In this sermon, the preacher begins by expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to share a message that will be helpful to the listeners. He then reads from Psalm 57:5-11, focusing on the repeated phrase "Be thou exalted, O God above the heavens, and let thy glory be above all the earth." The preacher emphasizes the importance of exalting God and giving Him glory in all circumstances. He encourages the audience to wake up their hearts and praise God early, highlighting His great mercy and truth. The sermon concludes with a repeated expression of gratitude and a desire for the listeners to continue to exalt and glorify God.

I haven't done that yet, I've been sort of talking, and I've had a bit of text this morning for you. I don't know whether you like that or not, I assume you do, we offer you, I mean I like preaching, not necessarily me, I don't like my own preaching, I wouldn't get up to hear it, but if you have, I'll try to bring you something that will help you. We have some good old psalms, Psalm 57, 5, and 11, let me read the whole psalm, I'll just do it. This is very good. He says, The merciful unto me, O God, and me, for my soul hath to live in thee, yea, in the shadow of thy hand, until these calamities be over, past. I will cry unto God most high, and to God all things for. He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that was sent. God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. My soul is among lions, and among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men whose teeth are spears and arrows, and that these are exalted, O God, above the heavens, and that thy glory be above all the earth. Thereafter my steps, my soul is bowed down, they are big to pit before me, into the midst where all there follow. My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed, I will sing, and wake up my sovereign heart. I myself will awake early. I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people. I will sing unto thee among the nations, for thy mercy is great unto the heavens, and thy truth unto the clouds. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let thy glory be above all the earth. That's what I want to talk about for a little while this morning, God above all other things. See, David here, David was no sissy, and he was no male housewife. Christians now are just male housewives. But David wasn't that sort of fellow. David was a soldier, and he was a king. He had not only affairs of state, he had military affairs on also, hadn't he? He called it, he said he was among lions. My son, I ate last night with my son and his new wife, and I said something, and he hoped he knew why their dad gets his effects by exaggeration. Well, I didn't exaggerate much of David, but he found he was among lions, and he was kind of a pale of the bush on it. He was talking about people. He said the people are lions. He described them, and he said that their teeth were like spears and arrows, that their tongue was sharp. Somewhere, you're surrounded by people that have teeth like spears, and tongue as sharp as an arrow, and then forever, that's sure as you live. So David did some very wise thinking here. He really knew that if he attacked these little fellows, if he attacked the lions, he decided, I believe he decided, that he would put God between them, those others, those other things And what they had, these recently died, 99.9% of the so-called Christians vote for money. These recently died, and they were invited to do that gargling and to make their payments. How many of you kids here ever heard of Henry Burr? Just put your hand up. Henry Burr. Now, now, you heard of Henry Burr, all right, and you would have counted him, but now he I never heard of him. One day, you know, all he had to do was announce that this stuff they call sin is really sin, and I don't believe it's really sin at all. There's so much color, you know, besides. Anyway, along those lines, he said that they started to see, he said, I believe that's all done, you see. He said, God, if you can go and talk to him, he's busy, and you want to go, and he's getting a couple of commanding where they are, they say, we'd like you to say, what's your name in your head, and he says, U.S.A., and nothing I can say would prevent you. If he can't talk you out of it, he says, okay, next window, so. Oh, I had a lot of things I thought up, fella, because he's been married, you know, but anyhow, he's a good, he's got some work, and he was quite thin, and he baptized there, and he never came back. He went back, and God didn't even marry him. Now, I can prophesy what happened. Possibly she's still a good Bible, and she's going to God. God married her, and that's the first thing you want in a generation, when anybody sees God and he's married. They pray, and they say, well, what's the will of God, and then they'll spend the rest of their lives. So, that's the negative side of it, and if I stop there, but I think it's the happiest part of that too, and it's great, that you don't have to live that way. For every one of us, there is a place of where you and God have the right relationship to each other. You've taken God, and you have dedicated your life to God, and you are a lover with which you can live only quite a little. I want to offer you a ladder, and I want to also explain to you how, and how you can have youthfulness and a better life. And he said, now the birds are down, and he's all exalted over it, where no people are demoralized. I said that one time, and the odd thing about it is that people seem to have more power to affect than good does. And if a young fellow who loved God is going to be injured, but the young man knew to live the other way around. So, if I had God above my friendship, I wouldn't have any pain in my blood, but I wouldn't put you first. Now, that's most important, particularly it's important for young people. It's important for teenagers. You and me are converted on hope. If you simply gave up hope, I'd be used to travel around the earth. But if you didn't, you are yellow. Come out clean, cut all the cords that bind you, as we think, and fluff off the old thing. So what am I going to do, go to a nun's school, or a nunnery, and shut myself up and all that? You make other things. You make me. When I was converted, converted when I was seventeen years old. I just, you know, you as teenagers wouldn't know that. I was five days back, and your parents probably heard me say it somewhere, but you wouldn't. I converted when I was seventeen years old, and I don't know how. I heard a fella preach on them. I came out of a home where there were no Christians at all. I know, we never went to church, only about once a year, if you can't believe, but I heard this fella preach, and he said that if you don't know how to pray, pray without anyone, you have a dream accident. He said if you don't know how to pray, go home and pray, God has mercy on you, you're a sinner. I went up to my, the attic of my mother's home, and I got down on my knees, and I said God has mercy on me, I'm a sinner. I said, I was going to a church to join, and I joined a church, a small Christian church up the road a little way, and then instead of that, I had to scoot a little left. That's when I went into the Alliance, and I've never belonged to anything since but the Alliance. But that was being converted when I was young. I had been running around with a gang, and fellas, we never had done too many bad things. We'd done a lot of things that were unquestionable, and I gave them up, but I gave them up more or less, if you're a really good Christian, and you insist upon living a good Christian life, the only problem with running with the devil is you naturally, and if they haven't left you naturally, it could be that you're not living. But the point is, all friendships that are enjoyed should be turned over to God, and we should say, oh God, you've died well with us. You've raised my country. I don't know whether I should talk to you about this or not. If anybody would get up at 5 o'clock to get out to a meeting like this this morning, and have a big crowd here, well, I guess you don't mind your country too much. That's good. I don't know which. But I do know one thing. Some of you are sleepy. Every once in a while, I see a mouthful of good-sized grapefruit in without touching either side. You're sleepy. I don't know how you're out there, but if you're going to have to make up your mind whether you're going to live for your own comfort, you know how we do in this country. We live for our own comfort, and in good comfort, the more we live fast. And you know, when you have to be real comfortable, it's time to take it all. How many people are taking this mixed-up mess this morning on the driveway? I forget the name, the nibbling on lettuce. Time to take off what they love a country to put on. Not really part of the sermon, but I'd better mention it. But we love comfort. We love comfort. Now, there's God's beauty, but when you have to say, Be thou exalted, O God, above my comfort. There must be a day when you say, Be thou exalted above my comfort. Praise your loving Lord. And there was a time back there, when I had lots of hair, and there was a time back there when alliance people didn't have to be told not to go to places of the world. They got converted and got to know alliance. They never went to the places of the world. But now, they're all changed, and it's very safe anymore. They don't have a place or a problem. Some people are running off to get birth. I said, oh, don't be fanatical about it. He said, I don't think we should go to hell. He said, well, then why don't you come here and we'll tell you a story? He said, remind you of a fellow who fell through the roof. He grabbed him and said, no, I'm not afraid of him. Let's just leave it to him. And, you know, it's like that. Oh, now, you're closer. Now you're old-fashioned. You belong to another generation. And this is who you are. And it could be that you're a little puny, because I've had more to sharpen up than what's left of my old brain. And I've seen what closure loving does to young people. I've seen it. A church I joined, it had been on the masonry on the far north of Maine. Well, I came out of that when I went into the Christian Eastern Oral Alliance because of it. I backslid in the basement of the old church making sandwiches, you know, even Sunday afternoons, and trying to play my own. Instead of making God and things of God and prayer and song and Christian fellowship and half-wild people, instead of making that first, I had to give those two backslidden kids something to keep them from just dying of frustration, have them have a life of God in them, to make them, to just keep them happy. And then the ambitions, I think I've mentioned. Here's your reputation. You're going to have to say, Oh, God, do I drive above my reputation? Everybody wants to be with somebody. And my likes and my dislikes, even my health and finally my life itself. Be thou my life, O God. But tell me, young people, as I've said before, this is not a playground, but a battleground. And the Christian life doesn't call you to play, it calls you to labor and fight. And when you're laboring and fighting, you don't look, you don't look for comfort then. I heard of a second lieutenant one time, and he said to a second lieutenant, he was in his first time in battle. First time. And he headed for a ditch. He dived head first. And as he crushed his hand and all, he dived into the ditch and he screamed, Oh, shoot him head first. Shoot him head. And the tough old fellow, Oh, I'll fall first. Of course you'll fall first. You'll get shot at. Get out of the ditch and fight. Well, you ought to like the second lieutenant. He dived into the ditch. He screamed, you don't know this battleground. You thought you were foreign, Mr. Moore. No. I said, they don't just shoot at you. If you were a good official boy, you don't think that it's anything unnatural for a Christian to get shot at. God put him out there to fight. You think God is just a liar, that's all. He used to tell me all the time that if you're here, you worry about the lightning. Because the lightning looks very fierce. If the lightning looked really real or something, that was about, so if a bullet brushes by, you can smile at that one anyhow, because it hasn't got you. And if it gets you, well, the devil is around here and the world's upside down. You've seen the pretty part of Chicago. I came in the other morning, the other afternoon, with the wife of Gordon Bishop. I was here on the plane together with the daughter of young Charles Bishop, 17, she told me. Good looking kid, hope she's here this morning. And we saw a medic out here, I figured it was going to be an old 57 or 53-year-old student. You know how students are. So we had a medic with a great big gorgeous blue Cadillac. He borrowed it for the occasion. And he took us down here with our child, three of us. And he took us through the seaside. Man, oh man, Chicago, I've been living here 31 years and I haven't seen it all like myself. And it was still worse places. I could have taken them to still worse places, but I thought, Chicago doesn't at all, doesn't at all consist of gilded panels and strangers. It's a sinful, vicious, ugly, devil ridden, crime ridden, bloody city. That's where you ought to be in at night. You ought to have to go out experimenting around the corner. Nobody knows and you walk one block here, you know you're held up for something else. Well, it's a wicked place, a wicked world, and you're going to have to save yourself a half year. She saved me, my old ex-grandmother said, to live in a barn box. I never found out what a barn box was, but I assumed it was some comfortable place. She said, well, you have to live in a barn box. She thinks she was married to live in a barn box. Well, living in a barn box, I assumed, would be by the fire, being fed, and combed, and looked after. But we're, we're not a social class, you know. We're, we're soldiers. God didn't save you to make you, to give you comfort. He saved you to put a gun in your hand, and to set you out there as, a soldier for you, and a soldier for Jesus Christ. And he says, now my house and my comforts, they've got to go. Be thou exalted above my God. Let God be first. Would you be willing to put God first in everything? Everything? Sure, I told it to the older generation, but not so. But I won't tell it to you, the younger generation now. It's a, it's a true real estate, and it's about a German fisher by the name of John Tyler. John Tyler was a great oiler about 34 years. He was a great oiler. He was a great fisher. He had a huge church. Everybody came to him every year. One day, an apprentice came to him and said to him, uh, Master, that evening, Reverend or Master, he said, we'd like to have you on, uh, on the Deeper Life. And, uh, he said, oh, sure, sure, I'll be glad to do it. He said, in fact, I'll teach on the Deeper Life next Sunday. So next Sunday, he preached on the Deeper Life. He had a sermon of 21 poems. I read the sentence. It was a good one. He said, preach one half as good. Then the Deeper Life, the crucifier life, the life wrapped in the grail, in Christ. And so, this fellow came back some time after Reverend was gone, and he said, uh, Master, that was a good sermon. He said, thank you. His face began to glow. He said, did you mind if I said something to you? He said, no, go on. He said, you don't have what you preached about. He said, all right, but you don't have it. He said, you, you, you have given us theory this morning, but you don't know what it is in your own mind. Now, Master Eccles, the great grand teacher, could have, or Master Powell, uh, if I say Master Eccles, you know I mean Master Eccles, because there's two of them. That's a person sometimes associated with my mind. But, he said, you don't, you have said, now listen, did you plan to go and plan a trip? I am the pastor of this church, and I look after, but he didn't. He said, he didn't know that leaning back on his dignity, he said to his friends, he said, well, what do you realize? He said, he said, I can't teach you I'm a farmer from up country. He said, you're the lonely doctor and I'm just a poor farmer. All I know is that the Holy Ghost is there. He said, that's what I want to know. He said, well, you come to my study and teach me how I can live the life I preach the best. He said, well, long time this Nicholas from up country this farmer told of his lonely doctor and told him that evil fellow he was and he just started shutting him down. He was shutting him down. Shutting him down. Shutting him down. he said, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, little, I'm telling you, it is only God knows what lies here before you. And you are saying to me, how do I observe it all? God above me and mine and all that I have and my reputation and my whole ambition, my place of need and my life itself. I believe that you will take that position and hold it. The power of the Holy Ghost will come upon thee and the might of the Lord mighty shall overshadow thee. You will be anointed with an anointing that will make thee a prophet to your generation. Are you concerned about something like that? Is that what you feel for? Do you want God to do this for you? Well, and it's a tough world, but it's a marvelously glorious world. There is man who comes, who finally comes to God, and gets a bag of it on his back, and comes fed and thirsty and tired and covered with dust, back to the little town. He doesn't have very much of the hunger. He's got a bag of gold. And so the hardships of the Christian life are here, and there's no reason to worry about them. But you have a bag of gold, not the gold of churches, but the gold of the kingdom. Gold in your heart forever. You won't remember death till you live. May God bless you and enable you to take this place. God, everything you imagine, you do, will never be sorry. Let's stand. O God, our Heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, through endless diversity, we pray for you young people, all of you children, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you,