In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the need for believers to not get caught up in the chaos and immorality of the world. He compares the current state of society to the people in New York City witnessing acts of violence and adultery. The preacher also references the teachings of John Wesley and a parable about tame geese to highlight the complacency and lack of passion in the church. He emphasizes the importance of preaching that man must surrender to Christ and be governed by Him, as this is the true freedom. The sermon concludes with a call to find the right answer to the question of supreme loyalty and surrendering to God's authority.

I want to say something good about Brother Dreswall, but I don't see him. He's gone to... well, bless your heart. I thought you'd gone to the picture show. You didn't hear him this morning. He's announced he's moving down this way and going to get on relief. I was going to move to Tennessee, but there was a gardener that built him big two, three, four hundred thousand dollar parsonage, and I was going to move in the old one and go on relief. But the last time I was down there, they were tearing it down to get rid of the catastrophe that had been announced. Brother Mayhan's a gracious man, and some of you younger preachers, up until today, he was a good example of how to have a long pastorate, which is the only kind that's in account. Made it a policy all these years, never let anybody preach for him, preached as good as he could. He said, if you let a fella pinch it before he knocks a home run, you'll get pinched yourself. After the messages this morning, he may be looking for a church. He's ought to make a mistake there. Praise God for the messages. A young man asked me the other day, a young preacher, if I saw any hope, and I said, the only hope I see is that everybody that gives any evidence of being involved in the mission of God in Christ is asking that same question, is there any hope? Do you see any hopeful signs? And the only hopeful sign we see is that there is more, there are more people today making up God's professing people who are not satisfied with the weathered condition of God's church and are looking about for a cloud the size of a man's hand that precedes the rain that's sure to fall. I wish to speak tonight so that I can ask two questions. I don't have a subject. I wish to talk about the one issue. And having laid some groundwork for it, I hope to ask two very simple and yet solemn questions of all of us who are gathered here hungry, hungry for fellowship, but in great need, in great need. What is the issue? And I have two passages of scripture. The first is found in the book of Genesis at chapter 3 where the issue was stated. And from that hour to this, every other issue has grown out of this one. And this issue that was the issue in the Garden of Eden remains the issue to date I was up in Binghamton, New York many years since. And God was giving us great black harvest that particular time. Somebody invited somebody to come to the meetings to hear me preach. And he says, no use to go. He says the same thing every time he preaches. I met a young Methodist preacher, gotten well acquainted with him, and swapped in tape. He's less than 40 years old. He's taught at the Duke University. And yet he's one of the powerful preachers of this hour. Started a church under the Methodist with nine families and is making that city sit up and take notice as he is seeking to create a fellowship of men and women who live in the power of the resurrection life of the risen Lord. And I asked him how on earth he had come to the clearness and the oneness of his message. While he said, Brother Barnard, there isn't but one message to be preached. And that's God's eternal purpose in Jesus Christ that on the basis of his life laid down he proposes to set up his totalitarian rule in hearts, in institutions, and in this world before the wind-up time comes. But that's quite a purpose, isn't it? That's quite a message. The issue is stated in chapter 3 of Genesis. The Lord God, in chapter 2, I beg your pardon, chapter 2 of Genesis at verse 15, chapter 2, verse 15, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, Say, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. In the ninth chapter of the gospel of the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, two verses, verses 6 and 7 of Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah chapter 9, verses 6 and 7. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. And of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end. And upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. A hundred years ago the controversial voice of his age, a man who was not an ordained public preacher, a man who wasn't perfect like we are, but he was crying aloud against exactly what we are facing today where we live in America, where almost unanimously the people have agreed that we ought to go to church on Sunday morning and then go home. But we must not get involved in what's going on. This world's being torn to pieces by every bat out of hell. But we, like the people in New York City, are watching women ravish, husbands beaten up for trying to protect their wives because this generation of people wants to go to church on Sunday morning, listen to the preacher preach a fire, and go home. And he cried out against the same thing that John Wesley cried out in his day and that our brother Griswold talked about this morning. This man wrote a parable a hundred years ago about the conventional faith characteristic of his fellow church members in Denmark. And I wanted to begin the message tonight so somebody will be familiar, you bear with me. The subject of this parable, the tame geese. And Mr. Kierkegaard, I never can pronounce that name, it's a Danish name, writes on the tame geese. And here's what he says. Suppose it was so that the geese could talk. Then they'd so arranged it that they also could have their religious worship, their divine service. Every Sunday they came together and one of the ganders preached. The essential content of the sermon was, I think this was a conference on the grace of God, I'm not certain, what a lofty destiny the geese had. What a high goal the Creator, and every time this word was mentioned the geese curtsied and the ganders bowed their heads. What a high goal the Creator had set before the geese. By the aid of wings they were told they could fly away to distant regions, blessed climes, where properly they were at home. For here they were only strangers. And so it was every Sunday. And as soon as the assembly broke up, each waddled home to his own affairs. And then the next Sunday again to divine worship and then again home. And that was the end of that. They throat and were well liking, became plump and delicate, and then were eaten on Martin Mass Eve. And that was the end of that. That was the end of that. Although the discourse sounded so lofty on Sunday, the geese on Monday were ready to recount to one another what befell a certain goose that took seriously the preaching and who wanted to make serious use of the wings that had given him. The wings that were designed for the high goal that was proposed to him. And the geese were wont to tell about what a terrible tragedy and what a terrible death this one encountered. Also among the geese there were some individuals which seemed suffering and grew thin. About them it was currently said among the geese, there you see what it leads to when you take this flying seriously. For because their hearts are occupied with the thought of wanting to fly, therefore they become thin. Do not fly. Do not have the grace of God, if we who therefore, we have, who therefore become plump and delicate. And then Mr. Kierkegaard says, and then when someone reads this, he says, it's very pretty. And that's the end of that. And then he waddles home to his affairs, becomes, or at least endeavors with all his might to become plump and delicate and fat. But on Sunday morning the parson preacher buys and he listens just like the geese. His world's gonna go to hell because we've reduced that for which God hung his son on the cross to a matter of attending divine worship on Sunday morning, waddling home, and refusing to get involved in what's going on as this world's being butchered from every direction. The geese listen to the parson preacher, and that's the end of that. There are two testimonies that speak to my heart. One of them was by this same gentleman. I wish you'd listen to this testimony. Of all the nonsense uttered in these miserable times, perhaps the most nonsensical is the sentence written with a pretense of wisdom, which I've often enough met up with in the course of my reading, and whose excellence I've heard some people praise. The nonsensical sentence is this. Nowadays no man can be a martyr anymore, for ours is an age incapable of making a martyr of anyone. And then Mr. Kierkegaard says, what a misconception. We are not to think it is the age which has the power to put a man to death or to make him a martyr, but it is the martyr, the genuine martyr, which must give to the age the passion, the bitter passion to kill him. Real superiority always works in two ways. It produces the force which brings about its own fall. Thus, when a disturber of consciences is to be put to death, it is not the age which does it in its own strength and leads him to the gallows, but it is he himself who by dealing his salutary blows gives to the age the passionate desire. And if the age is sought in the worst kind of laxity, such a brave man has only to appear to disturb such an age to its core. And I've got much sun, but so help me God, I'm getting so sick and tired of being. I wish on that God, God Almighty, would build a palace. We couldn't disturb a convention of fleas, the whole shootin' that job. Mr. E. Matthew M-A-T-H-I-O-T, he says, after 25 years of preaching this for us preachers, he said, I'm still appalled by all the fine words I've uttered from the pulpit Sunday by Sunday for 25 years. Anyone of which lived up to the hilt would have been enough to send me to prison. If Christianity is not persecuted in the West, it owes its security to its unfaithfulness. God help us. God's blessing is withdrawn and cannot be experienced in the midst of our verbal sonorities. We're the best snorers you ever saw. God's blessing seeks a truly adventuring life. God gives to us only by hands because we trust him by hands. With that preface, I want to prepare to ask my heart one more time in yours two questions. It is said, or it is true, that when a queen or a king, a sovereign, is crowned in Great Britain, that one part of the traditional service is as follows. They take a golden orb, surmount it on a cross, and this golden orb on a cross is presented to the sovereign. And then the words are spoken. When you see the orb set under the cross, remember that the whole world is subject to the power and to the empire of Jesus Christ. This will serve to focus our attention tonight on the one issue of this hour, of every hour, past, present, and future, in whom is authority and how may it be recognized. In the Garden of Eden, there's just one issue. On Golgotha's Hill, there's just one issue. In the Garden of Eden, just one issue. Does God have a right to be God? And does he exercise that right? There's just one issue at Calvary. We will not have this man reign over us. Does God have a right to sit on the throne? The Bible says he does. Does God have a right to exercise that right? The Bible says he does. When the issue was first joined, there was peace in Abraham's tent as long as Ishmael was the only son. And there was war when Isaac came. So he was all fighting in the Second World War and he kept getting letters from his wife, his henpecked, curious sort of a husband. She was nagging him to death, worrying him to death about problems. He finally sat down and wrote her a letter and said, for God's sake, quit worrying me with your troubles. Leave me alone to enjoy this war in peace. If God Almighty had asked Jesus, if he'd stepped down off the throne and quit bringing his commands, quit pressing his feet, quit meddling, quit interfering, then the Garden of Eden, two things happened. God's throne ship was threatened. If Adam had a war, God's been out of business. And man's manhood, his wholeness was lost. It was so lost that now the scriptures speak of the natural man to describe the unnatural man, the fellow that's crazy, who's beside himself and has to be brought to himself. The whole thing's out of character. And now the issue of the throne ship of God Almighty has got to be set. God Almighty will never listen to you on any other matter. We have the privilege, and I used to look in the back of the algebra to cheat a little bit and find out the answer without going to all the trouble of working it out. Praise God. I looked in the back of the book and I read in the 15th chapter, first Corinthians, this ain't going to be settled. Praise God. He must reign. He must. Until the thing settles. Until this world is brought into subjection to Almighty God in Christ. Man's wholeness was lost. Man was made to be governed. There's never been any government placed on anybody's shoulders but Jesus Christ. The government should be on his shoulders. The whole house is been turned over to him. Nobody got any right to make any decision there except Christ. The government shall be on his shoulders. I can't quote it, but John Calvin dedicated his institute to the reigning monarch of his day. And in the climate of boldness in his heart, was pleased to remind that monarch that he'd sit where he was as long as it pleased. The only one that's ever been given any rule or any government is Jesus Christ. Man was made to be governed. The ungoverned man. Only so will he be a whole man otherwise he's a fish out of water. He is created to serve God. His human personality was designed for something more. Made was man not to stand. That strange expression is still true in whose service is perfect freedom. Sin is personal slavery instead of obedient freedom. To be free, a man must be under him upon whose shoulders the government of everything that rise and wriggle from. What a sage. Salvation then. We heard about somebody seeing God's salvation this morning. Salvation then, if it's God's salvation, is the restoration of the throne ship of God and making a man a man one more time. It follows therefore that three things are true. The gospel of God's salvation is the proclamation of him. In him, through him, and in him, and for him. God purposes to sum up all things and in and through him regain God's throne ship in all of the world and restore man to where he's a whole man. If you don't buy any of the other books back there, get your wife and let you buy Mr. Warfield's The Plan of Salvation. Ah, when you get the blues, go read it. This world's going to be redeemed. God bless your heart. This world's going to be brought back as the creature with God on the throne. The gospel is the story of how God has put all of his eggs in one basket. The gospel is broad, is as broad as Christ and as narrow as Christ. The gospel is shutting the door to hope anywhere else except in Christ. And open it to him there. The gospel of God's salvation is the proclaiming, not the explaining of a person in whom and through him God purposes to do everything that'll ever be done for kingdoms or nations or systems or worlds. Therein we can understand Paul's threefold description of the credentials of gospel preaching. I hope Brother Radio, Brother Mahan can stay on the radio, but I'll warn him right now. If the world ever find out what the preaching, he ain't going to stay on. Imagine what would happen if the Jewish people in America ever got wise to what's happening on the radio. Why, it's an insult to a Jew. Stuff you preach, preaching that illegitimate son of a fallen woman. That man who, if they hadn't killed him, he'd have done irreparable damage to the Godhead of God and the religion of the fathers. My soul, we can understand that the reason we're political is that we don't have the power so to indict the offense. It's no wonder Paul said, preaching of the cross, the word of the cross, is a scandal, it's a damn high insult to a Baptist or a Methodist or a Presbyterian or a Roman Catholic or a Jew or anybody else. But don't know Christ. The idea of telling me that everything God has is in a little baby that is born in a cow stable, that's scandalous. And yes, we're preaching the gospel, but if it's the gospel, the word of the cross, it's scandalous, scandalous. And it's downright foolish to anybody who's got right good sin. It's foolishness to the Greek. I said many times, only a fool or a Christian believes that Jesus is born of God, is the son of God. There's not enough brain power in this world to figure that if you're an idiot, I don't understand how you can believe Jesus is the son of God. Otherwise, you can't, apart from the miracle of the new. No wonder the simple gospel. I heard a preacher the other day, he said, if you do, they'll take it, they'll never know when they swore it, never miss it when they lose it, never regret it in hell. It's not simple. It's not simple. We can understand why it's the power and the wisdom of God to them who will call. If the issue of the hour is a threat to the man's rebellion, the restoration of the total manhood, then the gospel of God's salvation is a proclamation of this one, of whom who is scandalous to religious people, downright silly to educated, wonderful to those who are here. In the second place, to be saved, if what I said is so, to be saved means to be converted and the kingdom of God is Christ. The New Testament identifies to be saved means to be converted to the rule of God in Jesus Christ. To be saved means that one's heart's concern is freely given to God sitting on the throne. Yes, holiness. We must keep preaching. Come with an open hand. By the love of God we must preach. While your hand's open, let your knee be bent. We must preach that man must become captives. We must preach that man is made to be governed and any salvation don't take care of that. It's not that which God hung his son on a cross. We must preach that we're most free when we're most tears, that we never stand so straight as when we bow to him. We must preach that under his authority and nowhere else is a man free. We must preach that the greatest need of a man is to find the supreme loyalty to be given. How may I surrender to someone beyond myself? How may I resign as the general manager of the universe? How may I render up my sword because that's a symbol of authority and God will have you. How shall I come to be able to swear allegiance willingly to him? No wonder the New Testament speaks of and the Lord added under the church daily such as were being said. Oh my soul, I don't understand these people that never have to pray and never have to confess and never have to repent and never have to apologize and never have to walk the floor at night and cry when they haven't seen the brass. They never have to face for one second the claims of Jesus Christ. Oh my soul, I can compare myself to you and I get along fairly well but the claims of Christ Lordship, slay me! Slay me! And I can say, Oh God, I look forward to that time when undamned love of Christ is if nobody's going to relate to me if any move up or apart more than the beaches in our hearts might come back to meeting. Oh my soul, conversion means a change of masters converted to the kingdom, the rule of God Almighty. And thus the saved man's found freedom. He's just whistling by the graveyard hoping the ghost won't get him. He's found freedom by becoming a slave to one greater than himself. The self-centered man that comes to church on Sunday morning and waddles home and that's the end of that refuses to recognize the claims of God on his life. The only kingdom he'll recognize is one he's built. Thus he attempts to become the rule of his own life. And his will becomes his God. For his will is just exactly in the place God said he'll not share with another. And thus he's not free but he's a slave. This is sin, the setting up of our own little kingdom in opposition to God. This is sin to build a tower of Babel, reach up to God and bring Him down, to do our bidding. This is sin, it's attempting to be the creator, not willing to be the creature. This is sin, the subject trying to be the sovereign. This is sin, open rebellion in my glow. Rebellion! Boy, it's a good thing Jesus ain't coming back in the flesh inside the city limits. We'd rid them apart. This is sin, it's rebellion against the will and the authority and the sovereignty of God and spiritual deafness to His voice. And sin's a lot more than an action now, it's a condition. God help us, we're buried in it. Salvation must come where man is and he must be converted dead to a lifelong pursuit of the will of Almighty God. I'm so hungry for my own heart and people. I'm so tired of preaching to dry out. I'm about to shoot somebody. I'm so tired of preaching to high sickles and orthodox people. My soul won't get to the Lord. I'm so tired, aren't you, of this nice little convenient stuff we call being saved. I long for somebody that makes about 1,700 mistakes a day, but bless God, he's headed toward the will of God. Yeah, boy. That's right. That's right. A fella tell me about it. This fella, yes, this side of him, my hail, said after he got converted, his face lit up like an old abandoned cathedral when darkness came, when it lit up with candles, said his face just lit up. Oh, boy, and he gets happy. He's liable to ruin us around here. We could do with it. Oh, my. To be converted. To be converted. To be hungry and then thirsting after righteousness instead of telling about that fella he ain't straight on the doctrines of grace. Oh, I ever need one of these graces. Well, Judge, I thank you. But it follows that if God's eggs are in one basket in Christ, then that salvation means to be converted to the kingdom, the rule of... It follows, therefore, that revival, if you like the word, would glory. Oh, that will be glory. It's coming somewhere down the road. What'll it simply be? It'll be when men see Christ sitting on the throne and they say, Praise the Lord. Sure, I'm glad He's there. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. It sure ain't going to be when we get some more church. It ain't going to be when we get some more people. It would be when all right with the world got so right quickly. If it be God's will that before He says it's enough for me, I'll experience something of them. I want to ask you two questions first. Can a given local assembly, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ in a given assembly, represented several ways here tonight, can it be brought to rejoice that Christ is enthroned? My God, how much longer is God going to stand the rebellion inside of the churches of Jesus? I say to you, not as a plea for pity. I've been preaching 37 years. Most of us are hitchhiking evangelists. Getting smaller every year. Most of the preachers have already thrown up the white flag they have threw trying to win in the body of Christ. They say it ain't no use. We've gone about as far as we can go. Some of you pastors have gone about as far as you can go. You know and I know unless God's voice begins to be heard in the church. As God is my judge, we just about shut up there. The only way Christ may manifest himself is where his authority is recognized. On the day of Pentecost, we've seen it. It must take place again. We haven't got any message. We can hoot and holler about we're not saved by works, we're saved by grace. We're elected and all that till we're blue in the face and they're precious but they're not the issues of this hour. The issue of this hour is whose false, lawless church members are dragging the gospel under that dirt. Men who profess to a far off risen Lord but will speak through the church. I say to you my pastor friend, we've swept the dirt under the rug about as long as we can. We've got to honestly face up. Nobody has the answer. Will we see in our day churches where Jesus Christ sitting on the throne of that church on the day of Pentecost pierces the hearts of 3,000 people? All of our efforts slip up on the blind side of this situation without a plea out on all of them. The only hope I see now is the revelation of Christ speaking through lips of clay, speaking the message of God. When asked another question, I haven't the answer. I just have a hope. Don't rob me of my hope. Can we again see in our day men utterly conquered by and taken captive to the... I said, I guess it's old mean Ralph Barnard. If somebody... We've had them. We get them to profess faith. We're doing the best we know how. I'm a member of the church. They ask me about John every Sunday. There ain't no more people in prayer meeting the next night. The budget ain't no bigger. I don't know what happens to them. They get converted. Hope to see you in heaven if you make it. Oh, I'd love to see somebody converted. Somebody that ain't perfect yet, but bless God, he's changed. He's changed. He's changed. Did you know that the Reformation was born in the heart of Luther and Calvin? We mustn't camp on first base. We must speak proudly. Learn all we can. But they accused the church of Rome of having a man-centered faith. They said that the church of that time was turning people out whose faith was centered in their own efforts to meet their own needs. And they said if we'd honestly answer to them, we'd come to the heart of it. First, do you seek God for what He'll do for you? Second, do you believe that by your own efforts you can get from God what you need? Now, out of those two things was born the doctrine of justification we would know if we met it in the road. It suffered at the hands of its friends and enemies. But it meant then that the gift, that salvation was the gift of God and that it was achieved by receiving and not doing. As you know, the two types of faith within professing Christianity today, there's the faith that centers on me, what I can do and what I can get. Then there's the faith that centers on God and His glory. Whatever faith is, it's basically a relationship between God and man. It's either God-centered or man-centered. I want to ask you this question, and I'm going to ask us preachers. Dear one, do you seek God because you think a right relationship with Him would benefit you? Then the real important person in that outfit is you, isn't it? Do you believe your own efforts will bring you those benefits? Man's need and man's efforts to have his need met. You know Luther battled there. Boy, he rolled up his sleeves and spat on his hand and said, I'm going to get right. That's good. He quit this and he did this. And then finally he came to see that he was worshiping himself. He saw that true faith was not a matter of his needs, that true faith was a bowing to God even if nothing resulted to Him. And thus he came to define salvation as, I quote him, the realization of God's will and purpose, whatever that might be, rather than the satisfaction of human need. He even went so far as to say that those who freely offer themselves to all the will of God, even to hell and death eternally, should God so will, in order that His will may be fully done. Calvin came and echoed, he said the Christians should be willing to be damned for the glory of God. He said we must affirm God without demanding that He affirm us. He said that true faith means having confidence in God regardless of profit or loss. He said only those go to heaven who are willing not to die. I done got down so deep I don't know how to handle it. Which comes first? The glory of God on His throne, the will of God, or what we can get out of Him. I pray for myself and for every public preacher and for every child of God in this hour for a baptism of the voice of authority to dare to say to this age that's got no use for God except as a milk cow to get something out of Him. Who on Sunday morning gives a little lip service to a far off God. Oh, to this bedeviled and bedazzled and religiously cocaine degeneration of people in for hell. There's just one issue. That's, that's the glory and the will of almighty God. Whether we spend eternity in heaven or hell to God be the glory must come back to our pulpits.