In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not being deceived and staying grounded in the truth of God. He highlights Jesus as the true and faithful witness and the Son of God. The speaker encourages listeners to have a heart that understands God's purpose and to live according to His will. He shares personal anecdotes to illustrate the practicality of God's love and the power of compassion in action.

Let us turn to scripture, beloved. I believe that quite a few of us here know my great love for the epistle of John, first epistle of John. Now I want to, without any offering any apology, I want to turn to that epistle and bring to your heart something which came afresh to my heart, familiar truth. It's a glorious thing when this does happen. And I do hope that you love your Bibles sufficiently to read and reread them. And though not just have some sort of favorite passages that are the only ones that you read, nevertheless to go over the whole of the book until it's all familiar to you. And indeed, as we go to some of the New Testament parts, I suppose these have a familiarity and a grandeur about them such as none other have. And this epistle of John, I was reading it through the other day and the old truth came sweetly to my heart again and on this great line of thought that we find here in this epistle some things that John says are in us. The other day, I don't know quite where I was now, but recently I came into this epistle and we considered there the marks of the new birth that are therein. Now, I know that some of you will know these very well, but there are those who have never gone into this epistle with this in mind so that they can assure their own hearts that they are truly the children of God. That's why God sets them in the book. And for these dear ones to realize what these marks of the new birth were, was a complete revelation to them. And it may be that this afternoon as we take on these new things, these old things in a new manner and dwell upon them, God may apply them to us in a very wonderful, loving and full way. You know, one never despairs if one is a preacher when one bears in mind the sort of natural and lovely things of God. For instance, if you go to a brook to drink water, well, the brook always has water in it. It's the same lovely clear water, but it's entirely different if you come tomorrow for what is today. It's the same water, but it's different. That's the whole part about it. It's fresh water. And I don't know where it came from, the water I'm drinking today. The sort of water I was drinking yesterday, well, I didn't drink so long way downstream now. And so this is how we approach the glorious scriptures. And when God, as you know, uses the figure of the river of water of life, for instance, or out of you flowing rivers of living water, perhaps we're not so far removed from the thought that's in his heart. And in this epistle, on the line of things that God has said are in us, I would like you to start with me in the fifth chapter. In 1 John 5, perhaps we'll read at verse seven, shall we? There are three that bear record in heaven, the father, the word, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost. And these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood. And these three agree in one. If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater, for this is the witness of God, which he hath testified of his son. He that believeth on the son of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his son. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to, beloved, is in this verse 10, that those of us that truly are the Lord's have the witness in ourselves. We don't have to depend on anything outside of ourselves at all. God has devised it this way. And you see, the witness is a most powerful one, because in the end of verse six you read that it is the spirit that beareth witness. The spirit is truth. Oh, beloved, when we come to realize what God is saying, that this thing is something of spirit, and it isn't of flesh, and it isn't of paper and ink, it isn't of anything outside of oneself at all, the spirit beareth witness within us. You have this witness in yourself. The spirit is God. It is God coming into you and witnessing in you that you really are his. Now, that is completely unshakable. That is unassailable. There are times in life when temptations are aimed specifically at it. They're the subtlest of all temptations. There are gross temptations that are aimed at your flesh. There are worldly temptations that want to catch you up in physical and material things. But the subtlest temptations of all are those that are directed against this, witness of God in your own heart. But this, beloved, is absolutely fundamental. Every one of you here this afternoon must know that you have this witness in yourself. If you haven't got this witness in yourself, if you've never had this witness in yourself, then you are not a child of God. God witnesses by his spirit in all his children's hearts. Amen. So that each one of them knows infallibly without a shadow of a doubt. I know that we, most of us anyway, come through doubting periods. I know that all these kinds of things happen. But bless the name of the Lord, there comes a time when the Holy Spirit comes right inside and says, it's all all right. He might, of course, he won't use colloquial English. But the thing is that he will witness inside you. That's where it's needed. And that's where it is most powerful. Glory be to his name. And the thing that he will witness to you is this, that as we read in verse eight, we can leave out the witness or record in heaven. The witness on earth is the spirit and the water and the blood. And these three agree in one. Praise the name of the Lord. The witness of the spirit to you is that there came a moment when Jesus Christ, the son of God died on this earth unto sin. He died unto sin once. He died and in the act of dying, bore away the sin of the world. Put away the sin, amen. And that's at the moment you knew what had happened that the soldier came along and he plunged the spear into the side of Jesus and forthwith came there out the blood and the water. And that signified the death, the real death of Jesus Christ, the purposeful death. Jesus died purposefully. The two thieves died lingeringly, not wanting to die, clinging on to life. But Jesus, once he'd made the atonement, he dismissed his spirit and hung there dead. And when the soldier came along, he plunged the spear into his side and out with came the blood and water. Praise God. And the spirit witnesses that the sacrifice is over. That you needn't bother about your sin in that sense. There's no atonement to make for it. You need try to get rid of it. You needn't do anything about this because it's done. Amen. The spirit, beloved, and the water and the blood agree that it's all over. Amen. It's all past. Now, you should have the witness of the spirit in your heart that it's all over. It's all over. Praise God. That there's a time in your life when, as we read, or as our brother, I remember, prayed so meaningfully this morning. We've passed from death unto life. Amen. It's all done. Now, have you got this witness of the spirit in your heart? It must be in you. So, you must not be trying to prop up your life on your Bible readings or anything like that. It must be in you, beloved. I don't need the testimony of another man. Although, if we believe the testimony of men, it says if we accept the record or the witness of men, the witness of God is greater. There's a multiplicity of it all. It's in my mouth. It's in your mouth. It's in her mouth. It's in his mouth. Praise God. And we get a great build-up of this glorious, positive testimony. Now, may God bring all our hearts to this. Out of peradventures and out of hopings and out of seekings and out of everything else to this glorious, positive, wondrous ground when God is witnessing, witnessing, witnessing in your own heart. Now, one of the glories, I'll tell you this, of being a preacher man is that the more you preach the truth, the more consolidated you become that God witnesses in your own heart. Praise God. You see? That's why you want to open your mouth and start the witness. Because when you do that, let me testify to it. God keeps on. It builds up and it gets stronger. You get bolder. You get bolder. You make the great assertions for God. You come off the ifs and perhaps and buts. And you move on into this positiveness that grants assurance unto other men and women that they can take for granted what you say and know that somehow God is laying a foundation upon which they can build their lives. This is what God is wanting. Amen. Not just loud, self-assertive, this kind of thing, mere dogmatism. But he does want this glorious assurance going out through men and women. And you know, beloved, you can always tell whether the person that's speaking really believes what he says. And more than believing what he says, there's something in it that can sort of wrap itself round your consciousness. And you know perfectly well it's true. It's the spirit that bears witness because the spirit is true. Amen. And what God is wanting to do is bring us all to this place that we can say, I have the witness in myself. The witness of God. All right, have you got that? Deep down inside. Then the next thing that you will find in this epistle, I'm not merely taking them in the order of revelation. It's in the third chapter. In the third chapter, we have this told us. Let's read from verse seven. Little children, let no man deceive you. He that doeth righteousness is righteous even as he, God, is righteous. Let's get this quite square. He that committed sin is of the devil. For the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin. For his that is God's seed remaineth in him. And he cannot sin because he is born of God. In this, the children of God are manifest and the children of the devil. Amen. Now, this is very, very wonderful, beloved. So, beside the witness of God being in us, we have the seed of God in us. Praise his wonderful name. That we have God's seed in us. What a precious thing this is. Beloved, let us get this very clear in our hearts that this whole matter of salvation is a spiritual thing. It's a spiritual thing. That you and me, if we are the children of God, we've been conceived of God. We've been brought forth by God. And God's seed being placed in us, in our spirits, so that we've been born out of that deadly state of death and sin. Now, that seed, when God puts it there, has come to stay. That's right. It's remaineth. Glory be to the name of the Lord. Is that true? Do you know this in your experience? Now, the result of this, when this seed is in your heart, you won't have understood this from the beginning, but this is the way God does it. He doesn't try to keep us from sin and sin from us by laying down a legal code. He did that for the old covenant, if I was going to say that was good enough for them. But God has superseded it. He's not sort of said, now, this and that and the other. He's done it in this great masterpiece of wonderful love. He has brought his seed into our heart, and this seed will not combine with sin. It won't do it. He's gone ever so much farther than the other the old. This seed will not join itself with sin. It will say, I can't. That's it. Isn't it a marvelous? It finds a glorious inability in itself to go sinning. Now, this is the masterpiece. This is the wonder of God. This is how he's done it. When I look at God, when I start to really think about God, I'm lost, you know, in amazement how he does it. Praise God. You see, I've been born of a human being. My wife never has to me, now, stop, say to me, stop eating clinkers. Why? Because pigs eat clinkers. I don't. There's something in me that won't. You might with it. Don't you see? She hasn't got a list on our dining table or, well, you know, where we eat. She hasn't. You should see the conditions we live under. Perhaps that's why I'm not in Exeter very often. I don't know. But she hasn't got a list up saying, now, you mustn't do that and mustn't do this and thou shalt not and all the other rest of it. Praise God. Now, this is like, like it is, beloved. You see, the human soul, until it saves, feeds on sin. Feeds on it. Lusts after it. Loves it. Indulges in it. Glories in it. The bigger the sin, the worse the sin. You know this. In the last 10 years, who in us in this room will, will, will deny the fact of the great moral landslide. They're glorying in it now. Things that 10 years ago wouldn't have been mentioned. Am I right or wrong? I'm not Victorian at all. I wasn't born as long ago as that. But this is the tremendous thing, beloved. Now, God has, has devised a marvellous way. I, you know, I, I adore him. I think he's wonderful. He just comes and he brings us to a place and he, he, he, he puts his seed in us. And when that dawns on the consciousness, would God it had dawned on everybody's consciousness, would God, there were a million, million preachers going through the world preaching this. Instead of keep saying, come and get your sins forgiven. Say, say, God has put his seed in you. God wants to put his seed in you. Would God that people ministered life instead of just forgiveness. Andra, you can have forgiveness because the law has been fulfilled and all this. Oh, if only there would be a revolution of preaching. To make people say, is this right? God's put his seed in me. Well, I can't go and do things like that anymore. I can't unite with this. I can't do it. Plenty of room, beloved. Come and find a seat. You might have to split up. Sorry to have to split you up, but you won't mind, will you? You'll be like me. I always have to let my wife sit down and me stand alone. And, and, and the, the, the tremendousness about it, beloved, is that God says, now, once this seed's in you, now, will you take this in your heart? It remains. And it's this that makes the distinction between whether you're a child of the devil or a child of God. And there's no middle ground. You're either a child of the devil or a child of God. By first birth, natural incomings into the world, you're a child of the devil. Not just a child of a man named North, or South, or East, or West, or Black, or White, or Brown, or Pink. It doesn't make any difference about that. It's a matter of whether or not the seed of God is in your heart. Until that's in your heart, you've got the seed of Satan in you. And it will fructify, and it will love, and lust after, and indulge in all the sin and filth of the world that it can. Or if you've been sort of corrected by sort of a legalistic kind of Neo-Christian background, or a professing Christian home, you will have been shielded from a lot that's vulgar. But it's only because you've been shielded. That's all. Understand that. And the seed of God in you is there. And it says, Lord, I can't do that anymore. Praise God. If you haven't got that can't in you, if you've got in you the great big, I can, I want, I love it, you've never yet become a child of God. As some of you must have heard me say before, I love this epistle of John. It just about sets me where I need to be. It doesn't allow me any fancy vaporings and vague ideas. It tells me in the plainest of plain language. It brings me out of all the mental fogs and doctrinal difficulties. It sets me down plonk, four square, on the truth of God. I'm glad that our salvation isn't a method of pulling the wool over your eyes. I'm glad that it's a glorious declaration. And that's why the writer said, little children, don't let anybody deceive you. That's where we started our writings, our readings. Don't be deceived about this. God's method is this. Now you see, of course, why you have the witness of God in your heart. You see how it is. God comes on this ground. He just witnesses, witnesses, witnesses, bless the name of the Lord. Let me ask you a question. Who in this book is called the true and faithful witness? Jesus. Who was Jesus? I'll answer that one. The son of God. I know which way my mind's going. You won't, I don't expect you to read that. And who was the son of God? The seed of God. He was the promised seed. Is this right? He's the faithful and true witness. There it is. It's as simple as A, B, C. And what he actually was in the flesh. He, it all is and ever was in the spirit. So it's the spirit that comes and bear witnesses, bears witness to you. Physically, I wasn't born the son of God. Physically and materially, Jesus Christ was. Spiritually, I've been born a son of God. Spiritually, the blessed Holy Ghost comes and witnesses in me. I'm the seed of God. Must have it because I wasn't born of Mary. Nobody will ever write a Bible about me and say, G.W. North of Bethnal Green was born the son of Mary. Nobody will ever do that. They can't. I'll never write a book about me. So God sends the Holy Ghost to witness to me. I've got to know. Amen. And I do. Praise God. Because God knows. He lets me know. He doesn't let me know till he knows himself. That's right. When he's begotten me, when the seed's in my heart, he lets me know. Amen. Isn't it wonderful? Of course, it's so simple, really. I'd do the same if I'd have been clever enough to have thought it all out. I would have done the same. Mind you, I'm learning to be sensible. I used not to be. I wasn't at all clever, had no intelligence at all. But God, beloved, this is the way he does it. I don't fall down and worship and praise God because somebody stands up and says, God wants you to praise him. God wants you to worship him. You see, it comes the prophets and the prophetesses. I don't need that. I'm never ready to do it. Glory. I'm on the face. You see, I've got the witness in here. The prophets come. Amen. The prophet's here. Hey, it's glorious. It's marvellous. The seed's here. The son's here. He's prophet, priest, and king. He's everything. He's here. Mind you, I like to hear the prophets and the prophetesses. Praise God. I always know whether they're talking truth or not, you see, because it's all in here. It's marvellous. You say, oh, he's got great discernment. Well, of course he hasn't. It's common sense. I mean, in the spirit. And God wants you to have the common sense of God, the sense that's common in the Godhead. That's why he sent these glorious revelations, and he comes into our hearts. Amen. And then there's something else that we need to see. Familiar truths, of course. But let's go to it, shall we? This time it's in the second chapter. And the great 27th verse. The anointing which you have received of him abideth in you. The anointing doesn't abide in a little glass bottle ready to be poured out like oil. It isn't in a prophet's pot set up on the shelf. For you remember that that's what the old widow, the widow woman of old had. She had dice. She said, dice, serve and have nothing else but a pot of oil. It was an anointing pot. It belonged to the prophet. Ah, that's something you didn't know. So next time you read that story, that's what it is. But you see, the anointing is not in a pot or in a little bottle. Hallelujah. The anointing's in here. Praise God. You know, God wouldn't put any seed in your heart but the anointed seed. Now, would he? You just think. When the seed died on the cross, he was the anointed seed. He's the one that comes into your heart. He's not the babe that was born in Mary's womb. He was unanointed then. He had to wait till Jordan before he was anointed. Is that right? That's right. Let your mind work. Hallelujah. When he died on the cross, he was God's anointed seed. Amen. And the seed I've got in here is the seed of my life. The witness I have in here is the witness of God. And the anointing that I have in here is the anointing of the seed. Hallelujah. Every one of the seed of God is anointed. The anointed is, the anointing is here. I want to tell you, the anointed one is here. In this room. And if you're claiming to be a child of God, he's in your heart. The anointing which we have received of him abideth in you. And you don't need any man to teach you. You need not let any man teach you. You shouldn't have needed me to teach you that. You should have known it was there. John didn't write, say, now I'm teaching you that it's there. He says, it's there. Should be teaching you that what I'm saying is right. Oh, oh, you see, that's rather reversed it, hasn't it? But that's the truth of it. There's no excuse for anybody going wrong. Say, don't you go and listen to that man, he'll put you wrong. No excuse for going wrong. You're not anointed, that's all. The anointing teaches you. You'd be surprised how many people are told to avoid me. I can't put you wrong. And I can't put you right either. The anointing is there, beloved. This is one of the things you're told to avoid me about, because I preach this very thing. Did you know? Because I won't have anything to do with this rubbish of, oh, God, anoint him to do this, and oh, God, anoint him to do that. Making us move under the old covenant. That's what they used to get under the old covenant, to have a fresh anointing about. I said, oh, the last anointing I had was fresh oil. Well, of course, that's right, he needed it. He was under the old covenant. He never knew what it was to be born again. Jesus hadn't died then. Risen again, the Holy Ghost hadn't come. Not in the way that he came at Pentecost, but has been here ever since. Praise God. Hallelujah. You see, the anointing's in you. And it teaches you everything, and is truth, and is no lie about death. That's right. And even as it hath taught you, you shall abide in him. Amen. Now, you'll only abide in him as it hath taught you. That's all. Read your Bible. That's what your Bible says. You're supposed to read it and believe it. You will abide in him as it hath taught you. Praise God. This is why you have such trouble with people sort of nipping in and out, and up and down, and round about. Because they've never let themselves be taught. The Holy Ghost has come to teach you the difference between right and wrong. Between sin and holiness. Between what's of self and what's of God. Between what's worldliness, and what is proper and natural behaviour as men and women. What you may have in your homes, and in your handbags, and on your backs, and on your bookshelves. He's come to teach you. But you won't let him. You'll let Chanel, or some dress designer, or somebody else teach you. Because of some fantastic thing you read in a coloured glossy magazine or something. What's that got to do with it? The Holy Ghost has come to teach you the habits of heaven. You want them. The way they've gone in God. The way God would live here if he was you. That's what the Holy Ghost has come to teach you. That's why people never get anywhere. They want the Holy Ghost to sanction all kinds of things that they have, and he won't have it. Praise him. He loves Jesus. He's come to see about the seed. That's what he's come for. He's come to be the instructor of the foolish. A guide of babes. He's come to abide in your heart that none need go wrong. Hallelujah. Isn't this a precious thing? So I'm all cut off from fellowship where I am. What, with God the Father and God the Son? What fellowship have you been cut off from? Amen. You're there in your loneliness if you like to learn the contours of heaven. The glory of the face of Jesus Christ. The way they speak to one another and love one another. Up there. Amen. That's why you're put in lonely places. Sometimes if you get too much with these people you call your fellowship, you might get like them. So that's right. You don't want to get like me, for instance. We'll talk more about this before we're through in about an hour's time. I was talking to a young man the other day. I was asked to go to a certain place to meet this young man. And the young man, I don't know whether you may have met him, I won't tell you his name, but he was a guardsman. He got saved about two years ago. Baptised in the Spirit. I have to look up to him. There aren't many men I look up to, but I have to look up to him a bit. And his wife, and as we talked and talked and talked, he said, you know, some of us have been listening to your tapes and we've all tried to be little Mr North. I said, oh brother, don't you do that. Don't you do that. You be yourself. That's all I am. I'm me. And you're to be what God wants you to be. Hallelujah. And the Holy Ghost has come to develop all those lovely little things about you. He's come to make you glorious. And if you keep neglecting them because you're aching after what somebody else has got, you'll become ugly and perverted and you'll become a... And do you know what the Lord says? I'll spew you out of my mouth. Make me feel sick. Fancy God feeling sick. You'd never think God would feel sick, would you? So I always thought God enjoyed perfect health. Well, he says, I'll spew you out of my mouth. That's feeling sick. The Holy Ghost has come to teach you and he's teaching you. You must not move off that ground. You've got to stop there. And so, two references this time, beloved. In the third chapter and in the second chapter. The third chapter reads this. Verse, uh, where shall we start? Verse 14. We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. So you believe God. If you haven't got really uprising, active, moving, flowing love to your brethren, you're dead. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. Now you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. You haven't got it. You're kidding yourself if you think you've got eternal life. You're a murderer. Perhaps you think we ought to stop now and examine, see how many people we hate. You know how dead you are then. But man, I'm baptizing the spirit. What kind of a spirit? That's what I want to know. Murderer spirit? Well, obviously it was the wrong one then, wasn't it? You say, well, I can speak in tongues. Well, I know lots of devils can speak in tongues. I've heard them. I don't know how many times. More times than I'd like to tell you. I can prophesy. Well, I've heard devils prophesy. More times than I could like, I could remember. Thousands of times I said, no, don't exaggerate. I mean it. That happens to be the way the Lord's brought me. These things are no guarantee. Glory, we've got to see what's got to abide in you, beloved. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. You know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God. Because he laid down his life. He didn't take somebody else's. He wasn't a hater. He was a lover. He let somebody else take his glory. Don't you see? He laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Hallelujah. And this is what John is telling you. In case you've got some Jehovah Witness sort of ideas about you. It was God that laid down his life. It says in verse 16, God. Amen. Glory. We're very, we're right down on the ground. But whosoever, verse 17, hath this world's good and seeth his brother have need and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him. How dwelleth the love of God in him? Chapter two, verse five. Whoso keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfect. All right. Look. The next thing then, beloved, is that in me, in me, I have the love of God. Not love to God. I'm not saying I have great love to God in my heart. I have great love to you because I have the great love of God in my heart. That's what John is telling us. And praise God. Now, all I've got to do is to keep his word and that love will be perfected in me. I just keep his word. I don't mean I sleep with the Bible under my pillow or always carry it in my pocket or anything like that. That's not what I'm talking about. That's not what God means. It's, it's, you keep his word. And the only way you can keep his word, I'll tell you, is living it. If you don't live it, you've lost it. Anything you hear here today that's the word of God to you, if you don't go out and live it, you've lost it. You might say, oh, I remember going to Stanley Hall, so and so, so and so, you see. If you haven't lived it, you've lost it. You say, oh, I can remember it now. It was as clear as anything. Didn't make any difference. Didn't make a scrap of difference. The tremendousness about this, beloved, is that you've got to have the love of God in you. Now, you can always tell if someone's got the love of God in them. They love the brethren, and they love the brethren to good effect. That is, that they wouldn't think of having something of this world's good if their brother was in need without sharing it with them, even to the impoverishment of their own selves. But you know, I've got to think about my wife and children. Yeah, but God thought about all the other wives and children in the world when he gave his son. Stop your nonsense. You're not better than God with all your so-called ethical approach. Stop your nonsense. You'll damn your soul if you carry on like that. You've got to love. This love of God has got to live in you. It's got to have its home in you. It'll go forth, but its home will still be in you. It's a marvellous thing, beloved, to love with the love of God. To have this world's good is a test of it. Not whether you say you have the other world's good, that is, the power of God to heal people. That's not what he's talking about. John's very practical. See, we want to put it... I've got the love of God in me, and I stand up, and I use my gift. I could tell you lots of things like that. I can tell you of times, beloved, when all sorts of things have taken place. They... I was telling one of the stories last night in the meeting of things that have happened. I remember once standing in a buskew in Bradford, where once I had a church. I stood in a buskew there, and we were waiting at the end of one of the long... I don't know, even my wife knows this one. Can't tell her everything. Don't have to tell your wives everything, do you? But I was standing in this buskew, and whilst we were standing there, I heard a little voice start to cry. You see? And it rose to a scream, and I look round, and the bus wasn't anywhere in sight, and there was Mother, this child had gone as white as a death, and it was... Oh, she was absolutely in a wits end. She didn't know what to do, you see. And I looked up the hill. I got an appointment to keep, you see. But something in me moved. I just took that child from its mother and clasped it to my breast, and I didn't say a word, and I gave it back to its mother, and it was all lovely and right, and I got on the bus and went. She said, That's the other world's good. Yeah, but John says, this world's good. If I'd have done that for her, and she needed a pound note, and I wouldn't give it to her, what? All this highfalutin talk. This is the thing, my beloved. Let's keep our feet down on the ground, shall we? People need this world's good. And I want to tell you this, beloved, it's a wonderful thing that the good of the other world came into this world. It's a marvelous thing. You might enter into the good of that great world, and live in the power of it in this world. But oh, you've got bowels of compassion. Now listen, here's a good guidance. When your bowels of compassion open up to people, give them everything you've got. When your bowels of compassion are moved inside you, and to meet need, meet it. The love of God has got to dwell in you. It's got to be perfected in you. You wouldn't have thought the love of God needed perfecting, would you? It does need perfecting. It needed perfecting down on this earth. Praise him. It still needs perfecting down on this earth. Men and women are in desperate need. They are, beloved. Glory be to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. You can do this. You mustn't shut up your bowels of compassion. You mustn't try and get all sophisticated and tough and hard. You've got to be soft. Let people know that you're soft, too. I don't mean up here, especially. You've got to be tender, easily touched, easily moved. This is what's got to happen to you. So that you can give, and give, and give, and give, and give, and give, and give. These are laws. I want to tell you this much. These things will ultimately decide your usefulness in ministry. If you think you have a ministry. Before Jesus came down here to be a minister, he gave up all heaven. He gave it all away, if you like. He left it all. That's before he ever started. He left all that. You know, I can remember. This is how it works. I can remember when God began first to move in my heart and the heart of my wife about going into the ministry. We were in our own business on the earth. We, who God had enabled us to start in our own business. And then God began to call and to draw. And the day came when we got up and walked out of it, left it. All the love of it. Never had a hate me from it since. It's a flourishing business. We left that before we made a start. Glory. We gave all that away. We invested nothing. Do you see, beloved? It's practical things like this that decide your usefulness. Not when you've had a great anointing. I had the anointing. I didn't know so much about it then, but I had it. God's most practical. And I reckon that Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, had first claim on the business, don't you? He was the eldest son. Joseph had died. And he walked out on it. It to his brothers. And they hated him. So John said they didn't believe in him. They didn't believe in him. Don't you see? Nobody believes Jesus. Whilst saying they do. They believe the fanciful little things about it. The things that are so nice. But all that come down here, beloved, and live as God wants you to live. I'm not saying all of you go out and resign in the morning and retire from business. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that get a heart that understands what God's doing. And what it's all about. Praise his wonderful name. Let's go on, shall we? This time I'm going into the fourth chapter. And in chapter four, this is what we read. Beloved, believe not every spirit. But try the spirits, whether they are of God. Because many false prophets have gone out into the world. And will you understand that he's talking about false prophets, not demons. This is what he's talking about. All right. Hereby know ye the spirit of God. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is that spirit of Antichrist. Whereof ye have heard that it should come. And even now already is it in the world. You are of God, little children. And have overcome them, the false prophets, the Antichrist spirits. Because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. That's right. He that is in me. Hallelujah. Jesus Christ is in me. He's in me. Praise God. Is he in you? Greater is he that's in me and in you than he that's in the world. And who, pray you, is in the world. It's the devil. He's in the world. And he that's in me is greater than he that's in the world. All the world. With all the millions of millions that there are in the world. If he's in me, he's greater than all that. This is so true. Oh, it's marvellous, beloved. When this is right. When you see now that you can't be overcome, don't you? So John goes on in the fifth chapter. This is the victory that overcomes the world. Our faith. Whatsoever's born of God overcomes the world. Here's one of the marks of the new birth that I've been mentioned. Whatsoever's born of God overcomes the world. Praise the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's all because he's in us. You do see this, beloved, don't you? That the whole purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ in spirit to you is that he should be in this world now. Overcoming the world now in you as he did then and as Jesus of Nazareth. Dealing with everything that's wrong in the world. He didn't come to put a new government in. Cast out the Herodians and put in the Sadducees or something like that. He wasn't interested in politics at all. I don't know whether you're unduly interested in politics, but he wasn't. He overcame the world in a tremendously different way, beloved. And he wasn't so bothered about putting governments right. He was only interested in putting men and women right. And then it seemed to him that whatever government was in didn't matter very much. Hallelujah. What a wonderful thing this is. That you should walk and live and act and think and speak on this knowledge, beloved. That greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. But it's no good you going about talking in the sort of an airy, fairy, accepted, Christian, modulated language and tone about him being in you if he's not in you. You've got to be able to confess that he's in your flesh. That is, if the people come in contact with your flesh, they won't get a sinful reaction. That's right. That if they tempt your flesh, they won't get fleshy rottenness. That if they attack your flesh, they'll find it soft and yielding. You can say, well, now here's the other cheek. That's right. You hit this one too. And if they want to break your bones, you say, well, I've got a lot more bones. You can break those too. Jesus Christ has got to be in your flesh. Oh, you say, I don't know about that. No, you don't, do you? That's the trouble. It's all being put into this sort of spiritual aspect, spiritual aspect. May the Lord save us from this cheap kind of thing that we're paying lip service to. It's got to be in your flesh. Praise God. If it hasn't got through to your flesh yet, get away somewhere in a corner with God, will you? Jesus Christ here. Hallelujah. Praise the name of the Lord. It's a marvelous thing. When you can move about and it's the Lord Jesus Christ walking about you. Praise God. I don't decide whether you go and spend about 15 and sixpence on a fish and chip shopper every night and go to bed so as you can't move hardly. So I'm all right. I don't get indigestion. Well, perhaps it's a good job some of you did. This will decide it. You've got to know, beloved, what the Lord wants of you. Hmm. Praise God. Being better if you'd have spent sixpence on yourself and given the 15 shillings to somebody else. Being far better, beloved. Don't you see what God is after? Don't you see what he's really getting at? He wants to see this thing working out. When I read back in my Bible, this is what I see that followed Pentecost. This is the kind of life they lived. Nobody said anything was their own. Nobody made any claims about this is my car and this is my that and this is that and the other. They didn't do that sort of thing, apparently. They must have had a different kind of a salvation from what people have got today. Mustn't they? Anybody here volunteering to give me their car? So don't be worried. I don't want it. What did you do? Treat it as a joke. Nobody said that anything they possessed was their own. So we're living in different days. We're not, you know, we're living in the same old selfish days that they were. Course we are. We live in the same old sinful money-grabbing days that they were. Praise God. This is the same, beloved. It's absolutely the same. God's showing you your heart, not the times you live in. The Holy Ghost hasn't changed. This is what we like to claim. We know we're in pain because God hasn't changed. He healed them yesterday. He'll heal them today. He'll heal them forever. He prophesied yesterday. He prophesied today. He'll prophesy forever. That's right. God will always prophesy. Didn't you know that? God will always speak. It's always prophetic when God speaks. That it has original power in it. Moving from original spirit. Now then, my beloved brothers and sisters. Don't you see what's happening? Jesus Christ has got to be in your flesh. Until it's worked out to that level, you're just simply frustrating the grace of God. Of course you'll have troubles. And don't keep running to somebody called a deliverance man. You're bound to have troubles. Alter your ways. I want some help. You don't want any help. What you want is obedience. Prefaced by repentance. That's what you want. You need to get down to truth. The spirit is truth. Hallelujah. And God moves us right in along this line. And oh how he keeps us down to this wonderful thing. All right, beloved. Let's pass on at least to one more. And this time I'm in the third chapter again. And I start at verse one. And I read. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath toward us, hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is. And every man, without exception, that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure. Amen. You got this hope in you? Praise God. Now all sons of God have this hope in them. It's the means whereby God works. He works, you see, he's very, very wonderful. He works in living things. Hope is a living thing. Hope is an abiding thing, you know. Faith, hope, and love, they abide. And it's an abiding thing. And as I pointed out how he, to keep us separate from sin, it's a living seed in you that won't unite with it. So now it's this hope, you see. He works through this living hope in your heart. And the way he works through it is this, that he makes you hope and hope and hope. And the thing he makes you hope for is that you'll be perfectly like Jesus. That's what he makes you hope for. That's my hope. He makes me hope and hope that I should be like Jesus. More and more and more like Jesus. And by this hope, he purifies you, you see. This is how he keeps you pure, you see. You've got a seed that won't unite with sin. You've got a hope that says I want to be like Jesus. Isn't it marvellous? It's one that's negative and won't have it. The other one's positive. The other one rejects and the other one draws me up and attracts. It's a marvellous thing. Isn't God wise? Isn't he clever the way he does it? That I hope, hope, hope. I dearly hope I should be more like Jesus when I put my head on my pillow tonight than I was when I took it off this morning. I dearly hope so. I'm not concerned whether he comes back in the night or not. That doesn't bother me, praise God. If I knew he was coming back tonight, beloved, I don't know what I should do if I, if I, if I didn't know that my life was purified from this and that and the other. I don't know what I'd do. You see, I'm his, glory, glory. Now, if Jesus Christ is in my flesh and I'm like Jesus in my flesh, as I walk about down here on the earth, that's marvellous. In the spirits and in the aspirations of my soul, I have every right to think. It's grounded upon a positive reality. It's not something hypothetical. It's not a theory that's being put over. God's most practical. I have a reason to hope. And that if he should come back tonight, I should be just like him. Amen. If Jesus could suddenly appear beside me now and you could see us both together. That's right. Am I like him? And the next time you look in the glass, what if Jesus should appear beside you? I'm not talking about the form of your features. I'm not thinking whether men count you ugly or pretty. Or handsome or like a hog. Doesn't make any difference. It's whether or not you're like him. Now, one of the great things about time is this. You're being granted opportunity to become more like Jesus. Amen. To hope and to hope and to hope. Praise the name of the Lord. You can never know. God never lets you know. He never comes and tells you. He doesn't want to swell your head. He doesn't want to make you vain. You never know. See? But you can go on and say, Lord, I hope so. You say, does this sort of obsess your mind? Oh no, I think about it when I'm preaching. You, you, you, all you do is live. And you know, beloved, you can only live what you are. That's all you can do, isn't it? You can't live what you're not. And as you live and live and live. Oh, bless the name of the Lord. At times you might feel at your wit's end. Times you might feel far removed from things you want to be. But this I'll promise you now. And I think I can look back over quite a broad expanse of time. And experience, beloved, that if you go on. And if you live for the Lord as you know him in the instant. Ah, he'll perfect everything about you. He will, you know. He will. Glory be to the name of the Lord. All right, I think I'm going to stop. Are all these things in you? Don't suddenly say, well, now I'm going to try and start hoping. No, it's got to be in you. It's got to be in you. Praise God. Is the seed in you? Is the witness in you? Is it? Is the love in you? Eh? The seed won't unite with sin. The love won't allow you to act unlovingly. Especially to your brothers and sisters. Isn't it a marvelous thing? The hope won't allow you to get impure. Isn't God wise? The witness won't allow you to doubt. Oh, you say, this is the life, isn't it? This is the life. Well, of course it is. If I could only live that life. Well, you can. Praise him. And then, beloved, to know that greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. You have overcome them, little children. You've overcome them. That's a marvelous thing, isn't it? To overcome them. You've done that, haven't you? Well, the Lord bless you. Lead you right on into this. I haven't exhausted this great theme in John's epistle. You go and trace it through for yourself. You may find some better things than I have found. Add them to what you have learned. Go through with your pencil. Underline the word in, in me, in me, in me, in you. Glory to God. And then let your heart go. Lord, thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna live this. I'm gonna live this. Praise him. It's amazing how you do and how you can. It's amazing. Just believe him. Come on, let's pray.