In this sermon, the preacher talks about the power of God to transform and save individuals. He shares personal experiences of individuals who were changed by God, such as a person who was divided between their business life and their church life, but God brought them together. Another person was addicted to heroin and felt damned, but Christ set them free. The preacher emphasizes that God can break the shackles of bondage and bring hope to those who despair. The sermon also mentions significant events, like the fall of a demonic ruler and the lowering of the communist flag on Christmas day. Overall, the sermon highlights the beauty of those who bring the good news of salvation and the transformative power of God.

There are two passages of Scripture that I want to read tonight. It may take you a few moments to see the relationship between them. But the first is found in the book of Acts. It is in the closing chapter of the book of Acts, chapter 28, and it is the closing two verses of the book of Acts. For two whole years, Paul stayed in his own rented house and welcomed all who came to see him. Boldly and without hindrance, he preached the kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ. In textual criticism, there is a Western text that adds to it, and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ by whom the whole world is to be judged. Our second lesson is found in the book of Isaiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 52, in a passage that is a prelude to the well-known chapter 53, the suffering servant passage about Christ. Reading from verse 7 of chapter 52, How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your God reigns. Listen, your watchmen lift up their voices, together they shout for joy. When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God. Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing, come out from it and be pure, you who carry the vessels of the Lord. But you will not leave in haste, nor will you go in flight, for the Lord will go before you. And the Hebrew of that is, for Yahweh will go before you, the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Will you pray with me? We give you thanks, our Father, for the privilege of worshiping you. We give you thanks for the privilege of lifting our hearts in praise and in adoration to you. But we give you thanks that as you want us to speak to you, you want also to speak to us. So somehow tonight let through the words of a fallible, mortal human, let your word come to our hearts. Override all that would hinder. We thank you that you can use even earthly things to speak of eternal things. Somehow tonight in our minutes together, let us hear you and we will give you praise through Christ our Lord. Amen. When I was a kid and began to read and learn something of human history, oftentimes I found myself saying, if only I had lived then I could have done something and what a great time I could have had. I remember I felt that way as a North Carolinian when I read about Kentucky and Daniel Boone. But you know, as I look around at the world of which you and I are apart today, I do not see how anybody who knows what's taking place in our world could ever say, I wish I had lived at any other period. There's no question in my mind but that you and I live at a juncture in history when our opportunities are greater than those for any generation that has ever preceded us. Now that does not mean that we don't have problems. It may well be that the problems today are the greatest and the most all-encompassing that mankind has ever faced because there is a very real sense in which we've lived today to see almost everything come loose and the end result is a cynicism and a disillusionment and a general disenchantment that seems to permeate all of Western culture and all of the cultures that you can find related to it. There is a sense in which today more than certainly at any point in my lifetime, all of the idealisms are dead. Our century has had those idealisms and there have been moments in the last century when segments of mankind have been caught with a great hope and they've given themselves to it and marched out confident that something significant and good was going to take place. Our century has been marked by one idealism that's one of the most remarkable in human history. It's what we have called communism or Marxism. It has had across the last hundred years incredible appeal for great masses of people. All that you have to do is have some touch with the liberation movements in the third world and you'll know that that hope sparked something inside people's breasts that caused them to endanger their lives for the sake of that hope. I remember what a surprise it was to me when I was a graduate student in Brandeis University in the early 60s and I developed a bit of a friendship with a rabbinical student who was an Orthodox Jewish young man. He had grown up on the streets of Brooklyn. His life ambition was to get a Ph.D. from one of the better Eastern universities in the United States and go to the land of Israel and spend the rest of his life farming. Now I couldn't understand that. If I had grown up on the streets of Brooklyn, maybe I could. But we developed a bit of a friendship and I found to my shock, to my horror, that he was a third of going Marxist. And so one day I looked at him and I said, Svee, don't you know that as an Orthodox Jew, if Marxism really won the day in this country, you would be one of the first persons circumscribed in your liberty, in your freedom, in your movement, in what you could do and be. I'll never forget. He looked back at me and got sort of a misty gleam in his eye and he said, Dennis, if that's what it takes to feed the hungry of the world, should I not be willing? And I sensed that his spirit had been caught with some of that idealism that was there. But as the decades have passed, you and I know that that has proven to be a very false hope. And one who had been an ardent communist wrote a book entitled The God or the Gods That Failed. And that's one of those hopes in our century that has failed. Some of us are old enough to remember the excitement that was attached to a phrase like the New Deal. And most everybody here can remember something of that in connection with the great society. But the reality is that we've lived to see the day in America when nobody except the most naive and the politicians really believe that politics is the way to improve much of anything in our society. We've lived through religious idealism in my century because I can remember the enthusiasm when the old Federal Council of Churches became the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches was formed and we had an organization called COQ that was going to bring us all together and establish the Kingdom of God in our world. Modernism put a light in our eyes and we were going to bring the world into a new day. And now there is nothing that strikes more of a yawn in the American mind than the church in its corporate activity. I've lived for a part of my life in what we sometimes speak of as an intellectual world. There was a day when people felt that education could solve our problems. There's hardly a state in this country that at one time or another has not been swept by a bit of mania that if we could get the right school systems we could change our society and improve our life. The intellectuals told us we had reached the modern period and in modernity modern man was going to solve our problems. But Thomas Oden wrote a book not too long ago entitled, After Modernity, What? And the subject of it was the absolute, the dismal failure of modernity. And today you get among the most enlightened intellectuals and they will talk about the post-enlightenment world because the enlightenment that brought to us science and brought to us reason has proven bankrupt and there is no one seriously who believes that in those patterns mankind can find an answer. America has been swept in the West by the thought that the social sciences could help us. I remember a friend of mine, a very good psychiatrist who had been a missionary, and then went into psychiatry. He said one day in a fit of disillusionment, he said, I know what I want put on my tombstone. That psychiatrist said, I want on my tombstone these simple words, nobody ever changes. Now that's the story of the world of which we are departing. It's enough to cause people to say, is there a future or is disillusionment the appropriate mood of our time? Now the scriptures indicate and the Church of Christ, the true Church of Christ, indicates that there are those who believe there is a future for us. And unbelievably they say that future is going to be good. They say the future is not where most people think it is, that if you will get the media and ask them where the future is, you can almost guarantee that that really will not have anything significant to do with that which is to come that is worth coming. That's the reason I began with that passage in Acts 28. You will remember it is the end of the book of Acts. It is the final story that we have written about the Apostle Paul and the early Church. The Apostle Paul is the greatest Christian in his day. He is the foremost spokesman for the gospel of Christ. He has given his life for that. And now he has been arrested and been carried to Rome. And he finds himself in a house as a prisoner there, shackled to a Roman soldier. And there he is teaching people, interestingly enough, about the kingdom of God and about Jesus the Christ, whom somebody said is the one before whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. Now, if you had lived in Rome in those days, where would you have thought the future was? If you had asked the typical person, he would have taken you to Nero's palace and he would have shown you the emperor on his throne. But the reality is that today you name your dogs Nero and you name your sons Paul because the future is not where the world thinks it is. And the future is never going to be where an unregenerate world thinks it is. The one who cast a shadow across the next thousand years was the one who sat shackled to a Roman soldier, not the one who sat on a throne with his scepter in his hand, dictating to people what they should do to please him and to honor him. Now, the second passage fits with that and is a very beautiful one to me. I've come to love it. I wish I could preach on it adequately. Don't you love those words, how beautiful on the mountain are the feet of those who bring good tidings, who publish peace, who bring good words about salvation and who say to us, Your God reigns? You see, these are people who do have good news. And the news that they bring is so good that people even think their feet are beautiful. Now, I am interested in what it was that they said that caused people to think their feet were so beautiful. And, you know, if you'll read it carefully, you will find that right at the heart of what they say is this. They say these simple words, Your God reigns. In Hebrew, that's only two words. But what a word, or what a double word. Your God reigns. There is one who's sovereign. You see, the beauty about that is these who came with the good news and these who come with the good news tell us that there's actually somebody in charge. Now, Dan Rather doesn't know that. And the New York Times doesn't know that. You can read their editorial pages for a thousand years and find never a word about the fact there's somebody in charge of this place. I notice that the U.S. News and World Report and some other impressive people do not know that. But these people who come say, Your God reigns. There is somebody today that's in charge of everything. Now, the beauty is, if you'll read Isaiah, you will find that they say there's somebody in charge even though it looks as if everything is coming apart. If we had the time, we could take the passage. It's where it speaks about the disillusionment that was taking place. Because, you see, Israel, the people of God, were under the shadow of Babylonian oppression and ultimate Babylonian captivity. And yet these who came said, there's somebody in charge and he's charged even when things look like they're going bad. There's a story that has become, that I've learned over the last year and a half, two years, that has become very significant to me. Some of you I have shared it with privately. Some of you may have heard me use it publicly. But if you have, be patient with me for a moment for the sake of the others here who have not heard it. Because it's been a story that has transformed my thinking. It happened, or came to me, just a few days before the Berlin Wall fell. I had no indication in my life, nobody intimated to me, that the Berlin Wall was about to collapse. It must have been ten days before that when Sam Kamalassen, who many of you know, called me from California. He had just returned from Romania. He had been in an evangelistic crusade there. I was not aware at that stage of the game that you could have evangelistic crusades in an atheistic communist country, in a Marxist country. So I was a bit astounded. I said, Sam, you mean you were in an evangelistic crusade in Romania, Ceausescu's Romania? And he said, yes. Now Sam is an Indian citizen. He's not a white American and he could get into places that we could never get. And so he had access to the Christians in Romania. And he said, Dennis, I've never been in a crusade like this one. The place was packed every night. He said, every night that I gave an invitation, hundreds responded. One night I didn't give an invitation and hundreds responded anyway. He said, I watched Greek Orthodox priests in their regalia come forward to receive Christ. He said, it was an incredible experience. But he said, one night something happened that I will never get over. He said, as I was preaching, I began to hear a sense of sound in my audience that to me was inexplicable. He said, as I kept on preaching, I sensed that it came in waves. And then he said, I noticed that the wave of sound came every time I mentioned the name of Jesus. And then he said, I realized the sound was the sound of the women in my audience weeping. And then he said, the sound grew. And he said, I realized the men had joined the women. And every time I mentioned the name of Jesus, my whole audience was weeping. He said, by that point, Ken Law, every time I mentioned the name of Jesus, I was weeping. And then he said this, hear this, I don't think I'll ever think the same again. He said, Ken Law, when the last alternative option to Jesus has been exhausted and shown for its true bankruptcy, the name of Jesus takes on incredible allure and power. Isn't that an interesting philosophy of history? There is somebody in charge. But you know what he will do? He's so much in charge that when you choose a false option, he'll let you run it out to its absolute dead end so that you can know that it's a false option. And so he'll let a good chunk of humankind spend 70 years chasing down a false option to Christ that we speak of as communism. Now that was done on a national and on an international scale. But do you know he'll do that on a personal scale? If I turn my back upon him, he'll let me go my own way. He'll let me go my own way. But sometime, somewhere, I will find that it was a false option that I chose and I will find that there is bankruptcy down that road. You may be on a false option tonight. Most of our world is on a false option. But that does not mean that Jesus Christ is not Lord and it doesn't mean that he's not in control. I want to say there's somebody in control, even for those of us who are wandering in our own darkness and on our false alleys and false options. Now these people who come whose feet are so beautiful, they not only know that there is a future for us that can be good, but they know who that future is. And isn't it interesting that the future is a person? Now if I don't know how to preach on the beauty of their feet, I surely don't know how to preach on this. But I want to tell you I'm glad there's a person in charge. Do you know what a good chunk of our world thinks? They think it's chance. Or they think it is blind force somewhere that controls everything. Or else they think it's the stars. Or else they think there is some inexorable law that's controlling things. But do you know what those with beautiful feet say? They say it's a person. And he's a good person. And we know him by name. Sarah, I want to thank you for the choruses that we've sung about Yahweh and about the Lamb. Because we're the people who know his name. The Hebrews were the people who knew his name in the Old Covenant, Yahweh. And we're the people who know his name in the New Covenant, Jesus. And do you know what a difference it makes when you know his name? I remember reading one of Paul Tournier's books. And he was telling about a friend of his, a doctor who was dealing with a young lady who wanted an abortion. She had an unwanted pregnancy. And so he was simply fulfilling the law of his country. It wasn't the United States. She had to sit down with a medical person and explain her way through and talk him into approving it. And so she was making her case, saying, well, it's just a glob of cells, just a glob of cellular glob, a glob of cells, meaningless cells, and why shouldn't I have my body expel that glob of cells? And the doctor, who was a Christian, had an interesting thought. So he looked at the young lady and he said, well, let's talk about that for a moment. Have you decided yet, if you have the child, what name you will give that glob of cells? And he said, you know, I hesitated. And he said, suddenly something I really hadn't anticipated took place. There was an incredible change in the atmosphere. And the girl broke and wept because she wasn't dealing anymore with a glob of cells. She was dealing with a person. You know, as you think about your future and as I think about mine, we're not dealing with chance or inexorable law or the stars. We're dealing with a person. And he's in charge. And what a difference that makes. Now, what's that person like? If you want to know what he's like, it may be that the best way to find out what he is like is to find out where you see him best. You see, when the world looks for somebody who's in control, do you know what they look for? They look for a throne. They look for a seat of authority. They look for a seat of power. They look for somebody who is in a position to exercise earthly power. But if you want to know who he is, the one who has charge of all that is to come, you will see him best on a throne. The incredible thing is you'll see him on a cross. And do you know what he's doing? He's dying to give you and me salvation and peace. Do you know the major actor in tomorrow's New York Times? It's the lamb on that cross. The mark's in his hand and in his side. Do you know the major actor who won't be reported tomorrow night in the evening news? It's the lamb who sits on the throne of heaven, but he is the lamb slain from the foundations of the world. Now, what is this salvation that he wants to give to us? Isaiah spells it out in a number of ways, but let me just mention a few simple ones. He's the one who can take the broken and make it whole again. My psychiatrist friend said once Humpty's fallen, there's no way ever to really put him back together again. These people whose feet are so beautiful say, yes, there is one who can put Humpty Dumpty back together again. It doesn't matter how many times he's fallen off the wall, and it doesn't matter how many pieces into which he or she has been shattered, this one, who these with the beautiful feet tell us about, he can put the broken back together again. Isaiah says that they say the people whose lives are meaningless, they have no reason for living, he can put purpose into your life. Whereas you felt you were in a dead-end street, you suddenly find you've got an open door in front of you that is open to eternity. Isaiah says he can take the people that are bound and that are enslaved and set them free. He can break the shackles and release us. And it says he can take those who despair and have no hope, and he can cause hope to spring up eternally in our otherwise despairing breaths. Little wonder that if this one can do that kind of thing, we ought to think that the feet of those that bring that news are beautiful. Now, we don't often see that on a national scale or on an international scale. Let me remind you that the communist flag, the flag of Russia, flew for the last time and came down on Christmas evening. Dan Rather didn't report that. And Ceausescu, one of the most vicious dictators in the world, on Christmas Day was shot by his own people. And his own people saw it on TV as that incredibly demonic ruler fell on his knees in front of his whole country with his face lifted to heaven and his hands open up. And it happened on Christmas Day. There are occasionally these signs that come on a larger scale, but those are all negative. You know where you find the positive ones? You find them in the unexpected places and in the individual persons. Like Sally, who stood here, was it last night, and said, I was two people. I was one person in my life, in my business world, and I was another person when I was in church. And the God whom these people tell us about brought me together and made me one person. Steve, who preached last night, was addicted to heroin. And a few days before he found Christ, as he walked through his marijuana patch, he heard a cackling laughter behind him. And he knew it was demonic and he knew that he was damned. And then Christ came and set him free. And Tim, with his ambition, God can even get to the blue-suited guy, and took the ambition and caused it to bow before the cross. And now he'd rather witness for Christ than to be the President of the United States. You can see it in individuals when this one comes and makes his change. That's still the story, Tim, of how God can change people. Those of us who have lived in Wilmore over the years have some incredible heritage behind us. The man who founded Asbury Theological Seminary was a man named Henry Clay Morrison. And out of all the preachers I ever heard, he was the greatest for my money. And as a teenager, I heard him preach for an hour and ten minutes like Steve Clark, and I said, what's he quitting for? Now, he was an incredible preacher. He had a sermon that was called the Elevator Sermon, in which he took people to heaven and he took them to hell. He took you to hell first and showed you all the people that never expected to get there. And he had personal interviews with them. I remember in the Wilmore Methodist Church here, when he got ready to take us down, he put his hand under the pulpit and said, tuck your elbows in, we're going down, and you don't want any soot on them. And a church full of people pulled their elbows in. It was marvelous the way we relaxed and expanded when he pushed the button that took us up. And we stepped out on the celestial shore. And when we stepped out on the celestial shore, he said, look, somebody's coming to meet us. And he described this incredible person that came. He said, wonder who it is. He said, let's see if we can guess who it is. Let's not let the person tell us. So he said, now, we so appreciate your coming to welcome us, but wait, don't tell us who you are. See if we can guess. Anybody like you must be Michael, the chief archangel. And the creature shrugged his shoulders and said, Michael, wait until you see him. And then he said, okay, if you're not Michael, then, and the person said, wait, I wasn't even a male. I was a female. And Marsden said, ah, we know who you are. You're Mary, the blessed virgin. Mother of our Lord Jesus. And the heavenly creature smiled and said, oh, no, I'm Mary, all right. But I'm the Mary that had the seven devils in her. I'm the prostitute made clean by the blood of the lamb. Now, let me ask you a question. Can you think of anybody who's a better illustration of brokenness than a professional prostitute? Can you think of anybody who's a better example of meaninglessness and despair than a prostitute? Can you think of anybody more bound than one who has no way out? Can you think of anybody more hopeless than the professional in that? And above all in the day of age, which is age, Jesus touched her. Do you know she's one of the ladies who fed our Lord Jesus, washed his clothes and took care of his physical needs? Do you know that she had the privilege of being at the cross? Did you know that she was at the open tomb and an angel appeared to her? And did you know that our Lord, after the resurrection, came to see her? Now, you know, if I'd been running Jesus' life, I'd have done it very differently. You know what I would have loved to have done on Saturday? Not Saturday, but Sunday morning after the resurrection? I'd have loved to have said, Jesus, let's go make a few calls. I'd like to have taken him to see Pilate, wouldn't you? And say, Pontius, look at him now. What do you think about him? It would have been a lot more fun to take him to see Caiaphas. But the fun of all would have been to take him to see Herod. Say now, what do you think, Herod? But it's interesting, he never paid any attention to those fellows because the future is never where the world thinks it is. And he went to see Mary Magdalene. Now, that's the power of the gospel that we have. Little wonder that the feet of those who carry it are beautiful. He brings salvation. He brings salvation from our sins. And we speak of that as new birth and conversion. He brings salvation from the tyranny of the divided self, too. And we speak of that as holiness of heart. He can come into the heart and cleanse us of our defilement, our sterility, our pride. He can take the division away and bring us to the place where we can sing like that German did, Jesus' priceless treasure. Thou, Christ, art all I want, more than all in thee I find. You are enough. There was a rather prominent preacher in England, relatively young, who found himself successful in his profession in a Keswick convention. And the Spirit of God began to deal with him. And he said, You preach this gospel to other people. Now can I have your whole heart? And the preacher, piously, said, Why, of course. And the Lord said, Well, give me the keys to your heart. So he said, I took the key ring and carefully took one small key off and handed the key ring to him. And the Lord said, I said, All. And the preacher said, But, Lord, this is very insignificant. It's to a very unimportant part of my heart. Can I keep anything for myself? And he said, I thought you wanted all of me. And he said, Then the battle came. And he said, I found I couldn't turn that key loose. And he said, Finally, I fell at his feet and said, I can't. I can't. His hands were frozen on him. And the Lord said, Are you willing to make me make you willing? And he said, I thought about the end of that pathway if I held on to it. Bankruptcy. And I said, God, can you touch me so you can get the key? Can you make me willing? And he said, He began to break the resistance in my heart. And my fingers relaxed. And he took the key that I couldn't give. That's salvation. That's the ultimate in earthly salvation. When he gets all of us because he's taken us. Because we're too self-centered and too sinful and too ego-driven to ever give that last corner. But he's capable. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of salvation. Now, the text closes with an admonition and with a promise. You know what the admonition is? It fits what I've just said. He said, They that bear the vessels of the Lord should be pure. So he says, Depart from the unclean. If you are to bear the vessels of the Lord, you must be pure and clean. Now, the interesting thing is that the hope of the world is of all things, this passage says, in Zion and Jerusalem. Now, you won't read Isaiah long before you find there are problems with Zion and Jerusalem. But you see, the hope of the world is the fact that in Zion and Jerusalem. Little country, how big is Israel? How many of them could you dump in the state of Kentucky? God says there's where the future is. Not in Rome or Egypt or Babylon. It's wherever this God is. And if he's there and people will let him, he can get rid of our sins. He can take care of our failures. And if he's there, there is where the future is. But he says if that future is to be realized, you've got to let me cleanse you to where you're clean and pure and whole. We've come tonight to the last night we're together. I want to know if he's got the last key. I want to know if he's got the last corner. I want to know if he possesses you tonight. You may want to possess him, bless you, but the important thing is for him to possess you and me. And if he does, what he gets he cleanses. And what he cleanses he fills. And what he fills he uses. And the hope of the world is in that bunch, whether anybody in the world knows it or not. And it's that bunch that God is going to take to do his work in the world and to build the future. Now the last thing is a promise. I love this. He says he will go before us and he will be our rear guard. That's double safety, double protection, isn't it? Now I suspect that in this crowd over these last three days some of us have begun to get intimations that God's going to lead us in some new ways in the days ahead. Maybe a little panic inside somebody. I wouldn't be surprised if he's laid his hand on somebody here and said, I want you in full time Christian service. Somebody who's been comfortable in the States, he's laid his hand on you and said, I want you overseen. I don't know what he's saying to you, but if he's spoken to you about a future that leaves you apprehensive, I want to tell you, he'll go before you. You know, he never says, go for me. He always says, follow me. And if the eternal Christ is marching in front of you, what is there to fear? And then he says, I will be your rearward. Now he said, as far as this text is concerned, the person who is not in the way that has him in front of him and him behind him or him in front of her and him behind her, that person is on a false option. You may spend 30 years living it out, but I can tell you what the end will be. It will be emptiness, sterility, and bankruptcy. But the person who's put his hand in Christ and said anywhere and whatever, I want to follow you. There's where the future is. And it is good and good eternal. Do you know we are as privileged as any group of people on the face of the earth? The people who sit in this chapel tonight. It's not because of you and me. It's because of the one you and I can't see. But many of us sent his presence. And he brought us to this place to take us out now back into our world, to be witnesses for him and to do his bidding. He took those believers in Jerusalem and spread them out across the earth. All ended up in Rome. And out of Rome, the gospel went to cover a substantial chunk of the earth. He wants to duplicate that among us. I want to ask if you're ready. Tomorrow morning we will have a Bible study and we will have a healing service. Tonight is the night when we ought to deal with the question of grace. Do you know the fullness of grace? Because he possesses you completely. Is your hand firmly in his? And are you walking in his ways or is there some reservation within you? If you do not become wholly his tonight, tomorrow will have darkness and tomorrow will have defeat. But if you're wholly his, tomorrow will be the way of holiness and it will be a pathway of life and of truth and of hope.