09-11-80 10a Part Ii — Bertha Smith

Jesus' Teaching on the New Birth

And Jesus used that as an illustration to Nicodemus as to how he could be reborn. Now you looked up to that serpent, just like your ancestors in the wilderness did, and you will be reborn. You will be healed of this devil nature that's in you, this poison of the devil that's in your nature, and everyone who looked up to that serpent.

And then he said, even Jesus said, now he was using this background that Nicodemus was familiar with, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, I must be nailed to a cross, that whosoever believeth in him will receive everlasting life.

And then he added an explanation of these two verses, for God so loved the Word that he gave his Son to die. Now the real message of how to be born again was the fact that Jesus was going to come and die and be lifted up and become sin, become sin for Nicodemus.

And then 12 is, for God so loved the Word in his love, well certainly, if God hadn't have loved us he never would have sent his Son, if his Son hadn't loved us he would have never willingly laid aside his glory to come down and become man to die.

Believing in Christ Rather Than Merely Accepting Facts

God so loved the Word that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him or believeth into him. Now that word believe has two words, two meanings. In the Old Testament it was trust, trust in means to lean on, to depend on, depend on, lean on.

Now we have our head, our head, word believe, which means we know the facts of the case, we believe, we know the facts, we accept the facts of the case, that doesn't mean we're saved. Plenty of people accept the facts of Jesus being the Savior nailed to the cross, but they've never believed into him, they've never leaned on him, they've never trusted on him, they've never staked their all on the fact that he died for them, they just take it as a mental concept.

And many of the Christians in China, church members, had done that before that great revival came to North China. They believed the facts of Jesus' dying, but it had never been personal to them that that great revival came and they'd had what they had in their heads had to be revealed to their heart by the Holy Spirit.

And they were born again and just declared they had never come to the cross of Christ as lost sinners, therefore they'd never had any fellowship with the Lord again, and had they, as they saw from the Word of God, they had never been saved, just been church members.

And even some of the pastors found they'd never been saved. And some of the people that had even taken persecution for the gospel, for the truth, died for the truth, which they believed in their minds, evidently were not saved because plenty of others that believed just like they did found out they were lost and had to be saved.

Putting Sin and Self on the Cross

Well, there's some things we have to do. And one is we've got to know that our sins are on the cross and that our old sinful self is on the cross. Not only do we put our sins on Jesus, we put our sin, which is our self, which is this old devil nature, that we have the privilege of putting it on the cross because, as we said yesterday, the Lord not only took our sins, He took our sin.

He died for what we are. He settled the sin machine problem. And when we have all of our sins on the cross and our sin on the cross, we can trust in the blood of Jesus to cleanse us from the very contamination of this old sinful nature.

And then we can throw Christ in our hearts instead of ourselves. And those who went to the prayer room last night heard this. Some of you didn't go. I'm just reminding you this is what you to do every day of the world and what you to remind yourself every day of the world when you're alone in your quiet time with the Lord.

And when you're in that position of death and choosing that as a stance in which to live and in throwing Christ in your heart, you're holy. You're in a holy position. And God sees you holy. Why? He counts all your sins as punished on Christ.

And He sees Christ enthroned in your heart. And I'd just like to suggest that when you thank Him that He's enthroned, thank Him that He's enthroned as the Lord Jesus Christ. Because those names have, all three of these names have wonderful meaning.

Lord means the one with authority over you. Jesus, of course, meant Savior. Jesus died on the cross to solve our sin problem. And Christ means the anointed one and the anointed kings and priests. And Jesus is your priest for every day sitting at the right hand of the Father pleading for you and the anointed kings.

Reigning With Christ Through Missionary Service

And friends, you're a person, we are a person with authority. Christ is living His life through you. If the Lord Jesus Christ is the anointed kings and priests, if the Lord Jesus Christ is enthroned in your heart, you're a king or a queen.

In the first chapter of Galatians, the believers are called kings and priests, kings and priests. Kings reign over their domain. Are you reigning over your domain? I have a friend, I say I have her. She died a year or two ago on a mission field.

She brought up six children, every one of them went to the mission field. And some of them said something to her about it, why she said we didn't bring them into the world or bring them up for anything else but to give the gospel to the world.

She was first a public school teacher and then she became a marvelous Bible teacher. And she went to mission fields everywhere. Her children were scattered everywhere on the mission field. And just about a year ago she died in Nairobi in Kenya, Africa, where one of her daughters and her husband were living.

And she'd go out and teach Bibles to an interpreter. And she was just marvelous. And I heard her, I went on a little vacation over to Japan one summer and heard her over there at a Bible conference. She had one daughter and son in Japan, son-in-law, and she was a speaker at the Bible conference.

And I went back and reported on her to our mission, and so our mission over in Taiwan invited her over there. And she stayed three or four months and went to all of our churches teaching the Bible. And I was down in a new place.

I'd been up in the capital until we got two men. And we had about three churches in the capital. And, you know, when we went over to Formosa, I just felt led of the Lord and went first and was there two years alone.

And then later some more women came. And then when two men came to help take over the work, and some of the new women didn't know how much Chinese had to study, although some of them were older missionaries.

We were scattered in three cities up and down the island of Taiwan. I was released to go down to what had been the capital at one time. And we just had three little rooms in a row. And one was a dining room and a little, just a little room about that big for the kitchen back of it.

And they put up a bamboo shed for the servant at the end of the house. That was built of brick. And our maid went and lived with some Christian neighbors while she was there so she could have the room next to me.

And we had to go out on the walk outside to go from one room to another. And she'd come along to my room every morning going to our dining room, which was a living room and dining room. Didn't have anywhere to sit except just sit around the table.

Went into the living room and sat around the table. Well, that's very good if you want to visit. It's just nice. And if you want to read and work and study, it was nice. If you wanted to eat, it's still nice.

Well, anyway, she'd pass along by my room every morning. She'd say, good morning, Queen Bertha. And I thought, well, if I'm not living like a queen, I guess I better be. I better be living like a queen.

The Hardships of Missionary Calling

Well, I'll have to tell you about one of her daughters, whether or not it comes in right here. But it's in victorious living. She had one daughter. All of her children married but one. The youngest daughter.

No, she wasn't the youngest daughter. She was about one younger than she was. Married in another mission field. And she was sent to India. And because the churches that they had tended and knew about in Los Angeles and anywhere around in that part of their city were so liberal, she and her husband just couldn't bring up their children in those churches.

And they had a vacant lot next to their home. Modest home. And he was an artist and they didn't have much money. But everything was just right. Culture. Colors combined right. And what they had just looked right.

It was nice and comfortable. And they built a little church there. Well, other people came. And it just became one of these little interdenominational groups, which was a tragedy. She told me later that her sons were just given the world.

Her sons-in-law would have just given the world if they had been Southern Baptists. But they grew up out there in California and they were not educated in Baptist seminaries. And they went out on what you call these faith missions.

Just friends giving money to support them. Well, that dear young woman was sent out to India. And she lived with two old women that had been out there for years. And we say they had gone age-addict. That means they weren't interested in anything but getting people saved.

Getting saved people to live in victorious life. Getting saved people to getting other people saved. And they just lived with a cook and they just ate what he cooked. And they had some old curtains that just looked perfectly awful in the house.

She had her own room and that was all. And it just nearly killed her. And these two women didn't have time for her, you know. Of course, they didn't realize they were neglecting her. They didn't care how much fellowship she needed.

And they were just, from morning until now, out all the time visiting Christians. Trying to get people saved. And she was digging away on that language by herself. And every time she went out at the door, there were the Indians just lying out.

In South India where it's warm, many of the people don't even have a home. They live a lifetime just out. And they'll just have a straw mat to sleep on. And they'll have something to eat if somebody passes by and throws them some money.

And a lot of them have leprosy. And she'd start out anywhere for a little walk. And these dirty people just reaching up with their leprous hands and having their fingers gone, pulling at their skirts and begging.

And she just couldn't bear the sight of it. But, of course, she just got so homesick she nearly died. And she just had a terrible time with the language. And to add to all those four calamities that had come her way, she got amoebic dysentery.

In those days, doctors didn't know how to treat it. They learned later from German doctors a little bit. But many a missionary went to their grave from amoebic dysentery. And some had to come home for good.

And some of them dragged on with it half dead and half alive as long as they could. And the doctor said to Miss Mitchell, now you've just got to go home. And she said, I can't go home. Since I was 12 years old, I've expected to be a missionary.

And all my life's been getting ready to come. And friends, they had to get up their own support, you know, and their own travel in order to be sent out in these little groups. And all the friends have given money for my travel and for my living.

It's my little bit. And I just can't give up and go home in defeat. Well, he said, you'll die if you stay here. And you've just got to. If you go home, maybe you can get better and come back. Well, very reluctantly and just broken hearted, she dismissed the teaching.

She packed her trunk, took down her curtains and a little bedding and a few books she had and the other things and packed her suitcase for travel. And was to leave the next day about 9 o 'clock. She was accustomed to getting up about 6 every morning to have her quiet time before breakfast, maybe earlier.

Joshua's Victory and the Five Enemies

And lo, that morning, she was accustomed to reading Old Testament and New Testament. Her Old Testament reading was the 10th chapter of Joshua, about the son standing still for Joshua. He was fighting the Lord's battle.

He was driving out those people, idol worshipers, that deserved death in the sight of holy God for worshiping idols. And the Lord told him to drive them out. And he was going to give them, give the Israelites that, had given the Israelites that land to prepare to send the Savior, to be the Savior of the whole world.

And the Lord provided what Joshua needed. And he needed time. And he commanded his son to stand still. And it stood still. And by the way, the Chinese have a record of that in their old histories, of a long, long night when they thought day would never come.

They didn't understand what it meant until the missionaries went out there with the Bibles and they read the 10th chapter of Joshua and they understood it. Well, Joshua conquered 12 kings, 5 kings, 5 kings.

The 5, they banded together and came to attack Israel. Well, the kings all ran into a cave, you remember. And Joshua had his soldiers roll a stone over the cave and put a guard of soldiers there and told the rest of them to keep going.

Well, when the Lord had the son stand still and people didn't fly off into space, as I was taught, that if the earth should cease to turn around, why would everybody fly off into space? We are held here by, what's that in English?

Doesn't matter, gravitation. I want to thank the Chinese word for it. Held here by gravitation. Well, they were held on. They didn't fly off. Well, anyway, Joshua had a glorious victory and came back and they said, oh, the 5 kings.

And he said, bring them out. And remember, Joshua brought them out and had them lie down on the ground and had his captains put the foot on the neck of every one of them. And Joshua said, this is what the Lord will do to all your enemies.

Miss Mitchell Stands in the Lord's Victory

And when Miss Mitchell read that, she said, I've got 5 enemies sending me back to America, spoiling my mission work that the Lord has called me to, and all of my preparation has been for the life of this mission work.

And do I have to let these 5 enemies spoil my mission work? Well, the God of Joshua is my God. And his son, Jesus Christ, is my Savior. And that woman got up and wrote 5 words on 5 little pieces of paper.

How she had to live there with those old ladies. How homesick she was. What a difficult time she was having with that language. Her terrible feeling towards those poor Chinese Indians. And her amoebic dysentery.

And she put them on the floor in order. And she came and put her foot on the first one. And she said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who left heaven and came down here in this sinful world and lived 33 years for me and died, I stand in your victory over this feeling that I have toward having to live with these women like this.

And then she put her foot on the next one. And she said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who never had one furlough back home while he was down here 33 years and had to live with people that didn't understand it and hated it, I stand in the Lord's victory over this homesickness.

And she put her foot on the next one. And she said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, who loves these Indian people, and came into the world and died to save them and love them just like he did me, I stand in your victory over the way I feel toward these Indian people.

And then she came to the next one. And she said, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I stand in your victory over this difficult language. And then she came to the last one, the most difficult of all.

And she said, in the name of my Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who healed every sick person that came to him, I stand in victory over this amoebic dysentery. The old ladies did have a piano. Now I don't know what it sounded like or how many years old it was or how many generations it's been handed down from one missionary to another.

But she went out to that piano. She sent a note to her teacher to come back. And she sat down at that piano and she just played and sang and played and sang and just praised the Lord and praised the Lord and praised the Lord.

And she stayed there. Well, of course, the Lord looked after the amoebic dysentery and all the other enemies. She stood in the Lord's victory. If that woman had gotten cold on her quiet time in the morning, and if she'd just gotten too miserable to pray and find anything in her Bible, that woman would have come home and maybe never gotten back.

And how many people whom she was later able to lead to the Lord wouldn't have been saved. But you know, the Lord not only looked after those five enemies. He did the loveliest thing for that young woman.

Well, I hope it was the loveliest. He sent along a bachelor who needed a wife and he married that young woman and he took her off to himself. And she may have had curtains of mighty cheap cloth, but she could at least combine the colors right.

And she could have some kind of flowers on the table and some leaves that iterate in a warm country where things are green year-round. She's still out there. She and her husband. Serving the Lord, seeing people saved, seeing those Indian people saved.

Daily Surrender, Holiness, and the Filling of the Spirit

Well, the Lord solved all of her problems. All of her problems. Because she was in the habit of reading the Bible every day, she's taking it for herself. And the Lord was able to do those five miracles for her.

No six when he gave her a husband, I guess. I guess he did six. Now friends, if you go on with the Lord, there's just a few things that are absolutely necessary. Put yourself in that place of death and then the Lord who saved you, who fills you up, who's been in your heart ever since the day you were saved, doesn't have to be prayed down from heaven to fill you up.

You've just been grieving if you haven't been living victoriously ever since you were saved. When you're in that place of death and you've chosen that position by a definite act of your will, you've made a break with this big eye in the name of the Lord, you refuse to let this old devil nature dominate you, and you refuse to be dedicated self doing a job for God, you're going to be dead self with Christ enthroned in your heart expressing himself through your personality.

You can invite the grieved Holy Spirit to come out of that corner where you've pushed him back and he's never left. He's gone along with you ever since you were saved doing the very best he could under every situation.

You don't have to wait ten days after Pentecost to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You let the Holy Spirit fill you. Get holy enough to let him fill you. And you're holy if this old self is in the place of death.

And everything that is produced has been transferred to the cross. You're holy if Christ is enthroned in your heart instead of yourself. And you can invite the Holy Spirit to come out of that grieved corner, as I said, and fill you up.

And he will. And in every day of the world let your first conscious thoughts be taking that position of death and praising him that his fullness is for you today. And then go sharing. Go sharing with somebody else.

Go sharing this with somebody else. Go sharing this with somebody else. And suppose you accidentally sin. The devil is always ready to trick us in. Don't wait till night until you have time to pray. Put that sin over on the Lord immediately.

I hope you don't ever have to make another sin list. I hope you never let them accumulate. And, you know, that sin list, I don't know that all of you have heard. Some of you were here when I told you how to settle it.

You can't be right with God and wrong with anybody in the world. One reason I asked you to write those sins was because you'd sinned against so many people. And you might remember a few of them and forget the rest.

But you can't be right with God and wrong with anybody. And you've got to go to those people and beg them to forgive you. And when you do have an accident, you've taken the throne again, you've risen up, you've expressed your old self, that old devil nature, you've grieved the Holy Spirit, and you come right back, transferring that sin to the cross of Christ and thanking the Lord that He died for that sin, and put yourself right back in that place of death again, plead the blood of Jesus for cleansing from the very contamination of that sin, and enthrone Christ in your heart.

He's got to have a clean place to reign. Enthrone Him again and you grieve the Holy Spirit back in the corner, invite Him to come out again and take over. And when He's ungrieved and filling you up, He'll make real what you have willed.

He'll make real your, so control that old sinful self according to your will. It'll be as if you were dead. That old self was just not controlled. And then you, and He'll magnify Christ and the Holy Spirit's filling us up.

He magnifies what you have willed, that Christ should be manifested through your life instead of yourself. Now that's living holy. That's living holy. And that's living. That's living. And be sure you share it with everybody you have a chance at.

Invitation to Repentance and Consecration

I'll let the pastor take over here. There may be some that would like to go back to the prayer room this morning who were not here last night or who were here last night and couldn't wait to stay or didn't feel led to stay last night.

And we'll be happy to pray with you this morning.

Father, You know all of us today even better than we know ourselves. And You know, Lord, that if we stand in our flesh that we can do nothing, we are nothing. And Father, we simply cannot count for You.

And Lord, there are some here today whose priorities are wrong and whose lives are not in tune with You because they, if they're saved, have never been filled with Spirit, have never taken the position that You've given them.

Father, they've never repented of the sins committed since the day they were saved. Now Lord, I just ask You now to impress upon hearts and lives the necessity of making the decision today to break with self and to willfully place self under the blood of Jesus and to take all the sins to the cross and there to meet You.

And Father, You just deal with us now as You already have and give us the power to do what You want us to do with every head bowed, please, nobody looking around. If you really, really want to begin anew with Jesus, to be filled with the Spirit, turn your whole life over to Him.

Everything. Your will, your attitude, your prejudices, all of the things that are so ungodly and wicked in us. If that's your desire. I want you just to stand up and I'm going to ask you to follow Brother Ken over to the prayer room on the second floor.