three equal persons. Now, in regard to the Holy Spirit, you remember he's the object of salvation in the second chapter. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall take the Spirit.

Take the Holy Spirit. That is the object of their getting saved, so that you have that lovely person. Then you remember, you Baptist friends, in the 10th chapter, Peter said, Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized which have received or taken the Holy Spirit, as well as we?

Not because you have taken Christ. The presence of the Holy Spirit proved they had taken Christ. He wouldn't be there if they weren't saved. And yet the object of baptism was that they had taken the Holy Spirit.

Can any man forbid water? Cornelius and his family were saved. Can any man forbid water that these should not be baptized which have received the Holy Spirit, as well as we? And Paul's concern about the Christians' emphasis was, Did you receive the Holy Spirit?

Nineteenth chapter of Acts, verse 2. Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you were saved? And that is the desire of Peter and John at Samaria. The Samaritans were saved through Philip's preaching, and they came down from Jerusalem to tell them about the Holy Spirit, for Philip forgot to do it, or didn't do it.

They didn't come down to tell them some more gospel. They came down to tell them about this person, the Holy Spirit. You see how wonderfully important he is? And the Lord Jesus said, It's expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come.

But if I go away, I'll send him to you. Did you give him a welcome when he came? Did you give him a welcome when he came? If he came to you, did you give him a welcome? Tell him you're glad he came? I expect we might say like the Ephesians, we don't know anything about him, except that his name's in the Bible, you know, and we know something about him.

And we ask the Father to teach us by the Spirit. Now, suppose I go over here and play the piano. I want to learn to play it. And so I call up the Warsaw Concerto of Music, and I say, Please send me a teacher.

I want to learn to play this piano. And so Dr. Muntz comes in. He's our best teacher, they tell me. And so I don't pay attention to him. He comes in, sits down beside me, that piano, but I pay no attention to him.

And I come across some strange words in there. I see the word RIT, R-I-T. And I bought that at a drugstore, so I don't know what this stuff is. And then it says Cress, C-R-E-S. And I bought watercress, but I don't know what this cress is.

And the bottom says, Fine. I didn't even play it. And then it says, D-C, District of Columbia. And so I go and call up the conservatory at Warsaw and ask them the meaning of these words. And I say, Won't you please explain these to me by your teacher?

Well, isn't he there? Sure. Well, why don't you ask him? Do I need to explain that to you? Why don't you go right straight to the Holy Spirit? He came here to teach us. Why ignore him? And ask the Father to do something that this precious teacher is here to do.

And that's the reason so few people of God's people get anything out of the Bible that's worth telling to another. They read a chapter and feel good, but get almost no truth. And not many of God's people could explain the Ephesians.

That had been saved forty years. Or Galatians, or 2 Corinthians. Couldn't explain it at all. We know a few verses, you know, nice verses. And the reason is that we ignore the teacher. When he has come, the 16th of John, he will teach you.

It doesn't say the Father will do it by his Son. Now, none of us say, Father, we thank you for dying for us by your Son. We never say that. We go to the Lord Jesus and say, thank you, you did it. You gave yourself for my sins, that's our conduct.

And you gave yourself for me, that's our character. For he had to die for both our character and our conduct. And we thank the Lord Jesus for doing it. We thank the Father for sending him. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we ignore him.

We don't think he has any job unless he's kind of an errand boy for the Father. When he has come, he will teach you, he will guide you. Our brother was telling us, Brother Strauss, about the guidance of the Spirit.

But we don't look to him to do it. We don't expect him to do it and say, no, this morning, Holy Spirit, I'm going to work with you, you and I are going together. And I expect you to guide me into the paths I should walk in, and lead me to the person that's in soul trouble, take me to the person that wants what I have to give, and enable me to give it.

I'm looking to you to do it. And the life of expectancy, beloved, from him is the life of usefulness and fruitfulness and surprise. Because you'll come across folks in the most unusual way. The Spirit of God takes you to them.

You see, he knows who's in soul trouble. You don't know. Neither do I. We don't know where to find them. And personally, I don't believe God wants you to run up and down the streets all day long trying to find somebody.

Because if you're depending on him, he'll take you to the person and save your time. I've seen it over and over and over again in these years since Dr. James M. Gray introduced me to the Holy Spirit of God.

He's the one that makes Christ precious. And you know, beloved, you'll take scriptures that you've never seen anything in at all, and you'll find something about the Lord Jesus there, the Spirit of God will show you, that makes you love him all the more and worship him all the more.

And you get to know him so intimately that his presence, his person, fills your heart with gladness. But if he's ignored, he can't do it. Now, we treat the paper hanger comes and hangs the paper, but you don't care anything about him.

And the plumber comes and opens up the pipes, but you don't care anything about him. And the doctor comes in and takes care of the sick person and goes away, and you don't care anything about him. You don't want to marry him and live with him.

That's the way we treat the Holy Spirit. We want him to do some work. We want him to help us to understand the Word. We want him to use us. But we pay no attention to him himself, and yet he's one of the persons of the Godhead, and he wants us to love him.

You read about that in both Philippians and in Corinthians. He's a lovely, wonderful person. Now, somebody said to me one day, where does the Bible say you can talk to the Holy Spirit? I said, I want to ask you a question.

When did anybody come to your house and bring along a note saying you could talk to him? Did you ever hear such a thing? The paper hammer comes, the plumber comes, the doctor comes, the music teacher comes.

Do they bring a note saying you can talk to them while they're there? That would be absolutely absurd. The personal presence of anybody carries with it the privileges of conversation. Isn't that right?

When anybody comes to the door, they don't have to hand you a note saying you can talk to them. That's absurd. His presence carries with it the sweet privileges of conversation. But you remember in the over-quoting umbrella verse, there's a verse I call the over-quoting umbrella verse, because when the preacher quotes it, the people grab their belongings and start for the door.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit, or fellowships, same word. Did you ever have that? Did you ever enter into the joy of that communion with the Spirit of God?

He's telling you what's in the Word, you're telling him what's in your heart. You talk with him about the people you want saved, talk to him about the class you're teaching. You talk with him about the Word when you open it up.