Crucified With Christ — Leonard Ravenhill

Spiritual Immaturity and Division in the Church

Paul to the Corinthians, the first epistle. First epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 3, reading from verse 1. And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.

I have fed you with milk, and not with meat, for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able, for ye are yet carnal. For whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men?

For while one saith, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are ye not carnal? Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, that ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man? I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that watereth are one, and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour.

For we labourers together with God, ye are God's building, ye are God's husbandry. One of the great forgotten preachers in America, and I never see him quoted anywhere, was a man by the name of Henry Varley.

And he left a place in history, I think, because on one occasion he said something that maybe he'd like to recall right after he said it. I've preached like that sometimes, you have if you're a preacher.

But he said on that occasion, the world is yet to see what God can do, or a person God can do through a man or a person who is totally committed to Jesus Christ. There was a young man listening, he wasn't brilliant, he hadn't been to Bible school, which was an advantage, and he just sold shoes in a shop, that's all he did.

Just an ordinary commonplace shoe salesman. But under his breath he said, well if the world hasn't seen what God can do through a man totally committed, then I'd like to be that man who is totally committed.

And eventually he got to be quite well known, his name eventually, well at the same time as a matter of fact, that nobody knew, it was D .L. Moody. Moody was no scholar, he murdered his English. Instead of saying Daniel, he said Dan-eel, and he said Jerusalem in one big slur.

But he left an imperishable record, and he rewrote the history books in some areas. I'm quite sure that Varley wasn't justified in saying what he did say. World is yet to see what God can do through one man totally committed to Jesus Christ.

Paul's Damascus-Road Conversion and the Encounter With Christ

We already had that man two thousand years ago. He was a man that was going down the Damascus road wearing a toga, and in that toga he had what he thought was the death sentence of the Church. And he was going down the road breathing out threatenings, mad, intoxicated, infuriated.

Somebody dared to stand up against the great religious system that had prophets like Isaiah and deliverers like Moses, and other great people there, and a bunch of little nondescripts who suddenly set up a rival religion.

And so again he set off on that Damascus road, and it was very wonderful. You know when he testified afterwards on two occasions, and Daniel said the same thing if you ever dip into that book, apart from trying to find the mystery of his middle toe on the left foot.

But if you ever read that book you may remember that Daniel said that there was with him a company of people, and they saw light, but he said I only heard a voice. And do you remember that Paul said the same thing, he was going down that Damascus road breathing out threatenings.

He was going to wreck Christianity. And yet afterwards when he's testifying he said, there shone round about me and them that journeyed with me a light from heaven. But I heard the voice. And you know I've got beyond crowds, dear Van Tavener says, he's an unusual preacher he is, he said I start with a good crowd Monday night and it goes down right to the end of the week.

Well I'm getting that way as you can see. I was thinking of preaching tonight on Will Ye Also Go Away. But the fact is you see that he said the light that shone round about me, I'm not concerned about a crowd anymore.

I've preached to thousands in ballparks here, there, everywhere, so what. But I'm quite convinced that God would convene a meeting like this and bring me a few thousand miles to preach in it just for one person.

You know Jesus preached his greatest sermons to one person, one woman at the well and questionable morality. A man up a tree. My we need to preach to a lot of them, a lot of people up trees these days.

And we need to get them down. But he preached to a man up a tree. He preached to Nicodemus, to Zacchaeus, to the woman at the well. The greatest sermons he preached. There shone round about me and them that journeyed with me a light from heaven.

You see he reckoned on that Damascus road, he reckoned on everybody but Jesus Christ. And isn't it amazing that Jesus slipped off his throne as it were and met him there. I'm glad he met Jesus. I'm glad he didn't meet a preacher.

I'm glad he didn't meet one of these funny folk down the street, you know, that carry a big banner and give you a copy of the four laws. That would have been the end of Paul. But he met the Lord. Isn't that great?

Sometimes you think, no, all right, have it your way. I think it was wonderful. I think that the fact that Jesus met him in the way, he never forgot it. And if you go to hell after tonight, you'll never forget that you meet Jesus.

It can't be the same. If you have a confrontation with a preacher, if you listen to theology and say, well, I don't quite agree with it, you know, it's a bit boring and this, that, or the other. So what?

But if you meet Jesus Christ, you'll be entirely different. There, Sean ran about me and then that journey, and so on that Damascus road, he gives you really a summary of what really happened to him. Something miraculous.

How do you explain his, well, his outrageous sacrifice, his unquenchable zeal, his deathless commitment? No man ever withstood all the temptation and trial and difficulties that he did, but you see, he explains it through his epistles.

I selected them for you because he says, on that Damascus road, what happened? Well, he didn't just say, well, I believe you're the son of God. What happened? He said he exchanged his life because afterwards he said, it's not I, it's Christ that liveth me.

So the life that he embraced is an exchange life. It was an expensive life, it cost him all that he had. That's something we sing, but of course Christians don't tell lies, they just sing them in church.

And so we sing, were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering, and we wouldn't give him it. We won't give him Wednesday night. People in this church have sung it many times. I'm sorry for pastors these days, whatever church I go to, maybe it's me, but not a quarter of the members of this church have turned up this week.

Maybe not a fifth of them. Rub their eyes when they sing the old rugged cross, and when I surveyed the wondrous cross, and were the whole realm of nature, forget it, they're lying, they don't mean that at all.

But Paul did. Everything that everybody was reaching after. He was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was of the seed of Abraham, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he belonged to the most exclusive holy club in the world, and they guarded it lest anybody should soil it with their sinfulness.

And yet my richest gain I count at last, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the seed of Abraham, the most colossal intellect I'm sure of any man that ever lived outside of Jesus Christ himself. And then he says, what things were gained to me?

He could have made a list like that and said they were gained to me, and he said, it becomes offensive, he says, I counted them, but done, that I might win Christ and be found in him. So on that Damascus road it was an exchange life, it was an expensive life, and the secret of his success is spelled plainly for us in this, he says, this one thing I do.

Paul's Single-Minded Life of Sacrifice

It was an explicit life. I find preachers who are selling this on the side and doing that on the side. Now if the Lord called you to sell made tag washers, go sell them. I'm not suggesting that you can't be a spiritual person and sell them, but I'm convinced of this, and it's a paradox and maybe I contradict myself sometimes because I really wish in my heart there were no professional ministry.

I think the saddest thing that ever happened in the church is when we had a professional ministry. And if you think you can't run the church without professional preachers, what do you do with the Plymouth Brethren?

They're one of the holiest groups and they have no paid ministers. Be that as it may, Paul says that all these things that were gained to me, I counted them, but done, that I might win Christ. It was an explicit life, this one thing I do.

Nothing could shake him out of that. Lash him at a whipping, Paul said 195 times, let him hang on to a piece of wood in the Mediterranean in the night and the day I was in the deep, in weariness, in painfulness, in fastings, in perils of the deep, in perils of mine own countrymen, enough to kill a thousand people.

And he sums it all up like this, he says, our life's affliction which is but for a moment. Isn't that a joke? You thought there were no jokes in the Bible, Paul's full of them. A hundredth part of what he went through would kill most of us, it would torpedo us and sink us, we'd never get out of it.

But not so with the Apostle. No sir, this one thing I do. He had seen the vision glorious, to use a phrase of Lloyd Douglas that talks about the magnificent obsession. He was obsessed with Jesus Christ.

Nothing else is worth talking, not a life is worth living. And he takes his vast intellect and his scholarship and his pedigree and his being of the tribe of Benjamin and the seed of Abraham and he flings it all at the feet of Jesus and says listen I'll exchange the whole lot.

It was an explicit life, this one thing I do, it was an exciting life. He wrestled with wild beasts at Ephesus. I think that means the deacons, check with the amplified. But it was not only an extensive life but it was an exciting life.

He wrestled with wild beasts and you know what, it was an extensive life because Paul is still preaching tonight. You talk about out of his inmost being shall flow rivers of living water. People have been under the wild banana trees in Papua trying to figure out with the finger, reading something of the translations of the Apostle Paul and the intellectuals at CBC have been trying to find the answer in the Greek and what not this week.

Isn't it amazing the coverage of his life? Out of his inmost being he might have been a genius and invented some things in his day but you see he took not merely his lousy sins to the cross, he took himself to the cross.

He took not only behavior, he took his whole being there. Where the whole realm of nature mine, I'm glad you sang the old rugged cross. I thought you couldn't sing the other hymn, Beneath the Cross of Jesus.

I love that hymn of Clephens. You see, I think he did this. I'd have to work a lot on it but I'll go over it in one statement. I believe that he really did survey the wondrous cross. When you see all he did, how he planted churches over Asia Minor.

He wrote 14 epistles, if you include the epistles of the Hebrews. And I read his life and I say to myself, my, I'd like the power of the apostle. Why, do you know what he did? He did everything Jesus did.

Whatever Jesus did, Paul did. He healed the sick, he cast out devils, he even raised the dead. Don't tell anybody, I mean don't mention this in Dallas, will you, or CBC. But you know the Baptist down in Africa raised the dead, did you know that?

I'll give you the name and address of them. Raised the dead. Little Bumer, a little black man about this height, went into a meeting place not long ago. They called him from the central office in town and said you're on duty in the cemetery this week to bury the people that have no church membership.

And there's a man, say Jack Jones, he's in the hospital, he died this afternoon, you bury him tomorrow at two o 'clock or the day after and that's it. And the little black man went down, called a couple of beacons, and he said come down to the hospital and pray with me.

Oh we'd be glad to come with you pastor. He didn't happen to mention the man was dead he was going to pray for. And so they went down and when they got there he had checked in at the office and the man said well, he said you fellas sit there.

And the man said oh he's in the morgue, he's on the slab number 12, pulled the curtain back in, do you want to see him? He said you don't have to bury him till tomorrow you know. He said that's right.

So they went down to the morgue and he pulled the curtain back and the deacon said he's dead. That's right. What are you going to do? Oh yeah I'm going to pray for him, raise him up. Do you mind if we go home?

Well of course they believe the Bible from cover to cover. Sure, they're good deacons you know. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever. His power is just the same until they have to operate it.

And do you know what the little man did when the deacons backfired, which they often do? He pulled the curtain over and he climbed on the body of the dead man, just laid on him and put his hands on the dead man and his face to him and he said, oh I must tell you this, he'd just finished seven days of prayer and fasting and he wondered why God had had him do it.

And boy was he charged up. And he just laid on the dead man and he said, get up in the name of Jesus. And the man coughed. Boy if he'd done that with me laying on him I'd have hit the ceiling I'm sure of that.

Brother Duma just got off him. Duma was a great admirer of Tozer's by the way if you fellows love Tozer. I've seen Tozer reading a little paper that he got from him, a little handwritten note from Duma.

He said I'd rather have this from this little black man in Africa than have it from the President of the United States. Little Duma just got up and the man looked around. Duma said, go home. Isn't that terrible?

I mean it's not bad for Pentecostals but for Baptists that's horrible. It's horrible to do a thing like that isn't it? But you see what happens when you really move in the supernatural. No, not when you go to meetings, you clap your hands and raise your hands.

Can you all sing this? Yeah, it's all a lot of tired, weary stuff. Some of these meetings are as rubber stamped as any meeting you're ever in. It's all the same. But not when God's breathing on the meeting.

The Cost of Paul's Power, Peace, and Perseverance

All right, don't look so cheerful. I said I'd like Paul's power. He could raise the dead. He could cast out demons. I'd like his peace. He said he had a peace. I'd like his poise. Wouldn't you? You know you go to school, to a model school and they put books on your head and tell you how to walk like this, like little wooden soldier.

They wind up and you walk like this and they say, oh boy she walks like a model. Well there's a poise in the spirit a lot better than that and Paul had it. And you know what he said? That poise was such he said that when he was going through hell itself and the ship was rolling and nearly hitting the bottom he said none of these things move me.

Isn't that nice? That's one of his other jokes. And he said none of these things move me. And I like his purpose. Again this one thing I do and I like his passion. For me to live is Christ. I like his persuasion.

He said I know in whom I have believed. Yeah I like all those things. His power, his peace, his poise, his passion. I'm not so sure I'd like the other side of the coin though. His power, his prison, his poverty, his punishment, his privations.

Paul we're living in a place where you get the baptism and from here on you're on an escalator and you go to glory. It's great. Make more money than you've ever made in your life before. You become popular and they ask you to go give your testimony to breakfast or the banquet.

Before long if you're not careful you'll be a big shot. Paul went the other way. The older he got the poorer he got. But you see if you're going to have this side of the scale you've got to have that side of the scale.

And we don't like poverty. Oh not that being poor will make you passionate and give you a purpose and poise. Not in itself but what if God says it's the only way to keep you anchored down. You get so lost.

The Bible is constantly warning against riches. Lest you know they get to your head and you get overbalanced and you think because you have a bit more grass than somebody else and your pool is three inches longer than the pastor's or somebody's that you're some big shot.

No, no, no. If you're going to have one you have the other. You can have his poise, you can have his peace, you can have his power, you can have his passion. But maybe you'll have to have some of his poverty I'd like his piety but boy his poverty I'm not so sure about that.

And prison? Would you like to go to prison as many times as he went? Would you like his punishment? Time to a whipping post and lash him. Of the Jews five times received I, forty stripes saved one. Five forties is two hundred and five less.

A hundred and ninety five times they lashed his back and pulled the skin off it. And one day because he had a tremendously good time they put him in a corner and everybody could throw a rock at him and if you'd seen him his one eye was up, the other was down, his jaw was broken, he had a limp, he had a bad arm.

He was a mess. Would you like his punishment? Would you like his prison? Would you like his poverty? Hmm? This side yes, that side what? But you see according to this old book there's only one way to get life and that's death.

There's only one way to be clothed with the spirit and that is what? That's to be stripped. There's only one way to be filled and that is to be emptied of all you have. Your pretty little ego and all your ability that you thought the Lord would use and he ignored the whole lot.

Hmm? How did it happen? Paul says that on that Damascus road it pleased God to reveal himself to me. And then he went in the wilderness for about three and a half years and he said it pleased God on the Damascus road to reveal himself to me but in the wilderness he revealed himself in me.

Hmm? Not in the midst of a revival campaign, not when he raised somebody from the dead, not when he did one of these fantastic things but when he's alone, shut in with God, far, far above the restless world that was below.

The biggest thing you have to do and I have to do is discipline yourself to get alone. Oh, I wish, I wish the, you know, I wish the kids were off to school and I could get alone and as soon as they get off you get on the phone and talk some stupid stuff to Mary Jane or look at some, you love Lucy more than you love Jesus and you waste the time, eh?

Oh my, what a difference, what a difference. When we really want, with all the power of our being, we want this Christ-centered, not a self-centered life but a Christ-centered life. So there, on the Damascus road, it pleased the Lord to reveal himself to him and in the wilderness he revealed himself in him.

God's School of Silence and Hidden Preparation

Yeah, we would, if we got a prize convert like the Apostle Paul today, we'd put a rope around his neck and drag him in front of every TV show and exhibit him, wouldn't we? God has a great school, do you want to go?

A lady said to me one day, what university did you go to? I said, Bush University. Bush University. I can't remember Bush University. Do I know anybody that went? I said, well, Moses went. She said, Moses who?

She's very learned. She was an American. So I said, Bush University is a university of silence. God sent brilliant Moses there, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, read the seventh of the Acts of the Apostles and God fired him into the backside of the desert only 40 years, not too long.

Elijah turned the nation upside down, strangled the economy, scared them all stiff and God says, go hide thyself. Oh Lord, I'm the greatest preacher in the world. Everybody's scared, the king and Obadiah and everybody's nervous when I'm around.

Go hide thyself. And in case you've forgotten, do you know what Jesus did for 30 years? Cut up bits of wood, knocked nails in things. God to the end of the day just brushed the sawdust off his legs and got the bits of wood out of his toes and went home.

The Son of God did that for 30 years. And John the Baptist, do you remember him? First Pentecostal preacher was a Baptist. John the Baptist, do you remember what he did? He was in the wilderness until the day of his showing forth.

He lived amongst the wild beasts. He stayed in the desert. You think that that's some steam, that's the place where he's been weeping. 400 years there's been no prophet. 400 years God has not spoken. Oh, that I will surrender heavens and come down.

And God says, wait a bit, son, you've only about five more years to go. That would kill most of us, wouldn't it? Isn't it amazing how far he got without a diploma and a trumpet? Isn't it amazing that he turned the nation upside down without double nets and white buckskin shoes, which you'll see plenty of at Dallas next week.

Isn't it rather amazing? I go to some conventions, I'm not sure what I've got to a bunch of evangelists, or guys that are candidating for Hollywood, they're so flashy and fleshy. But that's all they've got.

Big three-inch white belts, white shoes, and that's all. No anointing, no power, just a few gimmicks. God sends his great men into silence. John Baptist for 30 years, and then he preaches only six months.

Jesus for 30 years, and he preached about three years. Moses, 40 years on the backside of the desert. Elijah's out there. Didn't those men do some stupid things? They're crazy. Prophets are crazy men, aren't they?

Who was the prophet that laid on... Was it Ezekiel laid on his side 300 days? 300 days on Main Street? Oh, the clown. What's he doing there? He's sharing God's anguish for a nation. That's what he's doing.

Crucifixion as a Picture of Total Surrender

All God's children got shoes. The dear colored folk used to sing that because none of them had any shoes except if they picked somebody up that the boss gave them, so they sang about shoes. I'm going to walk all over God's heaven in my shoes.

But in the old days, slaves didn't wear shoes. The first thing the father did when the prodigal came, put shoes on his feet. Don't let him be running around like that. And yet Isaiah, the tallest, greatest, maybe, of the Old Testament prophets, he walked around the hot streets, didn't he, for years, three years, in his bare feet.

And yet we get dressed up and look so pretty, fleshy, flashy, floppy, little boys these days, hair down to the shoulders, many of them. Not that that's wrong. If your hair's down there, keep it there till the Lord talks to you about it.

You'll grow up. You know, these guys, you go to these meetings and you see them around there and they look so nice and you say, now, which of those evangelists had the tonic, do you think? They look so pretty, they look so nice.

Oh, there's nothing like that about these men of God at all. They're there in the quietness, they're there in the stillness, they're waiting on God. And this is where Paul went for three and a half years, he waited in the stillness before God.

And he says, he revealed himself to me on the Damascus road and he revealed himself in me when he was, when I was away there in the wilderness. You know, there's a sublime, can I put it this way, there's a kind of holy arrogance.

There's an arrogance which is carnal, there's an arrogance which is repulsive, there's an arrogance which is delightful, I think. You see, Paul's testimony was that he was crucified with Christ. Now, it's all right to sing about the old rugged cross, but I don't care how far you've traveled, and I've traveled a bit, but I've seen a lot of things.

I've never seen a crucifixion of you. We never see crucifixions. When a man was going to be crucified, as soon as they took him out of the city, and they laid him on a cross and nailed him to that cross, well, even if you saw the man going out carrying a cross, there was one thing he knew for sure, he wasn't coming back.

It was a one-way ticket. And when they nailed that man to the cross, immediately he was nailed there, he lost all his rights. You could abuse him, you could throw, if you wanted, you could go burn his toes, you could throw a bucket of filth on him, you could throw a rock at him, you could howl at him, you could do anything.

He had no rights once he was nailed to the cross. And at night, when they were crucifying a man, particularly a man of the caliber of Merabbas, people went, they were excited. How are they going to put Merabbas to death?

You know, he held us up, he stole money, he broke into our home, he did this, he did the other. And now we'll be able to get our revenge, and they put him there, and they howled and jeered and picked up their rocks, and one might say, you try and knock out his right eye, I'll knock out his left eye, you try and break his ribs, you see if you can smash his feet.

You could do as you like, he had no rights. He was a target for everybody's abuse and devilishness. And thousands would go watch a man crucified at night, six o 'clock at night. But, there'd be nobody there at six o 'clock in the morning.

Well, yes, the vultures. I remember going through India, maybe you've been there, the birds were nearly as big as me. And when they put out their wings, they had about a sixteen, eighteen feet wingspan, and they'd just flop like this, and they'd keep their necks in their, in their, in their feathers, and then they'd stretch their neck out about this length with no feathers on, and their beaks about that length are horrible things.

And when the man was on the cross, they'd come on the cross and they'd reach down and pick his eyes out and start tearing his body and disembowel him, and he'd be a horrid mess. And while they were having breakfast, the dogs would come and lick up the blood, and leap up at the feet and tear the feet and try and destroy the man.

It was one thing to see a man crucified at night, it's the next thing, another thing, to go in the morning at six o 'clock and see that man disemboweled and make you sick to look at him. And as Paul finishes his letter to the Galatians, he says, But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I am crucified to the world.

Now there are three crosses there. The world is crucified, I am crucified, and Christ is crucified. There's nothing attractive about a crucified man, he'd make you sick to look at him. And Paul says, The world is crucified to me, it has no attraction at all.

I wish that were true of every Christian, don't you? You've got people who could be here tonight, maybe they're sitting in a ballpark fooling around watching somebody. Of course they believe the world's going to hell, but after all baseball is more interesting than a revival meeting.

The world isn't repulsive to them. They love its honors, they love its money, they love everything. Are you kids going to quit talking or do I quit? One of the two. I'm tired enough to go home to bed.

You want to take over? The world is crucified to me. All of its pleasure, its pomp, and its pride, whatever has the mark of the world on it, it's repulsive to me. And not only that, he says, I am crucified to the world.

They say, there's an idiot for you. There's a man who could be a greater scholar than Gamaliel. There's a man who could draw the world to his feet. And here he is, being whipped and abused. The man must have no sense.

If he's a genius, he's too, such a genius, he's a lunatic. Why? Why does he give all he has? The world is crucified and I'm crucified to the world. You know, it's really a sign of greatness when people think you're insane.

Paul was so eager testifying before a king that Festus jumps up, he forgot his manners, and he said, you're beside yourself, not running to make me mad. All right, I am mad, most noble Festus. I'm intoxicated with a vision, with a power that can change the world.

Some of the kids ask in the street, well, why has the world gone on for 2 ,000 years and we're in this mess? And it gets worse and more immoral and more drunk and soon we, why, who cares whether you have a baby or not before you're married?

That's accepted. Society of women do it. Jane Fonda, these other people, they don't care about morality or anything else. Why should we bother about it? Huh? That's a concept of the world these days, isn't it?

And then they say, well, where's the answer? Isn't there an answer? Sure there is. Well, why doesn't the church step in and listen? Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting.

Christianity has been tried, found difficult, and rejected. Kissinger is running his legs off and trying to do this, that and the other. We have a peace conference where, in Geneva, yeah, but we have one there at the United Nations.

Never heard about it now. Kissinger put them out of business. But we have a United Nations there and before that we had a League of Nations and before that we had the Hague and now we have a Geneva Peace Conference and they've cost us multiplied billions and trillions and quadrillions of dollars and it didn't cost us ten cents.

Why? Because the answer's in the book, that's why. Christianity has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting the superb message for all mankind is in the Sermon on the Mount. And we should have peace on earth and not a jail in the whole world.

And not a prostitute. And not a drug addict. And none of the insanity like The Exorcist which is a Sunday school lesson now compared to the new films coming out. Brother, we're running into trouble, Sue.

Do you know the film they're making now is on the sex life of Jesus. They tried to make it in Denmark and the government wouldn't let them. They tried to make it in France and the government wouldn't let them.

So they've gone to a heathen country, a Mohammedan country they're making it. But you don't go like that very far before the judgment of God comes and we'd better get ready for something. No, sir. Christianity.

And he says, God forbid. Later, I say, he says, the world is crucified to me. And I'm crucified. And you know, he surveyed that wondrous cross. This man doesn't run into this thing blindfold. The Lord says, I stopped you on that road.

Do you want to go think it out for three years and if you change your mind go back and be a brilliant scholar and the most brilliant scholar in Jewish history. I think he did what Isaac Watts says in that hymn.

He surveyed the wondrous cross. The cross is a wonderful thing. It's pagan, but it's wonderful. Because if you lay a cross down on the floor it points to the four corners of the earth. And the gospel has a message for every part of the world.

If you stand it up it points to a topless heaven and a bottomless hell and the arms embrace the world. If you think of it, people of all nations they write towards the cross. We start at the right and we write over there to the cross and people over there write this way to the cross.

And some people write from the bottom up to the cross and some people write from the top to the bottom. And if you take a map of the world and you put the the end of your compass there right on Palestine and sweep it round you'll find it's just about the dead centre of the world.

Because the cross is the centre. J .B. Phillips that gave us that translation I like some of it said, remember this, that God purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Jesus Christ.

And whether the world ends with a banger of wind, but I don't care. I know this that finally the cross as I tried to say last night every knee shall bow and every tongue confess and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms God's going to take the Rockefeller business over one day and every island in the sea and every army and every other place.

God's designed everything to go back into the hands of the son that he loves the son that gave his life on that cruel cross. So Paul says I God forbid he finishes the epistle pardon me that same verse God forbid that I should go to save in the cross of the Lord Jesus by which the world is crucified to me and I and then in his farewell word to the same epistle he says this is sublime I think he doesn't say with his tongue in his cheek I hope you realize how much I sacrificed for the Lord.