In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of proclaiming the word of God in order to shine for Jesus and experience the reality of Christ. The disciples in the early church were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit after preaching the word of God. The speaker suggests that simply having intellectual knowledge or a theological training is not enough to truly know Jesus, but rather it requires a personal commitment to Him. The sermon also includes a story about a tightrope walker and a little boy, illustrating the importance of trust and faith in Jesus.

Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Thank you very much. I'll just chat to you for a moment, so that you can get used to a British accent, at least a little bit. Having lived several years in Chicago, the worst of it's brushed off, but since going back again, some of it's come back. Every time I come across to this country, I, in my mind, spend the six hours in the plane rehearsing certain words, which I mustn't use in the States, which we use in Britain. And then going back again, I do the procedure in reverse. Quite an exercise of your mind. I won't tell you what the words are, but they're quite interesting, really. I was telling the pastor of the Evangelical Methodist Church yesterday that shortly after I came to Chicago to pastor at Moody Church, I was showing a Nigerian through the customs. He couldn't speak any English, and he'd come to Chicago to learn the language and to study. And I'd arranged to meet him at the airport. Well, when I helped him through the customs, the customs officer looked at his passport and said to me, what is he? Well, I said, he's a clerk. Well, I didn't know that in Chicago that word was pronounced clerk. So he said, he's a what? I said, he's a clerk. Well, he said, what does he do? Well, I said, I don't know. And the customs officer said to me, Jimmy just goes tick-tock, tick-tock. This poor Nigerian man must be absolutely nuts because he imagined we both spoke the same language. Well, I don't think anything like that will happen tonight or during this week, but I realize it's a bit of a test to have to put up with a Britisher. And if there are some words I use that you don't understand, you can ask me what they mean. Seriously, though, it's a tremendous thrill to be here. I was thrilled by that music. Absolutely thrilled. So glad that young people today are getting with it. Just a few days ago, near us, we have what we call a motorway, you use the term expressway, restaurant, and at Capenry Hall we took over a restaurant and a motorway and had music groups just like this. We took the whole place over. There were seven or eight hundred teenagers. Many of them had never heard about Jesus before. And these young people sung their way into their hearts. And their message was supported by a strong gospel presentation and many found Christ. So I felt completely at home tonight. Thank you so much. And then of course it's a tremendous thrill to be back in this country and to find myself involved a little bit in this key 73 about which I'd heard, but not a great deal. I think it's a tremendous project. For a generation this country, indeed the whole world, but especially this country, has been blanketed with evangelism. But this is something different. As I understand it, this is really mobilized to evangelize. This is every Christian being involved. And that's what really counts. We've seen a great deal of mass evangelism and I'm a believer in it. But inevitably there are casualties and inevitably many people are never touched. And the only hope for the church is that every Christian gets on the ball and is a living personal witness to Jesus Christ. So I find myself 100 percent behind this from the very outset. But in four evenings, all I can do is to seek to underline some principles which we must bear in mind if we're going to achieve our... And therefore our subject tonight is the Christian's responsibility. And I'm going to speak to you on this passage of scripture which we read together in Acts chapter 13. If you care to turn to your Bible, if you can see it. I can scarcely see you, but I should imagine you've no problem about seeing me. Whether you can read the Bible out there or follow it, I wouldn't know. But before I turn to the Word, let me turn to the Lord of the Word and ask you to do the same in a moment of prayer together. Will you echo in your heart the prayer which I offer on my behalf and on your own? Speak, Lord, in the stillness while I wait on thee. Hush my heart to listen in expectancy. Speak, O blessed Master, in this quiet hour. May we see thy face, Lord, and feel thy touch of power. For Jesus' sake. Amen. Tonight I want to talk to you about the Christian's responsibility. Tomorrow, the Christian's renunciation. And on Wednesday, the Christian requirement. And on Thursday, the Christian's resources. All for involvement in this tremendous project that we face. Tonight, my responsibility as a Christian is set out for me in Acts chapter 13 and verse 47. So has the Lord commanded us, saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth. Everybody here is either a missionary or a mission field. May I just repeat that so that you can get over the shock, but it's true. Everybody here is either a missionary or a mission field. If you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are a missionary. If you don't, you're a desperately needy mission field. You don't become a missionary by getting a passport and going over to the Orient or to South America or anywhere else. You're a missionary right where you are. The moment you know Christ personally as Lord and Savior of your life, you're a missionary. Until that moment, you are a mission field. You may be a church member, but you're still a mission field. And this is highlighted for us in this verse that I've read, I have set thee to be a light to the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be, you should be for salvation to the end of the earth. Let's just be, let me just get the significance of that statement, a light. Do you remember that the Lord Jesus himself once said, I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of light. I am the light of the world. Then he turned to a little group of men who followed him and said to them, ye are the light of the world. That must have shaken them to the core. Ye are the light of the world. And you remember that Paul writes to the church at Philippi, he reminded them that they lived in a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as light in the world. Now, this is a phrase constantly coming up in the Bible and the thing that I want to be quite clear is that we understand how it is that Jesus is the light of the world and we are the light of the world. How can that be? I think an understanding of that fact is absolutely essential. Let me draw upon my very limited knowledge of astronomy. When God created this world as we know it, this solar system, we'd better stick to the one we know about, he put in it a moon and a sun. A sun, the greater light to rule the day, and a moon, the lesser light to rule the night. A few years ago, I was visiting in Central Africa Republic where my daughter is a missionary, and it was a wonderful moonlight night. The stars were shining and the moon was full. It was a tremendous night. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. The sort of night that makes people who are in love want to hold hands because they tell me that the moon controls the tide as well as the untide. I can assure you it was my daughter I was walking with and as we walked together along that little jungle path she said to me, Daddy, isn't the moon shining brightly tonight? And I said, yes dear, it is. And then I stopped, and I said, you know, how stupid. We're both wrong. The moon is utterly incapable of shining. Our astronauts have confirmed that. It's only a lump of lackluster material which has no capacity to shine at all. But it's in orbit in relation to the sun and as it turns its face heavenward it catches the glow, catches the brilliance and the warmth of the sunshine and reflects it into the darkness of this world. The moon is a reflector of light. Now, when Jesus says He is the light of the world that is precisely what He means. We have no capacity to shine for Him. Nothing has us at all that can make us capable of doing it. But when I turn my eyes upon Jesus and look full in His wonderful face then something happens. I catch the glow. I catch the reality, the warmth, the love. And somehow His light begins to shine through your life. Now this thrills me. Because, you see, there's nobody else, there's no society in all the world can compete with the Christian, with the Church. We're not in competition with anybody. No educational system can. No philosophy of life can. Nothing in the world can bring any light into the darkness on the problems that really hit us day after day except a Christian. A Christian who is in right relationship with God. A Christian who has come to know Jesus personally. He begins to shed light wherever He goes. You know, I found that fantastically true in these days. I have to travel a good deal nowadays. I don't like it, frankly. You may think there's a lot of glamour in travel. I don't like it. But in the last five years, I suppose I've been preaching in about 45 different countries. And there are most extraordinary things happening. Wonderful things happening to you that simply didn't exist ten years ago. Let me just mention one or two of them. You go down to a country like Brazil and you find that 75% of the evangelical life of that country is in the Pentecostal Church. And it's growing faster than the birth rate of the population. I find that exciting. Then, wherever I go, there's fantastic changes taking place in the Roman Catholic Church. A great friend of mine, as Dr. Stephen offered, of Calvary Baptist Church, New York. I was in his church recently at a convention he was having and in the congregation there were several. Afterwards, one or two of them came up to his apartment and had supper with himself and his wife and I was in the party. And they invited him afterwards to come and speak at a Roman Catholic nunnery, seminary, whatever you call it. And he was given carte blanche to say exactly what he liked. And he preached, he told me, to about 700 nuns in training for the ministry. And gave them the gospel. And they welcomed it. Fantastic. And then, what do you make of the Jesus movement? We haven't got Key 73, but we have Spree 73, spiritual emphasis and renewal and emphasis. And do you know who's heading that up? A group of people under the heading of Festival of Light, who were all Jesus people. Years ago, absolutely addicted to drugs. Way out, drop out. And who have been wonderfully converted and brought to us and are really making a tremendous impact on the youth of our country. Of course, when you read the newspaper you never read anything about these things. You'll read the bad news. But the Christian's filled with the good news. And this is some of the wonderful things that are happening in the world. And especially in our countries. A friend of mine who is ministering in California, about five years ago, he was about going around the bend or climbing up the wall, whatever you like, about his evening service. It had dropped to 30 people. The church holds over 2,000. He was in despair. He had no idea. I'm sure it came from God. He scrapped his order of service entirely. He got three robbing microphones. Gave them to three of his church officers who went round the building. Went round to 30 people and said, have you any questions? And after that they stood up and they gave a testimony. Someone told what Jesus Christ had done for them. Someone had come to know him personally that very week. And so this began to take life. Do you know tonight? Every Sunday it's full. More than 2,000 people there. A lot of them from the Jesus movement who come right inside the church and found the church that cares and is alive. And you know, when they pass the offering plate around, would you believe it, you can either take out or put in. Just what you like. If you're in need, help yourself. If you feel out of love you want to give, put it in. An absolute sense of love and unity and revival in that church today through very largely the people who were a way out and drop out, just lost to the world and to society. These things are happening. I hardly dare mention it here, but I shall have more to say to it later in the week, about it later in the week, and the charismatic movement. In 45 countries where I preach, it's in every one of them. And whether you like it or not, you cannot deny the reality of many people in their faith in Jesus Christ, sense of liberty and freedom. So all these things are taking place today, testifying to the fact that Jesus lives. And if I was a minister of a church, I'd just be afraid that I was so occupied in doing my thing, that they let all these exciting things bypass me. You're the light of the world. A reflector of light. The only kind of person, that because you're in touch with God, because you're in relationship with the living Christ, you can bring to bear light upon the problems that beset the whole human race today. It's a wonderful thing to be a Christian in a day like this. Tremendous. I'm so glad I'm alive. So glad that God has spared me to live, to see a day like this, when things are moving and God is at work and Jesus is alive and people are really turning to him. Now if I want to take my share in all this, and if you do, then I think there are one or two things that are laid down for us here in this passage of scripture that we can't possibly escape. And I want you to look at them very carefully a minute. If you're going to shine for Jesus, if you're going to be a light, a reflector of light, if you're going to know what it is to catch something of the glow of heaven, not by education, not by philosophy, not by theological training, but if you're going to catch the glow of the reality of Christ that you must pretend. Four times over in this little passage of scripture, did you notice it? The phrase occurs, the word of God, verse 44, the whole city together to hear the word of God. Verse 46, the word of God. Verse 48, they were glad and glorified, the word of the Lord. Verse 49, the word of the Lord. Four times over, the word of God, the word of God, the word of God. This little band of disciples who already had experienced the thrill of multiplication were really on the march, on the move for the Lord, and everywhere they went they were triumphant, and this was the message that had burnt their way, burnt its way, into their hearts. The word of God, the word of God. It wasn't simply they had systematic theology. It wasn't simply they had doctrine. As a matter of fact, I imagine that most of us knew, know, a lot more doctrine or think we do, than they did. They had experience, and that experience needed doctrine in order to explain it. We have doctrine, but so often we have no experience to explain. But this early church simply thrilled and were alive with experience, and they were proclaiming the word of God. You see, you say, I don't see anything wonderful about that. That's what our church stands for. We are an evangelical church. We proclaim the word of God. Are you quite sure that the message we proclaim through our lips, through our pulpits, through our lives, today as the gospel of Jesus Christ is what it was in the days of the early church? Are you sure it has the same emphasis, the same tang, the same punch, the same thrust behind it? This word of God had burnt like a fire in the hearts of these men. They couldn't keep quiet about it. We must obey God rather than men. That was their slogan. Nothing could keep them quiet. Have you found, my friend, that it's one thing to go through your Bible? It's quite another thing when the Bible begins to go through you. Have you made that discovery? When somehow it gets hold of you and grips you, and you discover that you're under the authority of it and under the power of it and the conviction of it and it's gripped your heart and you can't keep quiet about Jesus? Is something wrong when we can keep quiet about Him? I know that the most embarrassing question any man can ask a congregation from a platform is the one that I'm going to ask you, but you've often been asked it. How long since you sat down beside someone else and thought from the word of God to lead them to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ? Done it this year? Done it a year ago? Ever? If not, why not? Because simply we have the theology of the thing which is somehow it never has gripped us, the reality of it, the experience. To what experience am I referring? Well, just this. You find, and I haven't time to enlarge upon this, you can check me by reading it for yourself, that in the Acts of the Apostles, especially, when Abel and his early church went to bat, went to preach the word, they fired the gospel on a double-barrel gun. First of all, they preached justification by faith, that a man can be right with God through faith in Jesus Christ who gave Himself for us on Calvary. You find that here in verse 38. For instance, in this sermon preached by Paul at Iconium. Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins. And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. Now, I don't suppose any of us have any problem about that. I imagine, however, if I ask you what it means I believe, I hope I'm not doing you an injustice, but I believe, that many people when we get to Heaven, oh, it doesn't. Eternal life is not a duration, it's a quality, it's a depth. And when I receive Jesus Christ into my heart, I receive eternal life, the life of God Himself indwelling me by His Holy Spirit. And faith means committing, F-A-I-T-H, forsaking all I take Him. Not mere intellectual assent to a creed, but commitment to a person. You know the story often told of the famous tightrope walker, Blondin, going across Niagara Falls on a tightrope. And before he got on, there was a little boy in a crowd watching with his eyes wide open. Blondin stopped and looked at him and said, Caesar, do you believe I can walk on this tightrope across Niagara? Sure, sir, I do. Son, do you believe that I can carry you on my back on this tightrope across Niagara Falls? Oh, yes, sir. Well, jump on my back. And that little boy turned around and fled for his life. Hold that in your mind and come with me, would you, in imagination, to a little village I know called Viper. Strange name. A little old grocer's store, not much else there. An old, old village, very sweet place. One day a grocer is down in his cellar checking his stock. He's removed the trapdoor. He's gone right down to the cellar. Then he's taken away the ladder and he's looking around the shelves and the little trapdoor is open and his boy Caesar Moore wants to see him and he comes to the top of the trapdoor and he says, Yes, daddy. And the grocer comes right in out of the semi-darkness and looks up at him and sees him there standing up above. Yes, son. Daddy, I want to come to you. Well, jump. Oh, but daddy, I can't see you. Never mind. I can see you. Jump. And the little boy jumped and he fell into the arms of his father. Now, relate those two stories together. Blondin's boy believed all the facts about Blondin. But he wasn't prepared to commit himself to Blondin. That grocer's boy believed all about his father. But he went further and committed himself to his father and fell right into the arms of his father. Faith, saving faith, is a step into the dark onto a rock. And that rock is a step into the dark beyond reason, beyond intellect, beyond understanding, right into the dark onto a rock. I am justified from all things by taking that step from which I could not to be justified by the law of Moses. Now, many of us would argue with this. But the second battle on the gun is a bit more difficult. And always in the Acts of the Apostles I find the early church preaching that we're justified by grace in order to learn to submit to government. It was always preaching the sovereignty of God. And if you check, for instance, this chapter through on your own tonight, you would read how over and over again Paul was referring to the sovereignty of God in human experience and history. Now, this is an essential part of salvation, the Christian message. If we are really going to get anywhere with this tremendous project of Key 1973, I suggest to you that this message is right down to earth and absolutely essential. We're saved by grace for submission to government. Jesus is Lord. I cannot know Him as Saviour and then subsequently, if it suits me and when more convenient, I may have Him as Lord. Oh no! You see, sovereignty is an essential attribute of deity. You cannot divorce one from the other. An essential attribute of the deity of God is sovereignty, He's Lord before He's Saviour. Turn the cassette over now for the continuation of this message. And first, when you encounter Jesus, you encounter Him as Lord and He comes right crashing into your life. And it's very disturbing and very inconvenient and very revolutionary. But He has come to set up in my life and in your life the Kingdom of God. To demonstrate to society today, society that won't acknowledge any authority, the sheer thrill and the sheer joy of living day by day in my life under the authority. This is a completely new regime that is set up in our lives. It is the end of one regime when I've tried to run my own life and the beginning of another regime when Jesus takes over control. I wonder if in your home you have any wedgewood china. Maybe you do. Perhaps you like it. Well, I could take you to the place where it's manufactured. There's a town in the Midlands in England, a very dirty town, very smoky town, but out of it there comes this beautiful china. I was in that town just recently and at a young people's meeting on a Saturday night a Salvation Army officer was giving his testimony. Great, great man he was. He carried his presence well in front of him. Very large. And he said, you know, he gave the story of his conversion. He was converted at a Salvation Army open air meeting on a Saturday night. And the next morning he went to their holiness meeting. And he came back absolutely miserable. And his wife said to him, what's the matter with you? I thought you were converted. Oh, yes, he said I was, but everybody else in the hall had a red jersey on but me. I felt sort of blessed. Oh, she said, don't worry, I'll knit you one. So she knitted him a tremendous sweater, a great big thing like a tent. And he went out on the next Sunday. And when he came back he was more miserable than ever. She said to him, what's the matter? Well, he said, you see, everybody else's sweater had white letters on it. Mine hadn't. It looked so odd. Oh, she didn't know what to do about that because poor woman she couldn't read or write. But the next morning, the Monday, a man brought a ladder and climbed up outside a shop and began to paint a sign above the shop window. And she said to herself, I know what I'll do. I'll copy everything that man put on that sign onto my husband's sweater. And she did. And he went out the next Sunday and came back absolutely with a sweater on, the whole lot of them. Do you know what it had with mine? This business is under entirely new management. Now, my friend, seriously, that's a Christian act. That's a Christian act. The message that I must proclaim, Jesus Christ is Lord. And because He's Lord, He rules my life. I am here to display in a godless society which has rejected all thought that the only way of happiness and peace and joy and satisfaction is the meeting to the Lordship of Jesus. That's a revolution. When I bow out and Jesus bows Himself in, the message I must portray. A free salvation which demands His full control. And, of course, that is exactly the message of the New Testament. It was Jesus Himself who said, Not everyone that saith to me, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven. Why do you call me Lord and don't do what I tell you? I've never been able to answer that question. Have you? For once in your life, said Paul, grace, sin reigned unto death. Now grace reigns unto eternal life. One or the other must rise. And so this message has got to get back, I believe, right into the heart because it's the beginning, the really beginning, of Jesus beginning to shine through my heart when He takes control. When I'm no longer playing cheer, I'm no longer just doing my thing, but I'm really excited at the revolution that is happening. The message I must portray. Now you notice from this chapter 2 something else here, what I would call the movement that I must precipitate. Here it is. The Jews, verse 45, were filled with envy and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul. 48. The Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. Now isn't that interesting? You see, some people were glad, some people were mad, but nobody was neutral. Everybody jumped off the fence of neutrality. And I am telling you that if this project is getting underway, immediately, immediately, you get out where the action is and you bear testimony to the Lordship of Christ, immediately you run headlong into opposition. And do you know where it will come from? It won't come from the, may I use such a word, I don't mean it in an unkind sense, it won't come from the outsider. It won't come from the person who was never daft in the church door. He'll be thankful at last that he's met some people who mean business. And some people are real. He's met somebody who's in plain church who's Christian and who means something seven days a week to him. But do you know who it will come from? It will come from the people who occupy a pew every Sunday in our churches and do no more about it. It'll come from people who are really good church members but have never, never submitted to the Lord. I know that because after 28 years in pastoral ministry, I know what happens. When this message grips your heart and you know that this is the word of God and has to be protected. And they'll perhaps come up to you and say to you, Pastor, don't you think you could preach a nice little comforting message? And then after about 20 or 25 minutes give a 5 minute gospel application to the unconverted and get them saved. In other words, take the heat off us. Over and over again I've seen men with a real burden. Men who I would describe as prophets in this country have to empty their churches before they fill them. One such man was Dr. A. W. Telzer of Chicago. The greatest preacher in my judgment that America has known for this century. Soon after my arrival at that city he called me on the telephone and he said to me, you'll perhaps have difficult time in your church. He said, I would love it if you would come and have some fellowship with me sometime. And he said, you'll find me any morning between April and October, any morning on the south shore of Lake Michigan from 5 o'clock till 8. I didn't go too often. It was holy ground. But this is not pulpit rhetoric. This is actual truth. When I did go, do you know what I used to find? I used to find A. W. Telzer flat on his face on the sand of Lake Michigan with his open Bible for three hours. That's what made him the man he was. When he came into his pulpit, oh, everybody got in his neck, said he was a recluse, he wouldn't cooperate with people, etc., etc. Now that he's gone to heaven, of course he's wonderful. His books are the best sellers. Everybody's after him. But then they... So I want to stress to you that you, who go out with the message Jesus is Lord, that's where your first opposition will come. You know, don't get excited. Now take it easy. Take it easy. Just take it easy. Don't get religious mania. Just take it quietly. Quietly. Don't get too excited. People roar their heads off over several people knocking about an inflated piece of rubber on a football field, and they're so excited they think it's thrilling. Well, my friend, do you pardon me if I find Jesus exciting and I let people know it? Not a phony to me. This is reality. This is reality in my life because I know, I know... ...has meant my deliverance. I know that I need every day twenty-four hours of... And if you say that's legalism, I say it's brash legalism. It's a legalism which I can't do without as I learn to submit every day of my life to Jesus as Lord. I want to tell you that I've been on the way for forty years now. I'm ashamed of the times that I have rejected that fellowship. Oh, He was Lord at the very beginning. Can you go back to the day... Do you know the day, the time, the place? Not your baptism. I didn't say that. I said your conversion. When you are born of the Spirit of God. Do you remember? It doesn't really matter. Some people never can remember. It doesn't matter really as long as you know you are now. There's no such thing as a gradual conversion. Maybe a gradual recognition of it. But no such thing as a gradual conversion. There's a moment when you step from... Remember the time? I remember the time. I remember the day I was there when it happened. And I remember the man who led me to Christ. He gave... And I was so excited that I underlined that little word now so heavily that I went right through to the Epistle to the Philippians and ruined my Bible. But it was worth it the sheer thrill of knowing that now... Oh, I tell you that Jesus was my Lord that day. With all my heart I loved Him and thanked Him and rejoiced in such... But it wasn't long before He would be saying to me don't you do that again. This way, not that. You all right? Not that friend, but this. And He began to interfere. And I found it somewhat difficult and somewhat painful and somewhat costly. And I rejected it for years. Seven years I lived in a hopeless wilderness of complete failure and absolute defeat. For I would refuse to submit to the Lordship of Jesus. Oh, how glad I am today that there's a love that will not... How hard I try to run away from God, get away from Him in all different kinds of ways. But there came a day when He brought me right down to rock. Period. And when I'd ended the battle Jesus Christ became Lord again. But that wasn't the end of it. Every day, the older I get, every day, some things, some issues which the Lord Jesus contests which, in me, I'm inclined to resist and choose an easier path. Find that in your life. And when you live like that, my friend, other people are never neutral in your presence. They can't be. Because they're watching the reactions of Christ in you. No longer I live, as we were reminded in that lovely solo tonight. Not I, but Jesus. And since He took over and lived and demonstrates His life in me, His reactions become mine. You see, at the best, you and I are only stepping stones to Christ. And stepping stones are for walking on. And you often get walked on. And it hurts. Especially if the people who walk on you are your friends. But I'll tell you something. When the man who's crucified with Jesus is walked on, he doesn't hit back. Jesus reacts in him and loves. And that's what people begin to notice. Whereas normally you'd blow your top and give the other fellow such a raking through. But, oh, you're not a sissy. You're not weak. But you've learned the only peace of heart is meekness. Meekness is not weakness. Try being meek for a week and you'll soon find that out. Meekness is strength. It's from the Lord Himself. It derives strength from Him. And that, of course, is what Christianity is. Whereas strength is self-reliant, is self-confident, it's weakness. When it's derived from dependence upon a living Christ, it's strength. And Jesus never answered back. You go throughout this project and throughout Dallas and elsewhere and listen. Treat every fellow Christian as though he was Jesus. React to every fellow Christian as though you were Jesus. Get it? Treat every fellow believer as though he was Jesus. React to every fellow Christian as though you were Jesus. And I'll tell you our churches will be coming with revival in a month. Because the greatest preparation for all evangelism would have taken place through men and women who are abandoned to the Lordship of Christ and whose presence you can't be neutral about Him. Exciting. Tremendous. Just one last thing. That precipitates a movement. People either love you or hate you. They either quit or stay. Speaking of Stephen Oswald, if you'll excuse me a moment, he and I used to be in, he was in, and I was in Moody, Chicago. We used to ring each other up on Sunday nights to see how we were getting on. Two Englishmen in these pulpits. And, uh, how's the battle going? And I remember one Sunday I called him on the phone and he said, Oh brother, he said, At last we've had a breath of revival. Oh, I said, Stephen, that makes me green with envy. Makes my mouth water. Oh, tell me how many people have you added to your church? In a battle. And we'll meet our first unexpected who's not written of life. The sign which I have on my hotel door, please do not disturb. And the last thing he wants is to be involved. It'll take him from his television sets too often. It'll take him from all sorts of, it'll mean he has to go out and witness and have that. That'll be the exciting thing. To watch, watch people involved in Key 73 going right down the middle and in the fulfillment of what the Lord Jesus said, I came not to break. Did I say one last thing? I did, yes. You don't only precipitate a movement, but you see, you see, Oh, I'll be saying more about this another night. You make room for a miracle. Do you notice how our chapter ended? The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit. That's tremendous. How old were they? Well, I guess 48 hours, an estimate. Oh, I know what's happened. You say, I know what's happened. Paul and Barnabas have quickly sent to headquarters for some material on how to lead converts into maturity, on the four spiritual laws. They've sent for thousands of packets of those and little Bible cells have been established and every convert has been given a Christian to look after them and shepherd them and smother them. And all have been sort of formed into a little local church and they've all been told the rules and the doctrines. Not in your life. What's happened? What's happened? I'll tell you what's happened. Paul and Barnabas have quit. All together. They've wiped the dust off their feet and gone to another town and the disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit. When the human prop had gone, the divine power stepped right in. Now, it would be very bad for me to give you a false impression. In seeking to underline something of a principle to lead you to a false conclusion, I'm all in favor of little Bible cells for converts. I'm all in favor of discipleship classes. I'm all in favor of them being brought into a local church by listening. May I ask you this very simple question lovingly? How much room in your church is there for the Holy Spirit? I mean in your church program. What is the smallest meeting in your calendar? Your prayer meeting? We've crowded out the Holy Spirit and in our churches nowadays we don't need him anymore. We're so streamlined and so organized and everything is conducted so tidily and neatly. Wow! But to disturb that its smoothness would really be awful. Have you no room in your church for the Holy Spirit? How long is it? How many Sundays have gone by since something happened in that church which can only be explained by miracle? When we have to stand back with wonder and amazement and say, Oh God! You were in this service. I'm not being critical. I'm only concerned. Only concerned. Concerned that in this great project with all it will take we make great big room for the Holy Spirit to move in. And of course you see that starts with you and with me. How much room is there in my home in my heart for the Holy Spirit? Let me tell you a friend of mine who is an evangelist in Britain was staying a little time ago at a town. He told me this story. Went to take a ten day evangelistic campaign. The people with whom he stayed had a lovely home. Husband and wife. Lovely Christian people. And in their home they had a German girl who was what we call an au pair girl. She was there to learn the language and the culture and so on. And she was helping in the house. And this girl was an avowed atheist. Absolutely hated anything to do with religion. And she was dumbfounded to find herself working in a Christian home. Hated it. The husband and wife called her in one day and said look we have a preacher coming this weekend and we want him to have red carpet treatment. Would you look after him very well and go to the butcher's store and order a particular portion of the animal that we want to have in the home. And they gave her all the details. The girl went off to the butcher's shop and ordered the meat. And the butcher was so amazed at her being so particular he said to her have you somebody special come into your house? Oh she said it's only some preacher. Or other. And he gave her the meat and she was going out to shop but just before she went out the door she turned and flashed back at him the fusser making you'd think the good lord was coming. She banged the door. He was quite surprised. My friend was in the house and the week went by and she came back the following weekend for the next order of meat and the butcher recognized her. And she said by the way he said to her how are you getting on with your preacher friend? Oh she said do you remember I said to you you'd think the good lord was coming to our house? He said I sure do. Well she said he came. That's all. Could that have been your home? Could that have been you? A man not one thing behind the podium and something else off duty inconsistent but a man who reflected Christ seven days a week and that and only that broke down the atheistic cynicism of that German girl I told her ye are the light of the world the sun the moon the world what happens when the moon gets in the way of the sun? Eclipse what happens when a man gets in the way of God? Eclipse total sometimes the moon's just like a little pencil a little moon a new moon and the sun barely touches it just a little bit of light until one day one night there's a glorious in your life beloved in relation to God and in your impact on the world or are you just a little moon just a little moon or are you