In this sermon, the speaker discusses how Jesus Christ was portrayed as crucified among the Galatians, even though he never physically went to Galatia. The speaker emphasizes the importance of believers allowing Christ to work in their lives and being a testimony to others. He also mentions Jonah as a sign and warns that the men of Nineveh will rise up in judgment and condemn the current generation. The speaker encourages honesty and self-reflection, sharing his own experience of being taken to a place of obscurity by God in order to die to self and be raised up for a greater purpose.

I want you, if you would, to come with me into Luke's Gospel and into the 11th chapter. And we will notice some statements of the Lord Jesus concerning Jonah. We're going to read from verse 29 of chapter 11. And I want to read 29 to 32. I suppose he'd probably say the same about ours if he came, wouldn't he? If he were here now. And no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah the prophet. That, for me, authenticates that the whole story of Jonah is not some fable. Christ vaguely spoke of him in terms of an historical figure. The rise in liberal theology has pushed Jonah, as many other Old Testament characters, into fables. Vaguely Christ viewed him as being a very real and historical figure. And defines him as being Jonah the prophet. For as Jonah became a sign. Now please notice the language of the Lord Jesus. Jonah became a sign. He did not give one. He became one. He became a sign to the Ninevites. So also the Son of Man will be to this generation. The Queen of the South will rise up in the judgment. With the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon. And indeed a greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh. How wonderful. Notice where they're going to be. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. Because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. And indeed a greater than Jonah is here. Amen. Now that's wonderful. I want you please to notice. What time do we have? Do we? I don't. I want you please to notice two things. First of all in the passage. That before Jonah could preach. He had to become a sign. There had to be first of all the molding of the man before the ministry of the man. And you and I need to take that to our hearts. God needs to mold us. He needs to make us a sign to our generation. And until we are we must just as well shut up and say nothing. Because the men and women of this generation will pay no heed to us. Unless they first of all see that God has made us to be a sign to our day. Jonah was effective. I've often wondered what would have happened. Have you ever thought about this? What would have happened if he had never rebelled? What would have happened had he gone to Nineveh? First of all. Straight away. Immediately upon hearing God speak to him. What would have happened? Well you don't know do you? And I don't know. You could speculate. Well they'd have all repented. Because that was what God would have spoken to them. And they would have done it. Possibly. I don't know. But whether or not that's the case. The consequence of Jonah's fleeing from the will of God for his life. Led him into, as we noticed last night, this place of death. And I hope you all remember from last night. That he came to a place where he wanted to die. Do you remember my saying that? That's a remarkable thing. He wanted to die. I don't come across very many people like that. Do you? Do you? And of course you will recall that he did not. Even though he wanted to die. He did not bring about his own end. He says, as we noticed in chapter 2, you have cast me into the deep. I didn't do it myself. Lord, if you don't do it, it can't be done. There is no such thing as spiritual suicide when it comes to God's dealings with us. He will take us down into that depth. And Jonah came to a place where he said, I want to die. Because by my death, you will live. You men who are sailors on board this boat. Your life is guaranteed if I die. What a thing. And that means to say, if I will but take this to my heart and you to yours, the men and women to whom God wishes to send you, just where you are in whatever occupation you might be involved in, wherever you might live, wherever you might be, God can do something for their salvation if you will die. But if you won't, they've had it. And all our preaching and all our words will be as nothing to them unless they can see the sign. Now that word, sign, in the New Testament, there are four different words that can be translated sign. I want to point them out to you and then point out what this word, sign, used by Jesus in Luke's Gospel 11, really is and what it means. Okay. So now I want you please to come back in Luke's Gospel to the opening chapter. And in chapter one and in verse 62, we come to the baptism, sorry, the circumcision rather, of John Baptist. I'm going to take it that everybody knows the story, that you know about Zacharias, you know about Elizabeth, you know about the remarkable conception of John, his birth, and how Zacharias was done because of his unbelief. Unbelief will always guarantee to shut you up. It's when a man or woman comes to belief, to absolute confidence and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ, their mouth will be opened to declare what he has done, not what they think, or not what their opinion of this or that is, but they can declare with a clear heart and a bold voice, this is what has been done for me. And we touched on it yesterday when we noticed that Jonah, down in the belly of the fish, the first thing that he did before he ever preached, he gave thanks. Take note of that, won't you? Become a man or woman of thanksgiving. We might touch upon that tonight. All right? Now, he's done. He can't open his mouth, he can't communicate. And then we come to this. In verse 62, the people who were present at the circumcision, they were family friends and they were relatives. In verse 61, these people speak to Elizabeth and they say, there is no one among your relatives who is called by this name what name John. And for you and I, that is a gloss. We would just pass over that without paying too much attention to it and we would fail to see the tremendous significance that it meant for that society, that culture. For John Baptist, not to be named Zacharias, was the most incredible thing. Beyond what you and I could really get our minds around. It was absolutely part of the culture that the firstborn son bore the name of the father. And for him not to be called Zacharias was not only an insult to father, it was a slight appall of a family and not one of the relatives, not one of the friends could understand them. And they said, as we've just read, but there's nobody called by this stupid name. You've got to call him Zacharias, man. Look at this. You will insult your husband. How dare you. Boy, it was real strong stuff. And they made signs. That's the word. Signs. Now, for those of you who are interested, it is the word spelled E-double-N-E-U-O. N-U-O. And it means to use some sign, some means, to communicate other than for the necessity of the tongue. But they made signs. They wanted to impress upon Elizabeth the necessity of doing so. Okay. So, the relatives of Zacharias, they made signs in verse 62 to his father. So now they are trying to communicate with Zacharias. We've talked to Elizabeth Zacharias. She's not paying any attention. She seems to have this ridiculous thing in her mind that the boy's going to be called Tom. Have you ever heard such a stupid thing? Zacharias, talk to us! Well, he can't, can he? So, he gets hold of a slate and he writes on the slate what? His name is John. He doesn't say, I decided to call him John because the decision was not Zacharias's. Was it? Whose was it? God's. The angel has stated. Now, when he's born, and he probably went, ha, ha, ha. No chance. But when he's born, you ought to call him this. The choice is not yours. Well, that's quite something, isn't it? I mean, for all of you who are mums and dads in this room, I expect you spent hours trying to think of a lovely name for your baby daughter or your darling son, didn't you? And you probably had hours of discussion and you bought all the books and you discovered that, you know, this name means that and that name means this and you thought, what should we do? Did you do that? Did you? Had a dream? Oh, sorry. Did you have a dream as well, did you? No. I thought, I thought somebody dream for me. I decided. No. Oh. We had a victory, so we called her Laura Victory except it's Laura. Is that what it means? Well, the Laura Leaf is the Roman victory thing, wasn't it? So that's where Levi's from. Take a look for a book. We call him Victorious. Oh Victorious one. His name is John. That's what he wrote. Now they made signs to his father. Somehow Zacharias communicated with us. When Zacharias first had announced to him that he was going to become a dad he didn't believe what the angel had said. And when he came out of ministering in the temple we read in verse 22 of chapter 1 of Luke's Gospel that when he came out he could not speak to them and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple for he beckoned to them and remained speechless. He beckoned. He signed to them. Another word meaning signed. A different one. This one is spelled D-I-A-N-E-U-O. You got that? D-I-A-N-E-U-O. And it's the Greek word for beckon. He was calling them. He was trying to communicate. And both those words, the word annuo and the word diannuo which are probably from the same root both mean to try and to communicate. So you can seek to communicate by sign. And of course we now have the wonderful development of language for the deaf and people can communicate. Fascinating, isn't it? Remarkable that they can read the signs. Now that's the first. If you will now turn on to the Acts of the Apostles, please. And right at the end of the book you come across in the 28th chapter and in the 11th verse you come across a rather obscure little statement regarding a boat. After three months, verse 11, chapter 28 we sailed in an Alexandrian ship whose figurehead, whose sign was the twin brothers. If you've got an old AV it'll say Castor and Pollux. Won't it? They were the twin brothers and they have to do with the sign of Gemini in the star thing. I hope nobody reads their stars today. Oh good. You don't buy the Daily Mirror or the Daily Mail just to check for you? Nobody does? Oh good. Because if you do, I'd like to pray for you. But after three months we sailed in this Alexandrian ship and it had a figurehead. Now that's another word that is translated sign. And the word means something that marks out ownership. And the gentleman who owned this Alexandrian ship would have had that sign on all his boats, his ships. And it would have been a means of identifying that that belongs to him. It identifies ownership. Okay. So we've got the word sign speaking of communicating. We have the word sign identifying ownership of something. But the word that Jesus uses in Luke's Gospel and we've already read is a word that is different from all of those. Let me tell you what it is. It is the word S-E-M-E-I-O-N and it has to do with that which authenticates. In other words, it's the real, genuine thing. So for example let me give you some ideas of what I mean. The Gospel of John, time and again you have the word sign S-E-M-E-I-O-N being used indicating something that Jesus did that authenticated his messiahship. And if you read John's Gospel over and over again you will see that he did this sign. He did that sign. And the word is always this word S-E-M-E-I-O-N which indicates something that authenticates. Okay. Let me just read you one other. In the epistle, the second of the Thessalonians Paul concludes his letter to them and in chapter 3 and in verse 17 this is what he writes. Chapter 3, verse 17 The salutation of Paul with my own hand which is a sign a Semeion in every epistle so I write. This authenticates that the letter is genuinely from me. And his letters could not be forged or faked because he marked somehow there was an indication that the sign was genuinely his and it authenticated that the letter came from him. Okay. If you will turn to Matthew's Gospel a moment I'm going to run through just two or three examples of what I mean so that it's kind of stamped on our memories. In chapter 16 of Matthew's Gospel and in verse 1 Then the Pharisees and the Sadducees came and testing him asked that he would show them a sign a Semeion something that authenticates to Jesus that you are the real thing. Okay. And let's just read a little bit from these opening verses because there's another reference in this Gospel to Jonah. The Pharisees and Sadducees came testing him asked him that he would show them a sign from heaven and he answered and said to them when it is evening you say it will be fair weather for the sky is red and in the morning it will be foul weather today for the sky is red and threatening. Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky but you cannot discern the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign and no Semeion shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah and he left them and departed. Please note in the statement just made that sign was to be final and he left them he departed. This is ultimately to be the final sign to that generation as it is to ours. Now plainly Christ came and he did signs which authenticated his messiahship and the people of his day said never man did the things that this man did is not this the Christ? And the Pharisees and the Sadducees sought to divert their attention away from the possibility that Christ was truly Messiah. Over and again he authenticated his messiahship. He even did miracles that according to the writings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees authenticated his messiahship. For example never in Israel had anybody been cleansed of leprosy. Had they? You say hang on how about Naaman? I believe he was a Syriac. And yet you have in Leviticus chapters 13 and 14 the evidences of the cleansing of a leper but never ever ever ever did a leper get cleansed in Israel. And in fact you may recall that Jesus himself said that it was only Naaman the leper who got cleansed and it was only the woman of Zarephath to whom Elijah went and both of those were non-Jewish people. So when Christ came he did that which had never been done ever before in Israel. He cleansed the leper and sent the leper to see the priest at the temple to authenticate that he was genuinely healed. Never been done before. The giving of sight to the blind was a messianic sign. A sign that the one who did it was truly Messiah. That Christ opened the eyes of the blind. So he authenticated the very writings of some of the scribes and pharisees who had lived before him and had it written down that these would be authentic signs of Messiahship. And he did them and they still rejected him. And ultimately he said this will be the final sign the sign of death and resurrection. And in every generation it is still so the same. Which is why I've emphasized, and I'm going to do it again this morning, that I must become a sign to my generation. You must. And Jesus said just as Jonah was so that will be the sign to this generation for I will die and be raised out of death. And I must have in my experience and life that which testifies that I too am a sign and so are you. Are you the real thing? Are you the authentic thing? If there's stamped upon my life and on yours that which testifies this man, this woman is the genuine article. I'm going to make a confession. Do you know what? I like watching the Antiques Roadshow. It may be because I'm getting one. Antique that is. Could be. But I like watching the Antiques Roadshow. And every now and again every now and again they bring on something that looks like the real thing. And one of these experts examines it and he kind of looks at it and he says to this poor person who's anticipating that this thing is worth half a million and he says I'm very sorry. He said but if you look here and here and here and here you will see that this has been modified, that's been changed, that mark is not the genuine and it's worth about 25 pence. And you see this poor oh, how the sheer you know, the disappointment in their face that they haven't got the real thing. Don't you want to be the real thing? Maybe you're sitting there saying Father I am. Well if you are praise God. You make sure that you declare everywhere you go that you're the real thing. Now that's the word sineon, this word sine. So if you will now come back with me to Luke's gospel where we started and chapter 11 we will notice this that Jesus in verse 30 declares as Jonah became a sign. Now let me again re-emphasise that that is something which happens within his person. Within him. He becomes it. Now I find that statement quite remarkable that God could so work in the life of this man and let's again just remind ourselves of his disobedience of his rebellion of his seeming resistance to the fate of the men on that boat and of the occupants of Nineveh. He had no genuine real concern for them, was prepared to lead them to whatever fate was theirs. Even though God sent him to speak to them and in so speaking to give them an opportunity to repent. He denies them their opportunity. He is so caught up in his own particular way of thinking in my opinion for this work he's caught up in his own particular nationalism that refuses to allow him to see beyond his nationalism and he runs in the opposite direction. He seems to have no concern whatsoever. And we've seen God after him. We won't let him go. I've called you Jonah and I'm not going to forsake you and I'm not going to find somebody else to take your place. You are the man I called for this particular job. Get on with it. And if you will not obey, I will do whatever is necessary to bring you to the place where obedience becomes the willing delight of your heart. And again let me say it, and excuse me repeating it, he comes to the place where he wants to die. And he knows that by that death he is going to have to go to the river. He's going to have to fulfill God's calling on his life. And he wants an end of it. And he says to the men of the boat throw me over, let there be an end of this. And I think to myself every time I read it and I preach it and I think I think oh God how wonderful it is that you can work in that kind of power. And you can make a man of fun. In his very person in the way he thinks in his behavior in his manner in his living and ultimately in his preaching and please I beg you to notice that until God did this in his person he had no ministry. His preaching came out of his person. God delivered us from, oh I was going to say educated preachers. I guess I'm uneducated but I hope you understand what I mean. I don't mean educated in the sense that we can just kind of come up with things. We can string words together. There are lots of people around who can do that. I guess because I was I taught science, biology, chemistry I was used to standing in front of crowds of kids. They were wonderful. And I guess I can just do it. And I think Lord what a tragedy if men stand up and they can just do it. And there's not that something about them that gets hold of and grips the hearts of those who are listening and it produces the most profound effect. And I say that because I was brought up under a system where I listened to good, soft sound, solid evangelical preaching. But dare I say it did nothing for me. It never got to my heart. It never plumbed my depths. It never revealed me to me. Never made me see what my dreaming was. And it sure never made me a sign of anything. And I knew that while I remained in it the only thing I knew about myself was fundamentally I was selfish right down to the core. And my will and my way was all that mattered. And I think Jonah was like that until God brought him to death. And I suppose it's true for everybody is it? Until God brings us to a place where we say oh Lord oh to die to this. To die to this dreadful binding gripping selfishness that's in my heart that Lord I didn't even know was there until you came and you showed me that my living is of no benefit to anybody. And Jonah's living was of no good to anyone. Not to Nineveh. Not to the men on that boat. He was going to be the cause of their destruction. What a thing to take on board into your life. Lord could I be the means of being destructive in my life to other men and women. It's not a nice thing to think about is it? But inevitably won't you be? Unless you become a sign of death and resurrection. Sounds a bit strong doesn't it? Even as I walk to you it sounds a bit harsh. Do you know what I honestly and genuinely really do think that it's the greatest cause effect of freedom in anybody's life. I could be free Lord from this terrible wicked devilish satanic thing that creates in me fundamental selfishness. Or I could be religious. I can come along and clap my hands and raise my hands and do all the things that we do. And if you're brought up in that kind of thing you can do it fairly freely easily can't you? But what about that in your life? Come on Lord. How about us having a few minutes of real honesty shall we? Have a look inside just now. Go on. Have a little peek down there and ask yourself what are you like inside honestly? Has there been a radical death to the self life and a resurrection that has put you up into the life of Christ. And now for you to live is Christ. And the power that you want to live by is the life of Christ. And Christ has become all in all. And you see that in Him is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And I want to be in Him. I want to have Him as the source of all my living. Is that true for you? Is it? If not, why not? Well I can tell you why not. Because there has to come about this death. And forgive me. I'm going to repeat it. I'm going to repeat it. I hope day after day after day after day till the day I die that what is required is a glorious baptism in the Spirit that takes us down into death. And when I go to different places, especially and it's very naughty I know but I love to talk to Pentecostal folk. And I love to talk to holiness folk who've got this great emphasis on what they view as being spiritual baptism. And I always bring to this. This is what it's all about. It's to be baptized into Christ and into death. And then it's life. Life life life in it's fullness in it's glory in it's wonder and there's a development of life within that goes on and on developing. And that's the thrill of being a Christian. And listen if you're in this room this morning and for you being a Christian is following a set of rules. It's trying to keep yourself from being drawn off into this and drawn off into that. It's fighting against all the sort of things which this world throws at us. If it's not, if it's only that but no more than that my friend go into your inner heart and ask yourself, Lord am I alive with this life? I want to be assigned to the university where I go. I want to be assigned to the people of my day that I'm the authentic thing. I've got the stamp on me. You know just like the kings of England I guess. I don't know whether they did it in Scotland or in Wales. But they used to write letters to some you know important person in the kingdom and it would be written out on sort of a scroll and rolled up and a ribbon tied round it and then they would take wax and they would melt it and it would settle on to where the ribbon was tied and the king would with the ring he had on his finger put his mark into the wax and that would assign to the person who was to receive that letter this is the genuine thing. Here it is I see the mark of the king on the letter and he knew he had the real thing. Okay. So Jesus said just as Jonah in his person became assigned to the Ninevites and when they saw him and when they heard what he had to say those two things became as one in this man's life. It was his person and it was his preaching and the two things merged and they couldn't kind of tell one thing from the other but they knew that this man was the real thing and he'd come from the living God with a message. And the effect upon the people of Nineveh was most remarkable. I have read over years a failed bit about revival. I have read, as you'd expect, about the great revival in Wales in 1904-5. I've just got hold recently of a book by Edwin Orr on the 1859 Great Awakening in England and Wales and Scotland and America and it's fantastic reading and you hear of God doing all sorts of miraculous things all over the place. But I come to this, to Jonah and I think to myself man, one city of an immense gathering of people estimated as we've already noticed between half a million a million and it seems as if God just moved in such power that the whole city came to repentance from top to bottom. From King to slaves. And of course when repentance comes like that, you will notice if you read in the fourth chapter of the book, they all of them come to a place of fasting, sackcloth and ashes. You couldn't tell King from slaves. You couldn't identify who was important and who wasn't because when God moves it levels everything else and all this great applause we give to these people of names and it all goes because God is working and oh, don't you want to see something like that? I sure do. Mind you I don't know how much I do. I do, but I don't know how much I do. I wonder what I'd prepare to honestly, genuinely sacrifice, give in order that something should be done in our day. You might say, well you don't need to do anything by the time because all the sacrificing has been done. Christ has done it all. Sure he has. But you may remember that in the Colossians epistle Paul said I make up that which is lacking in the body of Christ. I am going through suffering, difficulties on behalf of his church and I'm delighted so to live. There's something that gets into the heart into the life and you see it in Paul perhaps more than in any other. And he was delighted. Suffering for him was not some great hardship. You say, what? Well of course it was. I don't think he enjoyed it much, do you? But somehow he saw it in the light of what Christ has done for him and he knew my life is laid down for the benefit of this church. He loved the church, didn't he? He loved it. Prepares to do anything for it. For her. Wonderful. And I think to myself Lord, I don't know if I, but all I can do is just come and just lay myself there and say okay Lord, well whatever you need to deal with, deal with it. But make me the real thing. I don't want to be a man just who can talk. God. We're friends, aren't we? I was talking to somebody the other day and in their house they've got a picture of this fellow, they've got a picture of his dad. And I said, hey, what's that guy? He said, that's my dad. And I said, he looks a fine sort of distinguished looking man, you know, grey hair, and you know, he looks bright and intelligent. And I thought, he said, yeah, he said he was a very clever man, mathematician. He was, he ran a business, highly intelligent. He said, you know what, he said, one thing he couldn't do, he could never stand up and speak in public. And I thought, that's interesting. And you know, it really kind of struck me, I thought, I can, but so what? So what? Lord, get hold of something in my life. Get hold of brothers and sisters in church, up and down this land, that we'll become marked men and testimonies to the people just where we live. Okay, he speaks then of Jonah as being a sign. And in verse 32, will you please notice, we're still in Luke 11, the men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it. I wonder if you really do, could you believe that? When you get to heaven, and when this day of judgment comes, have you ever thought about that, the men of Nineveh are going to rise up as a body, and they'll condemn that generation. I wonder if they'll condemn ours. Because the Christ who came to that generation is the Christ who comes to this generation. But how does he come to this generation? How does he come? If it's not through you and me. And do you remember, this is something that strikes me, let me just tell you before we go back there, into Galatians and into into, into, into if I can find it. Um, yes, here we go. In the third chapter of the Galatian epistle, Paul is nicely telling them off. And he says, you who wish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. Now notice, and yesterday I made a comment that the Christian epistle, Paul speaks about, I came among you and I preached Christ and him as crucified. Now please notice, he says, in the third chapter of the Galatian epistle, Paul is, he's nicely telling them off. And he says, you who wish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified. Now notice, and yesterday I made a comment that the Christian epistle, Paul speaks about, I came among you and I preached Christ and him crucified. Now please notice, he says, this Christ crucified has been clearly portrayed among you. The word speaks of like an advertising hoarding. You know, you drive along the road and you see these immense big boards they're about 30 feet long and 20 feet high and they've got smoke mounds of cigarettes written all over them or you know, go on holiday to this place or whatever it is. I mean, it stares you in the face. It is plainly portrayed. How was Jesus Christ plainly portrayed amongst the Galatians as crucified? Was Christ crucified in Galatia? Did he ever go to Galatia? No. So how was he portrayed as being Christ crucified amongst the Galatians? How? Well, there's only one answer isn't there? In the life of the man who was the authentic thing. And they looked at him and they said, this man has been through death and he's living in a life that we know nothing about. He's got a power about him. He's got a purity about him. He's got a passion about him. Where does this come from? Where is this man come from? He's come out of a death and he's living in a resurrection life that so possessed his being and his living and his mind and his passions that he demonstrated this in front of the very people to whom God had sent him. Isn't that remarkable? Don't you think? And of course you will all know that in the earlier chapter, in the second chapter of the Galatian epistle and in verse 20, he even testified I am crucified with Christ. So I want to ask you, come on, do you mind if I kind of point the finger against it? I know it's ever so easy and you must be forgiving. But have you been crucified? Have you been crucified with Christ? Please, please not crucified apart from him. You're not living some death that sort of makes you a martyr and everybody's looking at you and thinking, oh, what a wonderful saint. Listen, crucified with Christ. And you can't be crucified apart from Christ. That's why Joga in the story is a glorious picture. He did not inflict death upon himself. You've done it, Lord. This is what I needed. This is what you brought me to. Thank you. And down in the belly of the fish he did it. Lord, glory to your name. Now I can live. And I don't think he thought to himself no, look, I'm standing up. Here I come. I hear people do that, you know. Look, I'm arised. And there are people who got this kind of great thing about their ministry and they're some sort of super being. Listen, it all comes because we've been there to death. Glory to his name. I don't know about you, are you sitting there hanging? He's not going to say it again, is he? Yep. I saw that. I tell you, where's the greatest marvel of the gospel I've ever, I've discovered that Lord me, that rotten me, that selfish me, that arrogant me. I remember, listen to this, I remember when I first, when God first met with me, I was a student down in Exeter. I was friendly with a guy. I'm not going to mention his name. But I remember he and I, kind of we got involved together in ministry and praying for people who had some demonic troubles and I can remember thinking now, look out Great Britain me and my mate, we can be grounded and we're going to be the sort of solution to the spiritual needs of Great Britain. And you know what, I even thought like that. What a terrible thing. And you know what God did? He took me right out into obscurity into the backwoods of nowhere so I could die. And I didn't like it too much because I thought God, this ministry I'm a man. And do you know what, I'm a man today who were like that. Who secretly, quietly harbour a sort of secret thing in him. I thought it was something special. Well I discovered I was nothing special. And the only thing that I needed to do was find a place to go away and die in. And God could raise me up and do something, do something with me. Here, I'm going to stop because I can't stop. Oh my dearest brothers and sisters this young man, woman go for this. Don't go for some great ministry. Ministry will come out like it did out of Jonah. Out of a man who's been into death and resurrection. And I know when you read the life of Jonah you will think well if he had this death and he had this resurrection, what would ruin him the miserable so-and-so? He didn't seem to be very joyous after he preached his sermon. Because we might get to it. He went outside and he punted. Listen you've got to live in this. This is not some magical thing. You've got to live in it. Which is why I said yesterday Paul said I'm going to die daily. Day in, day out to this. To this life that can become so captivating with me, me, me, me, me. Die to it. Oh glory be to God and power to so live this way if we will. You know what it all is don't you? It's in Christ. It's in Christ. It's in Christ. Be a Christ man. Be a day in, day out feeding, living, dwelling, drawing on Christ. And you'll have a testimony like Paul. Lord I die daily. I die to me. I die to my will, my wishes, my dreams, my fantasies. I'm a man of the Lord God. Amen.