In this sermon, the speaker discusses the life and achievements of Blaise Pascal, whom he considers the greatest intellectual in world history. He highlights Pascal's early mathematical genius and his invention of a computer-like machine at a young age. The speaker then transitions to discussing the importance of gratitude and the need for Christians to remember the work of redemption by the mercy of God. He emphasizes the need for discipline and a transformed appetite for God, rather than worldly entertainment.

Father, we thank you for health of soul tonight. I think of Wesley's hymn when he said, to perfect health, restore my soul, to perfect holiness and love. Lord, we thank you that you are the one, as the psalmist says, who healeth all our diseases, not just physically, but even spiritually and morally. We're glad for that marvelous word, that measureless word in Hebrews 7.25, Lord, in which your word declares, he is able to save to the uttermost, all who come unto God by him. As we sang this hymn, Lord, I am pressing on the upward way. New heights I am getting every day, still praying as I am unbound. I want to scale the utmost height. Lord, as we sang that, my mind flashed across those wonderful people, listed there in Hebrews 11. Some of them had to leap across a chasm, as it were, but they found faith to do it. Others discovered that their faith did not remove mountains, but you gave them strength and courage to climb over them. And that word recurs in that epistle, they endured as seeing him who is invisible. Lord, I'm afraid so many of us have seen the things round about us. People are seeing change that they can't account for. Circumstances they never dreamed of. But Lord, we bless you that through Jesus, we can be more than conquerors through him that loved us. We thank you for every precious believer in the world tonight. We're surely a minority in a minority. But Lord, we bless you, you have many tonight, in many kindreds and people and nations and tongues that have been redeemed from all iniquity. You put a new song in their mouths, even praise it unto our God. Think of the psalmist said, he lifted me up from a horrible pit. Not only lifted me up, he set me up on a rock. And attuned me up, because he had to put a new song in my mouth. Lord, we thank you, you're in this business of making bad things into good. Totally transforming. Again, we bless you for this uttermost salvation. It is a fountain, full and free, pure, exhaustless, ever flowing. Wondrous grace it reaches me. Lord, I think of the apostle with all his fabulous theology. The magnificence of his conception of redemption and of God. And all he wrote to us in that letter to the Thessalonians, that the Lord will come with 10,000 of his saints. And Lord, we think of that moment. We don't hear much about it. It's put on one side, even by the redeemed. But Lord, we know you're coming to take charge in a new and wonderful way. Not to set up a temporal kingdom, but an eternal kingdom. We thank you for the saints who have gone before us. We have to sing, Lord, in truth. Brothers, we're treading where the saints have trod. We think again of Hebrews, where it says they were martyred. They endured affliction. They were persecuted and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. The world thought they weren't worthy to live in it. And you turned it around and said the world isn't worthy of them. And you took them through the fire and the flood and the flame and the persecution and the trial to shape their characters for eternity. Lord, we're glad you're not capricious, you don't play tricks. You are a perfect plan for each of our lives if we're willing to walk in the light as we sang tonight. And Lord, we believe that's the secret. If we step out of the light into the darkness, we get into chaos, we get into confusion, we get into difficulties, we get into sin. But Lord, we thank you, enable us to walk in the light. And we thank you for the light of his word. Again, we thank you. This book, not only has a line of blood from Genesis to Revelation, but it covers us stained with blood, the blood of martyrs. We thank you for those, I think of those men in England who put their hands in the flame first because they had recanted, and yet they slowly let that hand roast and the crowd jeered, but Lord God, we think of the glorious reward they'll have. We can't remember the Bishop of London and the Archbishop of Canterbury at that time, but Lord, you've left an indelible record in history that men would endure physical suffering, even to the death, choking in the flames, not able to see with the tears in their eyes because of the smoke. And yet, Lord, they did it as they endured as seeing him who was invisible. Lord God, we live in a world where people want to believe in what they can touch and what they can see and what they can handle and what they can value. But Lord, we bless you, you've changed our concept of that. We thank you, we know in whom we have belief. We thank you that we do have a home eternal in the heavens, a house not made with hands. How we bless you for that, beyond our concept. We thank you for the glorious kingdom you're going to set up. We thank you for the day when we shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and all the saints of the ages. Lord, what a celebration that will be, beyond our comprehension, beyond explanation. But Lord, we know that you'll keep your promise, you'll set it in your holy word. Remember again tonight, the suffering church. People like us in Russia who have no freedom, or in Afghanistan which slowly bleeds to death while the United Nations looks on. But Lord, you're looking on from another angle. There are people there who worship you there in spirit and in truth today. They've blessed you for food, as though they had a banquet when it was only a crust. They've thanked you for what they have, though they're only rags. But Lord, you see beyond that, you see them in a robe of righteousness. And you see them again in that day when there's no poverty, no suffering, no hardship. Lord, we think of women bearing babies, as we're told, with a shot and shell of hell going over them, cringing there. Nobody to attend them, no doctors, no midwives, and in terrible, terrible difficulties. But Lord, we bless you that they are enduring again as seeing him who is invisible. Lord, we thank you there are some people in this chaotic world who have a faith that's unshakable, and a peace that's indestructible, and a joy that's unspeakable. It can't be rationalized because it isn't rational, it isn't natural, it's supernatural. We thank you for those, Lord, who are walking tall in the midst of adversity and calamity and tragedy and affliction. Think of that hymn again, the part of which says, Of these saints they climb the steep ascent to heaven through peril, toil, and pain. O God, to us may grace be given to follow in their train. We thank you for the privilege of worship tonight. Grant that we may worship you in spirit and in truth. In Jesus' name. Let's sing the first and second standards only of number one. If you were here last Friday, you remember we had a very precious word from Gracie Greer. Very feeding, satisfying word. He spoke about the body. I want to take it up from another angle tonight, from the epistle of Paul to the Romans, chapter 12. I think there's a change here in the, from chapter 1 to chapter 11, the apostle has stated doctrine, and now he tells us we have to shift from doctrine to duty, or from precepts, if you like, to practice. This is a very beautiful verse. I remember going down the street in England. We were having a crusade and a man stopped me and he said, What's your habit of life? I said, Well, do you want to know them all? Take you a long while. Well, he said, I'll tell you what I do. Every morning I get up, I present my body, a living sacrifice to the Lord. Do you do that? I said, No. You don't? Well, you should. I said, Why should I? I said, This is my body, and that's the altar, and I put my, I put it on the altar tonight. How can I put it on the altar tomorrow morning? There's only one reason, that I took it off in between. I said, I don't know much Greek. I know a little Greek. He runs a, what does he run in? Eighth Avenue. He runs a garage in Eighth Avenue. I know a little Hebrew. He used to repair my trousers. I know where he lives, in beautiful Brooklyn. How many of you have been to Brooklyn? You haven't? It's one of the most beautiful, I mean, ugly cities in the world. But there's a great work of God going on there. I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present, that word present is in what the Greek scholars, Jack, do you know Greek? Not as I do. Maybe it's the same man. Present your body, the present is in the aorist tense. It's a present continuous tense. But he says, I beseech you, therefore, therefore what? Because of all that's gone before. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. Well, what has he done in the previous 11 chapters? He's shown us a work of redemption. By the mercy of God. There's a hymn that says, by thy love constraining, by thy grace divine, we are on the Lord's side, Savior we are thine. You know, God had to continually remind the children of Israel, remember that you are in a horrible pit. I think something that we don't call sin is very common amongst Christians. We are ungrateful people. How many millions of people would love to be in America tonight? How many millions of people would love the word of God? They don't have it. And yet we really, we're snacked by our Christians, most of us, aren't we? I was with a doctor last weekend. He has a fabulous mind. Every time you say it, you say, well, the Greek word in Hebrews 11 is this, and somewhere else it's that. And he's used his super-intellect just to dig deep into the word of God instead of plowing over the top. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, you present your bodies a living sacrifice. Now remember, the sacrifice in the Old Testament was a beast being dragged reluctantly with a rope around its neck to the altar. And it had, this thing had to be repeated over and over and over again. And yet Hebrews says, concerning Jesus, who was both, he is the altar, he is the priest, and he is the sacrifice, that once in the end of the age he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, and there remaineth no more sacrifice of sin. The Roman Catholic celebration of the Mass is blasphemy. You can't re-crucify Jesus Christ. We can by disobedience and rebellion, but the way they take it, no, it's false. In fact, I've been in many countries, seen many kinds of religion. There's only one religion in the world where they eat their own God, and that's the Catholics, and they're supposed to be super. How can you eat God? How can you drink his blood? But he says, present your body a living sacrifice. You get bound to an altar, you get to the place where he says, you present your body a living sacrifice, holy, accept, loan to God, which is your reasonable service. Now, you know this man, everything this man has has passion in it, and power, and purpose. Why does he say, you know, friends, I advise you to yield all you have to God. It's a good word of advice to you. It doesn't say that. It says, I beseech you. Or it's translated, I exhort you. I suggest to you that you have no obligation to do anything else. Look at the mercy of God in the previous chapter. You were the outside, the commonwealth, and he brought you inside. We were under the curse, now we're under the blessing. We were lost, we're found. Well, in the light of all he, look, he's saying this, all the previous 11 chapters, he was laying down his life. Now, you turn it round and lay down your life for him. He was a living sacrifice for 30 years. Now, from here out, you'll be a living sacrifice. And he says, present your body a living sacrifice. He says a lot about his body. You know, history says that he was about 5 feet 1, hunchbacked, and a big nose. So take courage, if you're any default. The body. Elsewhere, he says, if you remember, know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost? In Philippians 1.20, he says that Christ may be magnified by my body. Not my intellect, my body. The flowers are dying out in our yard. They haven't started growing in Dales yet. But there's some lovely little flowers out in the field called dandelions. Not very nice. You go to hospital, you don't take a bunch of dandelions, do you? To anybody. Except your mother-in-law, maybe, but anyhow. When they come out next time, you can get one and magnify it. And it's the most gorgeous flower you could ever think of. The way that God has built that little flower that cows tread on it and ignore it. It's beautiful. But you have to put something between that dandelion and your eye. With your 20-20 vision, you can't see it. You slip that glass in between and suddenly the thing is gorgeous, magnificent. And Paul says that Christ may be magnified that my lifestyle may increase the beauty and the majesty and the glory of Jesus Christ. Well, that's all we're here for. We're not here to be rich or famous or something. We're here to give God pleasure. What pleasure do you get out of your life today? Displeasure, when we're dissatisfied. You know, we should be the happiest people on earth. I'm afraid we're not. But it says that Christ may be magnified through my body, whether by life or by death. That's in Philippians 1.20. In 1 Corinthians 9.21 he says, I keep my body under. You see, he was in control. What was it the Greeks used to say? Man, know thyself. The scripture says that under the Spirit of God, man, control yourself. I bring my body. Do we sing that hymn here? I've forgotten whether they sing it here in England. All to Jesus I surrender. Do we sing that? All to him I freely give. I will ever live and trust him. Well, if we don't, we should do anyhow. I'm trying to recall another hymn. It won't come. Well, it starts the same way. All for Jesus, all for Jesus, all my being's ransom powers, all my thoughts and words and doings, all my days and all my hours. Worldlings prize their gems of beauty, cling to gilded toys of dust, boast of wealth and fame and pleasure. Only Jesus relies on us. All for Jesus. You know, I believe we're going to have to come to this before we ever have a Holy Ghost revival. We'll get to the place where nothing counts. There's nothing of any value at all. I've got a little brochure here. I wish you all had one, but this is the only one I have and it's not for sale. Not for a hundred dollars. Give me a thousand and I'll consider it. And I'll give the money to missions. There's a man on TV who used to be called Carl Sagan. How many of you have seen him? Carl Sagan. Snobbish. Aristocratic. Fool of a man. He's the only one living that was there when the world began. He witnessed it. Fifteen billion years ago he was there. In fact, he gave advice, I think. He's such a snob. I wonder what he'll what he'll leave in the world. There was an American who said, if you ever think you're getting important, get a bucket of water, roll your sleeve up, stick your hand to the bottom of the bucket and pull it out and the hole you leave is the impression you've left in the world. That's pretty discouraging, isn't it? Speaking of that, we talked with Paul last night. He has a little boy and he's a boy. And we said, how are the children? He said, well, there's a stream flowing past their house so they blocked up one end, dug a hole and made a little swimming pool. It's about six feet deep at one end. The youngster fell in and nobody saw him. And he just came to the top as they got there and he said, I did it, I did it, I did it. Whether he tried to touch the bottom of it, I don't know, but he did it, I thought. Well, anyhow, the kid took advantage of his opportunity. He did something, anyhow, if he scared his folk to death. How many of you have read Blaise Pascal? Blaise Pascal? No? Good, you have. What did you read, his Pensées? Yeah, Pensées, OK. You've got to get that for your girls. I'll chase you till you get it. If you can read it in French, which Phil does, of course, he's a brilliant scholar in French. It's the best ever. But let me give you a summary of his life. Now, here's a man, I think, the greatest intellectual in world history. He out-invented Edison in 1500-and-something. He invented a computer. Muggeridge says he'd love to have accounts of the Lord for doing a trick like that. This is the best summary I've found of this. Once there was a human being who, at the age of 12, created mathematics by means of bars and circles. At 16, he wrote the Learner Treatise on the conic sections since the ancients. At 19, he reduced into machine the science which exists entirely in the mind only. At 23, he demonstrated the phenomena of atmospheric pressure and brought to know one of the greatest errors of the ancient physics. At the age when other men had hardly begun to see the light, he had completed, listen to it, he had completed the circle of human sciences and, aware of their nothingness, turned his thought to religion. Who, from that time until his death, at 39 years of age, there's a great Austrian author, what's his name, Arthur? Bohram, Bohram. A preacher called Bohram. Isn't that the name for a preacher? Terrible. It'd be worse if he was Killam. But I was in a meeting once and Dr. Bohram was there. And the man who introduced him said, this is Dr. Bohram. He's written about 60 books. He has 5 books and there are 20, 20 to 25 biographies in each of them. So instead of having 100 books on your shelf, you just get the 5 books and they're priceless. I've had a set, I guess, 50 years now. They're not for sale either. But F. W. Bohram was introduced in Manchester and I was in that meeting. And the guy that introduced him said, this is Dr. F. W. Bohram, one of the most prolific writers. I think he's written about 65 books. He said, his name his name is on all our lips, his books are on all our shelves, and his illustrations are in all our sermons. Pretty good summary. But he says of this man, Pascal, was one of the great architects of modern civilization. The omnibus system which runs in Paris still was founded on the plan that that man established. He completed the human sciences. All the sciences he tested them. Well, I've always argued that theology is the queen of the sciences. A queen has a crown and holiness is the crown on the head of the queen. Holiness is the chief thing in a theology. Theology, a simple definition of theology is, theology is systematized knowledge concerning God as he has revealed himself to man through his word. So again, I'll finish this. He had completed the cycle of human sciences and aware of their nothingness. Isn't that something? He'd given his genius and in every realm he'd exceed every, he touched the, talk about the mountain heights, he touched the top of everything. He was a superstar in every science you can mention that man has. And he threw it hollow inside and it's rubbish. We didn't sing it, but we love to sing that hymn, I lay in dust, life's glory dead. That's easier said than done. But then he turned his thought to religion and from that time until he was 39, in his 39th year, he was always infirm and suffering and he molded the French language in a new way. But let me read something more wonderful here. I've mentioned to you more than once and I get profoundly moved when I think of Ludwig's statement concerning Solzhenitsyn, one of the greatest brains in the world today. When he came to England, the BBC told him to take the lid off and show Russia what it really is. And he did and it shook the nation. When he came here, not one of the TV stations would let him speak. We don't want to know what's wrong. We don't want to know the corruption in Russia. But remember that genius was in a bed. He slept every night on a bed of rotting straw with urine running round and filth in a dark place and hardly any light. And across from him there was another old stinking bed and every night a man reached into his ragged clothes and pulled out little bits of paper and uncurled them and read them and smiled and lay back. They gave that man more brutality, gave him more suffering, gave him more hardship, gave him less food and tortured him and never once did he wince, never once complained to men. He smiled at everybody that smote him. He embraced Venezuela, he was embracing some gorgeous woman. I love you, I love you. Solzhenitsyn says to him, how in God's name did you do that? He said, I did it in God's name. Jesus Christ came into my life and it was there in that stinking hole Solzhenitsyn had been to these cathedrals in Russia and never heard the voice of God. And he sees a man totally lost. He doesn't see as men see. He doesn't think as men think. He's on, his feet on earth, his thinking is in eternity. Even embracing hardship is embracing the mercy and the love and the greatness of God. And Solzhenitsyn said, when I die and I saw that there must be a living God. And the man says, well Christ lives in me. He must do. No one else could bear it. You turn and curse your enemies. You get violent. Instead of that you're so submissive. You are like Jesus Christ. Well listen to this. This is the other end of the scale. This fellow Blaise, that's spelled B-L-A-I-S-E. In the dawn, which followed the unforgettable night of the twenty-third of November, sixteen feet Blaise in complete surrender to his saviour, withdrew into the solitude of Port Royal, Deschamps. And very likely it was there, on the occasion of the monthly meditation he wrote his admirable Mystery of Jesus. But this is what Blaise says. In the serpent transport of love, I actually heard the Lord Jesus say to me, I was thinking of thee in my agony. I've said such and such drops of blood for thee. The moving dialogue reached a culmination of grandeur when Jesus finally rested from Blaise the words of utter consecration, Lord I give thee my all. From that moment one of his firmest conviction was that Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world and we must not sleep until that time. Now that's a saying. And yet we sing that hymn crowning with many crowns, who every grief hath known, that rings the human breast. I looked up one of the great old English really, Welsh preacher, Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, and he agrees exactly with what this man says that Jesus Christ is suffering now. He's the head of the body. The body is suffering. We sometimes say Lord, stretch forth thy arm. How can he? I'm the arm. You're the arm. If he's the head, he's the head. You don't have two heads. That's why you've no head of, like the Pope on earth, he's no head. I could tell you what he is, but I won't. But this man is totally abandoned to Jesus Christ, in exactly the same degree, I think, that the Apostle Paul was. You see, all that Paul is doing here in the 12th chapter, he's working out, at least in my judgment, what he said in the 6th chapter. That if we're genuinely born again, and I'm so sick of altar calls, I'm so sick of people going up and sniffling at the altar for five minutes. How in God's name have you time to tell them? If anybody comes to the altar, I'm going to stay there an hour, if need be. Oh, are you sorry for your sins? Sure. They repented, how do you know? They cried, how do you know it's not remorse? Do you think they deliberately said, love I'm putting off the world, the flesh and the devil, and I'm putting on the Lord Jesus Christ? I renounce all the hidden things of dishonesty, dishonesty? You see, the new birth is a miracle. There's nothing on this earth like it. If any man being Christ, I don't care how tangled he up, I don't care how deep he is in sin, if any man being Christ, it's a new creation. Tell me the people that come to the altar, give me the names and addresses, I'll go to the house, before the week's up, ask the wife, is your husband new? Children, is your daddy new? No, he's still angry. What? People will say, I'm saved. What do you say from? Hell? Are you saved from bitterness? Are you saved from anger? Are you saved from jealousy? If you're not, you're not saved. You may have given up some dirty habits, maybe you don't smoke or do this, but are you a new creation? Is your appetite as keen for God as it was for sport? How many millions of people, professing Christians, watch the, what do you call the games they recently had, the baseball World Series. And people stayed up till midnight. They said, what was it, about 2 weeks before the end of the, one game lasted 16 hours. Those people couldn't stand 6 minutes over 12 o'clock on Sunday. That's all they get out for the cowboys. Or this morning, they said on national TV, that the PTO cost 175 million dollars to build. And Jimmy and, what's her name, Tommy, Tammy, expecting to spend a billion dollars before they're through. God help them. A billion dollars for that junk? I'll tell you how to test your spiritual life. The more joy you have in God, the less entertainment you need. Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. You've to pay for entertainment, you can have joy in the misery, in adversity, in calamity, in tragedy. What did we sing? It is well with my soul. The man that wrote that had lost his son. He trained his son to take up a multi-million dollar business. The son died. Right after that came Chicago. He lost all his property. Right after that, he lost four daughters at sea. And then he could go home and take a piece of paper and write, when peace like a river had tendered. His world had dissolved. The psalmist says my heart is fixed. You better make up your mind that's the only thing that is fixed. There's nothing else fixed. The weather isn't fixed. Your feelings aren't fixed. So many of us live on emotions. I feel good. So what? What if you feel rotten? Does that mean the kingdom of God has fallen apart? Oh, I've disappointed the Lord. Well, he doesn't disappoint me or you. He's on the victory side all the time. But anyhow, in Romans 6, Paul says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed. Now there's the body. The body he's talking about here is this. I never said carcass. You have. No, I mean carcass I have. This is the case inside of all kinds of wonderful things. I have my will. As I've told you, the x-ray can photograph your brain, it can't photograph your mind. It can photograph your throat, it can't show you your voice. It can photograph many things, your kidneys and all the other trimmings we have inside. But it can't show a picture of your emotions. It can't show your will. It can't show your zeal. The most mysterious thing on God's earth is human personality. And if it's corrupted, look how devilish it becomes. Just going to bed last night, we turned on the news at five to ten I think it was, and they've been showing apparently a special on teenage prostitutes. Isn't it amazing in this country, of all countries, of all the industrialized countries in the world, America has the highest percentage of teenage prostitutes and teenage, teenage in all that kind of deal. Well, teenage prostitution, in the most privileged nation in the world. Sure we have more bathtubs and telephones. Sure we have more divorces too. Our jails have gone to capacity. It shows the total ineffectiveness. I called a guy the other day and he was mad about it. He said, I'll say it somewhere else. Let me speak on national TV. The biggest enemy to revival in America is evangelism. We're getting people up weeping and say this and that and there's no change. There's no transformation. They're not new creations. They don't wake up with all the joy bells ringing. They don't suddenly find everything is withered in the world. I don't know if I caught it earlier. Worldlings prize their gems of beauty. Cling to gilded toys of dust. Boast of wealth and fame and pleasure. Only Jesus relies on it. You see, to men like Pascal, the world he says there's nothing in it. I've tried every science, medical science, every other science and they're all hollow. And from here he said every beat of my heart, every thought of my mind is Christ. And he lived in that constant agony. He says well Christ is there. He's grieving over his church. I believe the church in America or England tonight is more grief to God than all the corruption and prostitution and drunkenness. We're playing a game. We're afraid to get down to the issue. You see, the thing I love about this precious man Paul, he's the best example of his own theology. As I've said to you often, I used to say in street meetings every week. What was I going to say? It comes to me right now. A man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. Paul is saying you present your body a living sacrifice. Do you know what God will do? He'll break open areas of your being and you have no idea of. This is a man remembering his bloody, his hands are bloody. He's going to stand one day at the judgment and say, why did he leave me? He didn't. So what happened? What you saw you read, the same thing happened with him. He was put to death. But Paul says you remember in Galatians 2 20, I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh or in the body, this body, I live by the faith of the Son of God. I like what he says in Galatians 6 17, I think it is, yes. From verse 14 he says, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world. He says, Then he says with a holy arrogance if he is such a thing. In verse 17 he says from hence forth let no man trouble me. You are wasting your time. Tempt me if you like on any level. Tell me I am a fool for giving my genius. He was maybe the greatest genius that ever lived. Tempt me with scholarship and I will tell you this, I am dead to it. Tempt me with pedigree. Doesn't he say I am of the tribe of Benjamin, the seed of Abraham. Everything that everybody else was reaching for he laid it in dust, life's glory, dead. And he says from hence forth don't waste your time on me. For I bury my body, that body again. The man marks, or the brands, I think it is Moffat translates it, I bury my body, the owner's mark. I have told you before in the temple, the temple used to be lined up with priests and if a priest was to run away from his boss or someone else, he would run to the temple and nudge the sleeping priest and say to him, brand me, brand me, brand me. And he says, you are a slave? He said, I just ran away from slavery. Choose which god you want to be. So he put his hand out, they took a red-hot hand and branded his arm, hand. Slipped his toga down, they branded him in his neck. Slipped his foot up and they branded his instep. He might be going down the street and his old boss, the slave driver, would say, see there's Aristarchus. Marcus, go out to Aristarchus, tell him I'll whip him within an inch of his life when I get him back home. And the young man goes up and smiles at the man who's bought him in the slave market and he says, look, oh, I can't touch you. Look, I can't tame you. Look at my foot. Well, you belong to your god. And Paul says then, forth let no man trouble me. There's a hymn that says, let my hands perform his bidding. Let my feet run in his way. Let my eyes see Jesus only. Let my lips speak forth his praise. Remember the psalmist in Psalm 51 says, Lord, open thou my mouth and my lips. Open thou my lips or my mouth and my lips will I praise thee. In other words, every detail of my personality can be god-controlled instead of self-controlled or controlled by worldly systems or worldly customs or religious customs. Somebody tried to tell me last week they went to a Pentecostal church. I said, I didn't know there was one in the world. What do you mean? At a Pentecostal church, they go to church every day. They break bread every day. Soldiers saved every day. They can do that in other countries. We can't. Maybe God Almighty is going to smash the economy so he can. I wonder if we'll ever be happy to call up to somebody's house or walk a two or three miles and say, we'll pray at your house in the morning and your house tomorrow and your house some other time. You see, God's going to get glory out of America if he smashes IBM and every blessed system that there is. He's going to make this whole world bow to the feet of Jesus even before Jesus comes. But Paul says, I bear in my body. His mind, he doesn't say, lay your mind, therefore, by the mercy of God. You see, He says, present your body, the whole encasement with your affections and your will. I said to somebody the other day, it's easy for you and anybody else to give up worldly habits. It's worldly friends you can't give up. They're nice people. They go to our church. They go here. But you see, the Lord won't take second place in anybody's life. He wants priority in my thinking, priority in my eating. Paul says, I keep my body under it. He didn't let it eat too much. My body wants to eat. I remember one day, we were, we were tramping around England. We had no money to ride anyhow, so we walked around England. We bought the length of it and the breadth of it. We were in a house and we had, I was going to say, bread and butter. That would be an exaggeration. We had bread and margarine and about one tomato between about four of us. It wasn't too big. And somebody got their piece of the tomato and this fellow was reaching for a piece, somebody offered him a piece of bread. He said, take it. He said, thank you. My appetite said, yes. The Holy Ghost says, no. And that fellow lived the most disciplined life I think I'd ever seen. But you see, once Jesus Christ gets control and there's something more than death, there's resurrection. I use that figure like this. Here's somebody standing in the water to be baptized. When they go under the water, immediately they go under it. They can't see the world above. They can't talk to the world above. They're cut off right off. Are you going to tell me every Baptist in America that went through the water is like that? Forget it. Fred Wolfe sent me his report three months ago. And he said, we have to deal with thousands of students around here. We're committed to helping students. But this is his report and he's a Baptist. He said, 95% of students in their sophomore year in college leave the church. And I wrote back. I said, Fred, you know as well as I do that 99% of students leave the church. 99% of that 95% have been born again or baptized according to your custom. But were they ever regenerate? Are they going to run away from the house of God? Just because Daddy and Mommy aren't there? They should be running through him. They should be finding new avenues of devotion and satisfaction. But this was a cruel death to be crucified. Knowing that our old man was crucified. If I'd reckoned, as Paul says, reckon ye yourself in debt to the deed and the sins of the world. I reckon I died with him. When he died, I died. That's what it's all about. And then I get resurrection life. I walk with him in eunuchs of life. As dear Dr. Toth, I think of that man every day nearly. He would say, well Len, you know, if you saw a man walking down Main Street in Jerusalem carrying a cross, you knew one thing, he wasn't coming back. It's a one-way ticket. It's not a sinning and repenting business. Oh, Ravenhill Preacher's Sinless Perfection has more sense. I don't believe in a man's inability to sin. I believe in his ability not to sin. And it's a vast difference. But when that man's going down, you might see a thousand people. If he's a Barabbas, you say, oh, they're going to put him to death. He once stoned my uncle. He once hit somebody and did this. And so they take Barabbas outside of the city and put him on a cross, name him to him. But immediately he's nailed to that cross. He has no rights. He has no social rights. He has no religious rights. He has no other rights. He's considered a leper. He's considered a right outside of society. He's crucified. He has no rights. And Paul says, I'm crucified with Christ. I have no rights. I have no choices. My hands are his. My mind is his. My will is his. My devotion is his. But they're the most cruel form. You know, I'm trying to write a book. And the judgment scene is awesome. I believe that thousands of American preachers and English preachers will be charged with criminal negligence when they get to the throne of God. They haven't declared the whole council of God. Do you know the silly thing that so many preachers say? Oh well, we're only human. We're only human. That's what the Mohammedan says. We're not human. We should be super human. We have Christ living in us. We should be in harmony with heaven. And if we get off that beam immediately the spirit bears witness with us. What's that hymn, The Comforter, we've seen it in England, I forgot it. No, I gave you the wrong thing there. It's a heavy hymn they sing. I'll have to make some notes. See if I can dig it up anyhow. Oh, the hymn is Our Blessed Redeemer, e'er he breathed his tender last farewell. guide the comforter bequeathed with us to dwell. He came sweet influence to impart a gracious willing guest where he can find one humble heart wherein to rest. And his that gentle voice we hear, soft as the breath of even, that checks each thought and calms each fear and speaks of heaven. I saw a man writing on the board, you've got this in your heart and that in the other. Listen, I can't memorize that. I need an inward monitor. I need the Holy Spirit to be there to constrain me. He's there to constrain me when I'm lagging and restrain me when I'm going too fast. But his that gentle voice we hear. There's an inward voice of the Spirit of God and Paul knew that because he talks about walking in the Spirit. He talks about being crucified but he talks about resurrection life. A man didn't have any choice about the cross. There were very, very many kinds of it. There's a cross like an X and they stretched the man's arms up and his legs and crucified him that way. There's a cross that was just a straight piece of a tree and they crucified him this way. The worst form of crucifixion was they took the man who committed murder and tied him to the body of the man he'd murdered. So there you put the corpse down and you lay the man on the corpse and then you strapped his living hand to the dead hand. The living hand to the dead hand backwards. His legs to his legs. You stand him up and say get going, get going. And he staggers carrying this. That's what Paul was referring to. The Romans knew that. They're carrying the body of this death. And yet the miserable preachers say you're going to sin as long as you live. Well if that's a sinning in God's name tell me what sins I can commit and what I can commit. Again did Jesus say to a wicked woman go and sin less? He said no go and sin no more. And she didn't have the cross and she didn't have the book and she didn't have the Holy Ghost. Christianity is not a sinning religion. It's a victorious religion. Jesus did not come into the world to make bad men good. He came to make dead men live. You wonder the blessed book through Paul says, he talks about the offense of the cross. It's the cross that's the offense. Also Paul says I tell you weeping they're enemies of the cross of Christ. The Roman Catholic Church is an enemy of Christ. She's an enemy of the cross because she says Virgin Mary is co-redemptive. The Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ most adulterous bunch in the world. And you get all these heresies. They're not enemies of Christ. They're enemies of the cross because the cross is against sin. It cuts across as Martha often said. It cuts across everything. It cuts across our desires and everything. So here is an ant and he's going down the road and somebody says oof. I knew that man had mud. See who he's tied to? He's struggling with a body. He falls down and sleeps and wakes up and sees those glassy eyes. The corruption in that body gradually comes into him. But I see him going down the street and I see a Roman centurion and I say excuse me that man is a friend of mine. Can I cut him loose? I want to cut the ropes from his hands and his feet. Can I do that? He says yes. Thank you. He says wait a minute. There's one condition. What's the condition? Immediately you cut that corpse from your friend. That corpse will be attached to you. Will you do it? I won't do it. No thank you. But Jesus says that body of sin, he took that body of sin to the cross. But we leave people in Romans 7. Paul finished up by saying oh wretched man that's a life from hell he didn't. But he says in that chapter it's Christ. It's no longer I. It's sin that dwelleth in me but go up the road he said it's not I. It's Christ that liveth in me. You can't be sin dominated and Christ dominated. You can be sin dominated or self dominated and after all Romans 7 is only about self. You can't be sin dominated. Take a pencil and check every time he says I, I, I, I, I. 31 times is it? Pardon? 36. You've got another version. OK. It's 36 times. And then you go into Romans 8. What does it say? It uses I only twice. Verse 18 and verse 38. I reckon and I am persuaded. You can't do anything else. But you see Romans 7 is a self centred, sin centred chapter. Romans 8 is a Christ centred chapter. And I've told you I'm going to finish with this. You know there are two great works by Milton. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Do you know when he wrote Paradise Lost? Just after he got married. Do you know when he wrote Paradise Regained? A few weeks after his wife died. That's a historic fact. But when I read it, Romans 7 is a funeral march. I, I, sin has dominion, sin has dominion. Come on. Tell me in God's name. You see the antagonism is between the world. You can't love the world and the things of the world. If any man loved the world, I don't care how you water it down. Well it's something we do in church. Well if it's worldly, it's worldly. It, it hurts God. The games they have in churches. The banquets they have. All that junk. The scripture says if a man's hungry, hungry let him eat at home. I got to a place, I won't even eat out on Sundays. Last Sunday while I preached my heart out for two and a, some hours, Saturday night went to bed, didn't sleep too much. Got on in the morning, had a snack and I thought, mercy I'm going to have to refuse to go to dinner because I don't believe I should eat out on Sundays. And lo and behold, the Lord in mercy has arranged us to go to a mansion. And we had a sumptuous meal. It wasn't a bit like McDonald's. Gorgeous English style, you know, great big polished table. And none of these stupid paper napkins. An abomination. Pure linen. It was gorgeous. You know, I was thinking, I was like, boy, when we get to the marriage supper of the Lamb wouldn't it be wonderful? All the saints, it will be worth it all when we see Jesus. Five minutes inside of heaven we'll all wish we'd sacrificed more. And denied ourselves more. And worshipped more. And adored him more. I tried to preach in the word of God. You young people, I pray for your young people, I pray for Bethany and Dale's children every day. It's a hell of a world they're going into, you'd better wake up to it. If they're not thinking, you can't live on borrowed religion. It's good to have a Christian home. Comes a time when you're facing it yourself. And if you haven't the strength inside, if Christ isn't resident, you'll go down. Present your body. Hey Lord, take my mind, take my heart, take my affections, take my will. I'll put it on the altar like marriage. It's a once and for all deal. There it is. And then take your hands off and let him do the working around. Let him have the authority. As the old song says, ready to go, ready to stay, ready my place to fill. Well, I won't be here next Friday night. Dick's going to take, isn't that next week? Or the week after. I've got it wrong again. I will be here next Friday night. And Spencer and Dick are going to take the week after then. You got a bit straight now? Yes. No, nothing. Is that right? Anyhow, we will get the news round, so.