Beatitudes - Part 1 — Leonard Ravenhill

So I'll have the check ready and then I'll go. What I want us to do in these times that we do have together is study what is certainly very, very fundamental to our lives. The greatest sermon ever preached was obviously preached by the greatest man that ever lived, who was Jesus, and it's called, for one reason only, it's called the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes

Now, I don't think that's a very good title for it. That merely speaks of the place where Jesus spoke. It doesn't give you any idea at all. It doesn't give you a clue at all as to the content of the sermon.

Now, the Old Testament begins with the life in the Garden of Eden. Now, without looking, tell me how the Old Testament finishes. Can you give me the last clause in the Old Testament without looking? Well, it began with life in the Garden of Eden, and the last phrase in the Old Testament...

No, wait a minute. I'm thinking of Genesis, actually. Genesis begins with the amazing story of creation, about life. The last statement in Genesis is a coffin in Egypt. So even in that one book you have a span from life to death.

Now, without looking, what is the last word in the Old Testament? Now, strange enough, the last word in the Old Testament is curse. And the first word in the ministry of Jesus in this sermon is blessed.

So, there again is a great contrast. The last word, the final word in the Old Testament is curse. The first word of Jesus is blessed. Now, in this version, in Matthew, it begins in the chapter 5, you remember, and it goes through three chapters, 5, 6, and 7.

There are 110 verses of what we have called, in the first part, it's called the Beatitudes. And if people sometimes say, well, what are the Beatitudes? Well, I kind of like to play with words, and I say, well, they're exactly what they are, Beatitudes.

They should be the Beatitudes of our lives. That's what they should be. You know, that wonderful chapter of Paul's in 1 Corinthians 13, it has 13 verses, and it's in the Authorized Version, in the sleepy Elizabethan English of the Authorized Version, you remember, it speaks there about the, a word that's used in a very different way today, charity suffereth long of this kind, charity endeth not, charity vaulteth not itself.

Well, all the modern versions, and they're not all good, but they've done one thing, they've taken that shabby word charity, which means disposing of your old clothes, or, you know, giving away your surplus cash or something, they've changed it to love.

Now, that makes the reading entirely different. Now, there's another way you can read it, and maybe you'd like to do this afterwards, and that is to put yourself there. And it's pretty close reading, you know.

I suffer long, I'm kind, I envy nobody, I'm never rude, I'm never resentful, I'm never glad whenever anybody goes wrong, I'm always slow to expose, I'm always eager to believe the best. I'm giving you Moffat's translation actually there.

But that's what it says in essence, you see. Now, could you legitimately put yourself in there? Okay, well, read it this way. Take out charity, take out love, take out yourself, and put Jesus there. Jesus suffered long, he was kind, you know, we talk about the fruit of the Spirit being love, joy, long-suffering, well, that's what it's talking about in 1 Corinthians 13, and it fits perfectly, 1 Corinthians 13 is a full-length portrait of Jesus Christ.

It is a full-length portrait, or should be, of a Spirit-filled believer. Now, what is the Sermon on the Mount? The Sermon on the Mount, I think, is a full-length portrait of Jesus Christ. Now, you know, the Scripture says, and it's a very, very, I was going to say acid Scripture, that wouldn't be right, but it's a very, very testing Scripture.

There's a Scripture that says, As He was, so are we when we get to Heaven. No, in this world, in this world. We're supposed to be miniatures of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm convinced of this, that if every professing Christian in America, or England, or Australia, whatever you may be, if every professing Christian in the nation lived the Sermon on the Mount, one day, we'd turn the nation upside down.

Believing and Behaving the Scriptures

Mrs. Wesley, as you know, I've said often enough, she had 19 children. She needed to be wise to manage that bunch. And she used to stress to her children, there are two things to do with the Scriptures.

Number one, believe them. And number two, what was the other? Behave them. Now, we've been very strong on believing, haven't we? But we've been very weak on, we've been strong on believing, but we're very weak on behaving.

And yet, that's exactly what, you see, the redemptive value of the cross is to get out of us all that they came in, whatever came in with the fall. You know, there's no knowledge, we've very skimpy knowledge of what Adam was like.

I'm sure he was a beautiful creature. I figure Adam was about six feet four, you know, muscular, colossal intellect, nice beard like my friend here, and like Keith's trying to get. Because there was no shaving, you know.

C .T. Studd used to say, don't bring me those men with effeminate faces that have to shave their whiskers off and look like women. He thought that a man without whiskers was trying to look gentle and, you know, sweet and show his skin like a lady, give us some muscle man.

Now, we have little idea of what Adam was like. But, you know, I personally feel that Jesus was like that too. I think Jesus had a beautiful physique. Now, he wasn't physically beautiful, but I'm quite sure he wasn't hunchbacked, and I don't think he slouched, and I don't think he did anything that hadn't discipline in it.

I think Jesus was a perfect example of manhood, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. Now, when Adam came into the world, he had a perfect environment. You could pick a snake up, you know, cuddle it at night when you went to bed.

You could have a lion on one side, a tiger on the other. There's no curse. You wouldn't get a thorn in your foot if you ran through the trees. You wouldn't get stung by a bee because they had no sting.

There were no nettles to sting you. There was nothing that would hurt, or defile, or injure. Adam came down a perfect man in a perfect environment, and he messed the whole lot up. Because of his transgression, the curse came into the world.

Now, Jesus did the very opposite. Jesus came into the world, surely a perfect man, but to a very imperfect world. I try to stress to people when they say, oh, the world's falling apart. And I say, well, listen, let me get this clearly into your mind, that Christianity was not served up to the world on a silver platter.

Christianity was born in a sophisticated totalitarian society. My dear wife and I used to live in the city of Bath in England. And if you haven't been, you should go. Everybody should go to England and complete their education.

But if you went into the city, you'll find there's a bath wider than this, and twice the length, and there are statues of the Caesar, you know, Caligula's there, and Caesar Augustus, and Julius Caesar.

Did you see them when you went? Yes, Poli's been, so there's one educated lady here. And those old things are still there. Now, that bath was created by the Romans in 55 BC, 55 years before Christ. It's the only hot spring in England.

It's still working there. Bath is a beautiful, what we would call a spa. It doesn't have any industry. It's a beautiful city. The retired kings and nobility and all the rest of us, I mean all the rest of them live there.

It's a beautiful, beautiful city. But it was established when the English were still, well, they weren't swinging from tree to tree, but they were certainly very uneducated, and they were very backward.

And you find cities like Chester, and Manchester, and Winchester, and Colchester, and every city that has the Chester behind it was at one time a Roman settlement. Now you think that 55 years before Jesus came into the world, there was already a civilization, a greatest military machine in the world.

And Jesus came and the world was a slave empire. And yet he never said a word about slavery, did he? The Apostle Paul doesn't say a word about slavery. The only thing he says is be a good slave. Well, that wouldn't go down very well with the AFL-CIO, would it?

I mean, you have to rebel and kick over the traces. But I'm saying that Christianity was born in a very unacceptable hour. And Jesus came in at the critical hour. I mean, come on, he's going to preach the Sermon on the Mount.

The Sermon on the Mount in a Hostile World

If a man compels you to go a mile, go a second mile, what do you mean? Well, if you're carrying your groceries down the street, put them down there and this Roman says, carry my load. You say, yes, sir, yes, sir.

And you can hardly carry the thing, you're tired. And then when you get to the end of the mile, you say, excuse me, do you mind if I carry it another mile? What? You're being sarcastic and silly. No, no, sir, I'd like to take it a second mile.

Oh, Murphy. And I'm sure if it was like our day when he went back, his groceries had been stolen, they would our day anyhow. Who's going to leave groceries at the side of the road? You see, if you read the Scripture, in this environment, thinking about, oh, there's a jet just gone over, oh, oh, there, oh, oh, TV, oh, somebody else comes up with a computer or some other silly thing.

But anyhow, we live in this environment, don't we? We don't see things as they were when they were created. You see, there could be nothing more astonishing than Jesus coming. We forget the cultural shock.

I thought, Matthew gives us this account. Well, Matthew comes with a gap between Matthew and Malachi of 400 years. As far as we know, there have been no angelic voices, there have been no revelation, there have been no prophet.

Isn't it amazing that in the most critical hour, what's called the Maccabean period, Judas Maccabean and all those guys rebelling, that for 400 years, God hadn't said a word to those people. Now, can you imagine what will happen supposing God cuts us off, supposing that the world is going to go on another 400 years and God withdraws his spirit and the lights go out in the nation and there's no witness and there's no prophet.

How in the world would we get on? Why doesn't God come to man in this 400 years of total darkness without any prophetic light, 400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice, and then suddenly, dramatically, instead of the Holy Ghost coming down on the great temple in the middle of Jerusalem, there's a rugged, ragged kind of guy up there yelling his head off and people say, Hey, do you know what's happened?

No. Elijah's come back to earth. Boy, that's a pretty complimentary thing. Nobody's ever mistaken me for Elijah, but to say, How do you know it's Elijah? Oh, you've got to hear him. I don't know whether they talked about unctual anointing, but they sure knew he wasn't like the priest in the temple there.

He was very, very different. And again, you know, he didn't have any chairs for them to sit on and he didn't have an auditorium. He didn't have an overhead projector. He didn't have any handbills. He didn't have a publicity man.

He didn't even have a mailing list. Isn't that amazing that John the Baptist could manage without a mailing list? You know, none of the stuff, we're so used to gimmicks and gadgets and this is how we'll do it.

Tell us how you do it. Where did you get such a big crowd? Where did you get this? And we copied everybody's method. We're trying to help Almighty God out, you know. Lord, you can bless this. Lord, you can do that.

John has nothing. And yet, you find the Apostle Paul in acres of culture. He's a scholar. He's a gentleman. He's the most amazing Jew in the world at that time. And he says, I have nothing. If he stopped there, you'd shake your head and say, What?

He says, I have nothing but I possess all things. Now the church has everything and possesses nothing. It's an amazing thing. So for 400 years there have been stillness, stagnation. They've gone through the performance.

They've shed the blood of bulls and goats. They've gone through the ritual. And then suddenly out there a guy comes up and man, everybody goes. Jews, Gentiles, even the Romans went. The Romans with their breastplates and their plumed helmets.

And while John was preaching, they cried out, What shall we do? Now we have to say, Close your eyes. We'll sing Just As I Am once more. Would you like to come down? Please, please, please. Oh, we beg and we scrape and we reduce Jesus to bargain basement salvation.

That's what you do in evangelism. You don't do that in revival. In revival people do the calling. It says John began to preach. What did he preach? He preached repentance. And it said the people cried out.

And then it says the publicans cried out. Not the republicans, the publicans. The republicans, you can get, republicans are too hard. But the publicans cried out. And then the Roman soldiers. Well, they haven't gone out to hear the gospel.

They've gone for the novelty. They've gone because they said, Well, we've seen that priest going all his strength when people bow down and say your excellence. He wore a golden crown with holiness on.

He wore garments of glory and beauty. And he wore a breastplate with twelve big stones. And on each stone was the name of one of the tribes of Israel. And he was next to God. Look at the difference in this little squirt of a fellow down here.

I was preaching in a holiness conference some years ago, you know. And they're very, very strong undressed. If you wear shorts, you're going to perdition. And, oh, and it was a hot afternoon and they were wilting.

And so I thought, Boy, I'll make this congregation sit up. And I said, You think of John the Baptist there in his leather shorts. Whoo! Everybody jumped up immediately. And when I left the platform, the leader jumped on my, got my coat and lapels and nearly broke my neck.

He said, You put the message of holiness back ten years with what you said. John the Baptist having shorts. I said they were shorter than that. They weren't even shorts. He was eleven girdle around his loins and a smelly old camel skin around his neck.

But he had one thing you don't have with all your smart clothes. He had the Holy Ghost upon him. And as I've said many times, you never have to advertise a fire. Whether it's a physical fire or a spiritual fire, you don't have to advertise it.

Fire is the most attractive thing in the whole world. But I'm saying, think of the cultural shock after 400 years. And they just got over John the Baptist and then Jesus came. Oh man, this is worse than ever.

John did no miracle. Jesus didn't do anything else but miracles. And they just got over Jesus and then up came the most brilliant man that I think ever lived. The Apostle Paul. Well, we don't think of that, do we?

We just read it, Paul went to Corinth, Paul went here, Paul went, wait a minute, there's that one cultural shock through, again, through John the Baptist, the next one, they have Jesus coming and there's an argument and he divides people.

See, people say, well, you know, it would be wonderful if we had revival, we'd all be one. No, it wouldn't be fragmented. Wherever Jesus comes, he brings division. Before he could walk or talk, there was a bunch, about 20 at the very most, maybe 15 of them in Jerusalem and it says, Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him.

But there's a little group here, Hannah, an old lady, an old prophetess, and Elizabeth, and Zechariah, and Mary, and Joseph, and the old prophet there, maybe not more than a dozen of them, welcoming Jesus.

That's the only welcoming committee he had. Immediately he was born, all Jerusalem was against him. When he died on the cross, he divided men. One went to perdition, one went to heaven. He went in the synagogue, there was a division because of him.

Wherever Jesus goes, there's division. I remember, when you're in the city of Bath, we had a church there and we had a lot of society people. People who danced in Buckingham Palace, they knew the royalty, they knew the dukes, and the lords, and the ladies, and they came as humble and sweet, beautiful girls.

They'd studied music in conservatoire over in Europe. They'd studied painting with the modern masters in Belgium, but they were the sweetest, loveliest bunch of folk. One day, I remember a young lady came in the tent where we started the meetings and she knelt there, beautiful looking, gorgeous clothes, had a real Oxford accent, you know, cultured English.

About a month after, her mother came down and said, oh, her mother was really hot. What have you done to my daughter? No, I haven't done a thing. Well, since she met you. No, she didn't meet me. She did meet you.

No, she met Jesus. She met Jesus. Well, you know, when she came home, she didn't want to take wine before dinner. And she didn't want to take a cigarette. And she didn't want to play cards afterwards.

She's become very unsociable since she became a Christian. Our home is divided, I thought, there you are, you've got it. Jesus comes in and divides. That girl actually went to one of the poorest hospitals in London, foot-slugging it there in the dirtiest part of London, stayed there three years, then she went over, of all places, she went to Afghanistan for some years.

One day, I used her as an illustration in London in a conference. A young lady came to me afterwards, she says, was that young lady's name Mary Barton that you mentioned? I said, yes. She said, oh, goodness.

I said, what's wrong? She said, she was my roommate for nearly three years and I never knew she was a society girl. I never knew she came from one of the upper-class families. She never mentioned her family.

She was sweet and loving and so gracious. She always made me feel so inferior. And not because of her scholarship and ability, but the grace of God in her life was so beautiful. Made me feel sometimes, am I really a Christian?

She oozes out with love and she oozes out tenderness and she overflows with compassion and she goes out of her way to be kind. I know it's a very filthy thing, yes, but let me do it. Somebody comes in all mangled up, you know, there's some other mess and says, oh, it turns my stomach.

She says, all right, dear. Listen, I'm going off-duty but I'll gladly stay and do it. Going the second mile all the time. Again, this is what the world looks for. It isn't waiting for a new definition of Christianity, it's waiting for a new demonstration of Christianity.

Man, you can make definitions like turning sausages out of a machine. Definitions don't help us. I don't know whether you believe this or not, but when I go in the restaurant I never eat the menu card.

Do you? You see, oh, we went to one recently the card this length and all the beautiful pictures of it. We said we'll take number one. Sorry, that's only Wednesdays. We'll take number five. Oh, we just ran out of that.

We'll take number four. Well, I think they just finished that. You know, the church is like that. It's got the menu card here but it can't serve the meal. You see, we've got our tall theology. Who in the world cares a hill of beans about our theology?

If Jesus said, by their suit she shall know them, it would be one thing but he didn't say that. If he said, by their gifts she shall know them, that would have given a lot of people a big hand. He didn't say by their gifts.

But rather, nine gifts of the Spirit, nine fruits of the Spirit. I could live without any gifts of the Spirit. I can't live without any fruits of the Spirit. I've only met one man in my life who said he had all the gifts of the Spirit.

We were at a conference and he said to me about the second day, you know, Brother Avondale, I'd like to hear you but you know what? He said, how many gifts of the Spirit do you have? I said, how many do you have?

He said, oh, I have all nine. Oh. The biggest one was humility but anyhow. He said, you haven't met my wife, have you? I said, no. He said, she's coming tomorrow, you'll see her. And he said, she has all the nine gifts.

Oh, I said, it must be wonderful. Are you a pastor? No, we get about 90 people in our house on a Sunday morning and I, well, I usually minister but you know, my wife's very envious of my, oh, oh, with all the gifts, she's envious.

He said, well, I have to tell you this but right now we're considering separation. Not divorce but separation. Any family? Three boys. Well, why are you going to separate? Well, because she thinks she doesn't get enough time to minister Sunday mornings.

I take too much and she's very jealous and I said, well, she sure doesn't have all the, she may have gifts but brother, she lacks fruit. You see, if your, if your Christian life goes sour, those fruits will dry up like, you know, it's like going to, out to California there and you see all those grapes, you know, and if you leave them too long they shrink and shrink and all you've got is a bunch of raisins.

You know, some people are like that. They're hanging on to dried up old gifts that have lost all their juice and sweetness and beauty and they're hanging on a few gifts. We don't need all the gifts of the Spirit.

It'd be too much for us to, most of us couldn't manage them all anyhow. We'd get too swell headed but I need every one of the fruits of the Spirit. I need love and joy and peace and long suffering and gentleness and meekness and goodness and temperance and faith.

I need every one of them. Now again, Jesus comes in the fullness, in the anointing, in the power of God. Back there in the Garden of Eden, perfect environment, a perfect man comes, mess the whole thing up.

Jesus comes into a world full of hostility, it's so imperfect and crooked in that day and yet he comes in the midst of it and he isn't contaminated by it. You can't corrupt him, there's no way you can destroy what he has.

His relationship with the Father never varied. His obedience never varied. In the midst of a crooked and perverse generation he even declared he was a son of God and that's what got him into trouble. He didn't get into trouble for doing miracles, he got into trouble for saying he was a son of God.

The Beatitudes as the Agenda of the Kingdom

Now in this outline that we have in the 5th chapter of Matthew, I think it was old Matthew Henry that said, how did he put it? This is, hmm, I'm trying to think, I can't, I won't come to it, come to me later I'm sure.

But what he's saying in essence is this, oh, it comes back to me now, he said, this is not the credenta, by credenta he means, this is not a list, a creed of things that we believe, but it's the agenda.

The agenda, when you go to some kind of meeting and say, this is the agenda, this is the things, these are the things we intend to do. Now actually here there are, I guess really, you can divide them different ways, but at least there are 10, oh, let me say this, this book of Matthew, OK, it comes after the 400 years of stillness and quietness, huh?

Now, there's a word used in Matthew, it's used 15 times, more than in any other place in the other gospels, fulfilled. Now, you know, there are some people who will not touch the book of Matthew, do you know why?

They say because it's for the Jews. God is speaking to the Jewish nation. Sure he is. When we were out in the Bahamas some years ago, I mentioned something about the epistle to the Hebrews. Oh, we never touched the epistle to the Hebrews in our church.

I said, you don't? No, no, it's for the Jews. Oh, and Matthew is for the Jews. Oh, and so you don't read them or teach them because they're for the Jews? No. Anybody in your church ever preach on You Must Be Born Again?

Oh, it's one of our key verses. Oh, I said, lady, you're in error. What do you mean in error? I said, because it's spoken to a Jew. A certain man named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, the same came to Jesus by now.

That's the most used chapter in the whole Bible. John 3 .16, John 3 .10, John 3 .30, he must increase, I must decrease. It's the most used chapter in the whole Bible. And it's directly spoken to a Jew.

It's out of bounds to you. Oh, no, it isn't. No, it isn't. No, I said, neither is Matthew, neither is Hebrews. They were people who had come into a living faith in Jesus Christ. Now, again, that word fulfilled is mentioned fifteen times in the, Jesus came to fulfill the law of the prophets.

It's mentioned fifteen times in the gospels recorded by Matthew. And then, there are more quotations in Matthew from the Old Testament than there are in Matthew, than are in Mark, Luke and John put together.

That first gospel, as you call it, there are not four gospels. We often refer to four gospels. There are certainly not four gospels. There's only one gospel told by four different men. Matthew shows Jesus Christ as a king.

Mark shows Jesus Christ as a servant. Luke shows Jesus Christ as the son of man. And John shows him as being equal with God. In my opinion, the whole gospel of what, twenty-one chapters in John are all condensed into that first, first, simple, beautiful, first chapter and the first verse.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. OK? Again, in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, and the word was God. In the beginning, eternity. The word was with God, equality.

The word was God, deity. So there you have it. In the beginning was the word, eternity. The word was with God, equality. The word was God, deity. And then the rest of the book is an exposition of all that's packed into that first verse.

Now Matthew shows Jesus Christ as a king, Mark shows him as a servant, Luke shows him as the son of man, John shows him as the son of God because he was a son of man and he was a son of God. Now if you want to read, if you want to study the prayer life of Jesus you'd go to the gospel as recorded by Luke.

Luke is emphasizing the humanity of Jesus that as a man he is totally dependent on the Father in everything. And so when you read, you read that John was baptizing in Jordan and Jesus came and the Spirit as a dove descended upon him, but Luke says that the Spirit descended upon him while he was praying in the Jordan.

The other evangelists say Jesus died on the cross, Luke says that even when he was dying he was praying. The other evangelists say that Jesus chose twelve disciples, Luke says it was after he spent a night in prayer he chose twelve disciples.

And usually when I'm in a church I say, hey if you spent a whole night in prayer before you chose your deacons how many would get in? We don't put deacons in office in a modern church because it's full of faith in the Holy Ghost.

We put them in because they own two Texaco stations and a hot dog stand. You never find any poor men on a diaconate. You don't find poor men on mission boards. We were in a place a few months ago and they gave me a sheet of their, you know, paper.

It had a nice masked head and down the side it had something. Then across the bottom all the members of the board. Mr. So-and-so, President of So-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so, the owner of a big industry, she's a millionairess.

Mr. So-and-so, the chief, and all the people that were quoted at the bottom were all somebodies. Not nobodies. Somebodies. We've fallen into the same trap as the world. You see? Well it's alright, I mean, if you're going to have a good man you may as well have a good man with money, maybe.

Just a man who's kind of sanctified and good but he has no cash. So why are you going to hitch him up? You know this book is so devastating against worldly systems. That's why the world can't get on with it.

Well, I've got news for you. Even the church can't get on with a sermon on the mount, never mind the world. It's the most incisive teaching that there is. It's the most beautiful thing that there is. Now it says here in Matthew, seeing the multitude he went up into a mountain and when he was set or sat down his disciples came to him.

Well the teachers always sat down. I'm not a good teacher because I'm standing up but do you remember when the Holy Spirit came on them in the upper room? It came where they were what? Well where they were sitting it says.

They were all sitting. Now think of the first time. Isn't it amazing that Jesus went to a hill and we don't know any name. Why didn't he go to the hill where Moses went? Ooh, no you can't go there. Man, that 24th chapter of Exodus is devastating.

Moses has to leave millions of people and take 70, 3 plus himself. And then he leaves the 70 and there are 4 of them. And then he leaves 3 and takes Joshua with him. And then he leaves Joshua and he just goes up on the hill by himself.

And he's wrapped in a cloud and the whole mountain shakes and God says at the beginning of the 24th chapter there, Moses shall come only and worship me. So there he is wrapped up in a cloud on that mountain.

Fire is there, the earth is shaking, it's terrifying. Jesus goes up on the mountain and a great multitude followed him. It's not a case of keeping away, it's coming near. But he doesn't address the multitude.

I don't believe he addresses the multitude. Because it says in the first verse of chapter 8. When he was come down from the mountain great multitudes followed him. Now I kind of figure that in this address that Jesus gave, that the disciples were immediately in front of him and the rest of the crowd were out there looking on and saying, oh this amazing man, this amazing teacher.

There's no way, there's no way that calm men are going to digest the sermon on the mountain, it's totally impossible. There was no way the disciples were going to live it until eventually they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God, otherwise this is a total impossibility.

You see men have always reached out for a utopia. One day we'll, what did Russia do? Russia said we're going to have a classless society. Russia doesn't have a classless society even today. If you went to the opera house, when there's a big show on there in Moscow, if you went to the opera house at night, you'd see beautiful cars, Rolls Royces and other, just for a select company of people.

All they've done, they've changed the buses. In other words it's a different hand that's in the tail. They have not abolished a classless society. There's only one classless society and that's the society of Jesus Christ.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, born nor free, male nor female, all one in Christ Jesus. Doesn't matter where you go, if the fellowship is there, if the Spirit is there, the Spirit bears witness with your spirit, this is a healthy group of spiritual people.

I preach in some of the greatest churches in the world. And yet the outstanding meeting I was ever in was a crowd about as big as this, all lepers, way up in the northern part of Thailand. They had no medication, they stunk like a, well if you want Macefield's word, a fox's gut.

Because when they kill a fox and cut it, it's worse than a skunk. And it was the open air, it wasn't a building. And their arms were little points here, all scaly and fingers were all matted and green with mould and pus.

Some of them just had a string holding their eyeball and you could see where their tongues were joined in their throats. Some were blind, leaning on others. Some had half a leg and they were hopping. And they came and met in a place, a bamboo shed and outside it said, oh 50 yards away, do not enter, leper colony.

And the young lady that took me there, she's at Worldwide Evangelization Headquarters now with her husband. She and her husband were out there and she took me to the colony, we went into that colony. And she's Swedish and she's a blonde and she'd win a beauty competition anywhere and she was about the most gracious girl that we had as a student at Bethany, 20 years ago, 25.

And she sat down in the midst of that bunch of lepers, I was moved to tears. It was like seeing a white lily on a bed of scum, you know. Or a white lily on a manure heap. And I thought, that girl always looked beautiful.

But today, surrounded with decayed and decomposed bodies and ugliness and bald heads with scabs on them, you couldn't describe the horror of it. And yet those folk who had, some had no fingers, they'd have stump and these fingers were bleeding and they were clapping them together, singing like this, my Jesus I love thee, I know thou art mine.

And I thought, yes and Jesus is looking down from heaven and maybe getting more genuine praise out of this and out of a congregation of folk with stained glass windows and a steeple and a rogue choir and all the rest of it.

We dress up our gospel, we try and make it presentable. Sunday morning, sickening on TV, you've got to give it a Hollywood presentation and the world outside laughs at it. They say 12 .5 of the people of the nation only look at TV and what percentage of that is Christian anyhow?

I think nearly 12 of them. Not maybe half of 1 look at the, unsaved people look at the show as they call it, the Christian shows. You see, again, Jesus was so simple in the way that he came. No ostentation, no show.

And he's trying to get through to these people that if you're going to have the life I have, it's a case of character. For after all, that's what it's all about. You would think after you read the first seven, seven is a perfect number, you know, and the first seven Beatitudes, which are to be the attitude, and he's built them up, you know, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the meek and so forth.