The Word of God — Norman Meeten

Receiving God’s Word on the Mountain

So you know how vulnerable you are. Glory be to God. First of all I want to read from Exodus chapter 24. That's where I am in my own personal Bible study. Just two verses, verse 12 and 13. And the Lord said unto Moses, come up to me into the mount and be there.

And I will give thee tables of stone and a law and commandments which I have written that thou mayest teach them. And Moses rose up and his minister Joshua. And Moses went up into the mount of God. Amen.

And isn't that what we all need to do? Of course it was only, it was the privilege and prerogative of a single man accompanied by his minister Joshua, whom you know in the New Testament is called Jesus.

He went up into the mount of God to listen to God, to receive from God in order that he might be equipped by God to teach the people. It was the prerogative and privilege of a single man to represent God to man and man to God.

And he said in generation, he served as a mediator. Today, it's the privilege and prerogative of every child of God. And how essential it is that for you and I to come up into the mount in order that the Lord can speak to us, in order that he might instruct us, in order that he might give to us, to qualify us and equip us to teach others also.

He doesn't just give us tablets of stone anymore. That's very wonderful. Praise God. Pick up your New Testament, if you have to change book, and go into the second epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, in chapter three, where all that is partial and limited under the old covenant dispensation is made universally available to every child of God who will come to him and believe him and receive from him, to be equipped by him to enable them in their turn to teach others.

Verse two of chapter three of 2 Corinthians, you are our epistles written in our hearts, known and read of all men, for as much as you are manifestly declared to be the epistles or letters of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not in tables of stone, but in the fleshy tables of the heart.

And such trust have we through Christ to Godward, not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, who also has made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit.

For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. Amen. What was introduced to Moses in one sense is far off in the Old Testament, is made nigh unto you and me within the context of the new, but we need to come to him and allow him to write the glorious truth upon our hearts, amen, to cut it there, to carve it there into our flesh, into our very nature.

For only what we receive, beloved, can we give to another. You can't impart to anyone else what you haven't first received yourself. Amen. Jesus never claimed to be original. Lots of people want to be original without to think that they're the only person who knows this or knows that.

Jesus never claimed or made such claims. He said of myself I can do nothing, of myself I can speak nothing, my doctrines not my own but his that sent me. He simply received and gave, received and gave.

Giving and Receiving in the Spiritual Life

Amen. And there's a great law in the spirit that you'll give, beloved, you'll receive. Again it's cyclical. Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down and running over shall men pour into your bosom.

Amen. You give and receive. And the moment you stop giving is the moment you stop receiving. That's why life in the spirit is likened by the Lord's river. Not a pool, not even a well. John chapter 4 talks about wells of living water.

The original doesn't, but it talks about springs. The springs beyond the well. There are no wells without springs. Springs are only the manifestation that a well exists. Amen. And springs of living water that of course are the explanation to every river.

And as the spring yields up and gives of itself into the river and the river flows out and gives itself away. Hallelujah. So it receives more and gives more. The same great illustration is in the heavenlies, in the realm of the sun.

The only reason why the sun goes on shining is because it constantly gives itself away. And if it ceased to do that, beloved, it would cease to exist. Glory to his name. We need to come up into God. Perhaps a week like this, beloved, is such a tremendous opportunity where we can lead so many of the other things.

Of course we have to go on eating, we have to go on drinking, we have to go on caring for our children. There are lots of things that have to be done, but there's a sense in which we can withdraw. Jesus didn't, didn't he?

He withdrew, went into a quiet place, he bared proud, waited upon his father. Not that his receiving was limited to those events or places in his life, but he did find it necessary from time to time to withdraw from the hub hub of everyday living and eat and drink and receive of his father.

Come to me, come up into the mount. Come to me and I will, I will give to thee. Amen. Now I want you to turn a bit further on into the New Testament, indeed the first epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians.

Entrusted With the Gospel

Probably the first letter that he ever wrote. One verse in verse four, it says, but as we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak. What a magnificent statement. That you and I, ordinary men and women, should be put in trust with the gospel.

I often think of the days when Jesus left the earth and went back to heaven, and entrusted the whole feature of his church into the hands of twelve, or rather eleven, incompetent men who had one thing to their credit, failure.

And don't go to that. Amen. He entrusted his nature, he entrusted his name, he trusted his reputation, he entrusted his word, he entrusted the whole growth and development and future of his church into the hands of initially eleven men.

What a wonderful thing, beloved, for you and I to be entrusted. As we were allowed of God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak. Praise God. Can he trust you, beloved, with his gospel? Has he written it into the very flesh of your being, and thus enabled you and equipped you, despite all the limitations and impediment of your natural personality?

To enable you to communicate it and pass it to other men and women. We're not here, beloved, just to feed ourselves. Of course, we do have to get the bean out of our own eye before we can start attending to the moat in our brother's eye.

There is a sense in which we have to initially be selfish and get ourselves sorted out with God before we can move beyond that. But we have to get beyond ourselves. I love that statement of the Apostle Paul in the Philippian letter, where he talks about having sorted everything out in relationship to his own life.

Let's just read it. It's in chapter three of the Philippian epistle. No, chapter four. Chapter four. In verse eleven, he said, not that I speak in respect of one, for I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content.

I know how to be obese, and I know how to abound everywhere, and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and suffer needs. What a state of being, beloved. He is no longer preoccupied and exhausted with his own problems, his own difficulties, his own needs.

That's why he could say, further down in the chapter, in verse 19, my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus. He didn't misquote it as most people do, beloved, and say, my God shall supply all my needs.

He said, my God shall supply all your needs. You see, he's taken, he's got his eyes off of himself. He's come to that place where he's utterly fulfilled and satisfied in God, whereby his whole life, beloved, could be utilized by God to minister to others.

We are not here primarily for ourselves. I think, yes, we are. But in the long term, implications and outworkings of it, beloved, it's for others. The majority of us here, beloved, we were never to hear another word of God, because we have enough.

We have enough. Amen. Paul wrote to the Colossians church, and he said, you're rich in the word of God. And what you regard as crumbs, beloved, of the people in the world, would look upon as a banquet today.

I go to places, beloved, and they look at you as if you'd just come from Mars or some place in outer space, as you share the things that have become commonplace. I find myself in a constant dilemma. Amen.

How can I justify going to places, beloved, where people already know the truth, when there are places crying out where they've never heard? Was it Oswald Smith, that great American evangelist who said, no one has the right to hear the gospel twice?

All the time there are people who've never heard it once. Glory to his name. That should provoke all of us, beloved, to pack our bags and be going. Amen. Not necessarily to the other side of the world.

Perhaps just down your street, because there are people in your street, beloved, who still haven't heard. They may have heard the words, because you can hear the words on the radio, you can hear the words, beloved, on the television.

You can read the words in books, read the Bible, beloved, and still not hear. Gee, because they hear, but they don't hear. They don't understand. When you and I minister the gospel of the Lord Jesus, beloved, we must minister the word of God in spirit, because unless the word of God is accompanied by the spirit, it will be dead letter.

We're told here in the same second epistle to the Corinthians, where we were reading, there in chapter four, we read, who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter stilleth, but the spirit giveth life.

Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you, they're spirit, they are life. Wouldn't the God, beloved, in every word, he didn't say the words that I preach unto you. He said the words that I speak unto you.

They're spirit, they're life. Every word that should come out of your lips and my lips, beloved, should minister spirit of knowledge, be edifying, upbuilding, encouraging, inspiring. Amen. And you shouldn't have to pray the Old Testament prayer, set a watch before my mouth that I may not sin against me.

That was a prayer, beloved, for a Jewish disposition. For people who didn't know anything of the inward reality of the gospel. It's a quotation. You can find lots of quotations in the Bible below to justify your compromised position.

Amen. You can do what you like, beloved. You can manipulate. The devil did it with the word of God, didn't he? He made it say things that God never intended him to say. It had an application in the Old Testament.

Jesus said, what's in a man's heart will come out of his lips. Now, if the love of God has been shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost, then we shouldn't be too concerned about what comes out of our mouth.

I didn't say that, Jesus said that. Wonderful. Glory be to God. God has entrusted you and me with the gospel. Now, let's look a little more thoroughly into the first two chapters, in particular, of the Thessalonian epistle.

Boldness in Preaching Despite Opposition

Go up into verse two. If we have been entrusted, beloved, with this glorious gospel, and authorized by the Spirit of God to speak, then in verse two it says, but even after that we had suffered before and were shamefully entreated, we, as you know, at Philippi, we were bold in our God to speak unto you the gospel of God with much contention.

Hallelujah. We were bold in our God. One of the great characteristics of original Christianity, beloved, was boldness. You want to see it? Go back into the Acts of the Apostles. Chapter four. Amen. We're so apologetic so often, so diplomatic, so cautious, so careful, because we're frightened of getting into trouble.

Acts chapter four, verse thirteen. And when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marveled, and took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.

They had been up into the mouth, beloved, but not only had they been with Jesus, I often say this is the closest understatement, beloved, you'll read anywhere in the New Testament, that they'd been with Jesus.

That was not the explanation to their boldness. They hadn't just been with Jesus, beloved, they'd got Jesus living on the inside of them in the power of the Holy Ghost. I mean, he was their constant and consistent companion.

And when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, amen, you will see it further down in the chapter. Verse twenty-nine. And now, Lord, behold their threatenings, and grant unto thy servants that with all boldness they may speak the word, stretching out thine hand to heal, that signs and wonders be done in the name of thy holy child Jesus.

And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they assembled together, and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and spake the word of God with boldness. You're marvelled, beloved, at the tremendous authority with which Jesus spoke.

Amen. His tremendous sense of conviction and assurance, lest it be his boldness. A thousand ago in the day, there was a lovely man in Bhutan who came to the Lord two or three years ago. He's a forester, great, tall, elegant, robust, Bhutanese, a donker.

He came to the Lord, and he said, I don't care what they do with me. They can put me in jail, they can beat me, and I'll tell you if you go to jail in Bhutan, beloved, there's no picnic. It's not a palatial residence like British jails, and you might think they're pretty crappy if you've been to look at some of them.

Those are America, beloved. Jails are like five-star hotels. But in Bhutan, beloved, they're like medieval dungeons. He said, I don't care what they do with me. And at that time, beloved, he was facing the responsibility of looking after four small children because his wife was dying of a terminal illness.

And that's after the first meeting. He said, brother, will you come and pray for my wife? And we walked up the valley to this home, and there she was perched on the edge of the bed, beloved, just a bag of bones, skin stretched over bones, looking more dead than alive.

And these four little children, beloved, clinging to her skirt. But God had come and met this man in the power of the Holy Ghost and wrought something in his heart, beloved. And I tell you, when you're in a situation like this, you wonder how they ever understand what you're talking about.

Not only do you have the linguistic barrier, beloved, but you've got the cultural barrier, you've got all the generations of Buddhism, beloved, all the powerful demonic, diabolical influence compounded one layer upon another.

You wonder how they ever get through. When you're talking, beloved, when you're preaching, you're in true interpretation, and you listen to what's coming out of their mouths. You scarcely can believe, beloved, that they're saying the same thing that you're saying.

I speak in English, and then one man speaks in Nepali, and then I turn to the second man who's supposed to speak in Gondwana, and he looks at me and says, what did you say? And the meeting which will take one hour here, beloved, will take about four hours there, and on in the meeting there will be, they will be translating the Khan and Sharshok and perhaps other tribal languages.

And you wonder how you're ever going to get through this tremendous barrier, all these obstacles and difficulties that seem to obstruct the Gospel, and yet they get through. Because it's unlimited words, it's unlimited language, it's unlimited culture, beloved.

We so often make great sins about these things. Amen. God can break right through if he will find men and women who will be bold, and these are not. Paul said, he said, I come in fear and much trembling.

Amen. And if you ever cease to tremble, beloved, then there's something wrong with you. You're depending upon yourself instead of the Lord, and that's the tremendous disadvantage of being an extrovert.

Amen. Who seems to be able to bash through everything. Glory be to God, they spoke the word with boldness. The forester's wife. Didn't I say the forester's wife? Sorry. The forester's wife, yes. There is so much to me about the forester's wife.

I left her a letter of folks on the edge of the bed. A bag of bones. Forgive me. You see, these things are so part, so much a part of me, but I'll often talk about them and assume that everyone else knows all the details related to them.

That's what happens to you, beloved. You start living and moving in the spirit. You become so integrated and a part of the situation to which you belong. But you assume everyone else is there. Yes, the forester's wife perched on the bed, a bag of bones, with skin snatched over it, and four little children dragging around her skirt.

We prayed for her, beloved. The next year she was in the meeting. Amen. God had saved her. God had delivered her. God had healed her. She was one of too many women on that occasion, beloved. Another one was in hospital.

The doctor told me. He said, we've done everything. We've had her here for six months. We've done everything that we know. And she gets worse rather than better. We've given up. Again, we prayed for her, beloved.

The next day she came out of hospital. She'd never been back to hospital again. Now, don't ask me why God does that there and he doesn't do it here. Perhaps we have too many alternatives. Too many cop-outs.

They haven't any, beloved. It wasn't even a general hospital. It was a leprosy hospital. Way out in the sticks. Glory be to God. I'm constantly amazed, beloved, as to how God is able to penetrate and overcome all the insuperable barriers.

But he has to find men and women, beloved, who are prepared to embrace the implications and take the consequences if necessary. You know, there are more Christians in Nepal, beloved, as a result of men and women going to prison than there have ever been of men and women living free.

It was one of the great jokes, beloved. If you went to prison, you vandalized the rest of the prisoners. Bless God. And that's why I never heard a Nepalese ever complain about going to prison. You talk to them about persecution.

They're not persecuted at the moment. Democracy has come. It's a funny form of democracy, but it's come. And there's a measure of liberty and freedom in Nepal today to preach the gospel. Never been known before, although there's much opposition to it.

When we were there last year, down at the hospital, we had the joy of seeing the Lord establish his church and set in position elders and deacons. People were baptized in the river. Babies were dedicated.

Glory be to his name. And people come into the Lord in one of the most diabolical areas of the whole of Nepal. They don't speak of Satan. Glory be to God. But men, God needs to find men with whom he can entrust, men and women, with whom he can entrust the gospel who have the ability to preach boldly the words of God and be prepared for the consequences.

Some years ago, before there was freedom in Nepal, beloved, there was a team of YWAM, young people, evangelizing. They were 50 Nepali and 50 were sinners. They eventually all caught, beloved, and all clapped in jail.

Because of pressure from the United States in particular, threatening, beloved, to withdraw their aid, they released all the foreigners, gave them their passports back, stamped them and said that they were persona non grata and put them out of the country.

The Nepali brothers and sisters, beloved, languished in jail. Some months later, I was speaking at the YWAM headquarters in Singapore. And I said to them, if I had been one of those Western people, I would have refused to be set free until they were prepared to treat the Nepali brothers and sisters in the way that they treat the Westerners.

We can go in, beloved, get into trouble and get off scot-free. Amen. And that's why often indigenous people, beloved, feel inferior to the Western missionary or the person who comes in and seemingly does everything and gets all the glory in there left to take the consequence.

We know, beloved, or we should know, that when we go to countries like Bhutan or Nepal or anywhere else in the world where the gospel doesn't have the same freedom that we enjoy, we know what the consequences are and we should be prepared to take those consequences.

If we're not prepared for it, then we should not go. Amen. We should not go. Amen. Peter and John knew the implications, beloved, of what it meant to preach the gospel boldly. They'd already been incarcerated once, they were going to be incarcerated yet again.

But they still went on preaching the gospel. They said that we will go on doing it. Glory to his name. Wonderful. Can God entrust you and me with the gospel? But because he knows the integrity of our heart and we're prepared to see it through.

Hallelujah. Here's another lovely truth in verse 4 again. But as we were allowed to God to be put in trust with the gospel, even so we speak, not as pleasing men but God which trieth the heart. Oh, the great danger, beloved, the great subtlety of being men-pleasers.

Pleasing God Rather Than People

Again, back in the fourth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you see the same principle appearing when in verse 19, Peter and John answered and said unto him, whether it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge you.

For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. So when they had further threatened them, they let them go finding nothing how they might punish them because of the people. For all men glorify God for that which was done.

Amen. Do we please God or do we please men? It may not be in extreme situations, but it's amazing how easily you can become seduced into a position, beloved, where you are in danger of pleasing men. I was reading somewhere else again this morning, it may have been this year, it was in those same chapters, 23 and 24 of the Exodus, where it warns men under the old covenant, beloved, about chasing gifts in case it corrupts your motives and causes you to do things, beloved, from an ulterior motive of pleasing men rather than pleasing God.

It was a law, beloved, one of the great principles written into the legal code that applied to the people of God as they then were to warn them against the danger and subtlety of being seduced away into pleasing men.

Amen. That's why it's always a very dangerous thing, beloved, to be employed by a congregation to preach the gospel and be dependent upon that congregation for your bread and butter. Because I tell you, beloved, they can strangle you.

Amen. God is looking for men and women to whom he can entrust his word who are obligated to no one. In that sense, that's simply answerable to God. Amen. Fear us of men. Amen. Whether they invite you again or whether they don't, read the biography of Charles Tynion, great Cambridge preacher, who refused, beloved, to couch out to his congregation.

So they put him out of his church and for some 20 odd years or more he preached on the steps of his church in Cambridge. And he was the man, beloved, who influenced so many men to go out to the outermost parts of Earth to preach the gospel.

He was the man who influenced Henry Martin. The great missionary who went out and aligned himself, beloved, was William Care, translated the New Testament into Hindustani and Urdu, finished it in a city called Kampo.

Then started working on the translation of the scripture into Persian and died, beloved, on his way to the capital of Persia in those days in the desert of consumption, as it was called in those days.

Fear us, Charles Tynion, would not please men. So they kicked him out. Glory be to God. And he preached on the steps of his church. He's marvellous. Read the biography of John Bunyan. You'll find the same glorious story.

Spent more years in jail than he did out of jail. He's now venerated, beloved, almost as a saint. Of course, he was a real one. Amen. He was a real one. Bless the Lord. Where are the men, beloved? Where are the women?

Who are no longer limited by what people say about them, by what people think about them, by what people will do to them? They will not please men. They will please God. Hallelujah. Now, when Paul preached, but he didn't just preach words.

Preaching With Personal Sacrifice and Love

Listen to him. Verse seven. But we were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherished her children. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you not the gospel of God only, but our own souls, because you were dear unto us.

Amen. He wasn't just preaching words. He wasn't just preaching sermons, but he was preaching life and giving of himself. We see this in his statement in the ninth chapter of the Roman epistle, where we find him so tied up and implicated, beloved, in his great desire to see the salvation of his own native people.

He said, I say the truth in Christ and I not. My conscience also bear me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. I could wish that myself were accursed for Christ, for my brethren from Christ, for my brethren and my kinsmen, according to the flesh, who are Israelites, like to whom pertain the adoption and the glory and the covenant and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises.

Whose are the fathers of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all. God bless for everybody. He's talking to God. That was the great cry of his heart. Amen. He was prepared, beloved, to be so involved with what he preached that it's necessary he was happy for God to block him out.

Amen. It's the same great principle that rose up in the heart of Moses. That tremendous verse in the Old Testament, the only sentence, beloved, that Moses never completed. The only incomplete sentence in the Gospel, when he's talking about, in the writings of Moses, where he was talking about Israel's king.

And he said, Oh God, block me out. Them, beloved, who were so bound up in what they were ministering that they didn't stand apart from it, they were involved in it. Glory to God. People often say to me, you've got a tantrum when you preach.

Well, you can't make anything that's worth getting excited about. I come from a city called Liverpool, brother, where they get very excited about football. I have to say, 23 silly men with one man to keep them in order and a bag of wind to kick around for so many minutes.

I don't know how many minutes involved in the game. My wife could tell him more about football than I can. Amen. Because she thought, brought up my three boys. On one occasion, she went to watch them on a mat and was running up and down the sideline, beloved, speaking in tongues.

She ran out of words, beloved, to a smile and encouraged her sons to win the game. She roared up and down the line, getting all excited, beloved, it's a game of football. I don't know if there's nothing more to get you more excited than preaching the gospel of Jesus.

When I talk about preaching, I'm not talking about preaching in the professional sense. I'm talking about gossiping the gospel in pastoral ministry, the law of Jesus, the men and women. Wherever you meet them, standing in the queue, beloved, in strange ways, wherever it is, like a supermarket, whether you go and get your goodies, standing on the bus, meeting men and women, pacing them up.

This man pressured the line leading about, but he had such an ability to take every natural situation and use it, to the furthest of the gospel. Some people used to get embarrassed and all hop under the collar with me.

Amen. But it was so natural. It was so spontaneous. It was so real. Amen. Because he was bound up, beloved, in what he was doing, what he was ministering, what he was preaching. You should read the Bible, beloved, these great men of God, whose lives, beloved, they weren't just employed to do a job.

It's a trouble, beloved, many people see it as an alternative profession. And lots of people in the ministry, beloved, it's a profession. Because it looks a nice cozy one. I want to tell you, beloved, if you really become involved in preaching the gospel of God, doesn't trust you with the gospel, it will consume your whole life.

Glory to his name, it will consume your whole life. Not the gospel of God only, but also my own soul. That's why I said, thank you, God, for being God. I could say that to lots of you. Glory to God. Anyone can go through the exercises of preaching.

That's no problem. It involves the totality of your being, spirit, soul, body, all that you are, all that you have. This is the sort of men and women that God is looking for. That's why Paul could say, my gospel.

He said, well, it's the gospel of God. It's the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he had become so integrated, beloved, with the gospel that he preached, he could say, my gospel. Because he'd become the gospel, beloved, he preached what he was, and he was what he preached.

And that's all that you will preach, that's all that I preach. Jesus preached what he was, and he was what he preached. He was the Word made flesh, and the words that he spoke were spirit and life. One was simply the extension of the other.

I know the different meanings between the two words, but in John chapter 1 and John chapter 6, they are two different words in the Greek. But one is simply the extension or the outworking the other. It's the application, the relevant application of the Word of God unto this situation and that situation.

But they all come out of the former, manifest in the latter. Amen. He was giving, giving, giving of himself. That's why he said, woe is me if I preach not the gospel. I read that in the 9th chapter of the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, where he's talking about the great responsibility.

Not just the responsibility, but the privilege of preaching the gospel. It's in verse 16. For though I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of, for necessity is laid upon me. Yea, woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.

For if I do this thing willingly, I'll have a reward. But if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed unto me, there's an awful inevitability. I can't be, I can't do anything else. But if the gospel doesn't burn in you like that, it would be just passing of words, being passing of information.

Hallelujah. But it will be that beloved, you will be so infectious with the gospel that everyone will get infected or contaminated by you inevitably. Don't have to come to terms, beloved. But what God has made you and entrusted to you, oh God, lifts us out of the professionalism and brings us into the gloryality and truth that makes the gospel tangible to men and women.

Most of us, beloved, are riddled with religion. We can pop the world, we can quote the text, light a recorder, press the button, beloved, and it all comes out. Amen. But that's not preaching. This is why I tremble, beloved, at the thought of computerized preaching.

Rejecting Instant, Computerized Religion

You know I all have a hang-up about computers, don't you? Amen. I do see their value, but I see the tremendous danger, tremendous danger of people going to their computer, beloved, for their gospel rather than going up into the mounts of God and meeting with God and roasting upon Him.

You see, we live in an age where we want everything instant. The quicker we can get it, the less work we have to do, beloved, to obtain it, the better. If you can press a few buttons and it pops up on the screen and then press another button and it comes all out on the printer, wonderful, beloved.

But that will never make a man or a woman a preacher. The only thing that will make you and me a preacher, beloved, is when we go up into the mounts of God and allow God to saturate our being with His gospel, with Himself, with His truth, so that He oozes out of our pores.

I was in France just a week ago, and Mr. Rombert, with whom I was stoned, I asked him how it was. I've always been very intrigued as to how it was that he got involved with us lot. Twenty years ago, came to England, he and his wife, they'd been missionaries in the Gabon, and they came to Cliff Conference, couldn't speak any English in those days, understood virtually nothing of what was going on except the fact, beloved, that God so impacted their lives with the glorious revelation of Jesus Christ, they'd never been the same since.

And they faithfully stood by that which they'd received. And I said to him, Mr. Rombert, how did you come to Cliff? Those years ago. Well, he said, when I was a boy at school, I shared a dormitory with another lad.

And he said, he went on to study English and became an English teacher. And to do some postgraduate studies, he went to England and landed up in a place called Exeter and visited the fellowship there.

And he said, he came back home to France and he said, George, you must go. He said, love oozes out of their faces, oozes out of their pores. He said, you can't explain it, you can't, you can't, oh, he said, I don't know what to do with it, but he said, it oozes out.