In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the unbreakable love of Christ and the victory believers have in Him. He lists various challenges and hardships that believers may face, such as distribution, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, and sword. However, he assures that believers are more than conquerors through Christ. The preacher also shares a story about a woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears, highlighting the power of forgiveness and redemption. He encourages believers to set their affection on eternal things, as the market never changes and God will supply all their needs. The sermon emphasizes the centrality of Christ and the abundance of grace available to believers.

Let's look at the epistle of Paul to the Philippians, Philippians chapter 4, and verse 18. But I have all and abound, I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odor of sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. Somebody attempted to give us another beatitude. I don't know what attitude the man was in when he said it. I don't know whether he was smiling or cynical or smug or satisfied or sincere. But his beatitude was this, blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed. It sounds a bit cynical, but there's an awful, awful lot of truth in it. And I'm quite sure that the Apostle Paul, on a higher level than that man said it, had already made this his way of life. He was not disappointed, because he expected nothing from the world in which he lived. He had written it off, and they had written him off. And the cost of his discipleship, to use a phrase that Bonhoeffer liked so much, the cost of discipleship to him was this, that when he wrote this marvelous verse that I've read to you just now, he was in prison. The sweetest note that the Apostle sang was when he was in prison. I don't know whether we'll have to go to prison to make some of us sing, but anyhow that's true in his life. And you remember that the background of this epistle was this, that he went to a place called Philippi. And being the good preacher that he was, he landed up in jail. And he decided to sing praises, and he sang his praises at midnight. And you remember that there was something tremendous happened, and the jailer was converted. He had a ministry in Philippi. And one of the outstanding converts there was a girl with a familiar spirit. And the Apostle was able to cast that spirit out of her. Now he did write on another occasion about the gospel of the grace of God. He said there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. You could break that down this way and say, there is neither bond nor free, that is race distinction. There is neither Jew nor Greek, that is race distinction. There is neither bond nor free, that is class distinction. And there is neither male nor female, that is sex distinction. Or you could say, as a result of his preaching in Philippi, that a very beautiful lady was the one who first gave him comfort and gave him an ear, Lydia the Seller of Purple. She was a patrician, that is, that she was somebody high up in society. It's usually said that she was of Asiatic descent. And so he was a means of converting this patrician, this lovely lady. He was the means of converting a woman with a familiar spirit. She was a prophetess. He was a means of converting a jailer and he was a, well let's say, a man who would punish. And so you see, each scale of life was met by the apostle in this one single incident. Philippi had been established by a very famous Roman. In fact, it's usually credited with being the first foundation stone in the Roman Empire. And Paul seems to have always been a strategist in this, that he didn't go to the small town, he went to the main cities. He went to Ephesus and he went here to Philippi and he went to Rome because everybody crossed through those cities and he set up shop, if you like, where everybody would see that he was there. And he didn't hesitate even to go to the synagogue and he didn't hesitate to call fire from heaven, as it were, in hostility from himself to himself. I find it tremendously challenging that a man who has braved everything that it is possible to assail his body, his mind and his spirit, now an aged man. I'm sure his eyes weren't straight. I'm sure his cheeks were pleated where stones would rip them open. I'm sure his chest was all scarred with rough stones that had been thrown at him. I'm quite sure he limped. Because, you see, one day he was taken to a city called Lystra and they stoned him there. They left him outside of the city saying, well that's the end of him anyhow, we finished that. And I don't wonder that a man like this, you see, the great thing to me about the Apostle Paul is this. He's the best example of his own theology. You can't fault him anywhere. Everything he says he did, everything he talks about he was. He made up his mind that Christ came and Christ said, look I'll take your human nature, I will be all that you are, in order that you may be all that I am. Now you could sit down and think of that for a week. Christ said I will become all that you are, minus of course human sin, that you may become all that I am. That is, on the level of a man, not sharing his deity, but being made a sharer, a partaker, as the word says, of the divine nature. You know, sometimes we're kind of rebuked because we accept things by faith. Well, you need faith to accept things that you can't reason out. There are some things you just can't reason out, and therefore you, you accept them by faith. Not that we'll ever explain God. God cannot be explained, he can be experienced. Now I say again that Paul says here, and he's writing to these people, now he's in Rome and he writes this, and this seems, it seems ridiculous, it's nonsensical. He says, I have all, and abound, I am full. If you trace the story back, you'll find that part of his imprisonment at Philippi was this, that he was, he was in favor with the Roman guard, and he was allowed, allowed to live, he said, in his own hired house. But he didn't stay there too long. The man got moved on, or he died, and therefore the apostle Paul fell into a different situation. And he says a little later that, all the saints salute you, chiefly they who are of Caesar's household. And it wasn't an uncommon thing, in fact it was a very pretty ordinary thing, in those days, for a man to build an enormous palace, and then underneath, like you have in say Warwick Castle in England, were the, the areas where the slaves were put, or where the prisoners were chained to the wall. Now Paul was never minus that chain. Wasn't it when he stood before a gripper that he said, a fester stood up and said, my, you almost persuade me to be a Christian. And he said, I would that you were as I am, except for these bonds, except for these chains. It was a sign of humiliation that a man dragged the chain, like today a convict, and he struggles with a chain between his legs. And even if this man was allowed to go free in the street as he was sometimes, that mark of condemnation was on him all the time. He had to drag that weary chain with him. It was an identification that he'd lost his freedom. It was an identification that they'd humiliated him and robbed him of everything that he had. He was spoiled. And yet listen, there's no embarrassment to the apostle Paul. He takes that chain of, of iron with him as though it were a chain of gold. He's as happy in his bondage. You see, here he's living down here in a basement. Will you notice what he says? I could have been comfortable, but the springs in the bed were rough last night. The air conditioner wasn't working. And I couldn't get a drink of cold water. And my mail's been held up for days. And you know, the food isn't quite as good as the other prison I was in. You notice this, that Paul never whines? He never whimpers. Why doesn't he whimper? Why doesn't he whine? Because he says, Christ dwells in my heart, and I can no more whine than Christ whines. Christ never whimpered. Oh, the height of really being lost in God, lost in Christ as the apostle was. He's downstairs, and he's chained to the wall when he sleeps. The other man's upstairs with a silken couch. The man up there is terrified he'll be assassinated. Paul isn't. He knows nobody will bother with him. His freedom is he's already an outcast. His liberty is he's already protected. This man is delicate and says, we don't have to eat this again today, do we? Oh, it's boring. I mean, after all, we did it. Well, these are leftovers. Oh, leftovers. You offend the dignity of my lovely appetite. Paul down there gets the scraps that fall from the rich man's table, unless, of course, the slaves ate them in between the two places. And then he says in his heart, I've got meat to eat that ye know not of. This man walks about and says, do you know that I have power from Caesar? The apostle Paul says, do you know I have a power from a man who's going to live when Caesar's been dead a thousand million years? He lives in a world they know nothing about. He has freedom. While the man upstairs is in bondage. The man upstairs has a delicate appetite. This man has said, I've learned, he says to these very people, I've learned whatsoever state I'm in therewith to be content. Now, should we change this into a testimony meeting and let you all say the last time you quoted that? Huh? He doesn't say I've learned some conditions, he says I've learned whatsoever state I'm in. Not that I speak in respect of want, he says. Do you know one of the most stirring things to me about this epistle? This is a love letter. He uses a personal pronoun here almost a hundred times. He speaks twenty times in different ways about contentment and joy and rejoicing. Oh come on, what do you mean? Are you bluffing us? Are you putting on an act? Do you want everybody to hear that when you really got your back to the wall and you'd only half the skin on it, that you really kept your chin up and you sang in the night? You see, this is not an epistle of some people that are living in comfort and an easy street. It's a man who's lost everything. You see again, as I've said to you before and it stands for Caesars, when you have nothing you don't have to worry you lose anything. And Paul had nothing. He'd no reputation, he certainly had no money, he had no creature comfort. You couldn't go in his cell and sit down because there's no chair to sit on. He couldn't offer you some refreshment because he had no refreshment to give. Everything that the eye could see, everything that the five senses could feed upon had already been demolished. And that's why he says to the believer, listen, listen, set your affection on things which are above. Do you know why? Because the market never changes there. Because the supplies never run out in eternity. He giveth more grace as the burdens grow greater. It'll be horrible if you thought there was less grace tomorrow than there was yesterday, if your burden's twice as big tomorrow as yesterday. But he says, he giveth more grace as the burdens grow greater. Listen, these very people he says, my God should supply all your needs. You want to see a living example of it? Here I am sitting in a lousy prison cell. And as a matter of fact he says, if I came right down to it, I'm really feeling sorry for you because you don't have as much victory where you are as I have right down here and I've got nothing. And in having nothing I've got all things. You see a fire doesn't make a man a martyr, it reveals he is a martyr. If somebody stood you by the wall this afternoon and shot you because you say, well I, yes I'll stand by Christ instead of communism or some other thing, that would just reveal that somewhere else you'd already made your decision. As I've said so often, Jesus did not die on the cross, he died in Gethsemane. The will of his, was surrendered to his Father. The cross was the physical evidence of something that he denies before when he sweat with great grief and agony and said, if it be possible let this cup pass over me or all thy billows have gone over me. It's my opinion, you may disagree, but it's my opinion that after the Apostle Paul himself, nobody ever stood as tall in spiritual life, after Jesus himself, nobody ever stood as tall as the Apostle Paul. He says, I have all things and abound. In a prison cell, hey come on Paul, you don't have a change of socks and you know it, why don't you own up to it? You don't have a spare, a spare shirt, why don't you admit it? You've got, what do you mean you've got all things? Well he says, all you need is air to breathe and that keeps you alive. You don't have a money jingling in your pocket, you don't need a lovely home, you don't need a marvelous palace like this king that lives above my head. I have all things because I only live on one level, I only have one interest, I only have one joy, I only have one goal and there is nothing can cut me off from that. You see, on that Damascus road, he says that Christ revealed himself to me and then God took him to that great school, the University of Silence and he was there for three and a half years. On the Damascus road he said Christ revealed himself to me, but in the wilderness he said he revealed himself in me. I'm afraid the great population of so-called Christians, Christ has revealed himself to them but I wonder how far he's revealed himself in them. I wonder what the degree of abandonment as God runs as it were his slide ruler, takes my temperature this afternoon and I may preach with zeal and a little effort and a little joy and a little sorrow and a little anguish but I wonder when he gets right down there into the center of my being and takes my temperature, what degree of reservation there might be right now? Is it showmanship? Is it zeal? Is it my hatred against worldly systems? Or is it my pure love to him? You see, Paul gives us a catalogue there in the second letter to the Corinthians and verse 11, he spells out some of the things that had come to him. In verse 24, 2 Corinthians 11, he says of the Jews, five times received I forty stripes saved once, thrice, listen, thrice, three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the deep, in journeyings oft, in perils of the waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own countrymen, in perils of the heathen, in perils of the city, in perils of the wilderness, in perils of the sea, in perils amongst false brethren, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings, in hunger, in thirst, in fastings, often in cold and nakedness. Hey, they aren't very good wages for a man that sold everything he had on that Damascus road, are they? This man could have been sitting up on a chair in the university because he had a greater colossal intellect, I'm sure, than Hillel, the greatest of the rabbis that ever lived. And here he says, I'm in weariness, I'm in fasting, I'm in pain, painfulness. Oh, you have to have pain when you're spirit-filled. Well, he had anyhow, didn't he? Hunger? Well, that's what he said. You know, I'm staggered, honest I am, and I'm not fooling. I'm staggered that when this man went into Philippi, he didn't go around and say, spread the news, spread the news, spread the news. Do you know who's come to town? Paul, the apostle. I've done more than any man that ever lived. I do everything Jesus did. He raised the dead, I raised the dead. He cured the sick, I cured the sick. He drove out devils, I drove... Why did he set up shop and shake the whole heathen city with a healing crusade? It's amazing how little he does of that. Now, that's not wrong, it's right, it's beautiful. It's wrong when you need it for entertainment and give you a lift. You see, Paul's center and circumference, his beginning and the end, his source and everything is Jesus Christ. Now, I say in this epistle, he uses the personal pronoun a hundred times, but as in every other epistle, his whole philosophy is geared and he centers people not on Paul, not I, but Christ. And he exalts him and he uplifts him. When he finished writing that longer epistle to the Romans, you remember the end of it where he sums it all up beautifully and he says, and I think there's a, could I put these together? They don't sound right, but there's a holy swagger here. There's a holy swagger. He puts his shoulders back and he says, all right, well, just a minute before you chop my head off, let me tell you something. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, distress, famine, peril, nakedness, or sword? As it is written for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We're counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things, not some of them, we are more than conquerors. Not we just skip through and then finish up exhausted. He says, when I finished, I have a surplus left. He says, I'm persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers. You see, he's not only fighting something, he said, there's a sword. Nakedness and the sword, they have to do with the body. You can't put a sword through my spirit, you can put a sword through my body. But he says, I triumph over that. And then he says, also there are principalities and there are powers. Do you remember he uses that same word in writing to the Colossians in the first chapter? He says, for by him, that is Christ, by him all things were created that are in heaven, in the earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers. You remember he finishes Ephesians 6 saying the same thing? We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers. I'll tell you what, the church has got by pretty well until now, but it's my guess, no, it's my certainty, that we're going to have a lot more to do with principalities and powers in heavenly places in the next few years than we've had in the past few. This is a fight to the death. This is Satan's last great drive before the final outpouring of the Spirit of God. And Paul doesn't hesitate to say that he's wrestled against principalities and powers, and against the rulers of the darkness of this world. And yet I remind you again of this text in which he says, but I have all. He not only says I have all, he says I abound. I not only abound, I'm full. He's a shirtless, homeless, moneyless, wifeless, childless, positionless, possessionless man, singing in glory, when the world has done its very best. And he said, I've told you over and over again that the matter's not about tribulation, or distress, or famine, or peril. What can separate us from the love of God? Again, you can wall me in, but you can't roof me in. You can cut me off from fellowship. You can take my Bible, take my church, and what do I do? Well, before God, it doesn't take that much to upset a lot of us, does it? A little adversity. Oh, I wonder what the Lord's doing. Has he forgotten about us? Hey, you were brave. You told him not long ago in prayer that you'd take anything, and so he says, all right, I'm going to try you out for a season. Where are my resources when it comes to that issue? Now, Paul is reminding this people that he himself is in jail. He's in a bad situation. But if you go to chapter 1 and verse 29, he says this, For unto you it is given on the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake, having the same conflict which he saw in me, and now here to be in me. The same conflict. You're going to suffer for his sake. In the second chapter, he says in verse 15, that he wants them to be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and a perverse nation. Coming over into the third chapter, he begins to excite them in praise and adoration. You see, I reminded you that a hundred times he uses the first personal pronoun, because he's showing them what Christ means to him, but he's keeping their eyes on Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Again, in twenty different ways, he talks about peace and calm and quietness and rejoicing and exaltation and worship. Now, there's one great omission in this chapter I only discovered. I think it was this morning. Do you know he says nothing in this chapter about sin? He says nothing in the epistle about sin. He wrote the next epistle in the same place, at least he wrote it in prison in Rome. But in the next epistle, he has to take up a cudgel, he has to fight, he has to do some combat. You see, some of the people have crept in and said, well, we don't deny Jesus is the Son of God. We deny that he made a perfect atonement for sin, and man, that pulls everything there is in the apostle Paul. You can tread on him, but you don't touch Jesus Christ. You can beat me and bruise me, you can cast me into the Mediterranean in a night and a day in the deep, that's all right, I'll take it, but you don't touch the Son of God. He loved me and gave himself for me. He has a holy passion, he has the fire that took men down to the martyr's place. He doesn't mention sin. Would you agree if I say there are some things harder to deal with than sin? Come on, you know there are. You know there are certain sins, if Satan tempted you, get out of here, I have no interest in them. The average believing man is not tempted to adultery and drunkenness and thieving and all those other abominable sins of the flesh, but there are some things harder than sin, and the apostle had to face them, and you and I have to face them. He had to face betrayal by some of his closest friends. He'd invested a great deal and trained some young men. For instance, he says, uh, Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. Demas had been a firebrand, Paul would never have had him. The men that swore their allegiance not to him, they swore their allegiance to Jesus. And I say in God's name, if men couldn't listen to the apostle, Paul teaches they couldn't listen to Gabriel. And they took issue with him on one thing, another thing, and they found a place of separation. Do you know why? The cross got too difficult to bear. They couldn't bear the scorn of the world, and so they compromised with it. Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world. He doesn't say he committed adultery. He doesn't say he murdered somebody. He doesn't say he did something obscene. He says the world, the world, the world got a pull on him. And finally he gets to the place where those giant men at the side of him, do you know what he says? I don't think he said it with his tongue in his cheek. I don't think he was crying on somebody's shoulders. He says, uh, well, all men forsook me. Nevertheless, the Lord stood by me. You know when you'll find who's your dearest friend? When everybody quits you but one. I'm not sure you didn't say amen, but that's still true. Everybody quits you but one. Do you think it was easy for this man? He's up against the Roman Empire. He's up against the might of the Greeks. He knows the Jews hate him with a perfect hatred. You see, he's got everything going for him. He's got nothing going for him. He's a tribe of Abraham, a tribe of Benjamin, everything a good Jew wanted he had. He was circumcised the eighth day. You know why they circumcise a child on the eighth day? If you circumcise it on the seventh, it would bleed to death. It's circumcised on the eighth day. Isn't it marvelous the Bible knew that before modern science knew it? But you see, you don't have to try and reconcile the Bible with science, you can't reconcile them. Jesus didn't come to reconcile us to this world, forget it. Sure, I think we need more godly men in government if we can get it, but I'm going to tell you this, you'll never reconcile Washington or London to Jesus Christ. That is not the purpose of redemption. The purpose of redemption is that men should be reconciled to God, then reconcile with each other as far as possible. But we're in a world system and it doesn't get any better. It's getting infinitely worse. Satanic powers are engineering everything they can for the downfall of this great country. And I'll tell you again, the White House isn't going to save it, God's house will save it. If God's house is cleansed, then really in the place you ought to be in. But Paul says, I've got everything going for me, I'm circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the seed of Abraham. Good night, that's about as much as you could take. Then he says, I'm not only a Pharisee, I'm a Pharisee of the Pharisees. My dad was one of the outstanding men, and I have everything open before me. And you know, he says later, he's not only of the tribe of Benjamin and the seed of Abraham, so he's got it religiously, he says, I've got it socially. You know, I'm a Roman, I'm free-born. You don't mean that? Yeah, yeah, my father had the freedom of the city. Oh, the Roman soldier said, I bought my commission, at least my daddy bought it for me, he's a lot of money. You're free-born? Yes, I'm free-born. And I think under his breath he said twice. But, uh, he was free-born. He was free-born as a Roman, he was free-born as a Christian. I think he would have loved Isaac watching him, maybe sang at the end of the day. Every day, my richest gain I count but loss. Oh, how easy to sing, how difficult to do. My richest gain I count but loss. Where's my testament? Let me look here. All right. But he says the very thing in that next verse, verse 7 of Philippians 3. Those things that were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ, yea, doubtless, and I count things. No, no, no, no, read it. I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered. Now, he doesn't, he doesn't try to be too heroic. He doesn't say, listen, uh, you know, I'm, I'm not built like you. I, I, it's so marvelous. You know, when God filled me with the Spirit, he took my emotions away, took my nerves away, took everything away, and I don't feel like you. I'm sorry for you, but I'm just not built like that. Paul didn't say, none of these things hurt me. He said, none of these things move me. Of course they hurt him. The more sensitive you become, the less of self you have, and the less of other things you have, the more sensitive you become in the Spirit, and it's harder to take. The irritation of the world, the blindness of the world, the folly of the world. The thing that gets under my skin now is that preachers are talking the language they talked 25 years ago. I want to tell you we're on a collision course. In America, in England, in, in, in all the, we're on a collision course. Number one, we're on a collision course with communism, I'm sure of that. Number two, we're on a collision course with God, because God gets angry with nations as well as individuals. But poor Paul says he suffered. Man alive, when they whipped him, he says, I was whipped, what? Five times I received 40 stripes. What's 540? It's 200 and 200 minus 40 stripes, save one. So that's 195. It was a whip, and on the end of every lash, there was a long piece of spiked copper, and he was tied to a whipping post. And you know what? If they hadn't have tied him, he'd have stayed there. He wasn't going to run away. He'd already asked for what I didn't ask for. You see, everybody wants joy bells and happiness, and you turn God's house into a pigsty almost. Everybody wants to eat and do everything. But I'll tell you what, nobody wants to travel in birth. When did you last hear a man daringly say to God, let me fill up the sufferings of Christ? That's something, isn't it? That's where our strength is proved. Disagree, but I'm convinced in the Old Testament, the sign of God's blessing in the Old Testament was prosperity. The sign of God's blessing in the New Testament is adversity. What's your breaking point? And the hostility of the world is such that if you get just a Christian philosophy in your mind, and believe in the virgin birth, and believe in the resurrection, and believe in other things, you'll break. But if Christ comes and lives in you, and that's what Paul says. You know, I like to tease people. You get them just as mad when you tease them sometimes. And I say, if you go to a Pentecostal church, you say, well, I got saved, and I got filled with the Holy Ghost, and I got some gifts, I spoke in tongues, and everybody says, Amen, glory, glory. Well, that's great, what's wrong with it? You go to a holiness church, you're not quite as exuberant. You have to look a little sad, maybe, and say, I'm saved and sanctified. Everybody wonders whether you're saved and sanctified, or saved and sanctimonious, but anyhow, you say it, and it passes off. But I say again, change your philosophy. And the night you're going to do it, take all your little children with you, if you have them to church. And the preacher say, preacher, do you know, my heart's overflowing, want it? Stand up, sister, and testify. Stand up, brother. And you stand there and say, sweetly, you know, dear friends, I was once a sinner and a rebel, but well, now Christ lives in me. Christ lives in me. As I say, you sit down, and your wife says, well, George, when did that happen? I've been living with Christ all this time. You know, I never guessed that. Oh, I know, you stop spitting on the rug, and swearing, and drinking, and carousing, and all. But you know, I never realized. I mean, you get angry so soon, and you get so bitter, and I didn't know. And then, of course, you try and rub it off on the old nature, and she says, well, you had that when I married you. But you said that now Christ lives in you. Well, that's the whole thing. I wonder, I say to myself, well, look, here is this man. He's defiant of the devil. Man, he doesn't live on an earthly plane, merely. I wish I could find some folk like that, honest to goodness I do. I go see them. One of the greatest men I ever knew was a little Pentecostal pastor in the city of Leeds. We went to a holiness church. If you went to the Pentecostals, you'd almost to be re-baptized. But my dad and mum sneaked off, took a street car, cost a penny, and we rode on the street car to town, and then we hadn't a penny to go the other, so we walked it. But I'd love to go to that church. Oh, it wasn't that they whooped it up, but you know, there was a stillness, there was an atmosphere, there was something that, even as a boy, I knew the difference. That little fellow was unlearned and ignorant, he had never been to Bible school, he hadn't been spoiled by men's philosophies. But I'll tell you what he learned to do. He learned to pray. And you know, I liked to see him, because whenever I saw him, he, of course, he only had one suit, and he'd have to do for everything, weddings, funerals. You didn't know where he was going when he went out, you knew he'd have a funeral, a wedding, or a church. But his knees were shiny, on his trousers, at the front. Preachers' trousers are shiny now, not on the knees. But he would come, and his trousers would be all shiny, you know. And you'd go in the meeting, and you know, when that man prayed, I felt he and God were on real good terms. I felt he was like Spurgeon. Spurgeon said, you know, there came a day when I looked in his face. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we were lovers ever after. I think that's beautiful. That's a whole life story. Of course, a guy was shouting on the radio the other night, he said, neither Wesley wouldn't make it today, and Finney wouldn't make it, and Spurgeon, because he didn't have the baptism. Well, I'd take their share anyhow, for what he got. Of course, others have said that, don't worry about that. But isn't this the secret of Paul's all in all? He says, I don't live, Christ liveth in me. Yeah, we sang Mighty Fortress again. Good old Luther. What did Luther say? Why, he said, used to be a knock at the door of my heart, and I went to the door. I soon discovered what was happening. I knew that knock, it was Satan. And he said, Satan came one day and knocked at the door, said, Mr. Luther. And he said, I said, uh, he doesn't live here anymore, Jesus lives here now. He's taken over. That Christ may dwell in your heart. Not that he may bless you, not that he may give you some gift, not under a 19, you know, we only stick by two or three. No, no, no, it's not that he may somehow put a halo on my head. Paul says, Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God. You see, this man has no concern about himself. Do you know why? Listen to these readings, just a minute here. He says, let your moderation be known unto all men. In the next verse, this is the fourth chapter, that's verse 5, let your moderation be known. In verse 6, he says, be careful for nothing, let your requests be known unto the Lord. And verse 7, the peace which passeth all understanding shall keep your hearts and minds. Now I understand why he's so defiant. Now I understand why he's so daring. Now I understand why he's so durable. Why? He's found a peace that passes all understanding. Let me tell you, let me put my improvement on it, would you? He not only found a peace that passes all understanding, he found a peace that passes all misunderstanding too, and it had been shifted. He says, you not only have enough grace to stand, but withstand when you can't understand. You see, this is the man who wrote all that marvelous interpretation of gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, and nobody'll ever surpass that, and picks it up in the 14th chapter, and in between he comes up to breathe, and he gives you the most amazing thing that's ever been written on love since the world began. Troubadours have written about it. The Old Testament talks about love being like a fire. But the apostle wrote, and he says, listen, you know, what people have done, and it's totally false, they say you either have all the gifts of the Spirit, or you have love. You can't have both. Listen, the reason many churches have gone down with the gifts of the Spirit is they didn't maintain love. If you're going to have all the gifts of the Spirit, brother, you're going to need more love to operate those gifts than ever you needed before. It isn't a case of either or, it's a case of have this, but get an abundant supply of that love. Otherwise they can become competitive. I speak in tongues, oh brother, speak in tongues, almost everyone in church speaks in tongues. There's only three of us with the gift of interpretation, you know. If we're on vacation, all heaven is suspended. And you have the gift of interpretation, well I have the gift of healing. That's what it became, they became competitive. I'm of Paul, I'm of Kephas, and Paul says, who is Paul? If you start putting a halo on my head, I've missed it, he said. I want you to love Christ, not me. Lean on him, I can be dispensed with, he's indispensable. He cannot be destroyed. He says, may the peace that passeth all understanding garrison your heart. That means you have a center on either side, and when Satan comes up, the center is challenged, say, where are you going? I'm going to upset him. You can't upset him, why? Because Christ dwells in him, and Christ has control. And even if you got in there, you couldn't do it. But he'll garrison your heart, so that that thing can't even get inside to molest you. Why? Because first, we have the promises of God. Second, we have the blood of Jesus Christ. Thirdly, we have the power of the Holy Spirit. You see, this man has spelled it out in his ambition. He says that Christ may be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. I think that's wonderful. Christ may be magnified. There aren't any around right now, but when they come up, would you do me a favor? Pluck a nice, beautiful, gorgeous dandelion out of the garden. A dandelion is only a, it's like a mum, except it's more beautiful than mums. I don't mean these mums, I mean mums in the garden. You take a dandelion and take a magnifying glass and look at it. You'll be astounded. It is one of the most magnificent flowers that God ever made. And you may have 20-20 vision, but you can't see it correctly. As you look at it, as you pluck it and look at it, that you take that magnifying glass and do this. Oh, it's got another world in it. Your vision isn't enough, so you put a piece of glass between, and there is the flower, and here is the glass, and here is my eye. And I look at it and say it's beautiful, but oh my, it magnifies. Oh, what beauty! And you know what Paul says? The world outside hasn't got very good eyesight, and it can't see Jesus as it ought to see Him. So put me between the world and Jesus, and when they look through my life, Christ is magnified. Huh? Or is He minimized? You see, that's what God, Jesus came to do. He says, I'm the light of the world. You're the light of the world. Paul says, as long as I live in the flesh, Christ lives down here on this earth. Christ dwells in my heart, and my sole ambition is to please Him. And you know, when you please Him, you please everybody else worth pleasing anyhow. You don't have too much trouble if you set your goal to please Him. Or, I'm not saying somebody else won't be displeased, but that doesn't alter the fact. If the Spirit bears witness, and that's the only place that the Apostle Paul lived in. The Spirit was bearing witness with his Spirit that he did the work of God, that he was perfectly in the will of God. That Christ may be magnified in my body, whether by life or death, for to me to live is Christ. You see, it's a kind of a sneer at the world. He says, do you know what? As long as I live on earth, Christ lives in me. And as soon as I die, He'll still be there. So you've lost anyhow. You see, you're tossing up with a two-headed penny. Christ lives in me now. And if you cut my head off, I'll still meet Him there. So what have you done? You haven't taken the thing from me. I'm still winning. He says Christ is all in all. All right, let me skip over this here. We've quoted from the next chapter, 3rd chapter, where he says he suffered the loss of all things. He sums it all up in this 4th chapter when he says in verse 4, be careful for nothing. Isn't that wonderful? Man, it cost you $5 or $10 on a psychiatrist's couch to get that. And here you read it for nothing. He says that, verse 6 of chapter 4, be careful for nothing. Be prayerful in everything, in everything by prayer, and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made none unto the Lord. Now the Word of God says a three-fold cord is not easily broken. Look, here's the first cord. Be thankful, be careful for nothing. The next line, be prayerful in everything. The next line, be thankful, be thankful for anything. So you've got it all covered. Be careful for nothing, be prayerful in everything, and be thankful for anything. Well, you've got nothing to lose there. You've covered the whole of it. If you're prayerful in everything, if you're thankful for everything that comes along, if you're prayerful in everything, and if you're careful for nothing, you couldn't have it better than that. And then he says, keep your mind stayed on him. And this is how he tells you to do it in the 8th verse. Finally, my brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things. You see, we've got to keep our mind stayed on God. If you don't, the enemy will come in. I can remember when I went to work in a factory, my mother told me to keep my mind busy. And I've used it to the children often, and young people talking about the attacks of sin and said, look, if you have a phonograph here, and that phonograph isn't turning, and you take sugar and pour it on, it will pile up. And then if you try and play that phonograph, it will go whizzing off, but man, your needle's going to be in trouble. You put that foreign substance on top of that record that isn't made to take sugar. But if you take that record off and clean it thoroughly, and then put it on, and speed it up, and then start pouring sugar on it, you've got problems. Sugar will fly in every direction, but it won't stay put. And if you leave a vacant mind, you see people talk about transcendental meditation, that's the devil's take-off on be still and know that I'm God. But if you sit with a blank mind, all you'll do is invite Satan to come in. But if you concentrate as well as meditate, then you'll keep your mind stayed on him. You think of things that are pure, and lovely, and of good report. In other words, they're elevating, and they're uplifting. Paul says that he has no desires for anything at all that the world can offer. He isn't groaning in his bondage. He says, I have all, and I'm full. And very obviously, he is not referring to visible things. He's not saying, I've just had a six-course dinner. You don't get that in jail, in case you don't know. He doesn't say, I'm full of all the excitement I've had in some of the great meetings I've been in, and great revivals I've seen. But he says, listen, all that I've spelled out to you in this book is already mine. I've discounted everything the world has. I've laid my social caste on one side, I've laid all my distinctions and privileges on one side, and Christ has become all. And I'm filled. What was he filled with? Well, I'll tell you one thing, amongst others, he's filled with faith. I like the hymn we sang this afternoon, and camp along the hills of life, ye Christian soldiers. Faith is the victory that overcometh the world. I confess to you, I don't have too much of it. I've never had to have too much. Certain areas I've had it, certain areas I've seen deliverance. Now it's different to talk about a faith, the faith once delivered to the saints, in which we kind of think of a theology from the virgin birth, or if you want right, from the incarnation to the consummation, that's one thing. But I'm talking about an active, virile faith. A faith that operates, a faith that sees God do things. Now again, you don't need faith to believe what you can explain. It's the invisible things. You see, remember this, there were rationalists in the days of the apostles. As I've told you, in the second chapter of the next epistle, the Gnostics come up. Oh sure, Jesus was the son of God, but you're not going to say he made a perfect atonement for sin, that the act of one man obliterated all this. Oh now, come on, come on. But you know, this man has got all his roots very deep, and peace is the root of faith. The root is all right, therefore the fruit is all right. The fruit of his faith is the fruit, the root is faith, and the fruit is peace, and joy, and long-suffering. He's got it settled forever in his mind, he's made no false investment in Jesus Christ. He knows in whom he has believed, he is persuaded that he's able to keep that which he's committed. He's quite sure that since Christ has come so far and done all he said, that all the other prophecies that are going to, that have been prophesied concerning him, will come to pass. There's not one of them going to miss. And after all, that's one of the most amazing things, surely, about the Word of God, that every prophecy in it is accurate. Everything that was prophesied until this split second in which we live, everything came to pass. And therefore, the other side of the story is going to come to pass too. And therefore, he's defiant because he has a faith, and he has a hope, and he has a love. You know, no person that was on that Damascus road when Paul was converted ever dreamed he'd become the pillar he became. Nobody ever dreamed when he came out of that wilderness experience in the three or four years, that that man was going to bring to birth the empire of Jesus that would outlast the empire of the Caesars. I suppose sometimes you might think, well, uh, Brother Raven gets a bit hot and gets a bit determined about these things. I wonder what some of these children think. I wonder if they pick up anything. Well, I say sure. Do you know why? Because I can remember things I picked up when I was five years of age and six years of age that stuck in my gullet, as my mother would say, and they stuck there till now. We had a lady in England years ago, more than a hundred, one of the distinctive ladies of the day. What we would say in England, a title lady, a very educated lady, a fine painter. They said when she came in the room she changed the atmosphere. Her name was Josephine Butler. They said even before the grace of God came in her life, there was something about her that, that was so different. Dora Greenwell dedicated one of her books to her. The greatest poem ever written outside of the Bible, if you can find it, was written by F. W. H. Myers, St. Paul. I don't think I've ever read it without weeping. I've never found a full edition. I have an edition now that has 72 stanzas, but it's not complete. I found about another 10 that I've tacked on the back. He wrote the most magnificent interpretation of the Apostle Paul. I remember one stanza in it says, Then with a rush the intolerable craving shivers throughout me like a thunder roll, all to save these, to perish for their saving. He's not talking about gutter girls. He's talking about intellectual Greeks. He's not merely talking about the man in the street. He's talking about all men outside of Jesus Christ, whether they're barbarians, or scythians, or bond, or free, or male, or female, or Jew. No distinction. There are only two distinctions, he says, away with your abominable social distinctions and caste distinctions. There are only two distinctions in the world, save men and lost men. All right, he wrote that magnificent poem. And you'll notice in the cover it just says, Dedicated to J.E.B. Josephine Butler, this beautiful, distinguished lady who had her afternoon tea parties and lived in a mansion. She said, I can remember some of the great things in my life. Two of the greatest, she said, I was a little girl, and I sat at the feet of Clarkson. Clarkson was one of the men that engineered the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire. And she remembered, I remember that dignified man, that great man coming from Parliament, and I sat at his feet with other children, and I listened to him talking about fighting to liberate the slaves in West Africa, raiding the raiding parties, how they snatched men and women, how they found them bruised. And she said, it lived in my mind. And she said, I remember Mother would put me to bed some night and say, darling, or put me on her knee and say, you know dear, one of the outstanding things in my life was an old man came to our house and he had silver gray hair, and I was very small, and he lifted me on his knee and gave me a hug and spoke to me. His name was John Wesley. And she said, those things stood vividly in my mind. But my dear mother sat on the knee of John Wesley, and my mother listened to one of the great emancipators of all time. And the third crisis was that she had been out giving a lecture and she came home. She lived in a stately mansion and there was a porch over the entrance, a stone porch, and her little girl was up there welcoming her mummy, coming up the carriageway, coming up the driveway in a carriage. The little girl was so excited, she reached up and she fell over and crashed to the ground and cracked her skull. I try and help others, I try and comfort others, now I've no comfort, now I've no comfort. But she said, I had been away and heard a man preaching when I was at school. He wasn't a great preacher, he wasn't very stirring, but some things he said. One day he talked about a woman that came to Jesus, and he emphasized she was a sinner, a sinner, a sinner, nobody would touch her. And she came and took the feet of Jesus, and washed them with her tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. And the critics all said, this man receiveth sinners. Well, after all, I wasn't that kind of woman, and I'd lived a very sheltered life. And then she said, the Holy Spirit said, my dear, my dear, listen, that woman is your sister because you're a sinner as well as she is. It's not the same sin, but you're still a sinner. And she said, I knelt down at his feet, and I said, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner. She was impure, and I'm pure, but I'm a sinner. She's lived her own life, and I've lived my, I'm a sinner, and she said, I just explained it all to him, and I got up, changed. He changed me. He said to me what he said to her, thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven. And I was sitting in my house one night, and there was a circus in town, and there's a girl filling the crowd. She was on the high wire, and when the circus was over, the girl ran away, and she was screaming up the road, and this, this, this lady heard her, and went after her. And she said, the Lord said to me, you don't have a daughter. She lost her life, pure, innocent, beautiful girl, lost her life. You've got a ministry to all the girls that are lost. You've got a ministry to all the street girls, and outcasts, and forsaken people. And years after, I forget exactly who it was, a great politician in England said, there isn't a woman in England whose life hasn't been touched by that of Josephine Butler. God transformed that hour of tragedy and emptiness into a life of fullness, and she went everywhere. She went to jail. She went to the street. She went everywhere, and she, she was a means of emancipating women, and getting certain liberties for them, and, and getting homes for them, and teaching them the gospel, and putting them straight in things pertaining to godliness. And she said, it all happened when I realized how frail my life was, and how much I needed him. But despite my home, and my luxuries, and creature comforts, I didn't have one that could abide with me. I invited him to come in, and he came. Completely changed my life. And I know in whom I have believed, and I'm persuaded he's able to keep that which is committed unto him against that day. Yeah, I've heard testimonies you have. Some are very daring. I used to listen to kids at teen, teen challenge. It almost chilled my flesh, the way they'd lived. They'd lived in sewers, and they'd enjoyed it. They'd lived next door to hell, and were almost proud of it. I remember Gypsy Smith saying, and I'm through with this, he said, I, I went to a big conference, and they put up a man who had been one of the most outstanding criminals in the country, and he'd such a vivid story, that I felt I was a little faded lily. The second man got up, and said he'd been maybe the greatest drinker, and fighter, and he had a story that made everybody shiver, even as he said it. My mind went back, he said, to when I climbed up the wheel of a wagon. A little gypsy boy, my black flashing eyes, my massive curls, all hanging down nearly to my shoulders, massive curls. And the old man on the bench, it was a farm cart, and he said, he kneeled down, and ran his fingers through my, my long curls, and said, well God bless you son, and make you a preacher. And he said, I thank God that Moody ever said that. A little skinny looking boy, with his shirt hanging out of his trousers seat, and godly old Moody said, Sonny, God bless you, make you a preacher. And it started something, I want it to be. So he said, I stood up, and said, you've heard what God did for that man, what a wreck he was, how many jails he's been in, you heard about this man with all his sin, there's no more sin he could have. I want to tell you something, I have a bigger testament in either of them. Man, everybody sat up straight and listened. He said, I want to tell you that Jesus found me when I was a boy, and he kept me from all the filthy things they've ever been in. And what's better, to build a fence at the top of the cliff, and keep you from going to the bottom, or having an ambulance at the bottom, that picks you up when you're all broken, and wounded, and useless. You see, Paul says, as long as I live, I'll drive men and women from perdition. They're bent on it, they love their sin, they buy it, they sell it, they love it, they breathe it, they talk it. They use it in their bodies, they use it in their minds, they use it in their spirits, they'll sell it, they'll damn you for it. My wife said, Martha said last night, Lynn, did you hear that? I said, no, she said, they're just talking about some heroin, I think it was, on the streets of Philadelphia and New York, that somebody had put out, and it was six times stronger than normal, and already 25 kids have died of it. Do you think the man who sold it worries? The fellow that wastes somebody's life, does he care? Of course he doesn't. Pollutes somebody's life? I remember a guy in the factory when I worked, there was a girl came, and they, they gambled on who'd be the first to molest that girl, or have some affair with her. A year after, they were talking about the same girl, and one of them says, well, I'll tell you something, you dirty bunch, there's not one of you would want your son to marry her, now you've polluted her, would you? Oh, the world's a rotten place in which to live. Satan is a taskmaster here, and a taskmaster for eternity. I'll tell you what, you won't have it easy from here to the golden gates. Satan hates every part of your being, every cell in your body, every thought in your mind. He lost control of you, and he hates you for it. And he said, I'm going to fight you every inch of the way. If I can get you to backslide, if I can get you to unbelief, if I can get you to bitterness and sarness, if I can get you discouraged and so forth, I'll do it. And Paul says, let me just tell you one thing, he's going to try. But we sang in that hymn about what old Luther gave us today, what? We'd go down if the right man wasn't on our side. Well, he's not on our side, he's on the inside, thank God. Greater is he that is in you. And therefore, Paul says, none of these things move me. Therefore, he puts his shoulders back and says in Romans 8, 37, in all these things, and the kind of figure most of us won't have to go through, that same catalog that he went through. But he says, in all these things, we are more than conquerors. And I say again, a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. I'm not listening to a man who's telling me a story, I'm listening to a man who's trod every inch of the way, faced every issue, and a thousand more than I'll ever meet. Met Satan head-on, met principalities and powers that I know so very little about, and he's engaging them, and he's released the power of God over cities and over people. And he says, I'm quite happy about it all. I've no regrets. Even in the prison cell, I want to tell you, right down here for me to live is Christ. Because you see, they can take my visitors out, but they can't take him away. He lives on the inside. And he walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I'm his own. So, farewell world, everybody else. It's quite all right. Nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. But I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day.