If Any Man Be in Christ - Part 3 (Cd Quality) — Leonard Ravenhill

German theologian came to America some years ago and he had to meet various crowds of theologians and others and someone said to him how many years have you studied the Bible and so he said X number of years and he said well what's the greatest discovery you've made in the Bible?

Do you know what he said? Jesus loves me this I know all the Bible tells me so. Now you can go home. Father we thank you that we don't have to stand in the outer court nor just in the holy place but we thank you for the offering that was made once in the end of the age to put away sin by Jesus by the sacrifice of himself.

We thank you that because of him we have boldness to come into a holy presence tonight. We turn away from this world with all its sin and sorrow and shadows. We thank you for this oasis that you provide it for us.

An old hymn writer said if our fellowship below in Jesus be so sweet what heights of rapture shall we know when round his throne we meet. God we bless you. We thank you for the privilege of meeting without fear of being arrested.

We thank you for this Holy Word you preserved it through the ages. Men have burned it and banned it and blamed it and banished it but it's here. We thank you Lord your blessed Holy Word stands at the graveside of all its persecutors.

We thank you Lord you said that this not it's not determined by the opinions of men thy word O Lord is settled in heaven and because you said it there we bless you Lord it cannot be moved. It's going to last through all the ages.

We thank you for the privilege of coming to it. We thank you for the holy men. Lord you didn't say there were rich men or brilliant men or kings or rulers you said that holy men of God will speak as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

We think of the Holy Ghost moving in the beginning over chaos and brought forth order. We think of the Holy Ghost moving over some of the Old Testament characters. We think of him moving over the womb the empty womb of the Virgin Mary bringing forth Jesus Christ.

We think of those men in the upper room and they came out not with swords though they may have had power over life and death and yet they were filled with the Holy Spirit of God and because of that they penetrated the darkness of their day, the dangers of their day, the devilry of their day, and in their generation or little after they the world the whole world of the world of God.

Lord we ask you tonight as we've sung Spirit of God my teacher be showing the things of Christ to me. Make this a very personal encounter though we're a number tonight. Speak to me one hymn writer said speak to me by name or master let me know it is to me.

Speak that I may follow faster with a step more firm and free where the shepherd leads the flock in the shadow of the rock. Lord we want to hear your voice. I'm hearing it we'll obey. So Lord bless your word in Jesus name.

New Creation in Christ

Okay the epistle of Paul. From the epistle of Paul to the Corinthians again in chapter 5 where we were last week. For the moment reading the same verse that we had in verse 17 Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creation.

All things have passed away and all things have become new. When I was a youngster in England there was a very brilliant preacher filling the historic pulpit of John Wesley which is on at the Methodist Church on City Road London.

It's a kind of a what do you call it now? A shrine almost. But Moffat Godfrey was a man of unusual eloquence and he said this about the Apostle Paul quoting someone else actually. He said that somebody says that Paul's mind was so steeped in dogma it became a mere machine for grinding out metaphysics.

If you don't know what metaphysics are well either see Joe Foss or the pastor after the meeting. Oh and then it goes to Sonny. That doesn't matter. In my mind Paul was essentially a preacher. He was not only a preacher he was a poet.

He's not only a poet he's a pragmatist. In other words he had his feet on the ground. Look at his tremendous missionary journeys. He had no plane, he had no train and yet you see him going over Asia Minor.

Those vast territories through all the hazards he went through. Now here he says again in this 17th verse. Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creation. All things have passed away and all things shall become new.

Now he isn't whispering this. He isn't sitting down in one of those beautiful what do they call them? Theaters that they had in those days. Arenas. He isn't talking to a nice bunch of quiet people. He's throwing a challenge to the world, the flesh, the devil.

This world has to become real in America or we'll go to hell. It has to become, capture our hearts. There's no salvation anywhere else. Oh there are some people today, what reconstructionists. They're going to rebuild the nation.

What on human depravity? The greatest of modern theologians, historians, not because an Englishman. Arnold Toynbee says remember 19 times man has built what he calls a permanent civilization and 19 times it's fallen down.

You know you tell your children a little story Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. That's deep theology. It's a satire on the fall of man I think brother Basie. All the king's horses and all the king's men can't put Humpty Dumpty together again.

What do we have now? The United Nations. What did they do? They watched the rape of every country in the world. They've stood by and watched a million people die in Afghanistan. They've watched wars and rumors of wars and not done a thing.

Before the United Nations, there was the League of Nations when I was the youngster. Before that there was a League of Nations establishing the Hague in Holland. And repeatedly man have tried to patch up and prop up civilization.

But this, this is not the word of a super optimist. It's the man who has tasted so much of the grace of God and therefore he throw any man anywhere at any time. Can you think of anything more exciting than that?

Or inspiring? If you're going to be a missionary you better get this well down in your heart otherwise you'll faint by the way. You go to a civilization or an uncivilization. I got the letter that many of you got today from David Wilkerson.

He has his usual monthly letter, sordid, telling about New York, all the crime, all the wickedness, that it's a jungle. And a young man called me a few days ago, somewhere on the outskirts of Dallas, and he said, oh I feel a real urge to serve God.

Great. He said, I can't make up my mind. So you see it was his choice. I can't get my mind whether I'll go to New York or San Francisco. Where should I go? I said Dallas. It's a bigger hell hole than any of them.

But it always looks so romantic. I've been to New York. I've met prostitutes. I've done this. So what? Sin is the same wherever you go. Sin in the church is worse than sin outside of the church. And this man has an answer to everybody.

If any man, however twisted he is, God can untwist him. However polluted he is, Christ can purge him. However bankrupt he is, God can restore him in every part of his being. If any man be in Christ, he's a new creation.

The Believer’s Eternal Home and Judgment

Well I said last week, when Paul was in that terrible storm in the 27th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, he said they threw out four anchors and a wish for the day. And I suggested we could find four anchors in this chapter.

That is again in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 beginning at verse 1. He says we know if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, in heaven.

It doesn't say that. He says eternal in the heavens. As I used to say to my Friday night class very often, I'm going to heaven. I'm not going for the weekend. I taught one night with a man at a banquet.

He said, did you ever meet my wife? I said no. Oh she's a wonderful woman, good for you. I heard of one man, he said, you got married since the solstice? He said no, my wife. He said my wife's an angel.

He said you're lucky mine's still living. But what did he mean? He said my wife went to heaven and she stayed in heaven six days and came back to earth. And when she came back to life she danced round the bedroom for six days on her tiptoes without going to sleep, without eating.

Isn't that wonderful? That's crazy. What do you mean crazy? I said listen, once I get through the pearly gates, there isn't all the hosts of heaven not going to kick me back to this dump. He shall reign forever and ever.

And we're going to reign with him. You see that statement we sang, when Christ shall come. It's too much for the nervous stomach of our generation. We'd rather sing gentle Jesus, meek and mild. But sing, look at this first chapter in the second book of Thessalonians.

He's coming in dreadful majesty. And Wesley put that in his hymn. Lord he comes with clouds descending, ones for favoured sinners slain, thousand thousand saints attending, swell the triumph of his train.

Jesus comes and comes to reign. Lord the tokens of his passion, though in glory still he bears. And then he says, he goes on to talk about his dreadful majesty. That's going to be an awesome thing. So one thing Paul is sure, he has a home eternal in the heavens.

That's why I went through all the stuff we talked of, you remember last week on 1st Corinthians 11. But then we mentioned another thing in passing here. We go a little further down the chapter, or further back actually, verse 10.

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done, where? In his body. According ought to holiest done, whether it be good or bad. Now that's a second anchorage.

The Love of Christ as the Motive of Ministry

The third one I think is in this wonderful verse 14. You know I've heard people say, what made the Apostle Paul take it? It's not what, it's who. Here's the speaker of his life, or one of them. The love of Christ constrains me.

The love of Christ? You say I'm not quite sure if I really love the Lord. I'll tell you how to find out. Find out from this book. Look what it says in John chapter 14. Here it is, I didn't write this.

This is given by divine inspiration. John 14 and verse 21. He that keepeth my commandments and keepeth them, he that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. Got that? Nail it down.

You'll keep his commandments. And he that loveth me should be loved of my Father. Dear God, if I'd said that 20 years ago in the Pentecostal churches, I'd have shouted the roof off. The love of God? Overshadowed by the love of the Father?

So before you enter that love, you have to leave the other love. The love of the world. If a man loved the world, the love of the Father isn't in him. He won't come to a divided heart. O happy day that fixed my choice on thee my Saviour and my God.

The last answer says now rest. My long-divided heart fixed on this blissful sin to rest. Not ever shall my Lord depart with him of every good possessed. But here it is. Where were we? In John 14 and verse what?

20. Was it 21? He that hath commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me should be loved of my Father. And I will love him. I will manifest myself to him. You say he doesn't manifest himself to me.

Sure he doesn't. You don't love him. I almost had you sing the most popular hymn in the world that was born in America, Blessed Assurance. I didn't do that. You'd be singing lies. Why? This is my story.

This is my song. Praising my... all the day long. Is that while you watch football all Sunday afternoon? Are you praising your Savior? What are we singing? Every idle word we've sung as well as spoken were to answer for at the judgment seat of Christ.

I think the most reckless thing for a man to do today is not jump out of an airplane. I felt like jumping out of many of them. Particularly when there was a storm. But it isn't a man skydiving. It isn't a man scuba diving.

It isn't a deep sea diver walking on the bottom of the sea. I think the most reckless thing a man can do today is say I'm a Christian in a perverted, degenerate generation in which we live. Immediately I do that I become a target for the devil, for the world and the flesh to oppose me.

Is this vile world a friend to grace? To help us unto God? No it's not. It's opposed every inch of the way. And while I'm there I'm going to say this very hard. You know I believe if you profess to be filled with the Spirit it's much harder to commit sin than for anybody else.

Because first you should have the Word of God in you. Then you should have the Holy Spirit and He hates sin. When men go into sin, as some have done, the Word of God says what? That He, the Spirit, the Spirit of truth will do two things.

He'll guide you into all truth. And when He has come He'll lead you. He doesn't lead us to harlots. He doesn't lead us to sin. He hates sin. Before a man can get into that sin he's got to do at least three things.

He's got to resist the Holy Spirit. He's got to grieve the Holy Spirit. And he's got to quench the Holy Spirit. It's to fight all the opposition of the Godhead. It's an awesome thing in this day to see we're Christians.

It means we're Christ's ones. Well anyhow let me go over to that verse again. I will love him and will manifest myself to him. That's verse 22. Jesus said unto him, not his carrier Lord, how is it that thou will manifest thyself unto us not unto the world?

Jesus said if a man love me he will keep my words and my father will love him and we will come to him and what? Take up our abode. Sure Jesus came into a wonderful place when he came to earth. He came to a royal palace.

It had wall to wall dung. It was acrid with animal urine. It had cobwebs for curtains. It had the sweat of bees for heating. And he came there but he doesn't come to the beast of a human heart. He cleansed it before he comes.

It has to be purged. It has to be pure. It has to be clean. I and my father will come and take up our abode. What does that great 91st Psalm say? He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

The favorite hymn of our dear president when I went to a little Bible school was, God is the refuge of his saints when storms of sharp distress invade. Ere we can offer our complaint behold him present with his aid.

Let mountains from their seats be hurled down to the deeps and buried there. Convulsion, shake the solid earth. Our faith shall never yield to fear. We don't fear man. We don't fear the future. The psalmist said my times are in my hands.

Is there anything more glorious? My times? I'm not kicked around by every strange thing. I'm not a dead leaf blown by the wind of circumstances. I'm a personality. I'm supposed to be the habitation of God.

The Indwelling Spirit and the Christian’s Calling

A China man had read the Quran. He'd read the Vedas. He'd read every classical book on religion in the world. And he spent a lifetime doing it. One day somebody said what is the greatest thing you've read in the Vedas?

That doesn't matter. The Quran? It doesn't matter. A sacred book? Doesn't matter. What is the most amazing thing? You have a book, a Bible? Yes. You have a book, Ephesians? Yes. You have a chapter 2? Yes.

It begins by saying we're in the world and it ends by saying oh are you a Christian? Yes. Oh you're the most amazing person in the world. He said what? The Christian didn't know that. He took a man from China to tell him.

You're the most amazing man. Why? Because he said your little book says you are the habitation of God. There's another religion in the world where a man's God comes and lives inside of him. Where the Holy Spirit comes to check each thought and calm each fear and speak of heaven.

Where the Holy Spirit restrains me if I'm going too fast and constrains me if I'm going too slow. Dear God what manner of person should we be? Every meeting should be like a volcano. Let me go back to this little word again.

He says the love of Christ constrains me. That reminds me I was standing at the side of a charming lady, one of the most ugly women I've ever seen. Dear Lord she was ugly. I don't think she could have won a beauty competition in a crocodile farm.

Do you know who she was? She was the daughter of the founder of the Salvation Army. She was 84 years of age. She came to preach at a pastor, church I pastored and we were singing and I looked at the congregation and she had craggy cheeks and the tears were bouncing down the cheeks.

We were singing a hymn that she wrote and I can't remember the first verse but one answer was, there is a life to have given me, a life divine and strong. It carries me through every sea of sorrow, storm and wrong.

There is a light, there is a fire that falls on me as in the upper room, destroying all carnality, dispelling fear and gloom. There is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost, shed a curvature of the spine like a mother had.

She went to her daddy the founder of the army and said daddy and he kicked everybody out of his office, go to another country, don't stay in England, get out of dark England, go to another country. She went and told her daddy, I'm going to France.

Darling you can't go to France, you have your mother's frailty. She's bought French better than the French. I'm going. She gathered some society ladies, ladies that never even put up their own hair and they took a basement.

I saw a picture of a bunch of Maranatha singers the other week. They'd been to France dancing in front of Notre Dame Cathedral and they said they were so accepted. Did you ever know a dance scared the devil?

Do you have to go to a Bible school for months to learn how to dance in front of a heathen temple? These women went and they rented a basement and packed it. The greatest prostitutes in town came, the greatest most brilliant scholars in the Sorbonne came and they sat there and at night they said at the altar call men would reach down and pull out revolvers, pull out knives and leave them there.

One night the Queen of the underworld came in, big fat voluptuous woman and when they started singing she lift up her skirts and danced. The Marashal said my dear do you want to dance? She said sure. She said okay, pull all the forms back and she said come on get some music going and she said the one condition, we'll play the music, you dance for 20 minutes and then I preach for 40 minutes.

But like me she didn't believe in clocks. They dance for 20 minutes, you preach for over an hour and 20 minutes and the altar was lined and the whole of Paris was shaken through one little woman who was filled with the Holy Ghost.

No financial backing in a dirty slum area, as bad as anything Wilkinson's in now. Every other woman on the street was a prostitute, everybody else was drunk and malicious. You hardly go out at night. They went.

It's alright to sing in church and feel sweet. All the angels camp round about you. What do you need angels round here for? Nobody will pick your pocket. They went to the underworld. Why she said, there is a love constraining me to go and seek the lost.

I yield O Lord my all to thee to save at any cost. There is a fire that falls on me as in the upper room, destroying all carnality. Listen you can't lead people to victory if you're not in victory yourself.

That's hypocrisy. You can't preach purity if there's inward defilement. The hold up of revival in America is not in the taverns or the movie house, it's in God's house. There's so much carnality, so much unbelief, so much indifference.

God help us. Why the world perishes outside. But you see Paul says, the love of Christ, not love for Christ, but God is love. The love of God is coming to my heart. The love of Jesus. Do you remember that hymn of Edwin Hatch's?

Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou dost do. Breathe on me breath of God till I am wholly thine, till all this earthly part of me glows with thy fire divine.

That was Edwin Hatch. In a prosperous church in England, packed every Sunday, plenty of money, but he said there's no moving of God. He snatched a piece of paper and wrote that hymn. He left his fashionable church and went to Canada for a while and headed up a Bible school.

But you see his desire there? Breathe on me breath of God. Don't tell me you have to go to the upper room to do signs and wonders and miracles, forget it. They did every miracle before, Pentecost and it after.

Jesus came and breathed on them in the upper room and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost and witness, Wesley calls that the witness of the Spirit. And then he said, Tarry, before you go, tarry, and not only tarry, wait for the promise of the Father.

Dear God, what a day that must have been. What do you think it was like in that upper room? They weren't nervous like they were before Jesus came. They were nervous after the resurrection, weren't they?

In the upper room, gathered together for fear of the Jews. They weren't nervous when they saw him ascend. They went back with great joy. They were rejoicing every step of the way, every day of the countdown.

They'd be now waiting 28, 38, 40, 50, no 36 or 37, only 50 days and the Holy Ghost is coming. What a difference. Somebody has said there was only one church in the New Testament. Look what they did. Dear God, I had an American theologian in my office not too long ago.

I said, I've just been reading that book on Azusa Street. On the second page, on the flyer leaf it says, there are now 70 million classical Pentecostals in the world. And he said, not 70 million, no he said 120 million.

I almost stuck my finger in his eye. I said, listen, were there 120 million in the upper room? What's the difference between their baptism and ours? What does a man on the street care if you speak Chinese or anything else?

There's a cripple at the door. What are you going to do? Jesus passed that cripple hundreds of times. Peter passed him. There came a moment when it would glorify God through healing. So Peter went and said, silver and gold I have none.

So he knew he wasn't evangelist. He knew he wasn't the Pope. And then he said, such as I have, give I unto thee. So he knew he wouldn't be a Pope again. But he goes to that twisted, tormented man. Everybody in town knew him.

Listen, some young evangelist came to a town called Blackburn in England when I was a boy. And there's a man at the street corner, blind. He would fiend for his money and sell his newspapers. And somebody took him into a meeting where, not Stephen, Edward Jeffreys, the son of Stephen was there.

They brought him in the meeting. And he prayed for him. And suddenly his eyes were opened. My dear neighbor came back yesterday. He's a prodigal son. He goes away and comes back now and again. Tim, and he was telling me, he'd been to Western Canada.

Everybody's looking here. Oh, if you knew there was going to be a moving of the Spirit, where would you be? You'd be there. So he goes to the ends of the earth. There'd been a meeting, what, in Western Canada with the Indians, wasn't it Tim?

And one young lady got full of the Holy Ghost and the joy of the Spirit. And she said, was it to a preacher? I've got to see my granddad. And I'd rather to see a grandpa. When she got in the hospital, the doctor said, no, no.

I've got to see my grandpa. He's in the room. He's dead. He's laid dead. I've certified him dead. I've got to see my grandpa. You can't see your grandpa. She pushed the doctor to one side. Bless her. She went in, took the cover off his feet, took his hand, took his feet in her hands and prayed for him.

And the dead grandpa got up. And the doctor didn't say, well, he wasn't really dead, you know. You know, with his poor, tormented little pride. He had to admit it. I said, I'd like to take you with me.

Every church I go to, there's loads of dead people. Let me put a commercial in here. Sunday, is it this Sunday, Martha, we go? There's a church called Birchman Baptist Church in Dallas. They've got six weeks of nightly revival.

And I'm to go there Sunday night. I'm not excited there'll be a thousand people there. I say there'll be maybe 200 seminary students. So boy, there's a chance to preach. I'll feel like Ezekiel. Can these dry brains live?

Then after that, next morning I have to speak to 100 or more Baptist pastors. That's a challenge. Then the Wednesday night, go to the Anchor Church, which is a church, I think about three or four years old, that Jack Taylor raised up.

So I've got a full load next week, pray, because I'm not that strong physically, mentally sure. So what a chance to serve the Lord. Paul says, the love of Christ constrains me. I don't know the verse, but you know it.

What did he say? You see, he believed John 3, 16, God so loved the world. He also believed the note in Ephesians, Christ loved the church. But he knows more wonderful. Do you know why he left the ivory palaces for a world of war?

Do you know why he left the blinding glory of eternity where Charon and Seraphim bowed down before him? Why did he do it? To leave that glory, indescribable majesty of eternity, and get shut up in the belly of a young Jewish girl?

Why did he do it? Because he said, he loved me, that's why he did it. He loved me. Oh, we sing it, we don't mean it. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. It's only verbiage, verbal.

He said he loved me. That's why he put up with the contradiction of sinners. That must have been amazing. I read the other day that marvelous verse, is it? I don't know how often you explore when you read the word.

I've read this, I guess, 70 years. And it says at the beginning of John chapter 13 of John, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew his hour was come, that he should depart out of the world unto the Father, having loved his own.

He loved them unto the end. What's this man talking about? The apostle Paul had a joy unspeakable, a faith unshakable, and a love unbreakable. And that's why he conquered where other men failed. That's why he went where other men stopped.

He says, I have a home eternally in the heavens. What makes him so sure? Because Jesus said in John 14, I go to repair a place for you. So he knew he had a home eternally in the heavens. The second thing, he was caught up to the third heaven.

What did he see? He doesn't tell us. Do you think when he was caught up, and I don't know how long he was there, a day or a week or a month, do you think he had a preview of the marriage supper of the Lamb?

Do you think he had a preview of all the marching millions coming through the skies, led by Jesus Christ? There was something. That's why you can torture him, beat him, starve him, put him in prison, do as you like.

I don't care. I have a home eternally in the heavens. Destroy this body. So what? There's something in me indestructible. I've got a home eternally in the heavens. Yes, yes, in English we wrote, when we've been there ten thousand years.

Poor guy. That's only a weekend. When we've been there ten million years, bright shining as the sun. We've no less days to sing his praise than when we first began. You see, we're so earthbound. That's our trouble, we're earthbound.

Paul says, Jesus Christ loved me, and he gave himself for me. Let me ask you to skip to that amazing chapter we had last week, but I always call that Brother Bracey's chapter. What was it? 2 Corinthians 11.

Affliction, Suffering, and the Eternal Weight of Glory

Listen, before you do that, step back a moment there. Do you know what this man had? I wonder if John Edwards got the idea from this, when he said, God stamp eternity on my eyeballs. See, everything in the focus of eternity makes all the difference.

We're earthbound people. We see with our eyes. We think with our eyes very often. But look what he says here. Again in chapter 5 verse 1, if the earthly house of this tabernacle is off, we have a home eternally in the heavens.

But wait a minute. Look at verse 17 of chapter 4. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal way to glory, for we look not at the things which are seen.

Glory? How much of you live by what you've seen today? The believer doesn't do that. We look at the things that are seen. We look not at the things which are seen, but the things which are seen at temple.

But these things are eternal. It carries it over to eternal in the heavens. It's at the end of the 17th verse. This man's a joker. Is he saying? Let me get hold of that and underline it in your mind a minute.

It is 2 Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 17. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, there's no rational way to explain that. It's total insanity. It's illogical. Listen to this. Of the Jews, five times received I 40 stripes saved.

Is that a moment? How long does it take you to whip a man's back five times? Or 39 times? And do it five times as always. Maybe one day and two days rest and then start doing it. Or weeks in between. Does it make it any easier?

He's counting the stokes. They're ripping his back with a cut of nine times. It's a lash that has at least five or even nine lashes at the end and each of them has a spike of copper and that cuts more than glass.

And they rip his back and he's counting only two more and then this is over. They push him on one side into a lousy prison and say listen two days you're going to get another lash. Then a third time, then a fourth time, then a fifth time.

Is that a moment? Is that light affliction? Dear God, it would kill most of us once. Never mind five times. Paul meets, send a begging letter. I need to go to California for a month or Florida. My poor back is so sore and I'm lame and I'm this and I'm the other.

We'd sing a song of sorrow and Paul sums it all up as it's a joke. A light affliction? What's the light affliction? I was beaten once. Once I was stoned. You see it's a model universe. He stood one day and he watched a man stoned to death.

I guess the first time a stone hit his head he wondered why people didn't, he didn't interfere. He lets, he lets people get stoned to death. And you see the wonder of this is that the love of Christ. Do you know why?

Because this man met Jesus. Jesus had nail prints in his hands and this pirate had bloody hands. He tore up families. He kicked them out of their homes. He kicked them out of their cities. He was a pharaoh.