In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of redeeming the time and not wasting opportunities. He highlights the urgency of spreading the gospel, as there are millions of people who have never heard the message of Christ. The speaker also discusses the passion and dedication of the apostle Paul in preaching, suffering, and praying for the sake of Christ. He emphasizes the need for believers to have the mind of God and to be guided by the Holy Spirit in their lives. The sermon concludes with a call to live a life of holiness and to be devoted to magnifying Christ in both life and death.

Thinking particularly of the 20th verse, according to my earnest expectation and my hope, that in nothing that I shall be ashamed, that that with all boldness, as always, so now Christ shall be magnified in my body. I used to think that in the second letter to the Chronicles of Corinthians and chapter 5, well, Paul gives us a kind of summary there of his theology. He believes that if we're absent from the body, we're present with the Lord. Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. We must all appear at the judgment seat of Christ. And then verse 14, I've always considered was the thing that really motivated him. He out-preached everybody, he out-suffered everybody, he out-prayed everybody. I thought that 14th verse, the love of Christ constraineth me, was his main motivation. Along, again, with the obligation to present Christ in all his majesty, all his glory, to remind us, as dear Keith said one day in my office, we were talking about the roads, he said, well, all roads lead to the judgment seat, which is true, they do. Whether a Democrat, an Autocrat, a Plutocrat, or any other crat, or a Liberal, or what you are. Whether we're slaves or free men, intellectuals or ignoramuses, black or white, rich or poor, all roads lead to the judgment seat, without exception. Now, I've come to this conclusion, reading recently in Philippians here, that the motivation of the Apostle, in his zigzag course, not up and down spiritually, but zigzag in prison, out of prison, in weirdness, in fastings, in painfulness, in tribulation, in distress, in perils of his countrymen, in perils of the deep, in perils of Robert, whatever it was, the one thing that motivated him, I believe, is in this 20th verse. As now always, Christ shall be magnified in my body, or some put it, by my body, whether it be by life or by death. The thing that gripped me as I read it this week, Christ may be magnified, not in my ministry, not in my miracles, not in my super love, I out love everybody else in the world today, I out preach them, I out suffer everybody, but he says that Christ may be magnified in my body. If you turn over to the, where is it, chapter 4, verse 8, this explains his life, I think, he says, be careful for nothing, be prayerful in everything, and be thankful for anything. That covers a lot of territory, doesn't it? The King James Version, of course, the best one, says, be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and thanksgiving, prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto the Lord. I believe that's a territory in which he lived and moved and had his being. You know, this epistle is very beautiful. You know why? Because it's a love letter. Some of you ladies remember the first one you got, I guess it's stuffed away somewhere now, tied up with a ribbon maybe, or you threw it in the garbage as soon as you read it, I don't know, but anyhow. Love letters are beautiful. A fellow in our church fell in love with my sister. He wrote a letter to her. Boy, Shakespeare couldn't have done better. He saw everything. She dies like stars and her cheeks were rosy and she was this. I never knew. I've lived with her 20 years and never noticed one of the things he said she had. Because beauty, again, is in the eye of the beholder. This is a lovely epistle. For one thing, there's no mention of sin in this epistle at all. I think what Paul is actually saying here, that in the greatest suffering you can have the greatest joy. We like the bonuses, we're not too anxious to have the burdens, are we? If you read the epistle carefully, you'll find that 14 times he mentions joy. And he's in a stinking hall of a prison we wouldn't put a dog in these days. No bed in it, no creature comforts, no rottenness food, just a hell hole. And yet here he is sending a letter of greetings and cheering to other people who should be writing letters to him. So with all the greatness and all the pressure, he says it's possible to have this boundless joy. Again, he does not mention sin. He mentions flesh once and then dismisses it. He's showing us that there's a grace of God far more exceedingly abundant than above all that we can either ask or think. The great old Scottish saint, Samuel Rutherford, some of you know that great hymn, The Sands of Time, was thinking. He didn't write it. But his cousins extracted phrases out of his wonderful diary and put that marvellous, marvellous hymn together. I think it's maybe the greatest hymn ever written. But he said, I have to go into the king's cellar to find the king's wine. I remember old houses not far from where we live. We got in one one day. The oldest son was a friend of mine. He said, ever been in our huge underground cellar? I said, no. We went in and there were all the old wine racks. We searched dozens. They were all empty. It's a blessing they were. I'm sure I'd have got drunk that day. I was so thirsty in that old basement. But he said, look at the old wines they used to keep. Labels, you know, from Portugal and Spain and here and there and champagne from France and all the rest of it. But they're not stored upstairs in the refrigerator. They're stored or were stored in dungeons, in the dark places. And we would like God to serve up, as it were, the wine of heaven just while we're living on the level. Without any interruption of trial or tribulation or testing. But that's not the way that God works. Let me look over here a minute. I've lost my marker here. Let me see, I'll find it. Well, oh, you can be looking right now at Romans. Well, you know it anyhow. You know Romans chapter 12. And think of the places where Paul talks about his body. He doesn't talk about yielding your mind, really. He says in Romans 12, 1 and 2, I beseech you, brethren, therefore, by the mercies of God that ye present your body a living sacrifice. Not your brain, not your emotion, not your spirit. But if I said to somebody, look, here's my watch. Well, it's a fairly modern one. You know, it doesn't have a battery. It doesn't have to wind it up. The old one they had works in, you know. They were marvelous old things. They used to call them stem winders. They're collective items now. If I give a man my watch, I give him the works, I give him the hands, I give him the face, I give him everything. Well, if I present my body a living sacrifice, surely I'm presenting everything that I have. My spirit, my soul and my body, for which Paul prays, you remember, when he's speaking to the Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians 5, 23, he prays, The very God of peace sanctify you holy, and I pray that your spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. So, I give my body in its entirety to God. A girl, not very well known in England, years ago wrote a beautiful hymn. 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. She goes on to say, Let my hands perform his bidding, let my feet run in his ways, let my eyes see Jesus only, let my lips speak forth his praise. All for Jesus, all for Jesus. Then she says so beautifully, Since my eyes caught sight of Jesus, I've lost sight of all beside, so I'm chained my spirit's vision gazing on the crucified. Vision is so vital in the Christian life. On that Damascus road, I don't believe the Apostle Paul ever recovered from that experience of being blinded. Physically, he did. His eyes were open, sure enough. But I believe that he was blinded to all the treasures of the world, as this girl says. Since my eyes caught sight of Jesus, I've lost sight of all beside, so I'm chained my spirit's vision gazing on the crucified. Or if you want it in the words of Isaac Watts, After you've seen him, my richest gain I count but loss. But as I've said so often, we use that phrase, you know. One day, when we, the things of earth, after you've seen Jesus, the things of earth will go strangely dim. You know, I like to turn that around and say when we get to heaven and look back, the things of earth will look strangely grim. We live, we spend our time gathering sawdust. Everything that we spend our lives to get is perishable outside of the spiritual. Paul says we're to what? Present our bodies a living sacrifice. So, the body can be a living sacrifice. In the same verse, he said it can be holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Now, in its normal condition, it cannot be that. A human body is corruptible. The flesh in us is corruptible. But once he takes us in his infinite mercy and Romans 5 is fulfilled and we receive the grace of God and we receive the peace of God and we begin to walk with God, then we can present that body which he will sanctify, a living sacrifice. Holy, acceptable unto God, which is only our reasonable service. You know, this is a fantastic chapter, Romans 8. Verse 1 says, There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and of death. Now, come down. Verse 7, oh, verse 6. To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now, how can you harmonize death and life? A man called me yesterday. Talked, I'm sure, 40, 50 minutes from California. Everybody's bewildered out there. That's why so many of them come here, you see. But anyhow. Oh, he was in despair about the carnality mastering his life. Oh, I'm a Christian. I'm sanctified. I said, you are? Yeah, but something carnal dominates me. Well, that's ridiculous. How can you be carnally dominated if you're spiritual? This scripture is very clear. To be carnally minded is death. I don't know why. I think preachers are the devil's advocates very often. They defend sin better than atheists. Tell you you can't get rid of sin this side of eternity. You have to have it. It has to have dominion over you. When the scripture says it doesn't. Oh, this man had just one sin of the flesh that mastered him. He could not in any shape or form get the victory over it. I said, well, get it nailed to the cross. That's the answer. Again, Romans 6. If we're buried with him in baptism, as I use the illustration so often, if a man is standing here in the water and I bury him under the water, he's cut off from the world above. He can't see the world above. He can't breathe the air above. He can't talk to the world above. He's cut off. We saw some people baptized last week. And I thought of them as they went through the water. Symbolically, they're saying, look, this is my grave. I'm being buried to the world above. It's idle pomp and fading joys, as one hymn writer says. Somehow preachers love to fall back on Romans 7, don't they? Here is the greatest man that ever lived. I heard G. Campbell Morgan many times. He's the most amazing Bible teacher I ever heard. He gave a great message on holiness to about, I guess, 400 preachers. And I kept squeaking out a little hallelujah because it was in a Methodist church. And, you know, that's almost like shouting hallelujah in a morgue at times. So I squeaked out a little. Oh, people turned around and frowned on me, you know. So I thought, well, if you don't like that, wait until he says it again. So when he said it again, I said, hallelujah. Which was all right. But when he'd taken us into the heavenlies, he said, now don't think I'm preaching a second work of grace or you can be really holy in this life because even the apostle finished up. He did not finish up in Romans 7. There happens to be a Roman date. It happens to be in the Greek that there's no difference, there's no division. That's an artificial division. And Paul says there's no answer in the law. Oh, wretched man that I... Sure he said that. Who shall deliver me from this death? But if he stopped there, we'd be in trouble. He says, I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord. That's why he starts Romans 8. There is therefore now no condemnation to those of us who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free. I guess you know that I do not. That's all right. Thank you. Take courage. Well, that man's walked with God many years, a dear friend of mine. You know, every time I get in a plane, I hate planes, as I say, facetiously, flying is for the birds. But every time that monster takes off and I try and estimate how many tons there are and tons of gasoline and tons of flesh and tons of baggage and it goes up like that. If I had a feather here and said go up, it wouldn't. It would just come down. But how does that monster keep going? The law of gravity immediately leaves the ground. The law of gravity pulls on it. That's why it's harder to land the plane than take off, isn't it? You see, taking off you can put the thrust and blast of all the engines and up you go. Coming down, gravity is pulling this way and he's fighting that way. So he has to control the two powers, gravity and the power of the plane. And it gets off because the power, the thrust of those tremendous jets, I suppose you know they were invented in England anyhow, but anyhow. Isn't it amazing when you see that thing going down and you look at 300 passengers in that plane, all the baggage, all the luggage, all the gasoline, off it goes real raw. Soon you're seeing the land, it's either dropping away or going up anyhow, but there it is. The thrust that's in there is greater than the law of gravity. Well then, what about the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? Oh, I love, as you know, I love resurrection hymns. Up from the grave he arose. I like that. As I said the other day when we sang it, sing it with a sneer. Death cannot keep its prey. Sin shall not have dominion over us. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free. Now that's a very wonderful text, isn't it? Look at verse 8. Romans 8, verse 8. Okay. So then, they that are in the flesh cannot please God. Well, there you are. There's your answer. No, the answer's in the next verse. But you're not in the flesh. You're talking about this flesh in one place and you're talking about a fleshy nature in the other. Galatians 5 where all the works of the flesh are there which are manifest but also corrupt. But then you come down into the next verse. Verse 9. Ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Look at verse 10. If Christ be in you. Verse 11. If the Spirit of Him that raised up from the dead dwell in you. Good mercy. What do you want? Is the Spirit of God in you? Is the Spirit of life in you? Is the Spirit of the Son in you? Is the Spirit of the Spirit in you? Well how can there be room for carnality? Knowing this Paul says that our old life our old man was crucified with Him. Nevertheless I live he says yet not I but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. In Romans 6 again. And verse 11 it says reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. In the same verse it says reckon reckon the body to be dead indeed unto sin but ye are alive in God in Christ Jesus. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and of death. That Christ may be magnified through my body. I've never heard anybody preach on this text never preached on it myself. You remember the psalmist says upon an instrument of ten strings will I praise thee. What kind of a thing is that? A guitar or something? Harp? You say I don't have an instrument of ten strings. Well supposing you would it is where you've got two feet you've got two hands you've got two eyes you've got two ears you've got one tongue thank God no more and one heart. Ten strings. That's why the girl says in that hymn 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. Or an American hymn if you like take my life and let it be. What do you sing there? Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee take my love my Lord I pour at thy feet its treasure store take my will that's the last area that we yield. Take my will and make it thine. Paul doesn't even say that Christ made me magnified by my epistles. Though he wrote at least I think he wrote the greatest things that any human being was ever allowed to write. His magnificent epistles to the Romans to the Ephesians to the Philippians again this is one of his jail writings. If you read it carefully we don't have time to do that if you read carefully through this let's read through the first chapter you'll see the position and life of the Christian. If you read the second chapter you'll get the pattern of Christ. The third chapter you'll get the energy that carries the Christian through this world. Chapter four the Christian superiority to all circumstances. In other words this epistle is the whole character of the Christian life. It shows Paul shows how to walk and work in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he of course is the fire leader he is the best example of it. I've said before I may be saying many times again I think that Paul was the greatest genius the world ever saw. Colossal intellect a will that never tired a faith that never flinched a love that never broke down the courage that nobody could dominate. He stands cheerfully before kings he's as happy in jail writing the epistle of love as he is in any circumstance of life. So he shows us that the man can be complete however whatever race of genius he has that he can be complete in God without even being involved in this world outside in its material concept or business concept he's totally God's man. I think it was Spinoza that talked about a God intoxicated man. That God intoxicated man is the apostle Paul in my judgment. In perils of the deep he doesn't shake everybody else on the ship he's terrified he stands by and the captain sends for him and the captain says what's wrong with you? Wasn't that a night last night? I can imagine the captain said I've been at sea for 50 years never gone through a night like that. I guess you were like the rest of us cringing and holding on to your bed terrified. No he said I had a great night. I had a great time a fellowship. Fellowship? Is there other Christian on board? He said last night. What's he called? He said an angel from heaven. A what? He said last night I had an angel visitor in my cabin. Boy did we have a time. Talking about the glory and majesty of God. Everybody else is terrified. You know I think that that experience that he had I forget the chapter where it is in Acts I think it's typical of the end of the age. Paul got on board that ship as a prisoner. And he ended as a pilot. Everybody got the jitters. Everybody was terrified. Everybody was vomiting and yelling and screaming and yelling and doing everything and there he is glorifying God. See what strange people Christians are? You know he was so amazing that when they skinned his back until it was raw he said none of these things hurt me. No he didn't. All people say if you really get saved and filled with the Spirit you know you'll never be hurt. You'll never have any troubles. Well I must be back slim because I get a lot of them. He did not say none of these things hurt me. He said none of these things move me. You could have a blast from hell and not be moved if you're in the will of God. They'll hurt. How can you get victory if there's no battle? He said we're more than conquerors through him that loved us. What are you conquering? Ingrowing toenails? Charles Wesley has a hymn in which he says should all the hosts of hell and powers of should all the hosts of death and powers of hell unknown put their most dreadful forms of rage and malice on I shall be safe for Christ displays superior power and boundless grace. You see Paul touched the powers of the world to come. To us that's theology. Just that's something we're grasping after almost in blindness. We're so happy to get rid of a lot of rotten sins and thank God for where we are but look at the territory there is yet for us to reach for. You know God's problem with Israel was getting them out of Egypt. They could have got out of Egypt into Canaan in eleven days. They didn't even make it in forty years most of them. We've got people now who have been saved twenty, thirty years and another day older in the spiritual life. They're no more mature. They've no more spiritual strength. They've no more spiritual understanding. They've no more spiritual revelation. Why? Because so often they've lived on meetings instead of living on Christ. I don't care where you go. What school you go to and I thank God for schools. This school particularly again. But remember you can't what do you do when the school is pulled away from you? See so many people get happy and blessed when they're in an association or fellowship and then you go and stick them up the Amazon somewhere they go to pieces. Can you imagine a man going to pieces who let me go back here and quote this exactly or here in Romans 8 again verse 9 You're not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. And verse 10 if Christ is in you. In verse 11 the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead. I said in the class Tuesday night we have a class here Tuesday night if you want to come with starting with a person this week. In Hebrews 11 The Holy Spirit of God is totally incapable of doing anything that's small. The world in which we live is beautiful carpeted with flowers and everything. It was a ball of mud shut up in the womb of the universe. The Holy Ghost brooded over it. Out of chaos brought cosmos and out of wildness He brought this marvelous system of the world. He brooded over chaos He brooded over death and brought forth life. He brooded over the virgin of a little girl that nobody noticed hardly going up the street. I've often thought of a little virgin Mary going up the street pregnant and people suspicious. Did you know about her? Did you know she's keeping company with? Did you know how far along she is? They didn't think they were passing the crater of the universe in that little woman. So near to her and never recognized it. Never knew it. It's not like other people go to church. They get within touching distance of Jesus and they never touch Him. They just go year after year week after week and never touch Him. The Holy Ghost came and did that miracle in her. Brooded over her and brought forth the most amazing creature that this world will ever know. Caught Wesley again. You'll think I'm a Wesleyan. Wesley says God was contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man. Here is the one that the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him and He's shut up in the little womb of a woman. He made all the food in the world and yet He has to sustain His life from His mother's breast. He owns the world. He made it and yet He never owned a stick in it. He owns all things and yet never had a dime. But after He brooded over the universe after He brooded over the virgin He brooded over a bunch of men in their Peru. They weren't all geniuses by a long way. A lot of them were cowards. And now they went streaming in the power of the Holy Ghost. I puzzled over this again today. If you can help me write me a dissertation on it. We're supposed to have about what? Fifteen million people in America today filled with the Holy Ghost manifesting gifts and nobody knows we're here. Only 120 in the upper room and they turned the nation upside down. What's wrong? What's the difference between their baptism and ours? Tell me. Maybe you're right there. Partly right I'm sure. But then after the creation that the Holy Ghost did after the miracle of the birth of Jesus after the men in their Peru then you've got this wonderful word of God. The creation holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. I heard of a local preacher saying not so long ago the story of John is a fish story. Well sure it is. Isn't about a donkey is it? But all he meant was something a bit fishy about it. That's what he meant which is not true. Because Jesus said does he deny what the word of Jesus? A man that denies scripture should renounce his job and go sell hamburgers. He came in as a fundamental believer and he becomes a liberal he should get out of the back door. I'd fire him if I had any power over that guy. But here we have the Holy Spirit of God creating through all kinds of men. A man that climbs trees and gathers sycamore fruit. A man of colossal intellect at the other end of the line like the Apostle Paul. A shepherd like David. A wise man like Solomon. And yet the wonder of this book is that it's so indestructible. Men have burned it and banned it and blamed it. Isn't it? Tennyson has a poem in which he says men may come and men may go but I go on forever. Well the word of God is like that. You know one of the great contemporaries of John Wesley was a very very powerful speaker in France by the name of Voltaire. He ridiculed the scriptures. One day he said in his little house a hundred years from now Bibles will be museums. Well he didn't miss it by much did he? Except about a thousand million copies. Bibles will be museum pieces. People won't bother they'll be too advanced they won't bother with the Bible. One of the nice things that World War II did was blow his little house off the face of the earth. But you know not long before a few years before that happened a few years before that happened the Geneva Bible Society bought that house and distributed Bibles all through Europe out to the very house where he said that the Bible wouldn't even be existing in a hundred years. Here it is. It's God's Word. And it will last forever. Thy throne O God is forever and ever. Heaven and earth may pass away. My Word shall not pass away. Here it is. Has all the power of God behind it. So come on now. The Holy Spirit of God who invaded the lives of those men in the upper room according to Romans 8 here the same Spirit can raise that raised Jesus from the dead abides in us. He's risen us from the dead spiritually. We can think and move and have our being in God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Lowry an old, old Nazarene had a marvelous book that's out of print. It's called The Possibilities of Grace. I never read it. I've just peeped into it. I have an old, old copy. But I think of that so often. It stretches out the possibilities of grace. What's a good book say? I have not seen, e'er heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for them that love him. That He has revealed it unto us. Not to the world. They stagger at it. Impossible. How amazing that a human being corrupted, defiled, doomed, damned can be forgiven, cleansed and indwelt by the Spirit of God and become a living vessel of God. God is yet to produce the greatest men ever. I don't believe God went off production with Wesley and Finney and George Whitefield or the great men who built the old spiritual empires like Hudson Taylor and others that went to China and Gilmore to Mongolia and Judson to Burma and Cary. The first missionary from England to India was Cary. I preached in his church once there. Is it in Calcutta? I think it is. And there was another little man, Henry Martin. I said to the class the other night, I wish some of you folk would wake up and use your brains while you're young enough to use them. There was a young lady singing on TV. I love to hear these great singers. She was a great singer, about 220 pounds. Could she sing? She's born in a little shack somewhere up in the Mississippi area or somewhere. Might have ended up serving hamburgers to somebody. Somebody took her in the home. She'd twinkle with a piano and then they discovered she had a voice. So they got her to sing. I think she went to the conservatory in Milan and various other places. Now she can sing in about five different languages. Did somebody suddenly suspect that in that girl was all this talent and all this ability? No, they just gave her a chance in one direction. She took off in another. Now look, if she can learn and I guess now she's only about 26 or 27 or something. Maybe at 18 she began to struggle with playing, struggle with singing and struggle with languages. You know, the Roman church is pretty smart. There's a great college in Ireland called Maynooth. You can send a ploughboy into that school that can hardly do his mathematics or anything. They'll turn him out in five years and he can recite the whole math in Latin. They have other convents where they take young ladies, maybe average farmers' daughters. They'll talk with them, show them maps of the world, tell them the need in the world, lack of education, lack of Christianity, so forth. Those girls will get down, oh, I think I would like to go to South America. OK. Brazil. What? Portuguese. All right. Argentina. Spanish. Some other area. You know, every time they send the missionary out, the missionary knew the language before they got there. What did they do? They went into the school system and taught. Therefore, the churches didn't have to support them because they were earning their money. They didn't have to wait to stammer out language for a few years. Immediately they got off the ball, they could speak the language. Immediately they were put into operation to teach in the schools and to teach religion. In other words, when they went, they were already accomplished in languages. And again, because of that, they could sign up in government jobs and there was no support needed at home. Now, here sometimes, very often with people, oh, we'll take you on, but you have to go around churches begging. Ask them to support you. Ask them to give you so much a month, so much a month, so much a month. I think God must be embarrassed by the church these days. What beggars we are. Why can't you use your brains now? Get a language. Get awakened. Get stirred in your spirit. Find out where God wants you. There are lots of hell holes that need the light of the gospel. If you think you may have the courage, why not pray about going to Russia? Get behind that curtain there or the iron curtain. I think I'm right in saying this. I'm not sure somebody can correct me maybe. I don't think there are five missionaries in the whole of Albania rather. They purged Albania somewhere in the last century. I think they put Christians in barrels and sealed up the barrels and pushed the barrels out on the tide as it was receding out to the ocean. And there they were cooped up in those horrible things. The sun coming in and roasting them. No food, no anything. They exterminated the church to that degree there. But there's a challenge. There's nobody in Albania. Why not be the first to go? What about getting behind the iron curtain? Czechoslovakia or some of the other countries? What about the, what, 800 million people in China? This week they said there were 700 million in India. It has about, what, 400 languages and dialects. The world population now is the greatest it's ever been in history. There are more lost people tonight than ever there have been in history. And yet I think there's more indifference. Sure we give a little bit to support of misery. We do this, we do the other. But that great dominion of Satan is almost unchallenged in the day in which we live. Now it's in this same epistle, isn't it? Yes, in this same epistle where Paul says let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus. Well actually that literally is translated let the love which dominated the life of Jesus, the disposition of Jesus be yours. And his was a disposition of love, of concern. Everywhere he went he went out doing good. Well if that mind is in me I'll tell you what I'm going to have some restless minutes or restless hours. I'm going to have to struggle with my own conscience. I'm going to have to struggle with the light I have. I'm going to have to struggle with the challenge that comes to me from a dozen different countries to get the message of Jesus Christ there while it's yet date. Christ may be magnified in my body. He was magnified through his brain. I'm sure God could have shared some things he shared with any other person except Paul. Magnified with his spirit, his hands, he wrote his epistles. He didn't type them. He didn't dictate them. He struggled with some kind of instrument, maybe a quill, I don't know. But every part of his being was coordinated to the service of God. That Christ may be magnified. I mentioned this last Sunday morning. Before long we'll have some lovely flowers around here. They're called dandelions. Nobody cuts them and puts them on the table in the house. You may have 20-20 vision but you haven't seen the beauty of a dandelion. Not until you take a magnifying glass and look through it like that and suddenly you see it is the most exquisite flower maybe God ever made. But we don't see it with our 20-20 vision. You need a magnifying glass. You look through it and when you see it that thing comes alive. That's what Paul says that Christ may be... When people look at my life Jesus Christ is clearer and nearer and more wonderful. Is that true? Do you think your children would say that? Oh, my daddy and mummy. I've never seen Jesus but I know Jesus is like... He's like my daddy. As I said last Sunday old Jonathan Edwards gets ridiculed, you know. He took a stack of notes and he read through them and he had a candle here and his big frowning face and a gravel voice and he reads through his sermon the greatest, most famous sermon outside of the Bible Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And people all remember because he thundered. They said that when people fell off their seats instead of showing mercy he kind of thrust the thing into them deeper the truth of God. People hung on to pillars that were supporting the gallery because they were afraid they'd fall into the abyss. But he didn't spare them. Bullard Dave was in my house the other day. Last Sunday night he preached in maybe the largest church in Denver, Colorado. He said, Len as we sat there I was ready to preach and suddenly I was overcome with grief and I just walked forward and sat on the floor didn't go to the pulpit and I began to weep. God just gave me such a burden and he said, look there's a congregation about 3,000 he said there's a girl in here who has been molested by a man, sexually molested and the man is going to go to jail. And as he said it the girl about 16 ran down the aisle and she said Mr. Wilkerson I'm the girl that has been molested my daddy did it and he has to go to jail. David just groaned. He said there must have been 15 or 16 other young women came there and said my father or brother or somebody is assaulting me sexually every week. And he said my spirit just groaned and he stayed there 50 minutes weeping. I said Dave, bless you. The average preacher would have said I just had a kind of a little upset in my spirit I feel there's somebody in trouble I'd like a few of you to pray. Raise your hands we're going to pray for this girl. She's in trouble I know she is. Instead of that he swept all his theology sermon on one side and obeyed the Holy Ghost and the whole church broke up in weeping and brokenness seeking God. Same thing happened without ever having to open his mouth preaching. I'm sure that's the kind of spirit that the apostle had because the spirit of Christ indwelling in him. It's the spirit of God dwelling in him. The fruit of the spirit as I've said if Jesus had ever said if he'd said one word differently it would have killed 10 million arguments since Pentecost. If he'd said by their gifts she shall know them it would have killed a million arguments. But he didn't say by their gifts he said by their fruits. And the fruit of the spirit is number one what? Love. The spirit of Christ is love. God so loved the world. Love again is the badge of discipleship. Love was unquestionably to me a motivating power in the life of the apostle Paul. But he says my supreme driving power is this that wherever I go I go to the bond of the free to the barbarian I go to the Greeks I go to the intellectuals on Mars Hill I go in prison. Wherever I go I want Christ to be magnified. I don't want somebody to say if that's Christianity I don't want it. I don't want somebody to say you know the way you live you blur the image of Christ. I want those people to look through my life and say I see Jesus Christ. Well that's what he dared to say. He says Christ it doesn't say I'm saved. He doesn't say I've had the baptism. He says Christ lives in me. It's much easier to say I'm saved. It's much easier to say I've had the baptism. We're accepted on par with the rest of the people in the church. Supposing you stand up in the next step in the past anybody want to testify you stand up and say Christ lives in me. Somebody say I never knew that. Never even thought about it. Go back to Jonathan Edwards sure he groaned sure he but his daughter said people think my daddy is a severe man. A man that pours out judgment. But she said in the home he lives just like Jesus. And every day my mummy comes out of the closet. She said her face shines like the face of Moses because she spends at least two hours in prayer with God every morning. And oh when she comes through the house there's something so different so fragrant. Well that's what God wants isn't it? He wants sin to have no dominion over us but we have dominion. You know the Greeks used to say man know thyself. The Lord says control yourself in the spirit. What did he say? Paul says I keep my body under. I control it. I control my passions. I control my appetite. He was never an excessive eater I'm sure of that. I don't think he was an excessive sleeper. You know it looks a bit chronic when you put it this way. We live what 24 hours a day. Supposedly we work 8 hours. We have 8 hours free. And we sleep 8 hours. Put that into 60 years what do you do? You sleep 20 years. You work 20 years. And you're free 20 years. Doesn't look too much when you take it in the day does it? 8 hours free 8 hours to sleep 8 hours. OK. But when you put it in 20 years sleeping 20 years of idleness maybe 20 years of work it's a very very different thing. Now this man is the man who eats up the time. He buys up the opportunity as the translation says. When he says redeeming the time which literally from the Greek is redeeming the time is buying up the opportunity. This opportunity will not come tomorrow it comes today. So I buy it up I eat it up. I don't want to waste time waste money waste opportunities. You know it's not difficult. It's not a case of living in a kind of a steel shell. It's a case of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ and the Holy Spirit governing my life that He constrains me when I'm too slow and He restrains me when I'm too quick. And it's joy to be in submission to Him. Paul said he's a bond slave of Jesus Christ. A happy slave of it. A joyful master a joyful to serve a master like that. That Christ may be magnified by my body he says whether by life or by death. Doesn't matter which way. Well there's no other way to live surely. Having the body and the soul by the power of the Spirit presenting my body a living sacrifice number one holy number two acceptable number three. All packed up in that first verse of Romans 12. Which is really only the normal Christian life. There's only one kind of Christian life really that's a life of holiness. We have a challenge before us tonight in prayer. We have a few. Brother David Wilkerson is preaching in a college tonight. Preaching in a college tomorrow night. Preaching somewhere I think in Pennsylvania on Sunday. A brother that comes here sometimes Brother Bob Roberts is going out on a mission this coming week and then next Friday he and a group of men I think ten of them are going down to Belize again to hold some evangelistic services there. Chip Arnold was here last week. Chip called in today his mother is quite sick she has to have surgery on Monday and he has a strep throat and the doctor says well you can't go see your mother because she may add to her problem. So he requested prayer tonight for himself and for his mother. The news this week of course has been about India which our precious friends love so much. If the Sikhs are being murdered murdering the others I have an idea the Christians aren't getting away with much freedom. Do those men that work with you are they still in prison in Nepal? Young men in prison in Nepal north of India only for preaching not for rioting just for preaching. You see if you serve the devil you go to jail if you go to crisis you go to jail. So there they are those wonderful young men up in Nepal that have it rough any time anywhere in prison for Christ's sake. Some liberated periodically they go in and come out. There's no safety. What are the Christians suffering right now in India tonight? Must be appalling. I'm amazed that rioting hasn't broken out in Poland yet. I think it will. It's a very serious situation. Yet I don't know anybody too anxious about it. Do you? Check up for a minute have you shed any tears over it today? Have you missed a meal so you'd have more time to pray and intercede? Hmm Let my eyes see Jesus only. We see the world its customs its fascinations we get mesmerized by materialism. We live in the present instead of we should be living for eternity even now while our feet are on earth. We should be so different from the rest of the tribe around us but I'm afraid very often we're not. The life which I now live in the flesh what kind is it a life of victory or a life of failure? Is Christ magnified in my personality through my mind through my spirit through my emotions through my body or am I just Mr. Average Christian a pew dweller? I just pray my tithes and I love the pastor and the world goes to hell. You know all these are awesome men again. I'm not suggesting for a minute if you do everything that Paul did you'll become another apostle of Paul not so. That's already been done there's no more epistles to write but we can become men of like character and that's what God wants. Emptied of self filled with God. Not just having a mind of my own but having the mind of God working through my mind through my emotions through my heart through my conscience through my will. There's that restless troubled world. People will die by the thousands maybe before this business is over Lindia and go straight to a lost eternity. Two thousand years after Jesus was born. Mercy on us. There are more lost people without God than ever. What is it every day a quarter of a million babies are born and they'll never hear the gospel. Every day at least a hundred thousand die throughout the world that have never heard the gospel. This man has a consuming passion for one thing that Christ may be known whether by life or by death I don't care he signed himself away one day when he died on the cross with Jesus Christ he died to all his ambitions he died to all earthly honors he died to his nation he was a tribe of Benjamin a seed of Abraham he had every cultural advantage every intellectual advantage I lay in dust lives glory dead he said. Hundreds of men have done it since. I'm going to ask you to sing a hymn and then we go straight to prayer. Don't sing it if you don't mean it please. 363 363 let's stand and sing.