In this sermon, the preacher discusses the urgency of preaching the word of God in a generation that is unaware of the impending judgment of hellfire. He emphasizes the importance of waiting upon the Lord, despite the fast-paced nature of the world. The preacher highlights the contrast between the dedication of sports fans who endure long hours in the sun and the impatience of some churchgoers. He describes a hypothetical church service that lasts for nine hours, with dedicated time for prayer, worship, and sharing of spiritual gifts. The preacher also expresses his belief in the imminent pouring out of the Spirit of God and the potential consequences it may have on the economy.

I'm very glad for this privilege of fellowshipping here again. I don't know when I was here last, sometime last year, in, I think, May. Somewhere about that time. And believe it or not, I've only preached one week since then. So if I'm a bit rusty, you'll know. I mean, I'm not like these millionaire evangelists that scoop up these big love offerings every weekend. But apart from that, the thing is that you have to flex your muscles and kind of get back into stride again. I like that expression of other jimmies there, that we spend so much time defending something that doesn't work. Most of our preaching is defending a man who died two thousand years ago. And we're very fundamental in doing that. I heard a very moving story just about two weeks ago. You may have forgotten that the fact is that America still has fifty or fifty-two thousand boys, not merely in Korea, not merely in Vietnam, but fifty-two thousand men just south of the 38th parallel in Korea. Another fifty thousand men still guarding the line in Germany. But I'm told that there's a Christian man just south of the 38th parallel in Korea. And every day he walks up and down the street with his hands raised up and he said, If only I had it now. If only I had it now. Because before the war, before he was pushed out of North Korea, south of the 38th parallel, he was a multi-millionaire. And he used to give a tithe, a little bit of his money, a little bit of his time to the Lord. It was expected of him. But he wasn't too generous. He, you know, pockets never burst at the seam. He didn't want to go too far giving what he had. But there came a day when the invasion took place and he was given out of North Korea. And now he's penniless. And every day he says, If only I had it. If only I had it now. Or he'd do so much with it. But when he had it, he did nothing with it. Maybe some of us will be sitting in concentration camps before too long. It could come and the way it's heading up, it will. Thinking outside of revival. And some of us will be saying, Now I, I wish I was back in that home with the wall-to-wall carpeting. Maybe I really would pray all night, but I'm too sore and stiff and I've been beaten up today and I can't do it. So we've got some very serious things to think about and I think preach about this week. But my mother used to tell me it was always good to say grace before you had a meal. And so I thought tonight we'd just say grace before we have the meats in the days that lie ahead. I have emphasized for many years, and by jewel of this year, I, I, I'm advancing my fiftieth, fiftieth year as a preacher. Isn't that an awful long while? I know you'll be trying to guess my age, but I won't tell you. And I have emphasized and I've written some books about prayer. And I say that one of the most embarrassing things at the judgment seat will be to discover how little we have really, little time we've really spent in prayer. I heard a lady say the other day, God hears prayer, but he answers faith. Now how does that upset your theology? But anyhow, stick it in your mind and think over it. He hears prayer, he answers faith. But if we shortchange ourselves in the line of prayer, I'm convinced that we shortchange God on the level of praise. And on the level of worship. So here's a very simple message tonight from the 96th psalm and the ninth verse. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Feel before him all the earth. Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The capital city of Scotland is Edinburgh. And it lies 400 miles north of the capital city of England, which is London. Now you could do that stretch of 400 miles in less than an hour in a jet. But if you tried to do it 400 years ago, it would have taken you maybe anything from 10 to 20 days. It was always a hazard. It was almost impossible to do it in winter because obviously they had no bulldozers. The roads were very undeveloped. And they were very heavily infested with highwaymen. And the stagecoaches that did the trip, remember they had no heating in them. But a Christian man took the journey. He was going on business. But while he was on business, he combined it with real spiritual pleasure. When he returned to London, he said to a friend, Well, I did good business, but I had a great time spiritually. He mentioned a certain city and he said, I went there and I saw a tall, dark, rather stout man by the name of Blair. He showed me the majesty of God. After another week of business, I went to another city and I saw a different type of personality with a very different accent, with a very different delivery. He didn't show me the majesty of God, he showed me the depravity of my own nature. And then he said the third week, I managed to get to Amroth. And at Amroth, I heard that not very tall, but a very fair man by the name of Samuel Rutherford. And he showed me the loveliness of Christ. It was from those amazing letters that you can still get. It was from the letters of Samuel Rutherford that Mrs. Cousins extracted those very, very wonderful words, out of which he formed a poem, and out of which there came that wonderful hymn, The Sands of Time are Thinking. You remember perhaps the phrase that Alexander White said, He loves so much with mercy and with judgment, my web of time he wove. And I, the due of sorrow, was lusted by his love. I blessed the hand that guided, I blessed the heart that planned, when throned where glory dwelleth in Emmanuel's land. They showed this man up in a thing very much like a coffee pot, a building out on a craggy rock. It was lost every day with the wind and the storm and the tide. And somebody went in one day to see Rutherford and expected to find him all twisted and dishearned with rheumatism and, as the world would say, cursing his luck or wondering why God didn't intervene. And when they got there, he says, Ian Amaluth, the place where he had given his life, Ian Amaluth isn't heaven and preaching isn't Christ, but in this sea-beat prison my Lord and I held Christ. Then he goes on to say, concerning his relationship with God and his anticipation of heaven, it were a well-spent journey, though seven deaths lay between. I don't think the political or moral or spiritual situation is any better than it was last time I was here. In fact, I think it's deteriorated very severely. But I'm quite sure that my generation needs to get each of the concepts that that famous, that wonderful traveler had. We need a new revelation of the God that we serve, a new unfolding of the majesty of God. We need a new revelation of the abyss of the human nature, so graphically given to us in the first three chapters of Romans, particularly if you read Mr. Phillips' translation. And I'm sure we need to see afresh the loveliness of the Lord Jesus Christ. This psalm is a delightful psalm, and I want to lean on two words in the text tonight, or worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Let me ask you a straightforward question, and answer it to God, not me. When did you last worship God? I see a notice outside of a church, divine worship Sunday morning, 11 o'clock to 12. That's tying the Holy Ghost up pretty much, isn't it? But you could go to church all your life and never worship God. You could sit in the crowd and go to all that you want to sing, and sing the anthems, and stand up maybe and sing a wonderful hymn, and yet never worship God. You can take communion every time you go to the house of God, yet never worship Him. You can give your tithes and your generous offering on top of that, and yet never worship Him in spirit and in truth. You know, a good background to this text would be to read the fourth chapter there in the Gospel as recorded by John. And you remember that Jesus met a woman there. One of the wonderful things about Jesus, He had so much time for individuals. In fact, His longest sermons were given not to the five thousand, but to individuals. The woman of the well, Zacchaeus Nicodemus. And Jesus, I hardly began talking to this woman before she gets into a controversy, as our brother reminded us tonight. Oh, she was going to put Jesus straight. You say we should worship Him. Look, over there is Mount Gerizim. Oh, they love that place. Part of the law had been unfolded there. There's still a small tribe of people on Mount Gerizim away there in Israel. And they value and they treasure a dusty, dusty copy of the Pentateuch. And they say, we have Abraham to our father. And you say Jerusalem is the place to worship. And the other man says, no, you go to Mecca. And the other man says, nonsense, you go to Rome. Jesus says, my dear lady, I want to tell you something. The time has come, and the time now is when neither in Jerusalem nor in this place nor any other place has a special place. So we worship God, for we worship God not by turning to the East. You see, as soon as the glory departs out of the church, we try and fill the vacuum. We put in a new stained glass window, or we change the robes of the choir. There's nothing any better in them. But anyhow, we change the robes of the choir. And then we decide that the preacher must be preceded by someone bearing a golden cross. Or we must build great stately candles up there. So as he used to say, we used to have fire, and now we only have a pair of winking candles. And that's about all we have. You see, when the glory departs. Oh, not very long ago, one of these men with a kind of a computer mind estimated the value of the temple that was built by Solomon. What a disregard he had for values. Why? He paved the house of God with gold. And he put solid gold on the walls, and even the desk had to have gold. This man worked out the dimensions, worked out the value of gold, and said that that temple cost at least $170 billion. And yet even when he had done this and clustered the walls with precious stones, while everybody was breathless, they stood in awe and amazement. There never was a place like that, surely. There never was a place like that. And yet that man had the spiritual, I'm going to use the long word I want there, spiritual sense to realize that except the glory of God filled the temple, you could use it as a stable. God is not interested in temples made with hanging. You're always trying to put all this strange architecture up. Springfellow calls it bastard architecture. Well, you know, but let me tell you again, you know very well there's no substitute for the Holy Ghost. We want a Christian and if it doesn't work, I'm going to talk about that tomorrow night, God willing. But when the glory of God fills the temple, this exhortation here, worship God, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Strangely enough, this word worship is repeated 15 times in the book of Psalms, and it is repeated 15 times in the book of the Revelation. For what do they do in heaven but worship him? I've told you, you can't make God rich if you give him a million dollars a day. You can't make God wise if you know more than Calvin knew. He didn't know everything, but anyhow. We can't make God wise. We can't make God rich. We can't make God strong. Now, we're exalted here to worship God. I'll never forget, amongst the many experiences that I did have with Dr. Tozer, and they were about the highest peaks in fellowship that I ever had. I went into his office one day, and he turned around, his sleeves were rolled up, he had a visor over his eyes, and he was thumping an old typewriter. I used to tell him it was, he should have sold it, it was the first that was ever made. If he said it came out of the ark, I could have believed it. It was old and rusty and antique, but boy, he produced some marvelous books on it. He just swung around on his swivel chair and raised his back. Oh, he said, come in and lock the door. Let your hair down. Let's talk. And in the course of talking, he pointed to a piece of dog-eared rug. You've seen these beautiful rugs that come from the audience, handmade, and the colors are dyed by hand, and the designs are so marvelous, they take a breath away when you look at them. Well, that wasn't the kind of rug he had. He had one that cost 69 cents from Woolworth. When they broke up his estate, I did manage to get one of his books, but I would have loved that piece of rug for sentimental reasons, I guess. And he pointed to that dog-eared rug and he said, you know, Len, I come in here some mornings. He never owned an automobile in his life. He used to go to his little office in Chicago on the streetcar and carry what I called postage stamp sandwiches. He used to finish about 12 o'clock and go down the street and sit on a little stool there in a little coffee bar and nibble at his sandwiches, drink his coffee, get up and go away. Nobody ever recognized his genius. He said, Len, I come in this office some mornings so filled with admiration that I just call my secretary in the other room and say, look, Mary this morning, no dictation. Today, no interviews. I can't see anyone at all. You can go home if you like and be back at 8 in the morning. And then he said, using an old English word, Len, he said, I would get down on that rug on my belly at 8 o'clock. I'd still be there at 11 or 12 or 1 o'clock and I hadn't breathed a prayer and I hadn't uttered a word of praise but I spent four or five hours just worshipping him. Just saying, as he used to say so often, oh, how beautiful, how beautiful the sight of thee must be, thine endless wisdom, boundless power, thine awful purity. Father of Jesus, love's reward, what rapture will it be? Prostrate before thy throne to lie. I am gaze, I am gaze on thee. Preach, when did you last do that? You see, if you learn to worship, you'll never be depressed. You'll never be distressed. And I dare to suggest you'll never be defeated. You'll get a righteous view of the majesty of God. You say, as a young man came in my office, I'm living in the Bahamas just now trying to write a book, trying to write a score as a matter of fact, and this young man came in and he sat down and put his elbow down and he said, why should I worship God anyhow? Well, I said, I can give you four reasons why you should worship God. First of all, because he's God. Secondly, because angels worship him. Thirdly, because one day God ain't gonna have to worship him. So don't release your doubt. And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is God to the glory of the Father. Now this text says that we should worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Theology is the queen of the sciences. Holiness is the crown on the head of that queen. A personal experience of holiness or the englobing spirit is the jewel in the middle of that crown. On the head of that queen. Now I'm glad that the psalmist and the divine inspiration put this word beauty there otherwise the text would read worship the Lord in holiness. Now I know some holiness that has people that are as cranky and an old boy that is hard to live with as anybody I ever knew. Again, to quote Toter, he said, we preachers often twist and torture text to make them fit our theology. I was raised with a holiness people and I'm not a bit sorry about that. I think some of them were very extreme. They talked about death. They were always digging the grave. They didn't get out of the grave. They didn't get any resurrection life. They didn't mount up with wings as eagles. The word of God says if we're children of God by faith in Jesus that we're a kingdom of priests but they became God's policemen instead of being priests. They were always chasing my sister to measure the length of her dress. I'd like to have chased some of those women and measured the length of their toes but they wouldn't let me. And I think that maybe Dr. Harry Jessop is right when he says that the Pharisees were the holiness people that backslid. You see, once they lost the sweetness they began to major in externals. The style, the length of your hair, the length of your dress or something else. Usually the women get beaten up on that level. But you see, here the word of God says worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and there is nothing under God's heaven more beautiful than holiness. We back off from the word but if you change the word which you could do from the Greek anyhow for holiness actually means full health, healthiness. Worship the Lord in the beauty of your soul's health. Now, one of the hymn writers amongst others wrote a hymn that said worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness bow down before him and his fullness proclaim with gold of obedience and in the sense of loneliness kneel and adore him the Lord is his name. I think that worship is rather difficult to define because it's made up of so many different things. Worship, adoration, gratitude, thanksgiving. You know, I don't think we really get as our brother said, the brother that was leading the singing. We don't get the exquisite about Christianity. We don't get the elevation that God wants us to have out of it. My, before we had these wretched song books that we have in most churches they used to have hymn books. I think some of the songs are silly. I don't go for mansions over the hill topic. To me it sounds as though you're trying to make Jesus jazzy and I don't go for jazz and Jesus. They don't mix too well. I think we're trying to get our faith down to folk songs and it's not much good. But also all those wonderful old hymns, they, somehow they, they ignite my spirit. They make me want to worship Him in spirit and in truth. I want to stand speechless before Him and see the King in His glory. I want to recognize that not five minutes after I die, not only when the Shakespeare said I shuffle off this mortal coil, but even now while I'm in the flesh, even now I'm an heir of God and an adjoined heir with Jesus Christ. I'm not a beggar, I'm a prince. And we need to rediscover, I think, the riches of His grace, the riches of His power, the riches of His love. We're not possessing our possessions. The kids don't want our religion because it is so shabby. I've always said this, if my boys didn't want my Christianity, I'd pack up right away and I'd never preach again. Thank God I've got two boys missionaries, another one, the third one I think going to Africa this year. If my boys didn't want my Christianity, I'd never open my mouth in the pulpit. Now you can disagree if you like, that's up to you. But if there isn't something attractive about what I have in Christ and I'd no right to try and strip it down the throat of your boy if my boy doesn't want it. But oh, when there's so hell, it's when there's the King in His beauty and He's residing in the palace of my personality. For after all, He dwelleth not in temples made with hands. If God Almighty only dwelt in Westminster Abbey, this room wouldn't have much chance, would it? When to worship the Lord. I used to have a teacher when I was at college, Cliff College in England, who used to say, there are just two things you need when you go to have your devotions in the morning. One is the Bible and the other is the Methodist hymn book. Now, I don't know where you'd find it these days, but really, I think one of the finest hymn books ever put together was the very old Baptist hymn book about a hundred years ago. But oh brother, when you read some of the expressions, for after all, those hymns were not the product of an intellect. They were the product of an emotion, if you like. They were the product of a vital experience that somebody had with God and they put it down in beautiful language. For after all, if you go to the Methodist, all Charles Wesley did was take John Wesley's music, John Wesley's theology, and put it into music. Or if you want to predate John Wesley, you go to Isaac Watts who gave us, of course, amongst other hymns when I surveyed the wondrous cross. And sometimes you might find an old volume, I have one, of all the hymns of Isaac Watts. Brother, you try switching channel choreographs some night and stick your feet up whether you have a coconut and just go through some of those hymns. Read them slowly and digest them and feel your spirit rising. You feel somehow that you've got wings and you're in another world. When all thy mercies, oh my God, my rising souls today transported with the view I am lost in wonder, love and praise. Or you take the hymn written, I've forgotten his name for the moment, I think who wrote, Lord of all beings from the far thy glory flames from sun and star, center of soul and soul of every fear, yet to each loving heart I'm here. Lord of all life, the Lord of, whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, before thine ever blazing throne we have no luster of our own. Come on preacher, when did you last bury your nose in the dust and gaze upon the king and his beauty before thine ever blazing throne? Why none alive even tell of him have two wings and they cover their faces because they can't gaze on the king and his beauty. And the king of Isaiah chapter 6 is the person of Jesus Christ in the 12th chapter of the gospel of John. This said Isaiah when he saw him. And when you see Christ in his beauty and in his glory you veil your face, you can't bear the dazzling brightness of his presence. And then you put two wings over yourself because you can't bear his scrutiny of his own life. And as Tozer says, there's only one way to worship God and that's face downward. It's arrogance even to stand. It's arrogance even to kneel. You see when you get that rapturous vision and you see the king in his beauty and you realize again that even the cherubim and the threat of him, those holy beings who have never sinned, gaze upon the king in all his beauty and all his majesty. And you go right back to the book of Revelation and it tells you there that one thing that the servants of God they serve him day and night and they worship him. I like that. Is it the 5th chapter there that says that there's a there's a crowd of 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands and if my figuring's right that's over 100 million with a few thousand numbers thrown in. It'll be something to hear the crowd like that sing won't it? But every woman can sing better than Gali Gertie and every bass singer can sing better than Robinson used to sing. Not Robertson, Robinson. And every tenor can sing better than that what Caruso. You know when I was younger oh well when you're young there are a lot of things you pray about that don't make sense when you're older. When I was younger I used to pray Lord bless me, Lord bless me. I found that was a prayer to bankruptcy so I quit. You get from the place where you say Lord bless me and you pray Lord make me a blessing. And when you pray Lord make me a blessing you get blessed blown in, thrown in. But all these hymns are matchless. That's why I go to churches sometimes I don't often get back a second time but at least the first time I'm there I usually say to them why don't you sell your song books and get a hymn book. We have forgotten how to worship. I mentioned I think when I was here before about dear brother Buck Singh who's been in America this last year and I hope some of you heard him. I talked with him for about three hours and in the course of talking he said well the Americans are very wonderful people very generous people very clever people. But he said I discovered that while the Americans can make planes and automobiles and do so much I was never in a church in America where they knew how to worship. Well then I said supposing I came to your church in India for the Lord's Day now how would the service proceed? Oh well he said by the way it's nearly the first three hours of the service. Sounds more like a ball game doesn't it? I've often said if you want to make money all you have to do is invent a church fuel that's as soft as a bleachers you've got it made. Because nobody gets pains when they sit on the bleachers in the boiling sun for four or five they had a game not long ago I think this past year that lasted the very maximum about twenty after one in the morning it quit. I don't think it was finished but legally they had to finish. Went through about twenty one innings nobody complained. Boy you preach five minutes and somebody goes preach five minutes all the time preach ten minutes they go preach fifteen minutes they go preach half an hour they go. Well, well, another thing what happens oh he said the first three hours of the service we give to praise worship adoration oh it's intoxicating sure it is the wine of heaven well then what well he said the second three hours yes oh the second three hours we spend in prayer supplication intercession yes the third three hours yes we break bread one has a song one has a hymn one has a word of exaltation this brother's just finished twenty one days of fasting this lady had a revelation this man over here has a a word of inspiration and he said we but I said now brother sing you don't mean that every lord's day you spend nine hours in service in worship in prayer well no not every lord's day ah well now now give me the normal well he said that's the normal well what do you mean you don't spend nine hours every lord's day oh he said some days the glory comes down whether twelve hours thirteen hours fourteen hours do you wonder he said he never went to church in America huh oh he sings spirit of faith come down but not until twenty to twelve not till after the cross and the offering good night the kingdom will fall apart if we don't get those miserable dollars come on let's get it now you can come in holy ghost and I'm the preacher now but listen you've got to go at twelve because the chicken will burn if you don't you see we're not liberals we're the fundamentals and if we're the best God has well God help us sure the the teacher was right when he said take your hymn book into the prayer closet take your bible into the prayer closet he's got strict authority doesn't he what does Paul say right into the Colossians in 316 let the word of Christ dwell in you in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing with grace in your hearts to the lord that is Ephesians 5 18 well Ephesians 5 18 is be filled with the spirit what's Ephesians 5 19 speaking to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs singing and making melody unto the lord in your heart I can sing like Caruso inside he gets spoiled coming out but that doesn't make any difference the lord doesn't tell me to sing like Caruso he says make melody unto the lord in your heart you see and sometimes I need crutches sometimes I have to borrow another man's language and say praise my soul the king of heaven to his feet my tribute bring ransomed healed restored forgiven for like these praise should sing praise the everlasting king praise him for his grace and favor to our fathers in distress praise him still the same forever slow to chide and swift to bless praise him praise him glorious in his holiness why Roman Catholic once got so blessed old Cardinal Newman he was quite a theologian he wrote the hymn praise to the holiest in the heights and in the depths be praise in all his works most wonderful most sure in all his ways all loving wisdom of our god and all of sin and shame a second Adam to the fight and to the rescue came all wisest love that flesh and blood which did in Adam fail should stir the flesh against the foe should strive and should prevail there were three famous brothers in Scotland by the name of Bonner one of them Andrew wrote a hymn that I love and sing very often in my devotions fill thou my life oh lord my god in every part with praise that my whole being may proclaim thy being and thy thy being and thy praise not for the litter of praise alone nor in a praising heart I ask but for a life made up of praise in every part praise in the common things of life it's going out and in praise in its duty and its deed however small in me so shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free that my whole life in every step be fellowship with thee you see part of this business of worship and praise and adoration is that first of all as John says in his first epistle that our fellowship is with the father I know it isn't it used to be but it isn't now our fellowship is with one another about the father but you can't alter the defined order worship the father our fellowship is with the father and with his son Jesus Christ and with one another but it comes down that first of all we must learn to worship him some years ago roughly about forty I was preaching in Scotland in a series of meetings someone came up after one of the meetings and said that an old old lady lives in a tenement would you take time out to see her and I said well I yeah we've got a busy day but is she sick well it's not that she's sick but she's very old she's just had her hundredth birthday well I thought when I'm a hundred I'd like somebody to come and see me I guess so I'd better go along and I went to see the old lady took a friend with me another preacher if you've been in these old Scottish tenements you know there are three or four stories high and you go up a twisting stone staircase we went up found a number of the room knocked at the door nobody answered they said she was very deaf and we went in you'll be very generous if you gave us five dollars for every scrap of furniture in the room and I noticed over here there was a rusty an old bed anyhow and a little frail lady whose wrists were just about as thick as my two fingers she was as wrinkled as a prune almost as deaf as the door post as we say totally blind no teeth the teeth were sunk and she was lying back on the bed with her mouth open for I could see her now she's got no teeth and she's got no eyes and she's got no hearing or hardly any and I got on the side of the bed and I yelled in her ear I called about her name Mrs. Jack ach, ach she said with a Scottish dialect ach, ach and who are you I said we are the evangelists and I shouted ach she says give me a hand give me a hand she got a hold of my hand with these scrawny hands of hers that were like claws and she pulled my hand down at one side and my friend's hand down at the other and she said ach she says can you sing croonim well I thought for a moment croonim croonim can you sing croonim ach she says that with yonder sacred thong we at his feet may fall join in the everlasting thong and croonim Lord of all and before he could start singing croonim she was about four months off key but brother I don't think have never heard anything more I looked at the tears coming out of those blind eyes I looked at that hollow mouth I looked at that wrinkled skin and I looked at that woman a hundred years of age without any creak or comfort a little enamel wash bowl and a door to put water in to wash those beautiful little hands that woman lived in the city of port in Scotland she had a marvellous experience of the grace of God and she said I was reading my bible and it says in the bible you begin at Jerusalem it's always easy to begin at the other most parts of the earth but nobody knows you there and so she decided she'd begin at home she made a vow to the Lord she said I'll witness for Christ in every street in this city and she took a bible and she preached in the streets while she was preaching one day the devil she said the devil said to her and so you're preaching and your own boy is a prodigal do you think the folk will take notice of you your boy is a prodigal you've no right to preach that God can save others your boy is a prodigal and right there she's got a bible and she's stamped her foot and she said God Almighty I'll never preach again as long as I live till my boy gets saved and as soon as he's saved I'll start preaching again you've got to live pretty near to God to threaten him concerning the work of my hands commanding me she stood with her bible folding her finger up and she says God Almighty I'll never preach again as she said in Scots I'll never preach again till my own laddie is converted not many months after he was converted not only converted became one of the great preachers of Scotland and she went everywhere telling of the wonder of God's grace that he heard and answered her prayers and then after that for a whole stretch of years more than half a century she went preaching and singing and testifying of the grace of God and it was no new experience for her to lie there because they said that when her daughter was out working you could hear that croaking old voice something like a bullfrog but oh boy when he got to heaven it sounded like an archangel singing call him, call him Lord of all you see we get so many kicks out of other things we don't need the glory of God anymore we're so excited by what we're doing that we don't get the thrill that we should get out of our meditation of God you see this is part of this great business of worship you've got to meditate I often think when they're waiting at a stoplight men alive if you happen to look sadly at your wife and say honey what time is it somebody blasts fire, fire, fire, fire every automobile behind you is blasting as though they were going to a fire well they're going to a fire, hell fire but they don't know that unfortunately and when you're saying a generation like this when we're talking about shrinking the world more and more with our jets the world is shrinking and the universe is expanding you preach on day but wait upon the Lord we don't have time to wait except on TV but apart from that we don't have time to wait when did you last get back in a chair that nice easy chair of yours and kick it up there and read a passage of scripture and meditate meditate meditate that it spoke and spoke and spoke into your mind and into your spirit until you thought that somehow lightning from heaven had struck your soul when it does the only thing you want to do is fall prostrate before him I'm convinced with all my being that God is starved for worship I'm convinced that not one church in a hundred gives God worship on a Sunday morning in America or Britain either so as I said to me on occasion Len I won't live to see this but I think you'll live to see people coming from India and Africa to teach us how to worship in America oh yes sir we've got our beautiful wonderful little brochures and hand it as you go in church the Holy Ghost ruled out before you start the meeting we're going to have this and that is the heaven floor Miss Jones is going to gargle and sing or something in the middle of the service and accompany the music and everything must go and brother we know this very moment we're going to begin and how we're going to begin and how the meeting is channeled oh but sir somehow it's lost its meaning it's lost its majesty it's lost the power of another world it's when we worship God the heavens open it's when we worship him in spirit and in truth because you cannot worship externally you're reflecting to the altar turning to the east or doing some other thing no sir that doesn't interest God at all it's when we come with a broken and a contrived heart it's when we survey the mercies of our God after all in many areas this sermon could last a week I'm sure there are so many things in which of course we could just stand in adoration and worship and praise and thanksgiving because after all all you have to do is go digging into the psalm here and one thing he says twice in the first verse he says sing unto the Lord a new song he says in the second verse sing unto the Lord and bless his holy name he says in verse 7 give unto the Lord 71 times in the psalms the psalm it says give unto the Lord the previous psalm 95 is a kind of introduction it says let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto the Lord with psalms they often try to visualize David sitting on the hillside somewhere with a kind of guitar or a harp there and strumming away at night the 23rd psalm or some of those other amazing psalms but after all all you've done is take this heart out as it were and set it down to poetry why should we worship God well I suggest again you do some digging in the psalm for yourself because you see you cannot compare how can we compare God you cannot compare God God doesn't compare with any other God he contrasts with every other God now tell me today did you think of the heathen bowing down in wooden stool and stone I remember going into the temple of the reclining Buddha in Bangkok in Thailand people go in there and they give their money and they buy temple money they go around this reclining Buddha which is 120 feet long and painted with gold they get into all kinds of twisted distorted shapes to show their humility and I did not see God so much he was twisting it with his tongue and I I was wicked enough to hope it would burn his nose to be quite honest because he was wriggling with it but he didn't want to get low enough before his God to give up his tobacco I'm not digging a new boy who got the smoke because I'm praying he'll get the fire before the week starts but this one you see was he was wanting to worship but he was wanting to worship without really rendering his sacrifice and the farmer says shall I render unto God that which cost me nothing you see part of the cost of worship is is sacrifice and we don't know too much about that do we if anyone lives in easy street I'm convinced that we do but for many years it has been illegal to sacrifice your God to your God a child and then a missionary said that going down the road in India one day she saw a woman and some of those women are very beautiful and they have very beautiful children there's a little boy dancing at the side of his mother he had curly hair and sparkling eyes and lovely teeth and the other babe in her arm was a retarded child it was drooling at the mouth it had a paralysed arm that was swinging as the mother carried it the missionary stopped and gave some tracts to the lady spoke to her for a little while and then went on her way the missionary was returning at the end of the day she'd been to the village she'd done her duty she'd given out her tracts and she'd spoken to some about Christ and as she came home up the road she saw the mother coming back with one child the retarded child she accosted the woman and asked where the retarded child was and embarrassed and pleading with tears that no this would never be spread any further she said I had I had I wanted a request of my God and I could only give him the best I had and so I threw my time into the Ganges now the crippled child has a sparkling delicious little thing I'm convinced that most of our people these days give God the leftovers money time anything you like I want God's best at the least price and God says no we should worship God thank God if for nothing else and amongst many other things we should worship and praise him and give him the adoration due to his name that we even have the light of the gospel we could give him praise and adoration and thanksgiving too that we are not tied up in a false coat tonight and we could do a little balancing of power and realize that though we live in a world with all this hostility to the true gospel and grace of God a day or an evening in fundamentalism as we will think later in the week we have limited the holy one of Israel I believe that a besetting sin of modern fundamentalism is that we have limited the holy one of Israel holy ghost we the odds are heavily against us tonight billions of dollars invested in the movie industry drugs crime if that old boy that lives in Rome is as powerful as he thinks he is why doesn't he excommunicate the mafia they're all his kids anyhow I don't think there's a Pentecostal amongst them but apart from that nursery the church is facing more adversaries tonight than she's ever faced in the history I'm convinced of that sure international crime international drug problems the movie industry the horse racing industry all these other things night clubs pornographic literature sure we're all over our heads in iniquity and sin and some already wring their hands and say well it's too late it's too late we're not gonna see this you know things are gonna get worse and worse well let's finish and add up a few things here what happened when the program in heaven went wrong well Satan started another program with that program he got a third of the heavenly host so you have Satan a third of the heavenly host the world the flesh and the devil all right you've got four lots of things the devil the world the flesh and a third of the heavenly host all right the children of the devil all right they make fight now those are against us now what about us then what do we have for us we have the Father the Son the Holy Ghost this imperishable Lord of God two thirds of the heavenly host and all the saints of heaven and earth so we still outnumber the adversary anyhow and I think that's something to praise God for I want to praise God that he cannot die I want to praise God he cannot lie the only reason we have no revival is not I praise God too he cannot cry he cannot ask anyone else for help because he's self sufficient God has no obligations to anyone we can't patronize God all he's praying for us is to come into the full possession of our inheritance in Jesus Christ some while ago it was an American too who wrote what he called the seven deadly sins of modern society he said they're these politics without principles wealth without work pleasure without conscience poverty without industry without morality science without humanity and worship without sacrifice that's a bunch of bedfellows for you but a tremendous summary of the day in which we're living if we worship God and worship him in spirit and in truth and this we've got what exalted to do if we worship I'm convinced that you cannot have this type of worship in any church without that church not only being a worshiping church but a widening church because this is a sign of health this is a sign of vigor this is a sign of covenant and obedience to the revealed home of God and God desires that we worship him and we worship him in spirit and we worship him in if you were to ask an Englishman what the year 1666 meant in history he'd nod off if he knew his history at all he'd say well of course that was the great fire of London the great plague had been sweeping over the nation and then there came the great fire that destroyed all the Germans and after 1666 nobody died of the plague but you ask a man a sort of red Scotsman in the year of 1666 and he doesn't think about the black plague that swept over England he's thinking about the time when the covenant was still there the Archbishop of Canterbury had declared that he would change the system of religion and they rebelled against the establishment you want to read a book that will show your blood a friend of mine wrote too on that tremendous subject one is called The First Sunshine I forgot the name of the other but anyhow George Octavius wrote those books he is a sort of red Scotsman he's a very brilliant man he lived on the roof of the world in Tibet for a number of years and now lives up in Glasgow one of the characters that he was revealed as was a young man by the name of Hugh Mackay if I remember right Hugh Mackay was only about 24 years of age some of them said he was the strongest and the most spiritual of all those covenanters they were cut down like grass they went to communion at night when the when the moon was down they crept up the hill sometimes on their dollies and just had a piece of bread and a glass of water and they got there and they quoted the Psalms because still in Scotland amongst the very devout they won't even sing hymns the beautiful Psalms the metrical version and they were very beautiful I've shared them with them many many times Hugh Mackay was told to go to the judges in Edinburgh and he went they asked him to recount and he said he couldn't he had done what many of the Scotsmen had done they'd taken the hide of a sheep and they still have it I think in St Giles Cathedral there if you go to the main street they call it the most precious thing that Scotland ever had and men even cut a vein or cut their fingers and they did the old goose and they signed their names on that sheepskin to say they would never deny the Lord of Glory there were many years of a system that was demanding that they should change their form of worship Hugh Mackay was bidden to go before the judges and he refused to change his position theologically in worship and so forth and so the judge said to him very angrily you have three more days to live the young man just put his shoulders back and bowed and said thank you sir when he got outside of the courtroom the streets were lined and either side were thousands of people and somebody said the rumor ah young Mackay has only three days to live they said when he came out of the courtroom he looked as though he could see the King of His Glory at the end of the trial he put his head back and he marched like a grenadier guard down the street the people began to sob ah one of the finest ministers as they say one of the finest ministers we could ever have ah and he got to D in three days they were sobbing and young Mackay turned around and he saw one of the old friends a man still in his twenties the young man stared in his eye and looked at Mackay ah he said and people began to sob again and sobbed very loudly and Mackay stood for an hour with a soldier beside him and he just turned around and said to his friend hi Huey Huey I have only three days and I can see the king in his glory oh brother that's the way to die and the only way to die is to live like him because if he the place where they put him to death in the grass market three days after or the place where they burned those early martyrs the fellows who gave them those fires didn't make them martyrs it just revealed that they were martyrs they died a year two years three years behind and there's no grief to give up a mud ball like this a stupid mud wall like this when you see the king in his glory somehow you feel oh I wish I could break through somehow today let me tell you one thing and finish I used to spend my priest days in England going to a forum where the great preachers of the day preached dear Dr. Sang Soon a friend of mine a fantastic preacher in my judgment a Methodist harm would come down Hugh Black from Edinburgh another good friend Dr. Martin Laird Jones these men would come every Tuesday we would sing a hymn they would give whatever message they had on their hearts and something like four to five hundred men would gather mostly ministers they in England wear their colours backwards of course and one day I know next Tuesday we are going to have a special visit from Dr. C.S. Lewis of Magdalen College Oxford well I had read some of his books how many of you have read anything of C.S. Lewis you must have good good very wonderful writer and I went down very early that Tuesday I thought my I want to see this very brilliant man I thought he would be like Dr. Martin Laird Jones Martin Laird Jones used to keep up in his shelter feeling for his feeling for his thermometer he was still a doctor because you see he used to be doctored to the king of England before he gave it up to preach I thought I would see a little perched sharp man instead of that there is a man sitting on the platform and I thought it was a farmer about six feet two in height he had a big oval face red cheeks as though he got paint on them and I thought oh oh say an old story I guess the preacher didn't turn up so somebody is going to stand in and preach for him well they sang such an offering and then the preacher said the leader said now we would like to give all the time we can to our distinguished preacher today and so here is Dr. C.S. Lewis Lewis just got up and he rolled to the desk and something like this you know put his hands on it and he said I believe in the resurrection of the body the way he said it was you are a fool if you don't I mean he didn't say that he was too cultured but the accent on it said I believe in the resurrection of the body then he went on to a theological and philosophical discourse that was fantastic but I'll never forget the way he finished up he said I have a friend my friend has a little girl that he idolizes and she gets everything she wanted and she wanted a pony and he bought her the pony and he said to the little girl now the groomsman is going to teach you how to ride and you're going to learn how to so day by day the groomsman took her out then she got tired of having her set her own or a a friend to guide her along and she said daddy would it be alright if I rode my pony by myself tomorrow I've been going out for weeks now with this man and he doesn't always want to stop and pull the flowers like I do and he doesn't want to stop by the book and he doesn't want to hear the birds sing I'd so like to go by myself alright darling he said you can do that but you've got to obey my instructions he said I'll do that what are the instructions well you can go down to the end of the avenue you can go through the gates they have a big estate and you can go down the avenue outside of the estate until you come to the big oak tree but you must never go any further because just past that there's a road with a lot of traffic and you might get injured you promise I promise well she enjoyed riding but one day she came back up the avenue and he was watching from the library window this big old castle where they live little girl was walking and she had the reins and the pony in her hand and she was walking up very disconsolate he looked down and he said now darling what's wrong did you fall off your horse your pony no did he bite you no did he kick you no what's wrong she said daddy I got so interested in a beautiful countryside this morning I forgot all about the oak tree and I went camping past the oak tree and just as I got there a big beautiful horse a Tesla horse put his head over the over the hedge so she said I rewound and I threw my reins over the post and I went and I struck him and he whinnied hmm hmm like that yeah yeah I talked to him and he called back to me and she said you know he said I couldn't guess he said what's that thing you're riding well it's my pony a pony it's not much bigger than a dog well you've got a dog at home a beautiful beautiful dog it's a banana that's nearly as big as your pony that's not you aren't a horse woman you can't even ride not till you've been on a on a horse like me and she said he began to paw the ground like this and she slapped the hedge and she said he ran away and he cantered round the field and he came back and he snotted a bit and scratched with his feet and came up and she said I put my arms round his neck and said you're beautiful I don't want that pony anymore she said darling I don't want that pony anymore you've always bought me what I will you buy me that horse he said yes darling now look I'll buy you that horse I'll buy you it look when you've corrected your bad horsemanship you don't sit well in the saddle you don't hold your riding crotch as you should ride it hold it and he said you've got at least five deficiencies out there now you get those five deficiencies right and as soon as they're right I'll buy you that horse and he said well my friend told me that he said you know that little girl would go down the road and she'd look over her head there and say to that horse you're gonna be mine soon I'm really gonna correct my bad horsemanship I'll love you oh I want to get on your back and see what it's like to really get on a horse that can go like you can go not ride this miserable little pony and you know the big brilliant scholar C.S. Lewis said you know gentlemen that reminds me of myself I'm the little girl that doesn't know how to ride the horse and sometimes I look over the boundary line of eternity and I see the body that I'm going to have like unto his glorious body and I think my mind's in a prison my spirit can't worship you and he said the lord looks down and says C.S. Lewis listen I'll tell you what's wrong with your spiritual life this is the very thing for which Jesus died not merely to save us from hell not merely that we may be killed in his service now but we may move out into those areas of eternity that God made us for ride in the song that we sing so often we'll join in the everlasting song and crown him lord of all tell me this have you been so changing God in the realm of worship don't you think it would be good to drop your prayer list and your requests and the other things that feel so urgent and say lord I've been so busy wanting to get get get now for a change I want to give you something I want to give you my other race I want to give you praise I want to give you worship I want to give you my lord I want to pour out my heart to thee worship the lord in the beauty of holiness and the more we join this prayer list the more his likeness will come back on us because after all when the woman poured out that alabaster box of ointment at his feet it was very precious it was very pungent and when she poured that ointment on his feet and took the hair of the head and wiped his feet and obviously she got back the fragrance she put on him and the only way to get back that fragrance is to worship him in spirit and in truth and in the beauty of holiness I pray god will teach us this even these days while we're here thank you