Labouring for the Lord

You're happy that the storm didn't keep on all night. How many of you got wet? I met a young man who had distinct forebodings about whether his ground sheet would be dry or not when he got there. I could afford to laugh because I don't use one.

Comforted him with this is one of the joys of camping. Well praise the Lord. Shall we stand up and praise him? Oh let's go together shall we? I love you. People come together and say oh Lord we love you.

Because you know he loves you. It's only reciprocal. I love thee Lord we used to sing yet tis no love of mine that flows back to that great heart of thine. Tis thine own love which thou hast given me.

Returning back oh Lord again to thee. Don't you think that's nice? We ought to have a hymn book as big as this. Now we could get all these lovely gems of truth in them. But still we'll sing this. It's quite modern.

I love. Somebody went down. For when? You don't go when. All right. When. Not when. When. You're on the same note. Shall I sing it to you again? Now you're catching me aren't you? I'm being set up all the time.

He sets me up. Ready? I'll be there. I'll be there. When the roll is called up yonder. I'll be there. I'll be there. All right. Make sure you're right. Well listen. Sometimes the music isn't put down right.

Why do people fiddle about with tunes? Amen. Praise the name of the Lord. I always remember one glorious passage from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. When at last he came and he said to the man that was writing, set my name down.

Hallelujah. Set my name down. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Is your name in the Lamb's book of life? How do you know? How do you know it's there? Because when it's written there, the name of Jesus is written on your heart.

You can call that a figure of speech if you like, but you know what I mean. When that's there, glory. And I've become a Jesus person. Because I've been born again. And I've been born a Jesus person. Hallelujah.

Well obviously you can't get that except you're born. You've got to be born to inherit that name. Jesus inherited a more wonderful name than any of the angels. And so have you if you've been born of God.

You've become a Jesus person. Hallelujah. This is what it's about. It's not something you believe. It's something that happens to you and changes you. And everybody can see your change. It's so obvious that really you don't have to tell the people that know you, but you have to tell all the others that don't.

And there are more of those than those that do. Isn't it wonderful? Let us labor for the Master. Not just attend meetings. Oh, thank you for coming. Keep coming. That's not the point. But just don't just attend meetings.

Labouring for the Master Rather Than Merely Attending Meetings

Labor for the Master. Labor. Listen. Hard labor. Listen. From the dawn to setting sun. Oh, I don't do that. I go to the office at nine o 'clock. Oh, that's the mentality. You've been brought up into it.

Labor for the Master from the dawn to setting sun. That's what the old salvationists used to do. Whether they do now, I don't know. It's wonderful, isn't it? Lord, I'm going to work for you. I'm going to work for you.

I said, hands up every one of you who really work for the Lord. I didn't say work for salvation. Whether you really work for the Lord. No, I know you can come up and say, well, there are all different kinds of works.

Which one do you mean? Because you're looking for a tree to hide behind, old Adam. That's what you're looking for. Somewhere to hide. I'm going to work. Do you know what God would really love? Everybody in this tent sometime for the weekend, weeks out, to volunteer to work for the Lord.

And then not go home and forget about it and settle into the same old rut. Forgetting that the grave is only deeper than a rut. Just a little deeper. You've seen some of the ruts I've seen. That's right.

You're going to labor. You're going to work. You're going to sweat. You're going to toil. You're going to weep. You're going to soil your hands. You're going to get out there where it's dirty and hard.

You're not going to settle back into that same old humdrum thing of getting up and going to the meeting on Sunday morning, and I don't know what, and retiring for the rest of the week or something. You're going to work.

You know Jesus was so concerned about this. He said to his disciples, he said, now you pray. He said, you pray and I'll tell you what to pray for. Don't say our Father. Pray that the Lord of the harvest will thrust forth labors.

No, no, no distrust. Unwilling ones, you see. Go on. Go on. Thrust them out. Oh, come on. You see, you see, that's done so much. He always said, follow me, and he'd lead, you see. Follow me. And written many books written on discipleship.

Yeah. Go on, now you pray. Everything's changing. There's a build-up of truth. Start following. Mind you, if you do, the first thing he'll say to you is, what are you looking for? What, what are you seeking?

What do you want? What do you want? That's what he'll say. Then if you keep following, he'll say, look I was expecting you to work. He said, you know, nobody told me this. I thought it was sort of all being happy in the happy land.

You know, I hear thee speak of a happy land. And so on. Do you know that one? Well, I won't sing that to you. Thou call'st its children a happy band. And so on. Yes, that's right. Trying to allure them onto the ground of being happy and all that, you see.

But let me testify to you. That it's work. W-O-R-K. And it's work. And it's work. And it's work. Did you know that? And I'll tell you this. That it is as you labour and work that you will get strong, and you will get built up, and you won't sit there envying others saying, oh I wish I was like him, or I wish I was like, er, I wish I could do, well, you know, that's how they started, wishing.

And most people die wishing. So get on with it. You go back to your churches and you volunteer. Do you know how that great man Dwight L. Moody got started? Do you know? He got saved, I'm not going to preach Norman, really I'm not.

He got saved in Chicago. And he hadn't been saved long, being the man he was, that he volunteered. He said, I want to be a teacher in the Sunday school. All right. So the pastor said, well, thank you very much.

But we've got a crowded Sunday school, and we've got quite sufficient teachers, thank you. So he kept pestering. He said, I want, I want to serve the Lord. I want to teach in the Sunday school. So the man said, all right, you go out in the street and collect the children, and bring them in, and you can teach them.

And that's what he did. He went out and collected the children, and his name wasn't the Pied Piper. He collected the children, and he got started. That's how this great man Moody started. And he ceased to be a man of moods.

He lived in constancy, came to England to convert thousands and thousands to the Lord, in England, and in other parts of the world. But you don't suddenly become a famous evangelist. You start by working, working, doing the donkey work.

Sometimes feeling you've been kicked in the face for doing it. But that's how you start. Let me tell you this. Everybody in churches is not a gentleman, or a lady. You won't get treated as though you were the queen, or the king, or perhaps you will, the king who was crowned with thorns.

The whole glorious concept is this, that you go and work, and work for your living. For I'll tell you this, you'll only live up to the standard of the work you put into it. That's probably shocked you.

I'll repeat it in case you think I made a slip. You say, that's contrary to all I get taught. Well somebody's not teaching you right. You will have eternal life as a gift, but you will only have it in increasing measure as you work, not just as you believe.

The Faithfulness of God to Complete His Work

Go out there, and when you work, you'll discover all kinds of things. I remember when we moved out of London into the country when I was a boy. I'm getting wound up. I shall have to stop normally. You, you pull my shirt tails.

I can remember when we moved out there. We saw these fields of waving corn. We always went at harvest time, real harvest time. You could have some real great times in the harvest field. Not seeing an old stinking machine going, going around doing all this and that and the other.

And, and you used to go out there and stack up the, the, the sheaves. I'm a country boy as well as a London boy. It's very funny isn't it? And, and, and it used to be wonderful. But do you know when we went out to gather the sheaves, do you know we found, we found dimmers in, in the sheaves.

Did you know that? Well they were, they were called rabbits. Yeah, yeah. As you worked, you fed. It's a law of nature. You can laugh if you like, and I know it has a funny element, but it's true. You found rabbits.

You found all kinds of things that were there, and they were yours. You didn't have to poach for them. Not that I've ever poached. Do you see what I'm talking about? That's right. So we will sing our hymn beloved and spend a time again in worship with your own hearts open wide and making your contribution and Norman will be speaking to you.

Thank you number 61. Oh, what a comfort we find. What a blessing. Many years ago I remember I'd been to a meeting where a certain gentleman had been preaching one of those remarkable sermons that left you afterwards totally devastated, not knowing whether you were coming or going.

Having gone to the meeting thought that you'd got it all sorted out and by the end of the meeting you didn't know whether you had or whether you hadn't. I remember arriving outside of our house in Queen's Road in those days.

I had a little green mini traveler and I got out that night and I banged my hand on the top of there. I said I haven't a clue where I am. I don't know whether I am or whether I'm not, but one thing I know.

He has begun a good work in me and what he has begun I am utterly convinced he will perform and perfect even unto the day of Jesus Christ. God does not take us up beloved to drop us. God does not take us up and abandon us halfway through.

What he begins he sees through to the end because he is utterly faithful, gloriously consistent, wonderfully thorough, intolerant of sin. He will keep working at you and me until he has brought us right through and in.

Glory to his name. Hallelujah. Now I want to talk to you this morning about the truth of new birth. I hope that I shall get through. Hallelujah. I want to look at the truth of new birth under the heading of three different questions.

Why Do We Need to Be Born Again?

First of all, why do I need to be born again? Secondly, how can I be born again? And thirdly, how can I be sure that I am born again? Three very simple questions. I'm going to look at three different passages of scripture and seek discover God's answer.

Now to begin with I want to read the very familiar passage in John chapter 3. There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. The same came to Jesus by night and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.

Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said unto him, how can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit.

Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the spirit.

Nicodemus answered and said unto him, how can these things be? Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel? And knowest not these things? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen and ye receive not our witness.

If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the son of man which is in heaven.

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up. That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. It wasn't under condemnation, beloved, and don't allow the devil to take the word of God and use it unto that end to bring you into condemnation.

It wasn't under condemnation, but it was unto salvation, that Jesus came and spoke and ministered unto you and me. Glory to his name. Now there are three lovely statements that I want to point out to you quite simply by way of introduction.

In verse 3 it says, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Verse 5, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Verse 7, you must be born again.

That is the great categorical statement of Jesus. Not an invitation at the end of an evangelistic rally or meeting, not an invitation to respond to him, but a clear positive declaration that there is no alternative way into the kingdom of God except by new birth.

He said there is no other way. Hallelujah. That simplifies it all. No alternatives. Lots of people say there are many ways to God, many ways to heaven. That's a lie, beloved. Amen. You must be born again.

And that's why it's so vital that you and I understand what God means when he makes that statement. And that's why I want us to look at these three simple questions. Why do I need to be born again? How can I be born again?

And how can I be sure that I am born again? Now obviously we can only look at the very surface of this subject. It's one of those things that should preoccupy you and hold your concentration, beloved, for a long, long time.

I would like you, first of all then, to turn into the Ephesian epistle, and in chapter two. This will serve my purpose this morning. It's one of many passages of scripture to which one could turn to find similar evidence.

It's consistent with the whole revelation of scripture. No one passage, beloved, contradicts another. First of all, in verse one, it says, and you who were dead in trespasses and sins. Again in verse five, even when you were dead in sins.

There's the first reason why you and I need to be born again. God's word says that natural man, because of sin, is dead. Now read the same truth, beloved, in the third chapter of the Colossian epistle.

You are dead. Dead because of sin. That was the sentence of God upon sin from the beginning. We read in the scripture, he that sinneth will die. Of course that was the counsel that God had given to Adam, the head of the whole human race.

He said, if you sin, you will die. Said it in a slightly different way. He said, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will die. There were two significant trees in the garden of Eden.

One was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The other one was the tree of life. The invitation of God to man in the beginning was that he could eat of every tree of the garden with the exception of one.

That was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Every other tree, and of course included in the every other tree, beloved, was the tree of life. Now that was the original invitation of God to man, to partake of the tree of life and live forever.

In other words, to partake of divine nature, for that's what that tree represented. And that would have brought men and women into eternal life. That was what Adam forfeited. The other tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And God said to Adam, if you eat of that tree, you will die. The devil said, you won't. Try it and see. You'll become as God. Try it. A man capitulated, beloved, to the temptation of the wicked one. First Eve, and then Adam.

Eve was deceived. Adam sinned, disobeyed God, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and imbibed the nature of sin, imbibed the old man over against the great invitation, beloved, to partake of the new man.

And so was indwelt with the principle of sin and death. And from that moment on, beloved, as far as God was concerned, man was dead. Not physically dead, but spiritually dead, separated, alienated, cut off from God, divorced from the very source of life.

And that is the every single man and woman born into the world. That is the state and condition that we inherit as a result of first birth. We are born into that state. It's called original sin. Many of you have heard me say before, if you have any argument with the doctrine of original sin, all that you have to do is get married and have some children.

And then you will stop arguing about the theory and face the dreadful reality, morning, noon, and night. Now lots of people can't stomach, beloved, the doctrine of original sin. They have to make some alternative explanation as to how it got in.

But I want to tell you, beloved, that God's Word says it came in at birth. It's an inherited state and condition. And as a result, beloved, the whole human race outside of God's provision in Jesus Christ is dead in trespasses and sins.

Sin, Satan, and Humanity's Spiritual Death

Jesus said you have no life in you. We like to think that we're alive, but we're dead. There's the first simple explanation. Go again into Ephesians chapter 2, verse 2. Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our conversation, that is our citizenship, our lifestyle, our pattern of living in times past, in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

Here's the second explanation, beloved, the human nature outside of Jesus Christ. The prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience. When Adam partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he didn't just imbibe the principle of sin, beloved, he imbibed the nature of Satan.

The prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience. You see, some people talk about being void inside, empty. That's utterly inconsistent, beloved, with the revelation of the scripture.

It's also inconsistent, beloved, with scientific understanding. You can't live in void. You and I were created, beloved, to be inhabited by a spirit. God's intention was that your life and my life should be the temple of God.

We should be inhabited by the spirit of God, that we should have the nature of Jesus on the inside of us. The terrible alternative to that, beloved, is the prince of the power of the air. It's one of those more gracious names associated with the enemy of man's soul, Satan, the devil.

The prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience. Now that's what will explain, beloved, your behaviour and mine. Sins are the manifestation and outworking, beloved, of that principle or law working on the inside of you, making you do the things that you don't want to do and preventing you from doing the things that you long to do.

That was the great complaint or great cry of the Apostle Paul at the end of Romans chapter 7. He said, the good things that I want to do I don't do and the things that I hate myself for doing I keep on doing them.

Who can help me? Of course the glorious answer, beloved, was thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. And that is the experience of every man and every woman. We try to improve ourselves, we try to do better, we turn over a new leaf, we make promises, we make resolutions, we resolve this, we resolve that, we try to control our nature, we try to improve our behaviour.

There are all sorts of things which are introduced, beloved, to help us. Education is one amazing thing, beloved, is that education, generally speaking, is working in the opposite direction to what God is.

Education is trying to make people something, someone, whereas God is working, beloved, to bring us to a place where we will acknowledge and confess that we are nothing, that we are dead in trespasses and sins, that in us there is no good thing, apart from a principle where that's working in the opposite direction.

The prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience. That's the explanation to everything that you read on your newspaper. Since we last met here a year ago, beloved, the world has been immersed in a war which could have led to the third great world war.

Read the front page of any newspaper, beloved, it's a devastating, it's the most depressing thing. There's only one thing more depressing than reading the front page of the newspaper and that's to become preoccupied with yourself.

That's why many people, beloved, live in the doldrums all the time, inward looking, constantly inspecting. I often say they're like the fellow who plants the seed in the garden, won't leave it alone, keeps digging up to see how it's getting on.

Don't wonder it never grows. Hallelujah. That's where you have to come to a place, beloved, where you trust God and believe God to do what He has promised to do in your life. But that He has to bring us to a place where we're prepared to acknowledge, beloved, the prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience and not in just in the liver of some people, beloved, it says amongst whom we all had our manner of life in time past.

All of us, not some. Always much more difficult, beloved, to convince respectable, educated, refined people of this truth. A man came to me the other day when I made reference to this. I was down in Terracina in Italy.

He was one of the workers there. They've just begotten themselves a lovely baby. There he was lying in the cradle. And when he heard me say this, he was horrified at the thought, beloved, that the prince of the power of the air was operative even in his baby.

You know, sometimes we look into our baby's cots. Oh, they're so lovely, aren't they? Especially when they're asleep and their little shoes are under the bed. It all looks so beautiful, angelic. Praise God, I've still got the first pair of shoes that my eldest son wore.

I don't know if he knows that I've got them, but I have. They're beautiful, very well worn. He was the fellow, beloved, who I talked to you about the other day who, who, um, who walked. Praise God. But you haven't begot angels, beloved.

It won't be very long before you discover that you haven't got angels. May Paul talk about the terrible twos and something the horrific threes. And I don't know what the fours are. Well, it's when they get into their teenager and forgive me, you teenagers, if you're here this morning, most of them are in the other tent.

You do know that there are over 700 young people here, beloved, under the age of 20, don't you? 46 of this conference is below the age of 18. Glory be to God. I tell you, that thrills my heart. Bless the Lord.

God's moving, God's working. And it's wonderful, beloved, to think that young people can be in a context where they're told the truth from the beginning instead of having to go on, like many of us did for years and years and years, muddling around, uh, groveling, struggling, striving, not understanding why, why things were working in us in the way that they did.

All the terrible inward contradictions of stresses and strains, no explanation, no one to tell us, no one to point us the way. If only someone had come and told me, beloved, in my teenage that the prince of the power of the air was working me, that would have explained a lot of things.

I wouldn't have come to the brink, beloved, of absolute destruction, breakdown, suicide. Any reason why I studied psychology for four years, beloved, was trying to find out what was wrong with me, only to be told that I was incurable, and that's why most people studied psychology.

Amen. Didn't bring any answer, didn't bring any remedy. It brought a measure of alleviation. It made life a little more bearable, where I had some degree of explanation, and I'm not saying, beloved, that man and woman isn't a psychological creature, but there is a disposition, an area in his life which is much deeper than his soul.

It's called his spirit, and it's into that place that the spirit, the prince of the power of the air, beloved, has come as a trespasser, an invader, and he's working. Amen. He's not lying down, beloved.

He's not just, uh, sitting around. He's working. Of course, one of the things that he works at, beloved, is keeping you respectable, religious, pious, making sure that you toe the line without giving you an impression that anything's wrong.

He doesn't like you to make a mess of it. It exposes him. Amen. That's why I was so respectable for so long, beloved, and so religious, to the point, beloved, of getting my collar around the wrong way, wrong way round.

Hallelujah. Some people used to say it was a slipped halo. Glory be to God. The prince of the power of the air works in the children of disobedience, and that's why there's such a tremendous emphasis, beloved, in the New Testament on deliverance.

Did you know that you need to be delivered, that you constantly need to be delivered? The word delivered, beloved, is the same word as saved in the New Testament. It's the same word as healed. Praise God.

You thought that the only person who needed deliverance, beloved, was the person who'd gone over the top, and was wild and crazy, heading towards the lunatic asylum. Amen. Every single human being born into the world, beloved, needs deliverance.

Jesus came to set the captives free, to set at liberty them that are bruised. Glory to his name, so that we could identify ourselves, beloved, with the latest statement of the Apostle Paul, when he said, God works in me, both the will and the do of his good pleasure.

Amen. The will of God, beloved, is the great antithesis to the will of sin, and the activity of Satan in your life. You and I need to be born again, because we're dead in trespasses and sins, and have no life in us, and apart from the life of the trespasser, beloved, the prince of the power of the air, who's working in the children of disobedience, taking advantage of every area of your life, of course, expressing and emphasizing himself in this one, and that one, in a multiplicity of ways.

Hallelujah. Again, beloved, there in verse 3, among whom we also had our manner of life in time past, fulfilling the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

God's Wrath, Sin, and the Substitutionary Work of Christ

Now, we don't hear much about the wrath of God, and we don't like talking about the wrath of God, but God is a God of wrath, beloved. There were days when men like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, beloved, preached on the wrath of God, and people felt that they were being dangled over hell itself.

God is the God of wrath, beloved, and the only alternative to heaven is hell. You see, lots of people don't believe that either. The only alternative to heaven, beloved, is hell. God is a God of wrath, and God has levelled his wrath against sin, because God hates sin.

The wages of sin is death. God has declared his judgment on sin. Now, the wonderful thing, beloved, is that when you compare the quotation that Jesus takes up in Luke chapter 4, at the introduction of his ministry, from Isaiah chapter 61, that Jesus omits a significant statement.

In Isaiah chapter 1, it speaks about the day of wrath. When Jesus quoted that scripture, beloved, he omitted it, not because he didn't believe that his father was a father of wrath, as well as a father of love, but because he was going to bear God's wrath in himself.

Amen. He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. It's the great doctrine, beloved, of substitution. Jesus coming and taking your place and my place, embracing all our sin.

He was made sin for us. It was a deliberate, willful act on his part. He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Beloved, Calvary was the great demonstration, not only of God's love, beloved, but of God's wrath upon sin.

For it was God, beloved, who crucified Jesus. It was in the great preordinations of God. It wasn't an afterthought in God's economy, beloved. It was a part of the great plan of salvation that had been settled in heaven before sin ever came into the realm of human experience.

Blessed be his name. God crucified Jesus, and if you don't believe that, beloved, then you attribute the salvation and all that flows from Calvary to someone less than God. Of course, the devil was involved in it, Pilate was involved in it, Caiaphas was involved in it, the Jews were involved in it, you were involved in it, I was involved in it, but in the final analysis, beloved, the cross, where God meted out his wrath upon his son Jesus was God's remedy, was God's solution, was God's provision for man's salvation.

And anyone who responds to and receives that glorious provision, beloved, is delivered from the wrath to come. But until, beloved, we are the children of wrath. That's what my Bible says very clearly.

And we're by nature the children of wrath even as others. That's why I need to be born again, beloved, if I don't want to suffer the wrath of God and the terrible judgment of God upon sin, which is death and eternal separation from him, the destiny of which, beloved, will land me in hell.

God's only alternative to heaven. Then I need to be born again and emancipated and set free from the tragedy and terrible legacy of sin and the activity of the old man in order that I might become a child of God.

A fourth reason, go further down in the chapter, verse 12. At that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ you who were sometime afar off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. Listen to it, without Christ, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise, with no hope, without God in the world.

What a picture of desolation. And that statement, beloved, without God, is the only place in the New Testament where the word atheist appears. Without God literally means atheist. God has no place for the agnostic.

That's the fence-sitter, the person who likes to sit on the fence and have a free opinion about things, either or. There's no place in scripture for that at all, beloved. God is a God of either or. Either you're in or you're out, essentially, fundamentally, without Christ, aliens, strangers, no hope, atheist, without God in the world.

What a picture. It'll wonder, beloved, that as we look upon the lives of men and women, we see them as being hopeless, aimless, lives meaningless. And those, beloved, who've been in positions where they've been able to exploit all the alternatives and look for answers in other directions, those who've had the greatest opportunity to do that, beloved, are the people who come to the point of greatest distress.

That's why in the highest income brackets of men and women, beloved, you have the greatest suicide rate in the world. And why in societies, beloved, where everything materially would seem to be wonderful, human relationships, particularly in the areas of marriage, beloved, are just cascading into chaos and confusion.

Hopeless, empty, barren, lonely. One of the greatest curses of the human race at this time, beloved, is the dreadful feeling of loneliness, isolation, separation. You can be in the midst of a glass company of people and know, beloved, that you're all alone, without God in the world.